[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

Does Krill know how Imperialistic works? It's +50%. 10 hammers turns into 15, not 20.

I would assume he does. I just was thinking one thing and typing another.

[Cyneheard]

I would assume he does. I just was thinking one thing and typing another.

There's probably some +fpt going on as well?

[scooter]

There's probably some +fpt going on as well?

Yeah I think Deer and Corn usually produce some food. I'll have to check to make sure. You can pretty much ignore that whole line there - it was written by me quickly typing whilst doing other things so yeah don't take it very seriously. The greater point that Imp == good here with the capital and the bonus is more significant.

[scooter]

t0: work FP workshop and move onto deer with worker. agri: 5T, grow: 5T, warr: 4T

Correction: Move worker onto corn. Road, cancel. Move onto deer and camp on T1.

[scooter]

Did not really expect Serdoa to pick Vikings, but upon seeing their starting techs (Fishing/Hunting) it's a pretty logical pick.

Vikings for me - lets hope Seven was honest with ships being important

Wait what? He said that? I just assumed this was like PBEM25 where there was no saltwater. Turns out, bad assumption:

* While there is enough saltwater that ships will be important, there are not enough water tiles to make circumnavigation possible. (It requires at least 33% water tiles, and there are only about 25%.)

Prediction: there will be a couple bodies of water just big enough to have an ivory island on it that you have to build ships for - thus the lack of the elephant bans. You have to prioritize whether you want key city locations or elephants. Scouting will be important here. Thankfully I actually have one.



EDIT: I'll cobble together a player-by-player preview over the weekend starting sometime today. I'm going to try to do it in a manner that's not boring and predictable like "he's a good player and has strong traits therefore I should watch out for him" type of filler snoozefest. If I can't do that, well then I'll just list their combinations, throw in some funny pictures, and then run for my life.

[scooter]

Also - I'm realizing I've never seen Brian Shanahan play a game, and upon further inspection he's never participated in a BtS game here - only FFH. Anyone care to give me a brief idea of what he's like? No idea what to expect for him.

[scooter]

Brian Shanahan

Cre/Imp of Aztec (hunting/myst)
-courthouse (EPs)
-Grocer
-no forest on deer
-tile C is plains

Here's his start:



Brian is Imperialistic and has Hunting, so like me he can get a settler out at EOT14 which is good for him. I'm really convinced for this reason that Hunting is the best starting tech here. Anyways, he has one option I don't have - working a plains village. My current plan works FP workshop and gets Agri in 5T instead of 6T. He can get it in 4T by working the village which lets him finish the corn 1T sooner.

Fortunately, this also slows growth and doesn't let him come out ahead - in fact, the slowing of growth causes his settler to come at EOT15 rather than T14, so I'm not hurt by the lack of the village. I ran through this real quick and his settler still finishes at EOT14 if he follows my plan. If he goes worker right after settler like I intend to, his worker will come 1T later than mine due to his lack of Expansive, so I would be ahead by 1T at T16. Regardless, he has the critical Imp/Hunting start like myself and Serdoa, and if he follows a blueprint similar to my own, he'll be one of the early leaders.

The most fun part about this pick, however, is the pairing of a Creative with the Aztecs. That means Brian gets a Sacrificial Altar in his capital starting at T0. Considering he can keep pace with me on the settler and (probably) worker, he'll likely imitate my tech path as well and go towards Bronze Working and get into Slavery quickly. That should really help him maintain a quick start, so I expect him to keep pace with me early on. If he doesn't, that will likely be the end of him because his traits are (like mine) traits that you need to have a lead going into the mid-game or you'll get out-paced by the Financial guys. He also is getting +2 EPs/turn from the Courthouse, which is likely to be annoying. I hope I don't meet him right away or else that'll slow down my ability to get graphs. Actually I hope he's not near me either - I'd rather have a slower starter next to me in the land grab phase.

From a skills perspective, Brian has participated in 0 BtS PBEMs here and 1.5 FFH PBEMs. I only briefly skimmed over closing comments and such, but it sounds as if he didn't finish all that well which was partially 1)map-makers faults and 2) his own fault. I didn't bother looking at the second FFH game he's in because it's pretty new, but I don't have much to work with on assessing him. My guess is that he's not that experienced in BtS, but is probably somewehat capable. I would guess his skills are fairly average, but the skill level is slightly above-average in this game, so I'm guessing he's probably 4th or 5th in terms of experience or skill.

