[Spoiler] Suboptimal's Next Attempt at Lurker Frustration

[suboptimal]

Turn 5

Just noticed while waiting for the game to load that “Pedro II” is displayed in the load screen as “Pedro Ii”. I find that mildly amusing.

Move to the stone on the lake shore, see a bit more of the lake shore and the waters to the south.




Check the scores, Ichabod is at 2 population. Given how the scores update I’ll assume he’s working a 3 tile. The others are all still at 1 population so no one is working a 4 tile out of the gate.

[Alhambram]

How is Great People looking? Is Hypatia next GS for example?
If Ichabod is already at 2 pop now, he has been working with 4 tile since we are working with 3 tile and are going hit 2 pop next turn.

[suboptimal]

Hmmm...you're right....I always track production and such as "End of Turn" but the actual accounting is done at the beginning of the turn. As for the Great People, you know, I never did check. I'll get that info in a little bit.

[suboptimal]

OK...here's the list of current Great People, excluding prophets, writers, artists and musicians (because they all do the same thing, more or less).

Great General: Boudica, convert adjacent barbarian units to your control
Great Admiral: Themistocles, instantly create a qudrireme unit. +20% to units of the Naval Ranged promotion class
Great Engineer: Isidore of Miletus, grants 215 towards wonder construction (2 charges)
Great Merchant: Marcus Licinius Crassus, gain 60 and your nearest city annexes this tile into its territory (3 charges)
Great Scientist: Euclid, triggers the eureka moment for Mathematics and 1 random technology from the Medieval Era

OK, so we don't have to immediately chase Hypatia. Whether or not the first one to 60 points passes or takes Euclid will remain to be seen.

I think getting Themistocles is the most important out of the five and given my industrialization plan I think Isidore is worth chasing as the Mausoleum at Helicarnassus has a 400 cost and Isidore could build the entire thing for us.

If we can put down and build/chop in three RNDs when Celestial Navigation unlocks that would boost both the economy and get us the jump on Themistocles.

Two other notes to keep in mind regarding Great People:

- The RND generates 2 Great Admiral Points per turn. The Cothon and Harbor only generate 1 GAP per turn.
- Pingala's Grants promotion applies to GPP created as the result of projects. Therefore it might be worth giving Pingala that promotion somewhere along the line and then moving him around if we need to run projects because we're in a race for a particular Great Person.

[suboptimal]

Turn 6

London is at 2 population. The second citizen is working the 22 stone tile for the time being. Slinger will be out next turn and I’ll start building the settler. Warrior moves east onto the grassland hill, sees a bit more of the world around it:




Settlervision indicates that the jungle 2E of the warrior and the forest to its SW are third ring to a city. No borders visible in the fog. The warrior will move to the cattle next turn and if I don’t meet the likely city-states forces before Turn 8 I’ll move east.

I don’t see anything over here that I’d call spectacular for a city site. Anything over here is going to build an RND/lighthouse, get a trade route going and then trickle out naval units, I think. Most likely this will be city #4 or city #5, planted on the hill the warrior is standing on. City #2 will be at the river mouth unless there’s something much better up north along the coast, which we’ll get to see in 3-4 turns.

I’m going to send the slinger up to the coastal plains hill directly north of London and then investigate the lake to the west. The warrior will meet the city-state then move up to the northern cattle to find the fresh water source that was seen on Turn 1.

Nothing has changed in the scores. We’ll see next turn if the others have been working 3 tiles or not.

[Alhambram]

Good news about potential city state close in east. Hopefully good one, otherwise if terrain around it is good a potential new addition for us.

Thanks for posting Great People, indeed both GA and GE seems good. About Isidore, if you just let him use one charge and let normal production to finish Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Isidore get extra charge which we can use then for rushing of another wonder worth 400 production.
I generally don't favor moving around Pingala, especially since we would miss out extra science and culture every 5 turn if we move him around. I think that it is better to just keep him in city with RND and its grant doubles GA points from RND from 2 to 4 and to 6 with lighthouse.

[suboptimal]

Turn 7

I open with a look at the scores. Kaiser, Woden and CMF are all still at 1 population. Ichabod still has no era points.

Warrior moves east-northeast, doesn’t meet anyone from that city-state. Here’s a look at the screen on settlervision:




Based on the third ring it looks like the city-state is located 3SE of the warrior, so the coast likely turns southeast just out of view. The city-state is likely coastal, in which case it’s going to get eaten at some point (say, mid-70’s or so). Also notable is the elephants. That’s a nice tile yield and it’s fresh water. The tooltip box actually identifies its fresh water source as the River Thames. Those fresh water cows east of London? Also on the River Thames. Doing a bit of zooming in and fog-gazing…




You can just make out the river channel on the NE edge of the elephants and there’s a river bend on the NE edge of the cattle as well. I also missed the river source – it’s at the NE hex corner of the PFH just east of London’s borders. The river looks to go along the NW edge of the tile E of the elephants, so that tile will also be fresh water. The tile NW of the cattle is third ring to London but the tile E of the cattle has fresh water and could be settled. The viability of that area as a city site will depend on where the northern coast is in relation to the river. I’d like to be able to put a city on the northern coast somewhere northeast of London which might require settling on the elephants (or further south). Next turn the warrior will head SE to reveal the city-state (unless its forces come out to meet me first) and then I need to get up there to see what’s up.

