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

[scooter]

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

:neenernee

I deserved that .

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

Cool. That was my guess as well. By the way, do you want me to add you on the tracker so that you get a copy of the save? Not sure if you're interested in that or not. Let me know.

So I can't figure out why my capital was named Paper. I mean, if it was a 3-player game I'd assume Rock Paper Scissors but we have 5 soooo... Notaclue.

[dazedroyalty]

Not to give you a hard time again about reading but....

Oh btw your capitals' names are just for fun, no map clues or anything like that.

Enjoy!

By the way, do you want me to add you on the tracker so that you get a copy of the save? Not sure if you're interested in that or not. Let me know.

I'd be happy to look at saves and help give input, but if it's not worth the challenge of coordinating your playing with my input, then that's cool

[scooter]

Not to give you a hard time again about reading but....

No I read that. I just don't believe him . Same thing about the 25% comment btw - I actually remembered reading that, I was just illustrating it clearly for lurkers - guessing the majority of lurkers didn't read every bullet point in the tech thread. The forest preserve I just forgot about so I didn't build it into my sandbox... No excuses about the saltwater!

I'd be happy to look at saves and help give input, but if it's not worth the challenge of coordinating your playing with my input, then that's cool

I'll add you onto it when I add the FW rules and if the saves ever get annoying just let me know and I'll take you off of it. Any input is appreciated!

[Cyneheard]

The Forest Preserve increases the chances of a forest spreading by 8x that of a regular forest. It's still fairly low odds (esp. on Quick speed: it's a per-turn check, and there are fewer turns).

[scooter]

The Forest Preserve increases the chances of a forest spreading by 8x that of a regular forest. It's still fairly low odds (esp. on Quick speed: it's a per-turn check, and there are fewer turns).

Ok cool. Maybe I'll get an extra one out of it somehow along the way.

Looks like we may be getting T1 here pretty soon which is cool. I'm going to go through my previews in pick order, so I'll be doing Lewwyn next, which should be interesting because his start is weird. Ah, save just came in. Report coming shortly.

[scooter]

T1 Time!

Camped the Deer as planned.



More interesting was the scouting:



That cow up there was not visible before ethis turn, so that's a new one too. That might go with a northern "fort-land" city. The Bananas obviously aren't great until Calendar; however, they are 3/0/0 and I could farm over them (assuming that's freshwater) and make it a decent tile. I should check that actually.



The fish "lake" is not actually a lake but is saltwater, so it's safe to assume that body of water extends further north. Mildly disappointing, I was hoping for +1 food. I just checked and the water east of the banana is also coast, so those are both saltwater bodies. I wonder if they connect into one small-ish ocean? I'll check soon enough but I'm considering taking my scout E-SE-NE next turn, so I may have to wait a bit to find out. Or I may go E-SE-S and just follow the road. Demos:



Guessing someone is working the corn. This may make more sense after I actually look at everyone's starts.

Wait, why am I the only one with 6k soldier points? Is Wheel worth soldier points? It's gotta be..? If not, that means I'm the only person with a Scout + Hunting and that... doesn't make sense.

[scooter]

Wait, why am I the only one with 6k soldier points? Is Wheel worth soldier points?

Turns out, yes. It's worth 4k and Hunting is worth 2k.

[scooter]

Lewwyn

Fin/Spi of Inca
-1gold
-turbo warrior
-corn is moved 1S to tile C
-tile C is plains and not grass

Here's his start:



Yep, the colors are wrong, the scout should be a warrior, all that stuff. Not important to me - just wanted to see what he's looking at and see how things work for him.

