[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

I feel really good, I got someone to use a basic workshop from the start of the game. (No I did not plan out all the best openings, I just though it might be interesting.)

Yeah I mean I know I said this earlier, but I really like the placement of that workshop. If it wasn't there, we'd all just mindlessly work the floodplains. I still think it was better to work it initially because of the research issue, but it's still an actual decision with advantages either way. I like it.

Surprisingly we actually managed to get another turn in today! I took some screenshots and I'll have a report up sometime tonight (busy night but I can slip it in eventually). Teaser: I found something pretty helpful at the snowy lake!

[scooter]

Didn't expect a second turn today but it's cool with me! This was played about 5 hours ago, but I'm just now getting the chance to report. So first order of business, the warrior:



1. LOL at the Whale in a 1 tile lake. Is that the Lochness Monster?
2. More mystery roads!
3. And yeah, we have a lumbermill on a random plains forested hill. That's a 0/4/0 tile which is basically equivalent to a pre-mined plains hill. That's nice.

So next my scout takes one step before deciding where to go and... whoa!



Elephants! So I keep moving onto the snowy hill...



And more seafood!

So I can get elephants right? Well potential problem here. It's funny because I was reading some PBEM20 threads earlier this afternoon to catch up on things I missed and I was reminded of an issue that cropped up with MH. Long story short (and this should not be spoiler material at this stage of the game), he was confused early why he couldn't build a workboat on particular port city despite the fact that it was ocean. This led to to research where SevenSpirits himself finally nailed down for us exactly what the mechanics are. Here's his post from that thread.

Here's all the mechanics:

If the body of water has less than 10 tiles, it is a lake.

If it has 10 or more tiles, it is salty. This enables "coastal" buildings.

If it has 20 or more tiles, it also enables military ships.

Regardless of which of the above are true, if it has at least one sea resource, it enables Work Boats.

So we already know it's saltwater by hovering over the tiles, and besides it's clearly over 10 tiles. Because there's resources there, I can obviously build work boats. The thing I need to figure out is if this thing is 20 tiles or not. The only clear water tiles not visible is the one 1S of the crabs and 2 of them NE of the elephants. I think I can fairly say the tile 1SE of the crabs is land based on tile bleeding... So counting the tile 1N and 1NE of the elephants, we have 14 tiles which is clearly not enough for a Galley (which would be needed to ferry over a worker). So do we have 6 extra tiles up there? It doesn't look like it to me, but I need to check that out with my scout. It's weird though, Seven clearly stated ships would be important so I would assume I can build a galley here... but based on the shape that seems unlikely. Maybe I'm reading the fog wrong.

If for some reason it's not 20 tiles I'd have to hope that this body of water to the north of my scout is:



Which would mean I could build a canal city that could slip in a galley... but yeah. Just trying to think ahead here to figure out what kind of investment Elephants would be. Honestly my main concern here is Commodore, as I know full well what a hassle those Cataphracts can be. Just owning Elephants would be a significant deterrant I would think. The question is if I can get Elephants before he gets Guilds.

Another thought - this might not be my closest source of elephants. By that I mean - I've gone pretty far east for this - it's possible that this elephant is actually closer to another player than it is to me. If that's the case, I need to find a closer source. I'm not quite sure if the mirroring here means that there are five sources (one for each player roughly this far away) or if there's only 3 sources like the diagram Seven used for PBEM25. I need more map knowledge before I can figure this out probably.


ANYWAYS. Demos. Because I don't know how to do a turn report where I don't include those and then make some barely thought-out remark because doing C&D bores me to tears.



Yeah that's that. So yes, elephants exist and I know where they're at. And after all those words, I still don't know anything more than that. Hooray.

One More Thing. Elephants in a snowy forest? On an island? Too funny. I guess maybe they're mammoths and not elephants. Either way, I'd like my people to tame them and ride them!

[scooter]

Turn 7 came in earlier, so I moved my warrior and...



Wow, scouting has never been more fun. First, a flatland gold? Cool. Settling 1NE of the pigs on the plains hill will make for a nice city. Or I could settle on the coast between the gold and pigs which might make more sense in the long-term. This city will probably be the second I found rather than the 1st given that I need AH for it. Also, note the workshop plains hill and the random windmill in the desert next to the Lochness Monster. Seven really had some fun filling in all these goodies.

My other scouting was every bit as eventful:



Found the Brian/kjn team. Well that answers my question about the elephants - in all likelihood this is roughly halfway between us setting up a race. He also knows the elephants are there, so I'm certainly not unique here. I also see the opportunity here for him to not know where I'm at!



He'll obviously know I saw him, but won't know where I saw him or where my unit is now. I could be near his borders with a scout for all he knows. Not super important but just kind of fun. I was also able to swap back to the corn:



This does not delay Mining and it doesn't speed up any growth, but I figure the 1 extra food will be useful eventually. Farm completes next turn so I was going to be switching anyways. Demos:



Serdoa grew to size 3 and is working camped deer + corn + fp workshop.



Again you see Serdoa at size 3. I'm second in the turn order, so it's possible someone else may jump up and join Serdoa this turn. Will be interesting if anyone else does - it'll tell me more about their openings. Lewwyn has swapped off the village onto the camped deer (I'm assuming) so I'm guessing he'll be size 2 at EOT as well.

