[SPOILERS] Pindicator promises brighter days ahead

[pindicator]

Turn 034



2nd worker done, starting a warrior at the capital. Growing the capital to happy cap now while getting warriors out.

I now think maybe AH would have been better ahead of Pottery.

[pindicator]

Turn 041

My neighbors are very much the unfriendly type.



What I'm thankful for is that so far they all have been unfriendly towards each other, and not me. Up to the northwest of Lundby we have superdeath with a fortified and injured warrior right by TBS. I really think my next settler needs to get the copper. I also really think I want to see where horses are and if a HBR rush is a possibility. With so many neighbors squabbling and slowing each other down I can have a lot of options for who to hit - surely 1 of them will make a good target?



Needed to get another worker out of the capital as I was working unimproved tiles. After that worker we finish the warrior, grow to 6 building more warriors, and then just pump out 3-4 settlers so I can get all the 1st ring cities that I have my eyes on.

Lundby is going to finish it's MP warrior and then just pump out workers. Actually, we'll grow to 4 and whip the first one, then build after that. WIth that city's food whipping makes some sense.



I like that crop yield.

[pindicator]

Turn 42

Forgot to note that TBS is at 3 cities right now.  He's playing the opening how I normally do:  get those initial cities out as fast as possible.  This game I'm trying something different, but finding so many neighbors has me questioning if I am going to have enough room ...  My goal is to get my 4th and 5th cities out before other people do.  Plus since I don't have the bonus to production for early game that other people might, I'm trying to give myself more lasting advantages.

And that kind of ties in to how I'm approaching micro this game.  Usually I am meticulous about my worker micro being as efficient as possible (to the point where I wonder if that's the main objective of the game for me ).  Here I am saving my mental energy.  But also because I find it's a lot harder to mentally get out of a plan once I've set it.

With that said, this turn I did sit down and do a little bit of micro.



When Lundby finished it's warrior it was 1 turn away from hitting size 4, so I decided to go ahead and grow it.  That in turn gave me the idea that we'd whip out the first worker.  My plan was just to sit at size 3 working the pig, wheat, and silver and pump workers from here.  At least while the capital is making settlers or until someone makes me do something else.  But with all this extra food around, it would be a shame not to be whipping this city every 10 turns.  So we are going to wait until we are a turn away from the worker being done and then whip, overflow into a granary.  And again in 10 turns do the same.  By then I imagine I'll have 3-4 workers built, and 2 whips worth of overflow into finishing a granary.

I wanted to build a barracks here, but the only thing that the border pop gets me is a trade route connection to my capital. I'll build it later, when I start planning on getting units out of here.



With Achtereekte I had to decide whether it was better to grow the city to size 6 as quickly as possible, or if we just wanted to get a settler out at 5 and not waste the production of the mine that I've built. We'll need the mine at size 6 regardless, but it feels weird to not use it right away. Turns out growing gets the first settler out a turn later, but you're a size higher at your capital and set up to just pump out 5-turn settlers. We'll also get 2 more warriors out, which we'll need to protect these guys. So for now we're going 3 turns at +11 food to get to size 5. Then at size 5 it will be 1 turn on the flood plains and 2 turns on the mines to get to 6 and to get the 3rd warrior done all at end of t48.

The second thing to sort out was how to get the road started and the right improvements set. At size 6 we need another 4 food-hammer tile to work to get to 20/turn. First settler is heading for the copper location, too. The best spot for a road, if I had all the time in the world, would be the pigs, because it lets me get to the next city in 3 roads and also heads in the direction of Lundby. But I settled that camping the ivory was my next improvement, and the only way to get that tile up to speed would be roading the forest northeast of the capital first, then the jungle hill above the ivory on turns 47 & 48. Meanwhile 2nd worker is already 1/4 into the mine east of the city, and will go improve up the ivory as the 4 food-hammer tile to work at size 6.

Oh no. I just realized I'm hooking up the silver but have no connection from Lundby to the capital. So unhappy at 6. Guess this means we are going to road the ivory instead of the jungle and hook that ivory up after all. That will get everything hooked up and improved right before we reach size 6.

[pindicator]

Question for the lurkers: Is my naming scheme too convoluted? I've been trying to put the first initial, last name and 2-letter country abbreviation for each gold medalist. Should I drop part of that to make it easier to read? But I also want to put in enough info that other teams can guess at the naming scheme.

[Erwin]

As an enthusiastic winter sports fan, I'm really enjoying your naming scheme. IMO, you could leave the country abbreviations away, though.

[pindicator]

Thanks, I went with that and renamed the current cities. Hopefully I can remember to give a nod to each athlete and not just say that I founded so-and-so city

[pindicator]

Turn 047



Horses are in. Writing next. Maybe I should slot in Fishing first? And now I want a fast library at Lundby.

Capital hits 6 in 2 turns, then we start spamming settlers.

[pindicator]

Turn 048



Goodnight, sweet prince.

[pindicator]

Turn 049



Finally hit size 6 and that 20 food-hammer mark. Settler due in 5. Writing due in 4, and I would really like to get some libraries going for the cottages I have yet to build.

The overflow at Lundby was enough that the granary is now just 4 turns to completion. I might put the next whip overflow into a library, although now that I'm looking at the city from this screenshot what I really need to do is chop those inner ring forests into a library and put cottages on those tiles. Because one thing I was wondering was "what do I do with these worker turns?" I'll want them for when the next 2 cities are planted, but between now and then they aren't doing much.

And then I decided, let's be greedy. So I'm building 2 settlers.

[pindicator]

Nah, I switched Lundby back to a worker. If we do double settler here we're not going to have any worker power for the next settler out of the capital. And while we will have some turns in the next 5 where I'm looking for things for workers to do, that's going to run out pretty fast as these settlers come out and we start assigning 2 workers per new city. And then there's cottages that need to go down. And maybe a couple chops.