His start is probably the slowest; however, the village gives him some extra options here, especially because he's financial. Fin/Spi really is the best combination for Inca here I think, so I applaud that pick. It allows him to get Hunting->Mining->BW faster (which is his obvious tech path), and really the bottle-neck for Lewwyn is likely research more than anything. Spiritual helps compensate for his lack of a scout, so really this start isn't as comically bad as I initially expected. Good for him I suppose. Still though, it's noticeably slower. Remember, by T16 I had:

-2 1/2 Quechas (or the equivalent hammers)
-a settler
-worker
-size 4 capital working 4 improved tiles

I ran through Lewwyn's start (working the village to get techs quicker) and he got:

-4 quechas worth of hammers
-a settler (came in 4T after me)
-size 3 capital working 3 improved tiles - corn, deer, RR mine. also a grassland farm and the village are available

Expand it out 2 more turns and he can finish a worker but still down a size (though ahead on improvements)... He's slightly ahead on Bronze Working and has 2 extra tile improvements though, so his long-term prospects aren't bad. Plus his deer is 1h better than mine.

The short of it is I really need to make my second city count to take advantage of the 4 turns I've gained on Lewwyn here, because the Terrace is likely to help him catch up. Granted, he doesn't have Exp OR Imp, so that may really hurt him as well. I really need to think about if Henge is something I should be seriously considering here. Mixed feelings on it. It's usually a good investment, and when I plan to spam cities as much as I am, it seems especially useful. The problem I see is if someone with the village is determined to get it, they could work that village and knock out IW and Masonry much quicker than I could. So there's that. Also yeah, it requires me to research those techs quicker than I probably would have otherwise.

Lewwyn's traits are traits that will be pretty great long-term. I really have to hope he struggles to keep up with the quick expansion pace that is likely to come from us Imp + T14 settler people. If he is able to keep pace, he would become the favorite.

In terms of sheer skills, Lewwyn is one of the better players here. He makes odd meta and diplo decisions in normal games, but that's obviously less of an issue here. It still could happen if he gets all rage-y because someone is camping on a forest in his territory and goes on a game-long vendetta, but I expect him to handle things differently in an AW setting. He's highly aggressive which is good and bad for him. In terms of micro skills, I'd rate him tops out of the players in this game - and PBEM22 has proven that he really enjoys that sort of thing (PBEM22 bored me to death after about 30 turns) which is half the battle.

I think his picks were really good, though I do wonder if Fin/Imp still might be better than Fin/Spi here. I know I liked the idea of the turbo warrior, but after running these sims and seeing how important growth is here, getting a free warrior is much less significant because he can produce a ton of them quickly. So I'm not so convinced he made the perfect 2nd choice, though it was still a good choice and his first choice was great.

PREDICTION: If Lewwyn can mildy keep pace through the first 40 turns, I expect him to be one of the favorites. He definitely has a slow-ish start, but he's a smart player. Still, his bad start and lack of an expansion trait is painful, so he definitely won't be "in the lead" anytime in the first half of the game. It's up to everyone else to claim enough land that he has to go on the offensive to give himself a chance to win. That'll be when sparks fly .

[scooter]

Off to a nice start because here's turn 2! I went ahead and moved 1E along the road before deciding my direction:



I think I see some floodplains tile bleeding!



Cool. Several food resources so I've got some options here. Both of those bodies of water are saltwater, so both of them are 10 tiles or bigger. Again, I wonder if some of those northern ones connect forming a longer northern river that acts as a "boundary" of sorts. Demos:



Well someone's GNP shot way up. Someone swapped to the village tile probably.

[scooter]

Here's a way-too-early stab at a dotmap. The only one that seems pretty obvious to me is the yellow dot but obviously I'm not going to settle that one first.



The question is how early to grab that fish. The fish is obviously 1F better than the crabs and settling on that plains forest hill is tempting for that reason... However, that would require a border pop. Would be nice to get 1st ring food with a first city.

I also cannot hook those crabs until I settle a city on that lake. I can of course do that with the south orange dot later, but settling a city that 1) is closer 2) can use the crabs and 3) doesn't require a border pop would be nice. I'd like to use that crabs for the capital, but really, the capital has plenty of food on it's own and doesn't necessarily need it. This is admittedly all somewhat dependent on what I find near the northern orange dot.

Anyways, I'm just as interested in settling pigs/floodplains stuff west of here, so this is hardly concrete or anything. And besides, I want to research AH anyways to find horse, so we'll see what else I find. Warrior will head west when completed. The realistic places for red dot is basically as you see, 1NE on the plains forest hill, or 1N of that on the grassland.