[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Nakor]

Good thoughts, Gaspar.

Let's consider that coastal site once we have more map knowledge. Getting our resources connected has priority to the coast at this moment, I think. Going for Maths (for more valuable chops) - Calender after Writing sounds like a very decent play to get in even better shape with this map. With Calender we can delay Monarchy for a bit and still grow our cities very big.

So:
Agri - Wheel - Hunting - AH - Pottery - Writing - Maths - Fishing - Sailing - Calender?

At least we don't have to worry about using our chops for good things, since there are only chops to be made. Running 3 workers per city for a start sounds the best we can do. Chop and expand, chop and expand.

Remember to switch civics to Slavery AFTER the first settler is done, then we can start using the whip as well to get more workers.

Regarding the map, let's hope we all started on different landmasses with different lay-outs and that Kyan started on an unforested agripelago...
Once we know everone has about the same starts, it seems reasonable to try to get everybody to consider going after India, indeed. We can mention it in our diplomacy but keep an "if" in our messages to not sound to "bad". If Ruff has made a map that doesn't benefit India, we shouldn't just go after them because we think they are the best players.

I do think we can assume that Kyan started BW as well, though and.... well, time will tell.

Regading our first chops, I suggest we chop NE first and E of that second, it will speed up the road to our second city. The downside is that after the two chops, we're in a position to mine the gems first, that gives 1c less then the gold, but since we're financial... We can chop between the mines after the first mine and finish with the gold mine while the other worker farms the corn and chops to the south/west afterwards. What do you think?

[T-hawk]

If a lurker knows whether the (10?) tile of water for saltwater rule can be broken on FR scripts, please let us know

I'm pretty sure the 10-water-tile rule is hardcoded within Civ and is not configurable by the map script.

[Gaspar]

Good thoughts, Gaspar.

Let's consider that coastal site once we have more map knowledge. Getting our resources connected has priority to the coast at this moment, I think. Going for Maths (for more valuable chops) - Calender after Writing sounds like a very decent play to get in even better shape with this map. With Calender we can delay Monarchy for a bit and still grow our cities very big.

So:
Agri - Wheel - Hunting - AH - Pottery - Writing - Maths - Fishing - Sailing - Calender?

Sounds pretty solid. We do have Fishing already, but otherwise I agree with the tech path. HR is less important here since we have 3 pre-calendar happys in our first two cities, and then 2 more coming with calendar. Assuming everyone else is as isolated a start as we are, I'd venture that a few of our neighbors will waste time wonder chasing.

I guess the other question is how long can we delay the Currency-CoL branch on this delayed/limited commerce start. I suppose theres an argument to be made for going that route before Calendar since we do have 3 pre-calendar happys, which let us grow to size 7(This is prince, right?)

At least we don't have to worry about using our chops for good things, since there are only chops to be made. Running 3 workers per city for a start sounds the best we can do. Chop and expand, chop and expand.

Couldn't agree more. I don't foresee building much of anything other than an army of workers and settlers, a cardboard cutout army and some granaries in the next 70 or so turns. When you're given this much room to expand, should definitely take advantage of it.
Remember to switch civics to Slavery AFTER the first settler is done, then we can start using the whip as well to get more workers.

Regarding the map, let's hope we all started on different landmasses with different lay-outs and that Kyan started on an unforested agripelago...
Once we know everone has about the same starts, it seems reasonable to try to get everybody to consider going after India, indeed. We can mention it in our diplomacy but keep an "if" in our messages to not sound to "bad". If Ruff has made a map that doesn't benefit India, we shouldn't just go after them because we think they are the best players.

Mostly I was just ranting about India, though I feel pretty strongly that Ruff just rushed the map without considering the implications, given that alex was originally the designer and Ruff filled in and had a map up without a map thread of any sort in no time at all. The big issue is I don't want us to make the mistake of not responding to the fortunate advantage they have. Something simple like saying some variation on "Boy, India sure lucked out with this map, guess we're all playing for second place" in a lot of our diplo is probably sufficient. Just make sure we keep it in everyone's mind.

Regading our first chops, I suggest we chop NE first and E of that second, it will speed up the road to our second city. The downside is that after the two chops, we're in a position to mine the gems first, that gives 1c less then the gold, but since we're financial... We can chop between the mines after the first mine and finish with the gold mine while the other worker farms the corn and chops to the south/west afterwards. What do you think?

Save hasn't come around yet, but when it does, I'll take a look at the specifics. I agree that NE and ENE make sense, but also that its silly to not get the gold mine up before the gems mine. In fact, I'd imagine it will be a good long while before we actually work the gems mine, since we'll want to get some cottages up and running quickly. So yeah, Chop -> Chop -> Gold Mine and 2nd worker farms the corn makes the most sense. While normally I would prioritize getting the food up before doing any other improvements, our uniquely forested position allows us to go double worker and not lose out much.

After that, I think we have to evaluate a bit, or at least a bit further than I really feel like microing out just yet.

And thanks, T-hawk.

[Nakor]

Agree on the wonder chasing by other teams. I might be tempted to go for MoM if we feel safe and have a good production site up and running. Great Lib is great, of course, but that would mean getting to the top of the tree early on. We can consider this when the time comes.

Even with early Maths, I don't think Hanging Gardens is vital to our gameplan, but it's an awesome wonder of course. Same as Great Lib.