London has finished the slinger and starts the settler. That’ll be ready to move on Turn 16. The plan with the slinger was to head north to the coast and then turn west. However, if I just move up the open plains I see nothing new this turn. Moving to the bananas, though, should let me see over the forest 2NE of London and reveal what’s north/northeast of there. I do that and…




It looks like the coast is the northern edge of the hill tile, the NW edge of the plains to its east and then the coastline turns north. There should be room for two close-by coastal cities along that shoreline – one NE of London and one by the NW lake. Next turn I’ll move NE to the forest, then NE-W in the open plains and continue westwards from there until I get to the NW bananas. That path will get the slinger to the bananas when the settler has 4 turns remaining, which is enough time to expand visibility in that direction a little bit before coming back for settler escort duty.

Having missed the Thames river source early on I take another very close look at the perimeter of the fog and find one additional...feature...of interest.




Those lines in the center of the screen on the SW edge of that jungle tile look like a desert graphic.

[Alhambram]

Good to know that there is a potential city spot in east near Ivory, city #3 between ivory and cattle tiles along river is not a bad idea. That would still allow us to found whale city acting as canal between London lake and sea.

A city state along sea just makes more desireable target for us to capture it to get more RND's.

[suboptimal]

Turn 8

The turn opens with the first notification in quite a while. A barbarian scout wearing the red exclamation point of “Hah hah I see you!” has come from the direction of the River Thames. Not the visitor I was hoping for.

Warrior turns southeast and enters the jungle. We get to see borders in the fog. Likely early pantheon here we come:




I’ll move southeast to ensure meeting my religious neighbors and then turn back north to defog the Thames and see if that scout’s home is in the area.

Slinger moves northeast as planned and…




I think a settler parked right on that coastal elephant would be a nice spot for a city. The 4 elephants are not coastal and not near fresh water. Nice +2 Campus spot next to the reef, though. The planned NE-W jog by the slinger won’t reveal much to the NE but it will more of the coast, possibly including the land tile north of the coastal elephants.

Question for the lurkers – would be it worth buying the plains tile 2W of London next turn? It doesn’t do us much good now but it saves us 5-10 over purchasing later for when we put the Campus down. Once Animal Husbandry is out of the way I’m going to go Pottery → Writing to eureka + 1 → Sailing as we’ll have the second (coastal) city down.

Handy factoid about barbarian AI – barbs won’t enter the borders of the capital unless there’s a unit outside the city center OR their camp has been cleared. They will also move away from the borders after about 10 turns if no targets of opportunity appear.

I also did the zoom out and rotate camera “trick” to see if I could see the map edges. I can see both northern and southern map edges by scrolling all the way in those directions and rotating 45 degrees. We’re a bit closer to the northern border than the southern but nonetheless we’re equatorial. My hope is that we have a backline to the west or east and aren’t right in the middle of things.

[suboptimal]

I think it's time to ramp up discussion about the pantheon selection. Provided we're the first to meet this city-state next turn we should have enough to pick a pantheon beginning on Turn 22. I think there are four currently worth considering:

God of the Open Sky (+1 to pastures)
Goddess of Festivals (+1 to plantations)
Goddess of the Hunt (+1+1 to camps)
Fertility Rites (free builder, +10% growth to all cities)

Right now we have three locations for plantations, pastures and camps and I assume there will be a fourth nearby once Animal Husbandry completes and we reveal horses. Culture is always good but I do have to wonder if getting those elephants +1+1 in addition to +2 is a better benefit. That pantheon makes the northern elephants food-neutral (243 and 253 with camps) and turns the eastern one into a 333 yield3.

On the other hand, the plantation pantheon makes monument-first in two future cities optional - build a builder first instead of a monument, get the +1 from the improvement and still have two improvements to go. We'd have to divert to Irrigation and wouldn't get the eureka for that unless/until we farm the rice or wheat, though. Open Sky would also alleviate the need to build early monuments to generate culture, at least in the three future cities that we could put down.

In the prior cases, though, these are eventual benefits, not immediate ones. Fertility Rites would give an immediate boost. Is a +10% growth bonus plus the initial boost of a free builder worth more than generating an eventual 3-4 per turn? We should have our second city founded by the time the pantheon comes around so would have a better idea regarding available improvements.