RBP4 [SPOILERS] - Shaka of Zulu (sunrise089, regoarrarr, and friends)

[regoarrarr]

Did you simulate the turn where you moved your Settler, or just started it at turn 2?

Darrell

How can you start on Turn 2?

[Krill]

Well, place the settler on the original start tile, then move it and settle on turn 1 instead of placing the settler where you moved to and settling on turn 0.

Also, thank you for the sim

[regoarrarr]

While we wait for Lord Parkin to not end turn (), I did swap us over to the 2/0/1 grassland river tile (rather than the 1/0/2 coast). Sometime today, I hope to be able to run some more definitive numbers on who is doing a settler and when

[Krill]

Now you know what it feels like!

[regoarrarr]

Now you know what it feels like!

Actually I'm okay with him, if he has a reason. If he just forgot to end turn, then that's annoying.

Generally (though not always), when we play but don't end turn, there's a reasoning for it. We aren't always the best at remembering to go back and end turn afterwards, but that's the downside of having a teammate.

Who's Lord Parkin got to communicate with - his band of 5000 posting lurkers?

[regoarrarr]

Made an executive decision on the scout.

After moving 1W, I noticed another landmass, so went another tile W to check it out.



Nothing too exciting, but good to know. Move 1S on to the forested hill next turn. Warrior SE I think.

Next turn we'll finish our Ikhanda and 2t to growth to size 4. We really need to think about a settler.

Speaking of settling, nobody has settled yet but ioan / mackoti have not played this turn (T27) yet.

[regoarrarr]

Turn 28 is up now.

Biggest news - plako is the first to found his 2nd city!! (The way you can tell is that he got a score increase in the middle of the turn)

Unfortunately, I can't tell how many land tiles it has, because I don't have pre and post founding demo screenshots.

I have the max land from 3 turns ago, which was 36K, and it is now 43K. So one possibility is that he founded a city with 7 land tiles in the initial 9. Tragically however, there are other explanations.

We are at 24/26 food, and just completed our ihkanda. We make 5 or 9 hpt, depending on whether we work the grass river or the plains hill mine (either way we grow to size 4 next turn)

I'm strongly thinking about swapping to settler here (rather than growing all the way to size 5)

Reasons:
* We're going to be a bit slower on TGLH because I also forgot about Masonry.
* We only have 4 possible improved tiles until BW or we farm the grass.
* Our worker is going to be very bored after he mines the hill and/or farms the grass. It's T28 now, and he has another 10 turns of work doing those things. But we have 12 turns of Sailing, 11 turns of Masonry and 8 turns of BW before he can do ANYTHING else.

I have to say, PB2 notwithstanding, I'm sorely tempted to send the 2nd city down to the double corn / gold site.

I think we work max hammers to get another (3xp) warrior out, then send him south as well, to explore the other side of the coast, and see if / where we meet any neighbors down there. It's by far the strongest city site we've seen, and if it's not near any other civs, then let's go for it!

[sunrise089]

Ok, lets do it. We're still growing to size 4, right?

[regoarrarr]

Okay so we're doing it. We're tentatively shooting for the crazy gold site (because we're idiots). A couple of things that we do have going for us:

a) Tech pace is a lot slower - as I see it only 4 teams have AH at this point, and only 3 of them start with wheel
b) Map seems bigger, so it's possible that this site isn't that close to another civ
c) We haven't actually MET any civs yet, so nobody really knows how close we are to that site
d) Last and not least, we have the very distinct possibility of everyone KNOWING that we did this in PB2 so we can bluff our way into saying "Surely we wouldn't do the same stupid thing AGAIN?!?"

I'm certainly not putting this in stone yet, and I want us both to be cautious about "settling" for this spot, pardon the pun. We need to keep a very open mind, especially if and when we meet some other teams.

The problem is that I can't find another decent site that a) is coastal and b) has resources that we can currently work, meaning minable, campable or farmable, and in the first ring.

As sunrise pointed out, GLH is the ultimate long term play, so we're making some short term gambits to try and lower the variance. (I'm assuming that sentence makes sense to him )

[regoarrarr]

So one problem I have not figured out is that 4 teams got techs on T28, and I can't figure out what they were. But I'm going to just give it a shot and guess, because I have found that the longer that you leave this kind of thing in the past (we're already on to T29), the higher the odds that the backlog just becomes too overwhelming and you give up.

Here are our 4 offenders:
* Mackoti, last researched a tech on T19, has Fishing, Hunting, Ag and AH.
* Adlain, last researched a tech on T19, has Hunting, Mysticism, The Wheel and Meditation
* Lord Parkin, last researched a tech on T20, has Hunting, Wheel, Ag and AH
* SleepingMoogle, last researched a tech on T20, has Hunting, Wheel, Ag and AH

Additionally, global soldier counts went up only 2000 points on T28, which means nobody researched The Wheel, and only one civ could have possibly researched a soldier giving tech (such as Sailing, AH, or Mining)

LP and SM have 8 turns, which, if we assume still 10bpt is 80 beakers for a starting tech, 96 for a 1 pre-req, or 112 for a 2 pre-req. The only things that seem to fit are Mining and Mysticism, so I'm going to give Myst to Lord Parkin, as a Chm / Ind civ seems awful Stonehenge-y, and Mining to SleepingMoogle.

That's our 2K soldier points, so it means Mackoti and Adlain can't have researched a tech with soldier points.

Since they last teched something on t19, that gives them 90b for a starting tech, 108 for a 1 pre-req and 126 for a 2 pre-req

Adlain is size 3, so it's certainly possible that he's been working a 1c tile, so I'm going to guess Agriculture. Mackoti is only size 2, so you got to figure he's working both his deer, so I'm going to have to say Mysticism for him too. He's also Industrious, and it's possible that he's given up on the Great Lighthouse (otherwise I'd have expected him to be working on Sailing, which is too expensive at 172 beakers). Possible that he went Mining and Moogle went Mysticism but I've got to guess something so here we are.

So that would point to a Stonehenge throwdown possibly in the works