[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Damn you Harry! Let's build some wealth then! I hope you know that you just destroyed the results of a 5 hour micro session.. Consequently I'm expecting a sizeable effort from you!

Couple of comments:

• The location of city G is our first immediate decision. It affects the movements of 3 of our workers next turn. I would not be sure at all that we are going to get a good plant next to iron in the future. This might well be m_h's expansion direction. The impact for city G from losing the rice is really not that big. In my original micro it will be borrowed only for couple of turns. If I understand you correctly it seems that we are both still undecided..
  
• You're micro plans are somehow forgetting our new cities (City I & City J). Especially now as we are going Currency first I want to have 10 cities AND Calendar by T102! (one of the cities goes onto island, another one to red dot at the river valley) So better get working! I'm a bit afraid that Agincourt's wealth builds complicate this wish...
  
• You are right, with delayed Calendar we want barracks first in France
  

[Old Harry]

Damn you Harry! Let's build some wealth then! I hope you know that you just destroyed the results of a 5 hour micro session.. Consequently I'm expecting a sizeable effort from you!

Couple of comments:

• The location of city G is our first immediate decision. It affects the movements of 3 of our workers next turn. I would not be sure at all that we are going to get a good plant next to iron in the future. This might well be m_h's expansion direction. The impact for city G from losing the rice is really not that big. In my original micro it will be borrowed only for couple of turns. If I understand you correctly it seems that we are both still undecided..
  
• You're micro plans are somehow forgetting our new cities (City I & City J). Especially now as we are going Currency first I want to have 10 cities AND Calendar by T102! (one of the cities goes onto island, another one to red dot at the river valley) So better get working! I'm a bit afraid that Agincourt's wealth builds complicate this wish...
  
• You are right, with delayed Calendar we want barracks first in France
  

Only five hours! Slacker! I think we want to keep a lot of your micro - I'm going to see if I can spreadsheet it now (this might take some time!)

I don't think that moving G gets us the iron - it's second ring and if m_h settles it first-ring we don't get it. I think he'll settle SW of the pig, then if he's quicker than us he'll settle the corn first ring, allowing us to settle the x? next to the iron. If he's slower then we settle on or SW of the iron, depending on how confident we're feeling. So my vote is for keeping it where it is, but since I got to decide currency first I think you should do this one...

[Fintourist]

Only five hours! Slacker! I think we want to keep a lot of your micro - I'm going to see if I can spreadsheet it now (this might take some time!)

Do not bother! At least yet! A lot will remain unchanged, a lot will change! Aaand here is the minimum target for your planning:



10 cities and Calendar comes in EOT100.
Some checkpoints:

• H will be settled on T92 as planned
  
• Currency comes in EOT94
  
• 2nd island city (location still undecided) will be settled T95
  
• River Valley (J) settled on T98
  
• Calendar EOT100
  

Some guidelines:

• Settler for H comes from Endor
  
• Settler for I comes from BoP
  
• Settler for J comes from Agincourt
  
• Cannae should probably build 1 extra worker as it waits for whale happiness (did not do it in this run)
  

I don't think that moving G gets us the iron - it's second ring and if m_h settles it first-ring we don't get it. I think he'll settle SW of the pig, then if he's quicker than us he'll settle the corn first ring, allowing us to settle the x? next to the iron. If he's slower then we settle on or SW of the iron, depending on how confident we're feeling. So my vote is for keeping it where it is, but since I got to decide currency first I think you should do this one...

I'm also leaning towards keeping thae original location, but that's because I'm biased and already in love with my own micro.. If we settle SW of our original location and pop borders m_h might decide to not to settle his dotmap aggressively.. And we keep the iron. Knights need iron, you know? But I would say: Let's wait with this decision still for a while (at least couple of hours).. Give me some time to gather my thoughts! Our planning process is a mess!

[Old Harry]

Only five hours! Slacker! I think we want to keep a lot of your micro - I'm going to see if I can spreadsheet it now (this might take some time!)

Do not bother! At least yet!

Tooooo late! - at least I only got as far as t87...

I'm out all evening, so I'll look forward to what your planning brings!

[Fintourist]

Tooooo late! - at least I only got as far as t87...

I'm out all evening, so I'll look forward to what your planning brings!

