[LURKERS] Mr. Gradgrind's Review

[BRickAstley]

REM and Gaspar with that really quick initial border tension though.

[picklepikkl]

I wonder how Gaspar/NH will react, given how down on the game they've been for a while.

[Mardoc]

Wow, we're definitely going to learn something about the right way to play industrial starts here. Look at the contrast:

Tall first:

before our settler is even started. But our settler finishes in 8 more turns, and we don't need to regrow our capital from size 3 (!) in the process. Again, not to repeat myself too much, but I don't think that whipping for settlers is the way to go. Maybe if you're Imperialistic; otherwise, they're simply too expensive. Better to grow to a larger size and build them in roughly 5 turn cycles, while working lots of strong tiles, as opposed to whipping and regrowing.
...

We'll be able to get our settler done eot 274, move it on Turn 275, and settle Turn 276, with workers ready to improve the resources immediately.

Wide first:

With this plan in mind, I am looking at putting down Gordon in Gaspar/Nobles face t267, James down on the plains hill to link them t271, and then Percy t273 locking the other lake fish out east, and Toby t274 at any of the city sites thought of with x's below. Unsure which is best yet, but guessing probably the sheep first ring deer second ring site above the capital.

By T275, Scoollla will have planted their fourth city, while REM is planting his seventh!

* Another related point: how much does it help to whip out fast settlers if you don't have the worker infrastructure to support them? Even if we did get a setter done sooner, we can't afford to split off workers right now to improve it. Despite our 8 Serfdom-boosted workers, we're still behind in tile improvements at our three cities, and that's with some substantial overlap. I'm sure that many of the other teams are hurting worse than we are. And I'm not talking just about farms and workshops and the like - roads to speed along the settlers to their destinations are crucial too. REM whipped out the first settler four turns ago, and it still hasn't settled a new city yet. He's probably moving it through wilderness with no roads and it's taking a while to reach its destination. It's not just about when the settlers are done, it's also about how quickly they can get to their destination.

Although this sounds important, I think Sullla is underestimating the play style effect of Slavery here. His team wants to start a city with three improved tiles, and then keep up with growth. On top, the improved tiles they want are not just the resources (typically 3-4 worker turns) but workshops and mills (~6 worker turns?)

REM, on the other hand, can have his new city start with a worker whip, and follow it up with another worker whip if needed, meaning a new city requires only 1-2 improved tiles initially. His core can spare workers much earlier than Scoollla's core, since he only needs six workable tiles/city (less if he's managing overlap carefully), on top of the ability for new cities to make their own workers.

I could easily see REM needing half the workers/city that Scoollla does, during the REX phase, because Slavery lets him suppress city sizes and still get useful output from his cities. Now, it's true that once he does want to grow his cities vertically, he's going to need a lot of worker labor still, while Scoollla will have their cities mostly done. That seems like a bonus to me, though. His workers won't go idle/useless nearly as early as theirs.

[Rowain]

It will be interesting to see how Sulla/scooter start compares with the other Not-REM-teams.
And if IMP is overpowered or if any other team can compete with the IMP-settler spam.

[Mr. Cairo]

While I'm not a big fan of whipping in general, I have to say that it seems like a mistake to not whip extensively early on in an industrial start.

Now, it makes sense to grow the cap tall right off the bat, since your workers are already there and can improved tiles around the cap quickly while it grows, but for every city after that (including the two from the other free settlers), the circumstances are not the same. They still start out with 3 pop, but there aren't going to be as many workers right there to improve enough tiles unless you take them from other cities, or slow down growth at the cap by building workers there.

So you have three pop that can't do very much productive, so whipping them off to build workers and settlers seems obvious. It doesn't slow down growth at the cap, and has got to be the most efficient way to use those citizens, especially with a forge bonus to the hammers, and the granary to help regrow quickly. And those workers are going to be building farms and other food-based improvements anyway, so growth isn't actually slowed down at all. In fact, by whipping out workers from newly founded cities, you can grow older cities even taller, since they wont be busy building workers to improve the tiles of new cities.

I can get behind some of what Sullla is saying, especially about building roads to speed settlers up, but as Mardoc pointed out above, with new city's pops whipped low anyway, there isn't as much need for workers to be improving tiles around there, and can instead build the roads that speed settlers out to new city spots.

[DMOC]

I'm starting to get a little concerned about Dreylin's start. He's top in score right now, but it looks like he's making micromanagement mistake after micromanagement mistake, after failing to get a galleon out. Hopefully he'll be able to make it up with some good use of the Kremlin.

[El Grillo]

Poor OT4E He's shown an impressive reserve of patience so far, but at some point the mistakes will become material.

[Tyrmith]

One (positive for us) impact on the game of having barbs active is that people are drawn into aggressive cities that people are anxious to counter. I definitely think it makes conflict more likely than it otherwise would.

[DMOC]

One (positive for us) impact on the game of having barbs active is that people are drawn into aggressive cities that people are anxious to counter. I definitely think it makes conflict more likely than it otherwise would.

I think having barbarians on wouldn't be a problem IF we could guarantee that each city would be heavily defended, on the order of four riflemen at least, to make sure that it's not easy to get them. But it seems like some of the results from various test trials haven't materialized.

[BRickAstley]

Well didn't one player say he thought the barbarian cities were being found with no buildings? If so, then they really aren't a big swing at all.