PREDICTION: His good traits, techs, and UB will help him get off to a nice (but not dominating) start, but he'll fall behind later. Also expecting him to struggle somewhat militarily out of sheer lack of experience for this kind of thing. His UU is pointless unless Seven deprives us of metal (not likely but then again having random tile improvements pre-set were not likely either). And anyways, with the bigger size of the map it's not likely to be a factor. As a result of all this, I rank him on the lower end of my "threat" scale - mostly due to the inexperience more than anything.

[scooter]

Geez, 56 posts in this thread before a turn was ever played. That's a record of sorts for me. So let's have our first turn report. So you know what my start looks like because duh, but first I need to name my city and... what? It's named "Paper"... I don't understand the code here, but I went ahead and renamed it:



I also made sure to swap to the workshop as you see. My worker sunk 1T into a road as planned:



This road will get completed in the 1T downtime before Agriculture comes in. One problem with everyone starting with their capital settled is it's harder to get a C&D read on the first turn (Serdoa):



However, I realized everyone will start working the corn tile. Therefore I can figure out Serdoa by noticing where he differs. And wait. Why in the world does he have 3 hammers on this turn? I actually really don't know. I'll come back to that. The "rival high" of food is the other three players working the corn, so the remaining three have 5/1 right now. So the rival worst of 4 must be Serdoa... So Serdoa somehow has 4 food and 3 production right now, which is really only logical if he's working a 2/2/0 tile. That would be a forested deer, except according to the chart I'm looking at, Vikings have Hunting, in which case he shouldn't have that tile available to him. Huh? I'm confused here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Moving on, I noticed we actually have a forest preserve too on the tile 1E of the stone:



Um, cool? Besides +1 happy, does it do anything? I've never built one before. Does it make me more likely to get a forest growth nearby? That would be cool.

ANYWAYS. What next. Scouting? Scouting. My two directions will be northeast to find a good fish/incense spot and northwest/west to find a good pigs/floodplains/mystery-fort-land spot. Whatever that fort is for. So I had to decide which direction to go with my scout. Well I figure I want to cover as much ground as I can, and I noticed some roads up northeast... And discovering those sounded more interesting at the moment, so to the northeast we go!



Note the bottom-left corner - 1195 land tiles. Dazed - see how easy that is?? Anyways - point is that's a LOT of land. PBEM14 had about 1200 or so IIRC and that was including the "New World" that never got touched. So this will be a lot of land. As Joao, this thrills me. So let's claim a ton of it. Unfortunately that does mean Cataphracts will be at their peak at exactly the wrong time, so I NEED to find that Ivory. Also because I want to kill Commodore for taking my pick.

Now I'm going way out of order but I'm going to jump back to the whole fort thing. Remember - Seven insisted that ships would matter here. I'm guessing this fort is to encourage us to use them as canal-makers, because he wants to see some naval action. I'm also guessing there's another body of water just west/northwest of the fort. 40x40 = 1600, which means at 1195 land tiles there's 405 water tiles out there, or 25.3%.

Right now I see 55 tiles total (not counting some tile bleeding on some obvious land tiles), 10 of which are water. That's roughly 18.2%... So the point is, I see a decent amount of water now, but overall distribution of water is higher than the small sample I'm looking at now. So... take that for what it's worth. Vikings might turn out to be more than just a good set of techs after all.

Is there a good link out there that has C&D info on one page? Specifically military power charts is what I'm looking for. I don't intend to do serious C&D here, but I would like to chart military builds as best I can for awhile because that seems to be extra-valuable in this kind of game. I may give up on it, but for now I'm going to give it a shot.

[SevenSpirits]

Note the village at B, the workshop on the flood plain, the railroad at D, and the Forest Preserve on the tile two south of the capital.

Moving on, I noticed we actually have a forest preserve too on the tile 1E of the stone

* While there is enough saltwater that ships will be important, there are not enough water tiles to make circumnavigation possible. (It requires at least 33% water tiles, and there are only about 25%.)

I just assumed this was like PBEM25 where there was no saltwater. Turns out, bad assumption

* Toroidal, Standard size, 40x40, players are all equidistant from all others.

Actually I hope he's not near me either - I'd rather have a slower starter next to me in the land grab phase.

Historical note: Mongolia's starting techs do not include Writing.

:neenernee

[dazedroyalty]

Historical note: Mongolia's starting techs do not include Writing.

:neenernee

Oh snap!

Also, my understanding is that Forest Preserves DO increase the chance of forests spreading, assuming the tiles aren't improved.