[SPOILERS-PBEM15] One Noob and his Helper - v8mark and Kyan are Darius of HRE

[Kyan]

Hey man, i'd reccomend the following scout movements. I did a pre-lim dotmap but after thinking about it more, i'd probably move white dot 1 west.

The reason for the scout movements as such is to maximise his 2 movement. Plus the land is ridiculously barren. we are yet to find a single strong food resource. Those two proposed sites are both weak in my opinion and will never be pivotal to our empire. Not to mention, as we're at the top of the map- they are very much backfill. Let's stake a claim to as much land as possible. The west looks very tasty thus far.

I only just noticed the screenshot from the borders pop. Oh em gee. Food on a grass tile! It's a miracle We've lost one food on each of our other food tiles simply because they are on plains. Do not approve.

We need to explore more asap. As for your demo analysis, i am not great at demo's but remember to factor in a few things to your gnp analysis:

a) 1 free beaker per turn
b) pre-req's inflate the GNP figure
c) people change their mind. LiPing did this in pitboss 2 and it totally frustrated Sullla. This happens a lot after a religion goes down as people often swap techs after they know they've lost it.

[Kyan]

Oh and as for the naming scheme, too obvious for me so i'll let the others play. Well, i know what the capital refers to anyway, where you are going from there (*cough* Priestfield *cough* ) is up to you.

[T-hawk]

Remember to choose a tech! It will only give 1 beaker towards it as we don't have a city (based on the way the mechanic works, you always gain +1 beaker for free per turn irrespective of anything else), but it's free so why not.

Not true; you only get the free beaker if you have a city.

[v8mark]

Turn 3

Annoyingly, the turn arrived at 9.30 this morning - half an hour after I'd left for work. So I had to wait until this evening to actually play the thing.

In any case, very little had changed. I moved the scout in line with Kyan's suggestions.

Demographics:


City/general interface:


Note that Piet's score has gone up to 37 - of which more in the next post...

[v8mark]

OK, so some thoughts.

First of all, Kyan's dotmap. I broadly agree with it. My only concern is that, with the city to the NW, we'll have to wait for a border pop for it to do anything useful. But I think that's largely unavoidable, and in any case, we're not going to be settling either of those cities in the near future - I think you're right that despite the gold, we should settle immediately to the south or south west, depending on what we find there.

We'll have to find something reasonably quickly - one of the main differences of quick speed is that scouting is much harder.

Secondly, the demographics. I think we can probably work a couple of things out here.

Firstly, the top GNP went down last turn from 20 to 19. This is extremely puzzling. Apart from the 19 (Creative), everyone else has a GNP of 17, which is to be expected from non-Creative leaders (it's also my GNP). This fits with a level 1 tech I think - 10 beakers + 2 culture + 4 esp + 1 free beaker.

So the question is: where did that extra GNP come from?

So you get an extra 20% for researching a tech with a pre-req. So it would fit that a non-creative civ put a turn into a tech with a pre-req. But...

...I was 2nd with 17 GNP in that initial demographics screenshot. So it must have been the creative civ with the extra GNP.

So...I don't know. Maybe he worked a 2 commerce tile for a turn for some reason? It's a mystery.

The other big news -- and for this one I don't have to do a lot of pontificating -- is that Piet's score has gone up to 37. This is clearly a tech -- he can't have grown to size 2 just yet -- so it could either be Hunting or Fishing, both of which are 38 beakers (4 turns @ 10b/turn - Mysticism is too expensive). Piet starts with neither. He does start with Agriculture, so he could be doing Hunting before AH. His GNP hasn't gone up (for AH he would get a 40% prereq bonus), but he may not have picked his next tech yet, in which case it won't go up for another turn (I'll find out in two turns, but I thought the splash screen came up at the beginning of the next turn? Maybe not...). I'll keep an eye on his GNP next turn - if it hasn't gone up 4 points or so because of the pre-req bonus for AH, I'll assume it was Fishing.

As far as land tiles are concerned: average of the other 4 is 16,250, which means they have a total of 65 land tiles in their BFC.

We know that Ioan (Louis of Byzantium) has 17
We know that the 9 is Twinkletoes, whose borders have yet to pop
So there are 39 between the other two, which means one of them is probably coastal (unless they have three lake tiles between them, but I find that hard to believe...)

Think that's all I have. We'll find out next turn if anyone built a warrior while working a 2/1 tile... I hope so, because it'll mean I've already played better than them so far.

[v8mark]

Turn 4

So, the main thing from this turn will be the C&D stuff.

Just quickly -- I realise it's way too early for most of this sort of speculation, but this is what I'm thinking might be the case at the moment (of course, part of it is Kyan's scout movements, but I'm thinking there might be a nice early production city in there somewhere...):



We'll know far more in 2 turns, I think, when our scout gets himself to the top of the hill.

Demographics:



First of all, land area. 18,750 avg x 4 = 75,000. Ioan has 17, there are 39 between the other two, which leaves 19 for TT. This means he's either got two lake tiles, or he's one tile off the coast -- I'll assume it's two lakes for now.

Secondly, soldiers. The rival worst has gone up by 2000, which means one of two things: the other person who started with 2000 soldiers (JKaen) either discovered a 2000 tech, or he's built a warrior. However, his score has also gone up by 6, which confirms an Ancient Age tech, he started with Hunting and Agriculture, and he's been on 10bpt as well, like the rest of us. Therefore, we can safely conclude that he has discovered Mining!

Furthermore, Piet's GNP has not gone up, so I'm going to assign Fishing to him (and by extension, I'm going to assume that he's the other coastal player with Ioan).

Techs so far:
Piet (Mansa Musa/Ottomans) - Fishing
JKaen (Hannibal/Zulu) - Mining

Pay rises all round in the Holy Roman C&D department!

No-one grew to size 2, which makes it considerably more likely that everyone has gone worker first (boo).

[v8mark]

Turn 5

Average GNP has gone up to 18 - that's the only change from last turn in terms of demographics. Having a difficult time working out why that is.

No other changes!





Other than that, nothing happened. Agriculture splash screen will come next turn...

[Kyan]

All looks good to me. Definitely need to check out that potential production city. One more food resource and that is damned tasty.

Prince difficulty, no barbs, Darius of HRE?

I make that land grab o'clock my dear sir. Let's gobble up our share, TT's share and most of everyone else's too

[v8mark]

Turn 6

Agriculture splash screen on opening:



And what's that you say Kyan? Another food resource? Why good sir, I think I just may be able to oblige:



...OK, so dry wheat isn't the most awesome thing it could possibly have been. But it does rather beg the question: will we want to move the city 1W? That gets 6 hills rather than just 5, and means the wheat is in the first ring rather than the second.

Demographics:



Nothing changed at all - no score changes, no-one's built a warrior, so I think it's fairly safe to assume every man jack has gone worker first in this game.

[v8mark]

Turn 7

While three turns in a 24-hour period is super awesome, I don't have time to write a report this morning before work. In any case, I moved the scout S-SW and there's a big lake there, but no other resources that I could see. 3 people discovered a tech last turn, for a total of 2000 soldier points.

Full recap potentially to come (although I'm out tonight as well, so it may not be until next turn...)