[SPOILERS] Team Reddit Must Die

[Hart]

So are those the final places?

I agree with the starting choices, if not all of the city sites.

I promise to post pictures/numbers supporting my thoughts later.

Sidar is in a good spot. The only other choice I would have put in for them is on the Desert tile 1N of the current location. However, that loses some of the resources. I guess Sid will want to do some thinking about how quickly we really need those resources vs. extra food .

Spot 2 is good for the Khazad, but the two points you've pointed out have way too much unknown space around them for me to be confident that you'd put them there. I think A is the best of the two, given the lack of data.

That leaves Hippus. If we go for a conquest rush of units then yes, this should be their start. But again that location has 5 tiles inside the BFC we have no clue on, so I'd probably suggest putting on the hill 1W. That gives city defenses, and you get to keep a farm and get one of the flood plains inside the big cross.

If we don't decide to do that rush (we'd be mad not to - we chose Tasunke, not Rhoanna!), then things are less clear. Hippus could take start 1, and the Sidar could pump specialists with start 3. But I'm not sure that's the best gameplan here.

[TheBold]

frankly--starting settlers get imbalanced movement. I think we should all strive to settle on turn 2, exploring maximally turns 0 & 1.

So my X's are just suggestions, and I'm hoping the darkness bears good things and not bareness.

[TheBold]

I think those are final for the starts.

[Hart]

Oh dear god what have we done.

Less than a week and no spoilers posted?!?!?!

This madness cannot continue any longer.

[TheBold]

What's been spoiling it for me is this delayed start. At least we have something to go on now!

[Hart]

[SIZE="7"]LET THE SPOILERS BEGIN![/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"]Sidar:[/SIZE]
I only really see two sensible locations for the Sidar start.

TheBold's suggestion is red. Mine is cyan - I have a thing for turning desert tiles into something useful.
Red:
Freshwater health bonus.
Uses marginally less useful plains tile.
Has at least 8 forests in the BFC - large health bonus and hammer reserves.
Gets Gold, Silk and Cotton in the BFC.
2 flood plains and 1 plains hill, 1 forested plains hill.

Cyan:
Almost identical... except it's not on a river.

At size 7, both cities could be working, 2 FP farms, at least 2 GL farms, a desert gold tile and 2 plains hill mines. Or, more farms/resources/cottages. Also, they're not exclusive sites.
So take your pick.

[SIZE="3"]Khazad:[/SIZE]
Much less clear for the Khazad.

Four sites, TheBold's suggestions are Red and Magenta. Mine are Cyan and Yellow.
They're all really similar. We need more scouting information.

Red: Fresh water health bonus.
Sheep, Wine, and Spices(?) in range.
2 Flood Plains. 3 GLs
6 Hills, 5x GL, 1 plains, with more likely to be found after fogbusting. (Oh, but one of those has the wine).
With the sheep health bonus, can reach size 8 with no penalty. Working 2 FP farms and the mushrooms, can feed 5 GL mines(or 4 GL mines and 1 P mine).
7 tiles we can't see, probably forested.
Magenta:
Freshwater bonus.
Much the same as Red. Two wines, though.
7 unknown tiles. Probably more forest in than Red. From what we can see, only 5 Hills.

Cyan:
From looking at the screenshots, this was solely intended to capture as many hills in the GFC as possible.
9 visible hills, probably more.
Still gets the 2 FP's, Wine, Marble (any good Wonders?) and Spices. Also secures the mana node (but that is a bit less useful to us, given our tech plan).
Downsides: no freshwater bonus.
Yellow:
Freshwater bonus! Also, Hill Defense bonus!
Secures Marble, Sheep, Wine, and Corn! Health resources are great.
Many, many forests.
5 Hills. Quite a few are forested, will rely on chopping.
Will have at least 5 tiles for GL farms.

All in all, I am very unsure. Since this is my civ, I'll probably move to 1SW of Red, and see what's there before deciding to settle on Red or Magenta.