[scooter]

T8

Warrior moved 1NE which of course revealed nothing new so I won't bother with a picture. Scout keeps exploring:



I have the bodies of water marked. I'm going to head south, but I'm trying to decide whether to loop back towards my land or to soldier on east to locate Brian. I'm actually leaning towards going east because if the land is mirrored, I might actually be able to figure out the land to my west by doing that. Or something like that anyways. Plus it'd be nice to know where he is exactly. One minor annoyance - of course I meet the guy with the Courthouse first! Going to take me longer than him to get his graphs I'm guessing. My wonderful capital:



Looking good. Press enter and I have a second warrior, a size 3 city, and most importantly, Mining. The plan of course is get to size 4 ASAP then swap to settler and you know the rest. I need to update my sandbox soon. I might be able to get to that tonight, but we'll have to see. I hit enter and a brief population/demos update again.




Brian Shanahan also grew earlier than me so he delayed Agriculture like Serdoa did. Demos are more interesting though. I have 14 food from center(2) + corn(6) + deer(4) + FP(2). Serdoa has 15 though. That must mean he's working the lake tile, which is a great bonus for him. Would be better if it was Financial but still helpful. Fishing really is a good starting tech here. Wait, Serdoa finished the corn at the same time as me? So he got to size 3 earlier without sacrificing time on research. Wait duh, lake tile. That just occurred to me now. I guess I would've known that if I had actually written the Serdoa preview which got lost along the way. Not sure it's really worth going back and doing now though given we're already 8 turns into this.

[scooter]

Turn 9 came in bright and early, so pretty high chance of two turns today. Quick look inside the capital...



Things are going as planned. The mine will be finished the turn after growth.



Warrior scouting isn't that interesting this turn...



My scout though... MUCH more interesting.



Well then. That certainly changes my guesses about the elephants. Obviously they are much closer to me than I realized, and more importantly, this is not my source. I also need to be careful of Lewwyn's warrior... Either at my capital or near his killing my scout. Both situations are not ideal. Serdoa is growing like a weed.



Interesting start there. Fishing might be almost as good as hunting, especially if you took Financial (Serdoa didn't).



Still trying to visualize the map with my new info about Lewwyn. I need to use Seven's map diagram from PBEM25 and try to predict where people are and that'll help me.

[scooter]

Yeah so remember how I said we were pretty likely to get in a second turn because of how early the turn got to me? Yeah... Well apparently I jinxed us because Lewwyn proceeded to have the turn for about 14 hours . Which is fine. So in the meantime, I spent some time updating the sandbox a little more (wow is it ever tedious work) - just updating stuff around the perimeter of the capital. So I simmed out to end of turn 22 and this is what I end up looking at:



(note: anything west of the pig is inaccurate - that cow is not there for instance)

Step-by-step:

1. Obviously finish settler at EOT14
2. Worker does grass hill mine and then roads it while he waits for Bronze Working to complete
3. Second worker follows at EOT16.
4. Bronze Working comes in and City2 is complete. Start Fishing (takes 3 turns)
5. In the meantime, chop tile 1W of City2 with original worker for an instant worker. Also chop tile 1SW of Holocene to speed a second settler and overflow into another worker.
6. Revolt to slavery as soon as BW comes in. Might as well.
7. Fishing completes at EOT21 as does worker from city2. Go directly onto work boat while working the crab.

So at the end of T22 here we have completed 2 settlers and 2 workers (3rd on the next turn).

Complete build order to this point in capital is warrior -> warrior -> half warrior -> settler -> worker -> settler -> worker -> finish warrior. This screenshot is the worker right before "finish warrior"... Might dump whatever remaining overflow there is into another worker before finishing the warrior just to use my hammers as best as possible. This feels like a little bit of a farmers gambit-y start, but I mean with 2 warriors produced before it all starts and another ready to be completed in 1T at any moment... I should be fine.

City2 will go worker (chopped as mentioned) -> work boat, and I'm THINKING I'll whip that work boat as soon as I hit size 2. Can't think of any reason why not anyways.

I thought about Fishing before Bronze Working, but the wasted worker turns are just too much. Seems much better to have my two workers each chop one forest while waiting for fishing.

[scooter]

T10 - My northern warrior kept exploring



Exploring by Lewwyn:



If this doesn't look familiar to you yet... Well...



If I can't get a galley on the elephant waters, I need to figure out if the fish ocean to my north is big enough. If it is, I could just settle a canal city. Southern exploring was the most interesting moment of the turn:



A... A pasture? This means one of three things.

1) We have horse! And it's ready for us! Rejoice!
2) Seven just put a pasture there to screw with us, kinda like how he put a windmill in the desert or the Lochness Monster in a lake.
3) We don't have normal horses, but INVISIBLE horses. This doesn't make the tile yield any better, but it makes our Keshiks INVISIBLE. This sounds awesome so I'm going to assume it's #3 until proven otherwise.

TOP CITIES (visible ones only)



No one else at size 4 yet. Wondering if some may go settler at size 3.

[NOTE: for those (Krill) who can't remember what happened yesterday, I pointed out yesterday that Serdoa was at size 4. Therefore, "no one else" means.... well, no one else. So no Brian, Lewwyn, or Commodore.]

Demos:



MOST SOLDIERS YAYYYYYYY. Game over. Everyone else might as well concede.

[Krill]

No one else at size 4 yet. Wondering if some may go settler at size 3.

Wrong...

[scooter]

Wrong...

Well Serdoa is, but I pointed that out last turn. But I'm 2nd in the turn order behind Serdoa - that comment was noting that none of the three people behind me jumped to size 4.

[Krill]

You expect the lurkers (read: me) to remember posts from over 12 hours ago? My memory ain't that good...