Dot mapping

[kjn]

Another thing that we should keep in mind. The map is 84x52 tiles big. Assuming we're placed in two rows, 4 in one and 5 in the other, that puts the "fair" distribution of tiles per empire as 26 tiles vertically, and 21 or 17 tiles horizontally.

We currently have a "width" of 23 tiles horizontally, and 17 tiles vertically. Ie, we should have plenty of room to expand to our south (though the land is crappy), but in all other directions we are going to bump into other teams hard from now on - we will have to fight for additional locations (via settler races and culture battles, but hopefully not actual fighting until we choose to).

For comparison, CFC has a width height of 14 tiles each, though both are due to rise shortly when their newest cities expand their borders.

[sooooo]

1) We have a solid plan of how to farm/irrigate the area. That can be either planting another city to the NE as described by novice, or getting irrigation from TH's river branch (which was previously frowned upon).

If you plant the city on my blue dot and farm the tile in between it and the bananas then that should irriage the rice?

Is sooooo's spot that much better at production than Horse Feathers?

Possibly, not sure. I don't think the decision of where to plant a city to use the northern rice should hinge on where the heroic epic should go. Even if the HE ends up in horse feathers, a city in the north with high production should be very useful.

My main issue with horse feathers having the statues and the heroic epic is that horse feathers has quite a bit of commerce potential and would make a decent hybrid city. It has six 3-commerce coastal tiles and two cottages in its BFC, with potential for more. I'd like to see this city get a library and university and not be tasked with constant unit builds.

[NobleHelium]

1) We have a solid plan of how to farm/irrigate the area. That can be either planting another city to the NE as described by novice, or getting irrigation from TH's river branch (which was previously frowned upon).

If you plant the city on my blue dot and farm the tile in between it and the bananas then that should irriage the rice?

Yeah, that's what I meant with the irrigation, sooooo. People previously stated that they would prefer to cottage that tile.

Is sooooo's spot that much better at production than Horse Feathers?

Possibly, not sure. I don't think the decision of where to plant a city to use the northern rice should hinge on where the heroic epic should go. Even if the HE ends up in horse feathers, a city in the north with high production should be very useful.

My main issue with horse feathers having the statues and the heroic epic is that horse feathers has quite a bit of commerce potential and would make a decent hybrid city. It has six 3-commerce coastal tiles and two cottages in its BFC, with potential for more. I'd like to see this city get a library and university and not be tasked with constant unit builds.

I would prefer to put the HE in a city other than Moai if we have a comparable candidate, partially for those reasons, yes.

[Ceiliazul]

Which region gets the next settler?

-somewhere claiming ivory?
-somewhere south claiming horse?
-somewhere near Covenant?
-somewhere North? (blue/white dots)

Seems like this is more urgent to decide than individual dot placements. I favor claiming Ivory.

[sooooo]

Yeah I think ivory too. On the ivory.

[kalin]

Are we considering not settling around the ivory and just getting a settler close? We don't ivory now, and the city would mostly serve to deny civplayers the resource. That can be achieved with a sentry and a settler ready to settle. Otherwise, the city would cost us for little immediate gain.

Kalin

[kjn]

More workers. We have four cities with jungle all over the place, the Hanging Gardens coming up, and we've established four cities in the last ten turns that are just getting started.

[novice]

Yeah I think ivory too. On the ivory.

I also like settling ivory next. Of course it depends a bit on empire management, a settler produced in Eastern Dealers should settle the dyes city instead of running halfway across the map.

I don't think there's any need for delaying the settling, the city will produce a bit from its tile yields, get its culture started, and it will have trade routes. Plus the extra happy should be useful for the entire empire.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Yeah I think ivory too. On the ivory.

I also like settling ivory next. Of course it depends a bit on empire management, a settler produced in Eastern Dealers should settle the dyes city instead of running halfway across the map.

I don't think there's any need for delaying the settling, the city will produce a bit from its tile yields, get its culture started, and it will have trade routes. Plus the extra happy should be useful for the entire empire.

I'm in agreement here. No need to build a settler to stand guard on the ivory and not settle the city. We want to spread our culture, both for visibility and cultural defense.

Preference for founding cities:

1) Ivory - Don't let your enemy get WEs...
2) NE of Eastern Dealers, E of Covenant (subject to worker availability)
3) backup horse location (location grabbing all local resources)
4) blue/white dots (we lack sufficient work force to develop this at this point, especially if we land HG)

We still need more workers to chop through the jungle we are growing onto in the NE and at Tree Huggers, much less for all the labor intensive jungle locations we're talking about now (Ivory, NE of ED, blue/white). Each of those cities would need 2 workers full time to keep up with improvements considering the jungle carpeting the area.

[Sullla]

Alright, let's try to organize these comments into a more coherent plan. Most everyone wants to go after the ivory next, and I'm fine with that idea, especially since CivPlayers continues to remain silent. Here's a map of that area in the west:



I keep envisioning the ivory as this really isolated and remote resource, but in truth it's not too far outside of our current borders at Brick By Brick. We would need two tiles of road connection heading north from the horses, and the city would be connected with our trade network. (We definitely want to settle on the ivory itself, given the lack of other resources in the area. It's even on a hill for the extra defensive bonus.) This spot would even be semi-decent longterm, once all the jungle was chopped down. We would need three or four grassland farms, and then could cottage or workshop or watermill the rest. Post-Biology, this would be a very nice spot indeed, although that's so far in the future as to be meaningless right now.

With roads in place, a settler could move from Tree Huggers to Horse Feathers, board the galley, land in Brick By Brick next turn, and then move 3 tiles along roads onto the ivory itself, planting the following turn. Two turns of transit in total. If we ferried the worker currently south of Horse Feathers over here (after it cottages the grassland tile to the southeast), we should be able to whip a settler from Tree Huggers and plant an ivory city around T109-110 or so. Then we'd have ten turns to chop and clear out a killing field along the CivPlayers border, build walls, and dare them to come attack us. How does that sound?



In the north, this was the spot that I proposed as a way of making use of the floodplains tile along the German border. But sooooo has an alternate plan that I think makes a more efficient use of land up here:



The dark blue dot in and of itself doesn't claim the river tile to the north, instead avoiding wasted tiles within our borders. However, sooooo's spot allows us to plant a second city on the green tile that I marked, one that shares rice + cows and still stakes our claim to those desirable river tiles. This spot even opens up an easier irrigation route for the dry rice, only needing one farm on the tile south of the floodplains, and not requiring us to mess with the situation at Tree Huggers. This is of course a dense build, but we've been showing all game the benefits of a tightly connected group of cities that can trade food resources and cottages. Why not keep doing the same up here in the north?

I would actually plant the green spot here before the dark blue, as it can work two good tiles immediately (cows + floodplains) and seals off the border with the German team. The dark blue can be safely backfilled from there. Hopefully the German team won't try to put a city in this region until we can finalize our claim to these two spots. (The German team finished a settler this turn in one of the two cities where we can track production. We'll see where it plants in a turn or two.) Depending on what the Germans do, we may have to re-evaluate this, but I would suggest adding these two cities if they continue to ignore this region. Hopefully they will, as there's little for them to pursue here until they research Iron Working tech.

We still need more exploration of the south before we can dot map it more accurately, and those are pretty safe locations. Therfore I would suggest that our next two cities go on the ivory and along the German border. We also probably want a dyes city north of Eastern Dealers, but again, until we know what's over there and can scout the land, there's not much we can do to plan. At least, these are my suggestions on where to settle next.