We should get libraries after granaries in two cities as well. In our GP-farm (3rd city?) to start runnnig 2 scientists and in our capital with gold and gems. Besides that, Granary's, axes, workers and settlers should do the job. Throw in some chariots once horses are connected (4th city?) for scouting and barb duty and let's hope we won't meet anyone...

Could Ruff be so smart that we only can get contact by water? Have to scout more...

About the chops, I agree with you. Let's chop NW and NWW first, then mine the gold.

Now, where is the save?

[Gaspar]

Well, the save came in, and my lack of micro skills became apparent. First the moderately interesting part:



(By the by, the chopped out part was simply a pop-up from my twitter feed that I missed when I did the capture, I didn't think anyone would be interested to see it.)

The next revealed tile by Feyenoord 1 shows the always popular forested hills rice! I sandboxed to make sure, and that will become an irrigated 4F1H tile at Civil Service(wasn't sure if the hill would block irrigation,) though its a nothing special 3F1H tile before then. What I did highlight in that picture is with 2 food bonuses, the fact that there are 9 visible flat grassland tiles means that city will either be a commerce powerhouse or a solid choice as a GP farm.

I'm not really as obsessed with that site as it appears, its more a case of we don't have a lot of interesting information yet, so I'm thirstily drinking any we do get. :D

The microing issue is such: I set production to a 2nd worker, and moved our first onto the NW forest. Worker is due in 8 turns and takes 40H. A chop takes 4T and provides 13H pre-math, so um, yeah, we're not getting a second chop into that worker. The lone chop will speed the production up by two turns, but we might need to rethink our micro-plan, as the 2nd chop at WNW will be wasted on a warrior. The alternative is to build 3 turns of the worker naturally, and then complete the remaining 25H with 2 chops, training a warrior with the non-chop turns. I don't know that that saves a lot of time, but it lets the city grow a little earlier. I'll let you think about it Nakor, since I'm 2 cups of coffee away from being any good at maths.

[Nakor]

Interesting! Still need to know a lot more about the northern lands, though. I must admit that I don't think we're on an island anymore...
Let's keep moving NE...

Now, about the worker, how much hammers do we make per turn? from what you tell me, I suggest that we put the second chop into a Settler and build warriors in between. All chopped hammers should go into Workers/Settlers, while we build warriors in between.

I'll take a look next turn...

[Gaspar]

Now, about the worker, how much hammers do we make per turn? from what you tell me, I suggest that we put the second chop into a Settler and build warriors in between. All chopped hammers should go into Workers/Settlers, while we build warriors in between.

Well, we're making 5 per turn towards a worker or a settler, 3F from the Oasis plus 2H from the city center tile. Obviously anything else we're going to get 2H towards. I'd agree that for the time being I'd apply all chops towards workers/settlers and hopefully slave any granaries. That leaves all the normal production to go towards units, obviously warriors at this point.

The upshot of this as a short-term plan is that first chop goes to 2nd worker, 2nd chop goes to settler, 2nd worker improves corn, 1st worker improves gold after the two chops, after both tiles are improved, both workers move to finishing chopping settler? Upside of this is we can grow normally after the 2nd worker, by completing the settler fully through chops we minimize the period of halted growth. The downside to all this forest is micromanagement is going to be crucial, so we'll have to keep making sure we talk all this stuff out to minimize the mistakes. Also, I hate India.

Anyway, yeah, I would have left the save for you but since we didn't get a turn in yesterday, I wanted to make sure the save moved along as quick as possible. I'll make sure to leave the next save for you so you don't go too long without having looked at it.

[Nakor]

Took a look at the save, so feel free to play the next turn.
From my calculations, we'll finish the 2nd worker T14.
At the same time worker 1 (we must name him) will start mining the gold.
Worker 2 will farm the corn t15.
Once those improvements are finished we'll have a warrior and be size 2 if I am correct. Then both workers can chop a forest and put that into the settler. If we're lucky, both chops will be done the same turn.

Hope that makes sense...

[Nakor]

Another day, another turn...



Post optics site?

And we forgot to mention this:



Who was this?

Jol started chopping!

[Gaspar]

Haven't looked at the save, but Hinduism has to be Tredje. Everyone had their first tech in sooner than that, and only Tredje has seen another score increase. Must have gone Agriculture -> Polytheism. Interesting decision, means he'll be late to the chopping party, since he still has to research Mining. Could work out, but I sure wouldn't delay worker techs with this much improvement needed on this map.

As far as a settling plan for the lake, may want to think about this: Ruff made a large square visible to us (one can easily assume to all players.) Obviously he did this for a reason - my guess, that is supposed to be "our area." I would suspect a similar sized square is available to each team. Most likely, that lake (and one can assume 5 others) was edited in to denote border areas between the Civs. Assuming I'm correct, this points in two obvious directions:

1. Settling the best spots by the lake before the Civs around us have good map knowledge will be a big advantage, as those are likely to be the contested areas. Its also imperative that those spots are easily defensible, so whenever we do settle, we'll need to bring a bevy of workers to chop the forest pronto.

2. We're going to see a unit near our capital in about 5-6 turns, assuming all areas are nearly equally sized. If so, we may want to think about slipping a warrior in between chops, because assuming it takes someone 8 turns to get to a border from their capital, if someone walks up on our undefended capital in 6 turns, the two turns it will take them to get to the center and raze it, we can't get a warrior built in (no slavery, and at size 1 its not an option anyway.)

Of course, I could be totally wrong about the map, but given how dry the map is, I'd be shocked if the lake was there for any other reason. What do you think, Nakor?