The Antisocial Team

[Ichabod]

What do you think about pink-dotting that insane floodplain/marble/oasis/wet corn location? As a heavy duty whip city perhaps?

It's a possibility, but it's also too early to tell. Our horses are not easy to reach, so we got to hope for copper (which we'll be delaying for a bit too long...). Going that way with only archers could be difficult.

Besides, I think that land is within our sphere of influence anyway, so pink dotting it might not be needed. I think having it as a 5th city could work. That'd be:

1. Capital

2. Second city in the 2 cows/corn/crab place - this is an insane city

3. Clam + Wheat to the east of capital - I think we could farm a quick GSci there for early academy. It'd be settle -> Work Boat -> Granary -> Library, withhelp of whips + chops. After that, help grow cottages for the capital + whips.

4. Cow city north of capital, maybe getting the corn in range too.

5. The marble city.

PB7 Spoiler (mali only):

I've made a pink dot move in that game by settling a gold + corn site and I sorely regret it. The city spent a long time without adding much to the empire. If we keep our empire closed, we save on defenders, worker labour, maintenance.

Besides, my micro plan so far relies on needing few workers, so a tightier placement helps with that, until we can catch up.

[Ilios]

Indeed. Greed is NOT good.

[Mist]

My C&D fu (extremely lacking) says the following:

Yuri : Agriculture, Wheel, Fishing, Pottery, Hunting, capital size 3
Dave : Agriculture, Wheel, Mining, Bronze Working, capital size 1 ( just whipped )
Commodore : Mysticism, Hunting, Animal Husbandry, [strike]Fishing, Wheel,[/strike] Mining, Bronze Working, capital size 2, building a settler
Gaspar : Agriculture, Mining, Bronze Working, [strike]Pottery[/strike] Animal Husbandry, capital size 2, possibly double worker opening

I should be able to keep up for a while more, at least until land points for expansion cities start coming to play.

[Lord Parkin]

3. Clam + Wheat to the east of capital - I think we could farm a quick GSci there for early academy. It'd be settle -> Work Boat -> Granary -> Library, withhelp of whips + chops. After that, help grow cottages for the capital + whips.

I wouldn't count the Wheat as a separate resource, because you lose it from the capital if you switch it over. I'd be more inclined to go north after your second city. There's some pretty good territory there. East of your capital can be saved for backfilling later... a single Clam addition to your empire isn't overly powerful anyway, and those 100 hammers in the Settler could be better spent elsewhere IMHO.

[Ichabod]

So, I've been thinking about Mist's and LP's adive that the third city should be a bit more ambitious than the clam spot. So, I thought about this a bit and here's what I think are the possible places for the third city.

The cow will be pre-improved when the city is settled, due to the border pop of the capital that is going to happen in a few turns.

*Red spot is the safest one, this is its big positive. We are less likely to get in trouble if someone decide to come for us. The big problem is not having a second good tile to work before border pop (monument or religion). It'd only help the capital with a cottage and, in my opinion, it's the placement with the worst potential.

*Yellow and Blue are pretty similar. They'd have the corn to work before border pop, which is massive. I think i slightly prefer yellow, since it gets fresh water and we won't waste those river tiles north of the capital (and I think it wouldn't need roads for a TR). Blue would be a very powerful city too, getting another hill and a fp, but I think those can go to other cities.

I think we should go for yellow. With my current micro plan, I think i'll have 2 warriors to defend that spot. It's risky, but not that risky... Well, we need to take some risks if we want to win, I guess.

By the way, we have gold. Gold + Ivory = nice happy cap pre-HR and it makes me happy too!

Settler is ready at the capital, going to settle second city soon.

[Lord Parkin]

I think we should go for yellow. With my current micro plan, I think i'll have 2 warriors to defend that spot. It's risky, but not that risky... Well, we need to take some risks if we want to win, I guess.

Seems like a good plan. I'd probably go for Yellow as a third city too, based on what I can see so far.

By the way, we have gold. Gold + Ivory = nice happy cap pre-HR and it makes me happy too!

Very shiny! Worth checking with the Warrior to see if you're lucky enough to have any more seafood to the east... or inland food further north. Settling on the forest would already give Rice+Clam+Gold, a very nice start. Might be worth considering that area not too long after city #3. Though that juicy flood plain region to the north probably still has preference.

All this assuming you're in a vacuum, of course... could easily change once you know how close neighbours are.

Settler is ready at the capital, going to settle second city soon.

Neat, good stuff.

[Mist]

I say blue. This lets us anchor three further strong cities as below



Yellow pushes the red dot further east, and that kills a lot of the good spots on the coast.

[Ichabod]

We got the religion!

I still haven't played the save, but I checked if Hinduism was gone and it wasn't. So we are probably going to see it getting founded at Pace (2nd city) this EoT.

[Lord Parkin]

Neat... had forgotten you were going for one, but that'll be nice. I'd be surprised if it wasn't founded in your second city... don't think I've ever seen a religion founded in the capital when another city without a religion is available. I've heard it's theoretically possible, but the odds must be pretty low as it's never cropped up in any games I've seen.

[Ichabod]

We met Yuris on the north. We saw his border earlier in the map, but I tried to avoid contact so as to not reveal to him that we are competing for that yummy land up there. But then I run into his warrior:

I'll post a SS of his border next. It's pretty strange, like if his capital was in a different land mass. He's probably on a peninsula of some sorts, that bends away from the marble spot. That's goo news for us!

On domestic news, Poly finished + second city settled!

We prioritized the religion due to the relative low value of BW in this start (at least that's how I see it). So we could afford to delay it and get a "first to" bonus. Religion is mainly for border pops right now, but it'll be fairly useful later too.

Demographics:

GNP is a lie due to culture. The rest is average. I hope we don't lose much ground to heavy whipping strategies, but I just can't see whipping as a strategy with our start. It lacks food.

Can't wait to see that second city growing and becoming very powerful.