[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

Well I can say I've played many worse starts than either would lead to! Settling right now we get the second settler on turn 27 which is blazing fast.

I just tried to sim it, and I think 1SW doesn't work out quite as nicely, just for micro reasons. Losing the 1 turn of city production (probably 3 food), crosses the point where it pushes everything back one turn, so the settler comes out on turn 28 instead of 27. It also loses a turn of early research delaying the palace, and is a capital that won't grow quite as quickly when sharing off the corn. (I've lately become quite sold on capitals with an amount of food that seems ridiculously too high. ) So I now don't think the benefits are worth it.

I also would prefer a second city that shares corn if possible, so we can delay fishing a little while longer. Fishing is (sort of) on the way to Pottery though.

I also vote against 1SW. That extra turn is costly but also for considerations of where our next city should be.

As for the scout, I'd suggest NW-SW to help decide where our next city should go. Red vs Blue may be decided by what we see out there and we may not get our scout back over there if its eaten. Also, your plan only has 1 quecha I believe so we'll be sharing that warrior.

[WilliamLP]

Good point about being conservative with the scout. It's free until turn 5 but after that a bear or a bad die roll would suck. I'm kind of interested in the N though, both for huts and because of resources that might be around the tundra like deer, fur, marble, silver. (I just realize we have no happiness in site! )

Hmm, the blue site would be a fantastic production city, I just wish it had a little more food - only one four food tile (that it needs to borrow from the capital) isn't great. Red north needs a border pop to be good, and that's going to be difficult and costly to get for us before Pottery so I'd pretty much rule it out as a second city. I'm hoping for a site S of the corn for a city that can grow in pop extremely fast between whips by borrowing it.

[WilliamLP]

We may have to agree to disagree if this post isn't convincing but I think I like a scout strategy like this:




We have 26 turns of scout moves, and quite a few quechua moves to find a city site. And we have the luxury that we're not desperate to find one. We see a couple of options that don't suck already, and even the quechua will be able to look at the area around the corn on its own, in the unlikely event that the scout dies before the trip back.

What I think is that we'll never have as convenient a time to look at the fog to the NW as we do right now, and there are a lot of things we will want to know about it, not for the second or third city, but for potential happiness and strategic resources, e.g. to have more potential tiles to see when BW and AH come in.

[WilliamLP]

Turandot (there is controversy whether to pronounce the final "t") was unfinished when Giacomo Puccini died. Puccini is one of the most famous Italian composers and known for the Verismo (true to life) style, which is as much a musical style as a thematic one. Turandot is a long and complicated opera, and it isn't very often performed, but it has arguably the most famous and dramatic tenor aria, which has seen a lot of pop and movie crossover. Opera singing is about producing sound in the most acoustically efficient way possible, with no unnecessary tension and emphasizing the overtones in the human voice which project best. To be heard without a microphone over an orchestra in a large hall there is no other way to sing. What is amazing is how relaxed Pavarotti is in the above clip while he produces the most powerful sound that is possible for a human voice. And you can see the effect it had on people who heard it live.




Now how about this land! Wet wheat, silver, marble, and a lake revealed? Wow. The silks are a bit of icing, and give us a bit of extra commerce while building the first worker.

The marble is probably too far for an Oracle run (barring some crazy all-in play), even if that would be a good idea with 18 players and 3 IND. It's far from useless though, it cheapens HE and NE, has trade value, and there are a some less popular wonders we could think at least think about. GLib, Parthenon, Hagia Sophia, run at Mausoleum, etc.

What I know is, with this many players, if we want a contended goal we need to choose it early and commit to it hard to have a chance.

I am not going to even begin to try and do full C&D in this game, mostly because of diminishing returns on reward vs effort with this many players. Half of the players in this game spent a turn moving their settler. Two people subscribe to the "settlers make good scouts" philosophy and haven't planted a city on the second turn either.

I expect a slow turn pace with this many careful players, so buckle up for a month of scout moves.

[Rowain]

Ah Pavarotti and Nessun Dorma - what glorious start

He was the greatest showman of the 3 tenors and you always saw how much fun he had to perform for audience and how much he loved the praise and applauding of spectators.

[WilliamLP]

Rowain: Yes, I figured we might as well start from the top!

A bit more map info:




That silver is nice but not game changing. I'm going to go NE-W next turn, because I don't think we'd find another excuse to move a unit to that coast anytime soon, and if there's seafood it could affect our dotmap.




The averages include two unsettled players. Of those who have settled, the average number of land tiles is 6.9.

[Ituralde]

The opera information was much appreciated. Now you have to settle a lot of cites, so that I can learn a lot!

[MindyMcCready]

We may have to agree to disagree if this post isn't convincing but I think I like a scout strategy like this:

Convinced.