[SIZE="3"]Hippus:[/SIZE]

A few options here.
Again, Red and Magenta = TheBold. Cyan and Yellow = Mine.
Since they're not exclusive, I've put some of the sites together.

Red and Cyan - I would explore to the east and settle Red first, depending on what was there.
Red:
Secures Corn and Sugar.
2 FP's, 4 GL RS (riverside) tiles, and a couple of Pl RS.
2 PH's, at least 1 GLH - I think directly east of Red is a hill as well.
5 unknowns.
Cyan:
The best thing about this one is that we know all the tiles!
Secures Bananas. (Is this a health resource? I forget.)
2 GL hills. 1 Pl hill. 3 FP's! (But one would be shared with Red, I think.)
Only 5 GL RS for farming - I thought there was more than this. Of course you can farm the RS plains as well, but that's... rather suboptimal.

Magenta and Yellow. I'm not sure that either of these are more viable than the above two, but I made the dotmaps, so.
Magenta:
Similar to Red. Secures all the resources with the first city. Gets a mana node, too.
Gets access to another FP, but loses a hill for more RS plains... not ideal.
Also loses the GL hill to the city itself.
Yellow:
Another try at using less valuable tiles to found cities on.
Secures banana's. Thats it, unless there's something hiding on those 6 unknown tiles.
3 FP's. 5 GL's, 3 of which are RS. 3 Plains.

I'd be leaning towards Red and Cyan, or Yellow - depends on how well you go with scouting. You might want to move east to the FP, and if the tile to the SE turns out to be a hill, move on top of that.

[Hart]

Also, on delaying settling until t2 or 3, its not THAT useful. t0, certainly delay. Early hammers count for a lot though, so once we have enough information to suitably inform our suspicions, we should just make a move. Every exploration with the settler moves us further away from the 'intended' starting location and moves us closer to another player.

Unlike every other FFH/EitB game we've played, this map has been balanced by more than one person :P

[TheBold]

I'll trust in the map makers then.

That's a hell of a spoiler Hart.

My only input at the moment is: yellow/pink look best on khazad to me, but that's not my civ.

[Hart]

That's a hell of a spoiler Hart.

That's how it's meant to be done...

Anyway. Is it normal practice on RB for pre-game screenshots to be inverted???

The events of yesterday revealed some semi-interesting stuff about the Khazad start. I do have some minor quibbles about using semi-spoiled screenshots in this thread, but other teams were, and it won't be that long until we have this information in game again anyway.

A small, skinny body of water to the south, with clams.
A few revealed riverside GL tiles make Magenta slightly more promising than Red.
Otherwise, nothing to write home about.

The other revealed sites revealed absolutely stuff all.

I also forgot about the dwarven hill movement bonus. So come our turn, I'll be moving [strike]down[/strike] up to the hill wines tile. That should reveal buckets of the map, and fully inform my choice of Red or Magenta.

[Hart]

Ok. After moving on t0, this is where I stand. Warrior moved over the hills to exploit that movement bonus. Scouts don't actually move any further on hills, despite getting "double" movement. Such a jip.



In hindsight, not the best movement - after moving on the hill wine tile, I should have moved BACK on to the sheep. Instead I moved onto one of the two sites I've been thinking of. To get to the other one would require moving over the FP and into the forest plain, which would consume all movement points, right? Might have forced my hand there.

Still, Magenta's not bad. The lack of hills is a bit worrying. There's more of those to the east, though, with new potential Red and Cyan sites. A new potential Yellow site, too, which would grab the (unfortunately dry) Wheat and Marble.

I'll just have a very commerce based capital. Nothing bad about that, right?

Edit: of course there's also the possibility of settling on the current Yellow site instead. More hills, and Marble (although we'd need Masonry before we got use of that...)

WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK? Seriously, you should be posting just as much as I am.