[SPOILERS] AlaePB1 - the ol' Nile blues

[Bacchus]

This is a spoiler thread for an RB-friendly 7-player Pitboss. Big and Small map rolled and touched-up for strategic resources and settlement location balance by Qqqqq. The game is run via hamachi and hosted by Znth or whoever is able to replace him in down times. Other players, please don't read past the picture, the rest are welcome.

T-Hawk, if you think these threads are becoming too much, please feel free to move to any subforum.

The player roster is:

Willem of Netherlands - Furungy
Alexander of Greece - Alexander
Pacal of Maya - MIKY
Cyrus of Persia - Znth
Gandhi of India - Andrey
Hatty of Egypt - yours truly
Qin Shi Huang of China - Gavagai

Plain BTS, no diplomacy, ability to offer AI-like deals in the chat box, no War Elephants, no active espionage or infiltration, no tech trading, no Statue of Zeus. Should have gone no GLH, probably, but didn't (see below).

[Bacchus]

This has been a strange game so far, and one which I haven't paid that much attention to in terms of C&D and the like. By turn 33 though there is a bit to report and even some intrigue. We start with a graphic overview, which is nice and pleasant, as we are the only civilization to have settled beyond their original abodes, and how! But first thing is first, here are the natural lands of the Egyptian, rich in water both fresh and salty, and so endowed with food that legends of the Egyptian girth spread nearly as far as their legendary songs and dances:



"If only my people were naturally predisposed to philosophizing and able to educates greats among them", sighed Hatshepsut, the eternal lich-ruler of this glorious tribe. "Instead, we will have to make do with the not-unreasonablle ability to switch away from exploitation of the miserable toil of our men under the whip to a system where as many men as can be fed can sit around pondering and trading even in abscence of any infrastructure to sustain their activities. Apparently, if we just tell them that they are better than others, they will be almost as capable, in gross terms, as scientists and merchants that operate in actual libraries and markets."

This is really nothing to write home about. Lot's of whipping in the early game, and maybe a Globe Theatre Drafting city in the future. If I actually want to retain this as a capital, it will need Moai, I guess and certainly Colossus, otherwise the base yields are just not good enough. At least I hope I find something that can make better use of Bureaucracy than this. Two forests have been chopped to date, the hill one and the river grass one. Notable features of our coastal north before I move to explaining the actions so far:



As you can imagine, techs went Mining-Bronze Working-Fishing. Then I had some choices. Notable events included Maya founding Hinduism with their first tech, and India following with Buddhism after what looked like Fishing-Bronze Working. I haven't been C&Ding as carefully as I could have. The tech and development choices that I most seriously considered were: Pottery, get second Worker out before the first Settler, more chops into the Settler, then cottaging and infrastructural development with Granaries. As you can see, I decided to go a different route, which sacrifices Pottery and early development for Sailing-Masonry and the Great Lighthouse. I also got the Settler out before the second Worker, as there is slightly less labour demand. The reasons I went down this route are: necessity of maritime expansion due to limited land in the south and ready availability of islands, earlier Great Merchant opens up a possibility of Metal Casting bulb, which in turn puts me in the running for the Collosus against whoever will grab this tech off the Oracle, and second city spot is such that I won't have need of cottages for commerce nor really of granaries yet, due to considerable food surpluses. To explain, Granaries are progressively better as surpluses decrease — halving 10-turn growth of a pop point saves 5 turns, but halving 3-turn growth will only save 1. Of course, you have to scale by the amount of whipping you would do, saving one or especially two turns 5 times quickly starts adding up. Then again, I'm certainly starting to build Granaries within 3 whip cycles, or far less. Finally, the Settler rush was for this:



Which is just about the best second-city spot I've ever seen. Cons: no copper. In fact, the copper situation is generally bad, alleviated only by the fact that we won't need it ever:



SimEmpire! The land is very dry, but at least there isn't too much of it, eh. A pertinent question is: what the hell will be my source of commerce? I have three gold mines to put me through the ealrly game, which is fine, but then things will get pretty tough pretty quickly. This is a tricky dot-map to manage, there are a few spots which are excellent at least in the short run, but most of them encroach on each other and not in a good lets-share-some-tiles way, but rather ha-ha-you-cant-settle-here way. Note the plains hill over on the east coast, which gets two wheat, desert gold and a clam. Decent spot? Sure. Also means that you can't settle the river grass on the west coast, which is the best candidate for a commerce capital with two sources of gold and three river cottages (yeah, three). And even if you give up the northern desert gold and settle on the grass hill, that in turn kills the plains-hilll production city which could have fed off the crab and the pig both. Alternattively, to settle the wheat-clam-gold combo you have to go and plant the city on one of the few grasslands in the vicinity.

