[spoilers]Commodore is Darius II of the HRE, now with less excuse.

[Commodore]

Oh farmers, pray that your wheats be wet and your micro, solid.



A bit of micro to massage. Annoyingly, Bronze Working is 3 commerce short of finishing in six turns while I work the plains forest, so riverside it is. Once the wheat farm finished I'll swap to it and the worker will still pop out five turns hence...and unless I miss my guess, BW will finish the turn after, enabling a good fast settler by turn 23, or 22 if I'm feeling brave.



I'm pretty sure I'm not that brave though. Mr. Lowest Power me isn't feeling very safe here, and it makes my techs annoyingly easy to track. Yuri grew too, as an interesting note.



As for where the next city goes...I still like the forests/lakes/wet corn Riffington spot, but I think I've found a rival. Wet rice! Lighthousable lake! Floodplains, fish, hills, oh my! This is a prime little land, I need to dwell for a while on dotmaps here.



Still need gems/stone...

[spacetyrantxenu]

The gems and stone are under the few uncovered tiles along with our gold.

[Commodore]

The gems and stone are under the few uncovered tiles along with our gold.

Davy and Yuri are in the 6k clubhouse too now. Effect of camps being faster than farms, methinks.



Dotmaps soon!

[Commodore]

Okay kids, fun time! Here's the assignment:



For purposes of this exercise, we'll assume (from fog-gazing) that the black patch is just forested riverside grassland and there are no seafoods north-west (the mapscript being a touch parsimonious, in my experience). That being said, here's my plan:



It's all fairly self-explanatory. The red dot is the future capital site, will hills and commerce that will make it an epic Bureaucracy center. Following up will be orange and green in some order, green if there are attractive things in the fog, orange otherwise. Orange is entirely too good for a city this early, with epic hammer, food, and cottage availability, so dark grey (fillers are grey) would "help", as would light green to the east on the marble. Teal is just darned solid, with ph plant, plains cows, dry corn, and gems. The one spanner in the works is that I'd really love to land the Great Wall with spies on, but pink stone is darned reachy.

[Commodore]

Make that confirmed; parsimonious (read: natural) script. PB5 ought to have taught me that anyway. That is not to say a fishing village with wet rice and lighthousable lake isn't a valid dotmap, of course.



With a great cha-ching ("yeah baby") we swap to the wheat, figuring reasonably that an extra hammer > an extra beaker. Ignore the silly governor's estimate, with the farm finishing next turn that's a three-turn worker, meaning it'll be born and will run to the woods to chop just as BW enables that.



Somebody has an identical tile configuration, I think Yuri if I'm tracking him right? I wonder if anyone else is getting second food online next turn. 33.3% (repeating of course) increase in CY next turn here.



We're not in the rocket-start but unless my micro completely fails we're going to keep competitive. That's the hope anyway, eh?

[novice]

The Great wall is cheap, you don't need stone for it.

[Commodore]

The Great wall is cheap, you don't need stone for it.

True, it's a bit less than a worker and a settler. Might consider using it to pop borders post-Math if I can be assured it won't be grabbed that early. Which means C&D, which I'm fuzzy on. Speaking of which:



All that can really be said from that is that we're first to a second improved resource tile, which is awesome. Need every little snowball boost possible to catch up to the Agriculturalists. Hrm...Ichabod has yet to grow, maybe he's making an Imp settler? Anyways, for food hammers this is a great capital.



More coast proves that: A. The blob is pretty wiggly. B. We probably have a northern neighbor. C. Awesome to have a dessert band of protection. Still, need to settle this area quickly to ensure our claims.



Worker -> finish warrior -> settler is the plan.

[Ceiliazul]

Need every little snowball boost possible to catch up to the Agriculturalists.

...

Worker -> finish warrior -> settler is the plan.

All looking real good, Commodore. I'm following along, if not contributing much... keep up the good work!

[Commodore]

All looking real good, Commodore. I'm following along, if not contributing much... keep up the good work!

Thanks Ceil. Suddenly looks a little less good this turn as everyone grows some more. Also, we have signs of a mine or plains cows.



On the plus side, our explorers found lots of...plains.



Fun micro due next turn, which is the cue for someone to warrior rush.

[Commodore]

So an interesting turn. Here's the situation: Bronze Working finishes in 1-turn with zero overflow. Both workers are free and move to a forest each for chopping next turn. I want those chops to finish a settler for me, to enable a half decent Turn 25 second city. That second worker finished with 4 hammers of overflow, one less than ideal, but needs must as devils drive.



In the city's queue I also have 8 hammers into a warrior. I want it out sooner rather than later. At the base food-hammer production of 11hpt, with the 4 overflow we're at 37 natural hammers in three turns, which is two short of making the settler with the 26 chopped-in hammers. So we need to make the warrior with +2 extra overflow. Now I could have winced, swapped from the wheat to a plains forest, and gotten the warrior with +6 overflow this turn...but I'll not. Next turn I can more swap the deer to a grassland forest, because the lost beaker isn't fatal then. Fun times, and result:



The scout found someone kind of scary: Bella of the Rocket Start. Hi Bella! Need to figure out if I want to make contact or not, we could use the extra beakers on AH, but they could use the extra beakers too. Either way we need to be the ones making contact, lets us get a +4 EP advantage.



I at least think AH was their second tech, given the time to research and power jump. They could be sandbagging too though, who knows. I'm frankly just curious enough I think I do want to make contact. Hrm...



When Bronze Working came it, it made an interesting and compelling counter-argument to the Riffington spot. How about: Sharing capital wheat, wet rice, grassland copper? Probably going to be my new target, and by all means ignore the signs, they get shifted (1N and 1E, most likely).



One other copper is available in our sphere of interest, in Hamburgerland. Yay grassland copper!



The Wheel is next, followed by...something. Polytheism is nice, if an awesome dedlurker of mine would be able to C&D for old time's sake and I could be confident of landing it. Either Pottery, Fishing, or AH would also be valid...the later is a bit of a crapshoot, but nicely located horses would do wonders for my hammer needs.