[spoilers] novice & moon shoot the world

[novice]

Warrior discovered crabs in range of the sheep.

[novice]

No more land in the southeast, as expected. Next turn we need to start working the rice.



Mackoti grew to size 2 on his t9, nobody else did. Serdoa has played his t10 and is still at size 1 like us. I guess everybody but Mackoti has been working the ivory then, should be easy to check if we bother to go back and check the demographics. Soon we'll find out if anyone went worker-worker or worker/settler - I know Gaspar loves the worker-worker opening...

[novice]

I played turn 11, nothing new was revealed. Everybody but Serdoa has grown to size 2.

[novice]

Save made it back to me in less than two hours.



Galley passage around the peaks to our southeast is blocked by ice. Although we could settle/fort the tundra hill there for a canal.

[novice]

Updated sandbox:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/pbem47...dSwordSave

[novice]

Played with the sandbox. I think our worker should road all the way to our second city instead of building our flood plains cottage. This speeds up the corn at the second city by one turn, and we can cottage the flood plains afterwards.

I also think our workers will be able to occupy themselves fruitfully farming and cottaging for a while, so I think we should consider going Mysticism->Religion after Bronze Working. (Maybe Buddhism so we can build a monastery and missionaries [for culture], as I don't think we'll want to spend a turn revolting to OR?) We can triple whip another settler on t28, overflow to a 2-turn worker, and settle a city on the desert west of the lake and have our third worker on t30. We'll have AH ~t32.

Screenshot (I grabbed Polytheism in this run):

Save: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/pbem47...dSwordSave

What do you think?

[novice]

The avoid growth trick in action:

Before:


After:


You'll see the finale of the trick next turn.



The demographics are fascinating. We have at least three very different openings here.





Rival worst food is 5, so Serdoa must be working at least 2 food in addition to his city center. But rival worst mfg is 4, so Serdoa must have camped his ivory and is building another worker with the Exp bonus.

What's more, rival best food is only 8, which I honestly am having trouble understanding. Did nobody farm their rice? And someone has a mfg of 7, which I think must mean they've mined their sheep and are working mined sheep + unimproved ivory at size 2.

[Shoot the Moon]

I'm not at all sold on the location of the third city--was that just sort of throwing it down for simming's sake or actually where you are planning? If it's where you are planning, I'd say 1S is strictly better, although I'd also like to consider on the bananas.

I'm also not entirely sold on religion so early. If we plant the third city 1S we could potentially chop out Stonehenge there if it's still available. The way I see it, there are only three teams lacking an effective way to get early border pops (the other two being cultural and Inca respectively). I'd expect one of those gets Stonehenge and the other two one of the early religions. At least to me, early happiness from the phants is probably worth quickly getting hunting out of the way is at least my gut feeling. That all being said, I am not an ordinary player on this site regarding religion and wonders. PBEM 41 for instance it is past 1000 AD and I have yet to build a wonder or found a religion (yet am still at least in contention to win). So maybe take what I say here with a grain of salt as I simply don't value religions as high as a lot of RB metagame does.

In essence, some doubts on religion first but can probably be swayed on that, but the city locations I think is pretty obviously better 1S or potentially on the bananas.

[novice]

Replying in brief - henge will fall to Mackoti. Religion is low risk for us, and especially Buddhism has low opportunity cost. We'll want a religion anyway so might as well use one for border pops. We'll get hunting and AH in time, we don't need the happy nor the pastures immediately. Try simming it and see if you agree.

Third city: it was indeed just plopped down, but the desert spot has some advantages: Settled one turn sooner, instant trade route, redeems a desert tile, has flood plains first ring. The last point won't matter if we grab a religion. At any rate we need to reevaluate when we see copper.

[novice]

Played my fourth turn of the day. The second part of the avoid growth trick:

Before:


After:


We grew to size 3 as the first civ. Judging from demos the others may be producing workers or settlers.