Dot mapping

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Wow, I wasn't aware we could be that close. We may want probably want monarchy/monotheism first, but Burea is appealing... I am still not sure that orange dot is worth, I'd like to hear more arguments.

Kalin

Orange would be a long term project for sure. I believe in settling locations that get us new resources or are obviously strong before fix-me-uppers like this would be. And one city that does nothing but pump out units or GPPs at the expense of one city's maintenance in a large empire is easily worth it. If we had 10 cities and 1 does nothing but work farms and generates 3 great people over the course of the game, I'd say that is worth it. Grow the city large and swap briefly to caste/pacifism while starvign the city for max GPPs for the duration of the GA. I can see us squeezing a few GP out of a location like this, or using it as a hammer farm when workshops are better later in the game. We can get some use out of these tiles, may as well do it.

[mostly_harmless]

Settling 1S of the oasis is within our agreement with CFC which states "no settling past the oasis". Whether the spot is still available is another question.

mh

[kjn]

Yeah, but they're going to complain mightily. Which I can understand, but then they've piddled around during 80+ turns without settling in our direction at all.

They will claim we've pink dotted them, but then they've missed the first and best defense against pink dots:

[mostly_harmless]

Its only a pink dot if the borders don't touch your existing culture!

mh

[kalin]

I was thinking about blue dot. What if we moved it 1E to get a dye? The city would have no good tile to start but it would still be a good city... Any thoughts on this? Of course, we'd need to explore that area before making this decision, but it seems to me it may be worthwhile to claim dye.

Kalin

[kjn]

Not sure I like moving blue dot 1E.

First, it will start out slower since it won't have any good tile for the first 10t - starting with 3F is painful (as we saw in TH and GM), and this is aggravated by that there are no forests in the first ring for a quick granary.

Second, it loses not only the grass spices, but the cow as well. We go from +8F to +5F. The original blue dot can share the cow or the spices, the eastern would need another farm to reach +6F.

Anyway, I think we need to decide fairly soon if we are to go for pink dot (1S of the oasis), red dot, or blue dot with our T92 settler. All three proposals will require quite a bit of worker support, that needs to be set up in advance. And all of them will require strong military escorts. I think we need to decide on this over the weekend, so we can focus our sims and plans.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I tentatively support Blue over Red, with Blue in the spot most frequently discussed, not the 1E proposal. I do not support the pink location south of the oasis for diplomatic reasons. My support for blue at this moment is largely because it will bridge the gap between the barb city we will presumably capture within the next few turns, but also settling here first leaves open settling for the stone resource at pink down the line if we should somehow get the stone in the west (Brick by Brick?) sniped from us. Only if we lose that western stone would I risk the diplomatic fallout with CFC over the eastern stone.

[novice]

I tentatively support Blue over Red, with Blue in the spot most frequently discussed, not the 1E proposal. I do not support the pink location south of the oasis for diplomatic reasons. My support for blue at this moment is largely because it will bridge the gap between the barb city we will presumably capture within the next few turns, but also settling here first leaves open settling for the stone resource at pink down the line if we should somehow get the stone in the west (Brick by Brick?) sniped from us. Only if we lose that western stone would I risk the diplomatic fallout with CFC over the eastern stone.

We plan to settle the western stone before t92, so by t92 we'll know whether or not we need to claim the eastern stone.

[mostly_harmless]

Putting the latest proposals and discussion into the most up to date map:



Our BFC's are in yellow, assuming we capture Alemanni and settle Brick-by-Brick (our stone city)
I put in the settlement agreement with CFC (dark grey wobbly line) and a vague northern border to Germans and WPC (dark grey line).
Resources and flood plains outside out BFC's are marked with cyan exclamation marks for better visibility.

Red, pink and blue dot currently under discussion.

And some suggestions for white, green and brown dot.

Under the assumption we land Brick-by-Brick, there is no real need to get the stones at the oasis with Pink Dot. This will avoid a lot of diplomatic pressure.
So between red and pink I strongly favour red dot.
Should we lose "our" stone, then the situation is completely different, as we will also lack Horses!

As for red vs. blue dot for the next city (after Brick-by-Brick):
If we have the feeling that we are in a race with CFC for the fish, then we need to hurry red dot!
For a start, we know CFC knows about the resource rich area and has clearly stated that they want to settle there. Look at the map from CFC point of view. 1SE of the oasis is an awesome spot, grabbing the oasis, the stone, one wine, the fish AND OUR WHEAT!
Plus it will invalidate out red dot!

Given that WPC is in a war right now, I feel the red dot area is much more at risk than the blue dot area.
So red dot as the next city is my vote!

mh

[mostly_harmless]

This is an alternative variant for the blue dot area, that is more in line with our overlapping strategy and packs the border to WPC more tightly.




Cyan Dot would be on a hill for defense and grabs dyes.

mh