So, horizontal expansion is not all that. Thankfully, in a seven player we have a good chance of scoring some wonders. GLH is an absolute must, and I just have to make a run for it, even if I have a very strong contestant in the person of Andrey, who loves this wonder, playing Gandhi India and opening with a Warrior whilst researching Fishing. He is maritime, he is industrious, he is India. I just hope he goes for the Oracle, or the Henge. I actually plan to run for the GLH before building any other settlers in Thebes. The city will whip a Work Boat off 2 for immediate regrowth onto the netted clam, grow onto the mine, slowbuild another workboat to 27, whip 1 off 4 and switch into a lighthouse before completion. The lighthouse will receive a chop and be whipped for 2 on something like 28 hammers, switch back into the WB, complete WB with 31 overflow, complete Lighthouse with 31+29 overflow, get 60 into the wonder, chop 4 forests for 80 more, and then get the remaining 60 off working two grass mine in 9 turns. There will be pretty much no production potential left in the city after this, one has to note, so if the wonder race fails it won't be pretty. Estimated timeline for completion: T60 for Metal Casting in 110.

Now that I've written that out, and this is really the best possible scenario, Collosus doesn't look particularly optimistic. Might be quicker to do MC naturally and get Currency off the merchant, which is not too shoddy either.

Some additional global context: apart from being the first to build a city, there are 2 capitals of size 4 and two more of size 3. Scary.

[Bacchus]

Tech Plan:

Sailing -> Masonry -> Animal Husbandry (cow, hopefully horses) -> Pottery -> Writing -> TBC

The first two are for the wonder, the following probably require little explanation. I'm isolated, so Hunting, Archery, Horseback Riding and even Construction might not be invented until an amusingly late period. Assuming Currency is bulbed by the wonder-generated GM, paths to consider are MC for Collosus and an early start on Great Engineer generation (might just come in time from a random city with no other specialists for the Taj), Calendar for the Mausoleum of Modernarts and Religion/Monarchy/CoL. An alternative is to naturally research Currency and bulb MC, this is a beakerwise more efficient bulb, but might well lose the wonder, so the arithmetic is deceiving. Aesthetics? Parthenon sucks due to the amount of landmasses, no SoZ, little need of a Heroic Epic. No marble for Great Library and limited production to get it in cap, little need for it elsewhere. National Epic would be nice.

Second city build plan:

Work Boat -> Warrior -> Worker (whip 1) -> Settler

[Bacchus]

Hm, a Prophet can bulb Civil Service, albeit under some ghastly conditions. Pretty much has to bulb Theology first too. Still, with two priests off the Obelisk and two Scientists off the Library, getting 200 and 300 GPP is very doable. Throw the lighthouse into the mix, and things look even better. Perhaps scientist boost to the GLH-generated Merchant (at worst I'll get an Academy), and then a full out run to 200, culminating in Philosophy, Theology or CS. My kingdom for the Phi trait.

[BaII]

I thought Prophets could only bulb Civil Service in vanilla BTS.

[Bacchus]

Well, this is plain BTS, we are not playing modded. Civil Service has a fairly high Religion flavour of 6.

[BRickAstley]

Just as a notice, I moved your thread from the general forum to a Pitboss game subforum, since there are enough threads by players to make sense to do so.

[Bacchus]

Thanks Brick!

[Bacchus]

Wow, lurker thread. I guess I might as well report more thoroughly in the future. So far, there just isn't much to report, you've seen the shots, until I get an exploring workboat or galley out, news will be scarce in coming. I guess it's a good opportunity to devote oneself to micromanagement, as we did with Gavagai in PB12, but I don't have the time to invest, alas, nor really the interest. So, turn after turn will be played suboptimally, but there you go, sometimes you have to just rolll with it and enjoy the relaxation.

Nonetheless, I've played with the sandbox quite a bit, mostly through putting it into a pre-rolled BTS map, where needless to say I win (Liberalism, Music, MoM, 32 turns of golden age, Holy Trinity, Confu, Philo and Islam). Totally pointless sim, really, but it was fun. The practical outcome is that I shifted the build order around a bit, so instead of growing to 3 and whipping off a pop into WB, I will build the boat, build the lighthouse, whip lighthouse for 2 off 4 and switch into the boat to whip it for 1. GLH incoming ~T62, which is probably an unwarranted rush, but I basically want a Currency bulb asap, and every turn yields 6 gold, which is nothing to sniff at. The problem is that my third city will be built in line with the wonder. Yah, T62 and 3 cities. Chosen for the luxury of not having to compete for space and in the hope that securing the wonder will pay. As noted previously, I have good reason to fear competition from Hum, unless I get some clear indication that he went for Priesthood.

[Bacchus]

Znth (Cyrus) founded a city couple of turns after me, followed by Gavagai (Qin) and Furungy (Wiillem). Alex, MYKI and Hum don't appear to have built yet, albeit Hum took a double whip some 2 turns ago - surely the Settler? I also noticed that my own city was founded in the minute the turn rolled, as I was the last and the first to play, so it looks like a beginning-of-turn pop increase, people might get a wrong idea. Not that it helps much. Hum 2 techs since Meditation, something that took 3 turns, and then 8. I'm at a bit of a loss. 3 is clearly Hunting, but I'm not sure what fits 8 with his GNP, which should be impressive. He doesn't have the Wheel for Pottery, he's got both prereqs for Masonry, so it would have gone faster... Animal Husbandry?