Awesome, a save stack! In big picture it looks good. Here are couple of suggestions/fixes:
T82: Dunkirk could work copper instead of unimproved cows. (I assume that you are doing so that the city grows faster to size 4. But if we finish bowman already it will be timely in place to protect workers near Endor. Economic wise we are trading 6 hammers for 3 food + approximately ~2 commerce and 2 cottage turns, which is at least not an amazing deal.... Mmm, maybe worth it, have to see)
T83: Worker on the island should move onto the more southern forest (W of France). From there it can start cottaging without losing a worker turn. IMO we get granary+barracks optimally done with only 1 whip and 1 chop.
T85: Workers that just finished roading the cow could start a cottage NE of Dunkirk. Settler can be started in BoP!

That's all I found so I think next 5 turns should be fairly clear!

[Fintourist]

I did the clear moves and tile assignments, but left the 3 relevant workers and settler unmoved. Let's decide tomorrow where we settle our 7th city!

I moved the galley, but did not unload Lunch. It is actually an unnecessary risk (might meet a barb) as we are about to reveal those tiles couple turns later with our galley and we are hoping to find a hut that gives us AH or 100 gold.. If you are too eager and want to land the scout anyways you might want to reduce the risk by moving our bowman first..?

If you are spending time with civ still today, I would love to wake up tomorrow with a solid argumentation regarding the city site options of "G"!

[Old Harry]

I don't know how solid this argument is, but it's certainly long:

Moving G to be a less profitable location (in terms of micro, cottage sharing and if we're intending it to be a cottage city) hinges on what we think m_h will do.

This is how his area looked when we visited:


And this is how it looks now, note the missing forest:


I don't know exactly when this forest disappeared - do you have any shots of that area since t60? Anyway it makes me think he settled the plains hill with the purple X. I think he settled his fourth city two turns ago or this might be his third city (settled t63). He might have settled on the forest to get all the resources in the BFC, or S or SW of the forest (blue X), but I don't like any of those placements:


I think the next city site he'll want will be somewhere near the pigs (probably NW of them), meaning he has the option to settle the iron first ring with his fifth/sixth city. I think that would be too much of a stretch though, leaving a huge flank open for YuriMack to settle up to, so I'd expect it to be his seventh or eighth city and he'll settle towards the rice first.

All of which makes me think we should settle G on the hill, so that:
- He doesn't spot our borders as early
- It doesn't look like we're expanding hard in that direction
- We give ourselves the option to settle on the iron, if we're worried about pillaging
- It's a better defensive spot
- slightly quicker setup
- saves redoing the micro
And iron city might need to be city I or J (with the Suttree pink dot being the other and K being the second island city). Lets send a bowman down to check how far he's got before deciding what order is best though.

By the way, I think unloading Lunch would be okay, he'll uncover a lot of tiles (ten?), and can only be threatened from two of them. Also there is another island to the north, would you like to explore all of this one first or get over to that one? The galley could go north while he explores this island? Would another scout be useful, or should we send a bowman now that warriors are wandering around?

[Fintourist]

That's a nice piece of Sherlock Holmes work Unfortunately I don't have screenshots from that area

Let's just settle G on the original spot. I still have a slight feeling that we are being as we leave iron outside our BFC, but as you wrote there are a bunch of arguments why we should remain more compact. So yeah, when you have time, go ahead and move the workers and settlers as in your save stack!

I also allow you to unload Lunch. Btw, I hate to be the constant enemy of scouting, but we kind of need that galley to turn back to our core already in couple of turns. I think we want to whip a settler on T92 in BoP. Load the settler and a worker/bowman on T93 into the galley and land it onto the island either on T94 or T95. Fitting in a second galley into our micro would come with a significant cost.

Btw, since everybody has surely researched BW already a while ago I don't think that it will take long anymore before we see our first barb axe.

[Old Harry]

Okay, will play in a couple of hours.

I forgot you wanted that second island city, so I'll aim to have the galley back by t92 - lets hope Lunch uncovers a good city site...

[Old Harry]

No need for all that worrying - Lunch just uncovered another source of iron. Unfortunately work have blocked dropbox, so no picture available...

I moved the workers and settler, set France to build a barracks and ended turn.