[SPOILERS] *Placeholder* Zakalwe plays a soldier

[zakalwe]

Hmmm. Maybe go pottery after fishing, and then polytheism?

Simming a bit, that feels premature. Mining after fishing, then polytheism, works out well. Get the two hills mined (one of them may well have copper btw.), and stay on path for a potential great lighthouse beeline. We'll get the hinduism border pop just in time to connect the fish. We might decide to skip agriculture and pottery for some time, still. Particularly if there is seafood to go with the coastal horse site.

[zakalwe]

I'm looking at a tech path of Fishing -> Mining -> Polytheism -> Agriculture, and settling the third city SE of the capital, with dry wheat and borrowed grass deer. At size 3, the capital can stagnate working the plains hill, grass hill, and plains deer, and slowbuild stonehenge. The fish/clams city takes over settler duty, and stonehenge comes in around the time our fourth city is settled for corn/horses.

Here's what that would look like:




I built enough warriors in this run to establish an adequate sentry net.

[zakalwe]

If we want to skip agriculture, we could settle like this:




This may be the way to go if we want to seriously gun for the great lighthouse. It lets us get bronze working (or sailing, if that's our next tech) about 5 turns earlier.

[zakalwe]

Boldly's scout is north of our capital:




I don't think there's much risk of him disrupting anything. If I get a clear shot at him, I might take it though.




The warrior has 4 hammers in it, I'll complete that after the settler, before starting a worker.

Our scouting units didn't meet anyone, and revealed this:







Sandbox: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49396026/rb/pbe...dSwordSave

[zakalwe]

Looks like there are two narrow, diagonal land bridges connecting the western and eastern hemispheres, with two islands in the middle.




Forting from the outer sea to the inner seas is also possible:

[zakalwe]

Novice settled his second city.




A bit more scouting.







Looks like the eastern and western halves are mirrored in the east-west direction around a line centered between the two silk tiles. Furthermore, the eastern half is flipped in the N-S direction around a horizontal line that also goes through the two silk tiles. I will scout a bit more before I update the sandbox based on these assumptions, but that's what it looks like.

Sandbox: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49396026/rb/pbe...dSwordSave

[zakalwe]

Boldly somewhat unexpectedly moved his scout two tiles west:




He could be going to explore the coast, I think. He's already made a lap around the world, and if he was trying to bypass our capital he would have moved differently both on the previous turn and this one. Since we're roading the plains deer after camping it anyway, and we've got a turn of slack before working it, I put one turn of road into it now. If I had done the same thing last turn, that scout would be dead now.

I'm not quite sure what to do with our own scout. Both he and our warrior are on the isthmus now, and I fear he is about to run into an enemy warrior. The main point in exploring further would be to find Novice, as we basically have the whole map now, excepting the islands. So he could turn around and serve as a sentry in our south.




Here is what the isthmus looks like in the sandbox:




Our warrior will move a couple more tiles and try to guard that approach from overly aggressive settlements. (Edit: He will move 1N and sit on that forested hill, I think.)

We'll settle our second city next turn. Hopefully we won't be orphaning any seafood with that, although I have a sneaking feeling we might. That wouldn't make our city any worse, but it sure would be annoying.

Sandbox: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49396026/rb/pbe...dSwordSave

[zakalwe]

We met Novice on the isthmus:




Our warrior moved 1N, and made contact. His scout is facing SE. So I really wonder how that happened, without making contact. He must have been sitting still for one turn, unless I'm missing something. Anyway, since we now have all contacts and basically the full map, I turned our scout around. He will serve as a sentry south of the capital. The warrior will stay put on that forested hill. If Novice wants to settle on that plains hill, that's fine with us. So long as he doesn't come any closer.

We also settled our second city this turn, revealing orphaned seafood as predicted:




Whales, though. We can live with that. More importantly, we got silver, and seafood for the corn/horse site. Very nice!

(I should have kept my mouth shut about Paya, though, or I bet that silver would have been gold...)

The picture also shows Boldly's scout passing through. I decided to let him go, since the odds aren't so great in the forest anyway.

Demographics are looking decent now that we're working three improved resource tiles. Novice is working the same three tiles.

[BRickAstley]

So did I miss the part of the plan where you change the thread title every 2 days?

[Bigger]

So did I miss the part of the plan where you change the thread title every 2 days?

he changes it several times each day (I get an email notification w/ every new post that includes the thread title)