And just a question about planting that city. It looks like our capital + newly founded city will be sharing a warrior. That's a pretty huge risk, of course since we won't have slavery at that point. Having the scout in the area will help that a bit,...at least we could see a barb animal or alternatively we could see an approching warrior earlier giving our capital more time to build a warrior.

I'm not demanding a change in your plans or anything,...just pointing it out.

[WilliamLP]

I'm not totally sold on building a settler at size 2 either. The more I think about it and sim it, the better size 3 or 4 looks. The silk tile changes the equation a little bit because working the extra unimproved means extra beakers. I'm going to do some more theory-crafting here later, with numbers.

Is the risk that an opportunistic rival warrior comes our way? I'm not worried about barbs at all - human barbs won't start appearing until 9 people have settled their second city. The capital would build another warrior while growing after the settler, and that would only take 3 turns (with a bit of overflow). That would still be pretty fast since with EXP we're a couple of turns faster than the rest, right out of the gate.

Would you go toward BW first here, or Pottery? BW first feels like the standard, and chops and whips are the key to economic acceleration, and settling for copper early is nice. But pottery gives us the unique building in our second city (it would be slow to slow-build though) and earlier cottages snowball nicely. But I guess we only have one place for a cottage in the capital without chopping anyway.

When would you go for a religion, if ever? I'm very torn on this still. With the same number of religions and 18 players it seems a shrine will be more valuable than a normal game, and early is better for having a chance to get other people to adopt it. My gut is that they're going to fall really early because of this, and because of the increased sense of competition and urgency. Options are going for it after hunting, going for it after BW, or waiting even longer. Is the cost of delaying BW too much for it? Is even the cost of delaying wheel, fishing, and pottery too much? My gut is that if we wait that long we'll miss them all for sure in this game.

Is a dash for Oracle completely crazy? I'm talking about settling a fast third city right on the marble and just going for it, chopping it out. It would make Meditation not a completely worthless tech, and the GP would build itself from the passive wonder points. Metal Casting isn't that great an early tech, I don't see us with a burning need for Colossus, but it is a lot of beakers. I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm just throwing it out there.

[MindyMcCready]

Is the risk that an opportunistic rival warrior comes our way?

Yes, wandering human player's warrior. If we're splitting the 1 warrior across 2 cities we're either risking our capital or risking to lose our settler.

The risk depends on whether someone has discovered our capital with a scount.

Would you go toward BW first here, or Pottery?

I'd definately for for BW before Pottery. Landing, or not landing metal could easily determine our game. Especially if we're not going to research AH for the horses. We have no way to defend against any type of unit other than an archer (quecha advantage). A spear, axe, chariot shows up and we can't whip and we can't produce anything that can stand up to these units.

When would you go for a religion, if ever? I'm very torn on this still.

This is a tough question. Normall, since we have Agriculture, I'd say that we'd have to wait for Mining, BW, wheel at a minimum. Then if we had no metal, AH. But in this case since Hunting gives us such very high productivity I think that we could get Meditation/Poly as the next tech. If nothing else we should be able to produce a steady stream of warriors to fend off a lone chariot strike.

I really don't think that Pottery should be in the mix until we can defend ourselves.

Some options post Hunting:
Option1: Religion early, defense early, Pottery early
Mediatation (80B -20%) >> Archery (40B -defense) >> Wheel (60B) >> Pottery (80H - 40%)
-Not sure that I've got the tech discounts right, only a little time to write this up.
-120B before we can defend ourselves
-260B before we land Pottery

Option 2: Religion; then push for metal
Mediatation (80B -20%) >> Mining (50H) >> BW (120B -20%) >> Wheel (60B) >> Pottery (80H -40%)
-310B until we can begin to get copper to defend ourselves. 250B if we're currently sitting on copper.
-Pottery after 450B

There are other options, but I'd say that Option1 is pretty good if we're going to go for a religion. We should land a religion, we can settle cities in relative safety to claim our land and we land our UB very early.

Is a dash for Oracle completely crazy? I'm talking about settling a fast third city right on the marble and just going for it, chopping it out.

I'd say its pretty crazy. Its a nice to have and if the 3rd city goes there anyway great. But I'm thinking that civs will be pretty close together with this many players on the map. With all these productive tiles, the opportunity cost is really high to make a dash for something like that.

If we don't prioritize the military techs and claim our share of the land we could be choked out or settled up on aggressively and then just outproduced. Landing a religions + pushing for Monotheism play to our strengths. The Oracle only for the GP. Nice, but with cheap temples we can get the GP pretty easily anyway.

Also, strategically, if we find ourselves to be very close to our neighbours we should try to punish anyone playing a farmer's gambit. That means AH + Chariots.