Nothing like the Prodigal Sons: The Odd Couple actually play as themselves.

[NobleHelium]

I'm fine with S-E or whichever you'd prefer.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I suggest SE/NE, then NW/N onto the forest the following turn, unless you think the tile 1E of that forest is land and not coast. It's hard for me to tell. It actually kind of looks like land now that I squint, but I still think I like SE/NE better this turn. I'm not in a huge hurry to uncover the tile on the island. We'll need a boat down there to explore anyway, so let's get our ass-kicking scout up toward Warren G.

Question on tile configuration: in some runs it has taken 4 turns to build the worker following the settler, in others it has taken 5. Have you looked into this?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Who's up for some mindless crap?



I'm not sure what to make of this, except it is dumb and kind of funny.

[Gaspar]

t27 - Musings

Wasn't sure when I'd have time to play this turn as I have a busy day ahead, so I squeezed it in now.



I decided to go S-E with the scout. While I agree with Boldly's assessment that the north is more important to figure out AND that we need a boat out post-haste, I think we might be looking at 4th city at the earliest before we have a coastal plant and maybe t75 before we have a naval scouting unit. That's not a huge deal in and of itself, but I also thought it important to learn the scope of the land to the south - was it a chain of islands or another continent. My guess is these are islands between us and a southern neighbor(s) and getting there quickly is going to be everything.

A little big picture. I think what we've revealed of the map makes two things pretty clear. One, that the land grab phase is going to be specially important. One of the things I think all the random maps of recent pitbosses maybe obscured is that the land grab phase tends to be one of the two-three most important aspects of MP games. Getting land first means a lot more when there aren't a host of crappy AI to steal land from. It also makes it a lot more likely that you get what you need to win a war against humans - a production edge. The random maps the landgrab phase is warped because you could just get dealt a crappy hand and it makes it all immaterial. In a hand-drawn map, the mapmaker is necessarily going to give everyone a roughly even chance at success, so really how well you can claim the land is important. Also, generally speaking more land is more favorable to lesser players, which would make sense because we have a lot of semi-greens here.

The second thing is Great Lighthouse and Colossus are going to be fantastic. While there's a good chance 4 of our first 5 cities might not be coastal, there's an excellent chance that all of the 10 after that are going to be, including a high probability of multiple island plants. We could easily get the 4 TR slots filled with offshore holdings. Unfortunately, I don't see a high probability we land either. I'm not remotely attuned to normal speed, but both our settling path and research path don't seem headed towards GLH. Firstly, Masonry is pretty much a sunk cost on the way to Monotheism in a game where there is no stone or marble. Secondly, since we won't be settling a coastal plant til somewhere in the high-50s at the earliest, I don't think Sailing is going to come early. Oracle > Colossus is probably more realistic, particularly considering that we're going to want Forges in play sooner than later regardless AND I expect there to be close copper providing a doubler, but Oracle is sort of a fool's bet because its the sort of wonder you can nearly guarantee a new player is going to go for because they overstate its importance. So while they're both going to be very good, I don't know that we can really plan on either.

Here's a blank map to use for the following questions. Blue Dot is locked in as our second city. Green Dot is our current plan for third city. (Click to enlarge)




As a thought exercise:

• If you were building a coastal wonder, where would you build it?
  
• Which of the two sea wonders do you see as more attainable?
  
• What priority level would you assign those wonders given a possibly agressive neighbor very close on land?
  
• What order would you settle the cities, placing special attention to wherever your prospective coastal wonder site is?
  
• Do you see a Moai city yet?
  

I would like it if as many of the dedlurkers as possible could take a bash at those. Even though I think its unlikely we go this route, the only way we know if its a good idea or not is if we thoroughly explore the possibility. Since the micro for the next 10 turns or so is pretty well set, this is as good a time as any to explore it. Bonus points to anyone who feels like d/l'ing the sandbox and actually working through the sim to get there, but I'll be happy with it explore as a thought exercise. Thanks!

Not much else going on. Gavagai's power still flat and he has not settled a second city yet. (I check both those things every turn, even if the latter is highly unlikely this early.) If neither of us meet anyone else, btw, we'll have research visibility in roughly 15t. (It requires another 51 points of EP. I know that will increase slightly as our respective EPs spent goes up though.)

[Gaspar]

I'm not sure what to make of this, except it is dumb and kind of funny.

I can't even imagine the amount of marijuana that was involved in the recording of that song and video.

[darrelljs]

The Corn/Fish/Gold city could be settled with 7 Forests.

Darrell

[NobleHelium]

I suggest SE/NE, then NW/N onto the forest the following turn, unless you think the tile 1E of that forest is land and not coast. It's hard for me to tell. It actually kind of looks like land now that I squint, but I still think I like SE/NE better this turn. I'm not in a huge hurry to uncover the tile on the island. We'll need a boat down there to explore anyway, so let's get our ass-kicking scout up toward Warren G.

Question on tile configuration: in some runs it has taken 4 turns to build the worker following the settler, in others it has taken 5. Have you looked into this?

It's always taken four turns for me. Working the PFH would not have reduced it to three turns, that's what Gaspar actually meant last turn.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

t27 - Musings




As a thought exercise:

• If you were building a coastal wonder, where would you build it?
  
• Which of the two sea wonders do you see as more attainable?
  
• What priority level would you assign those wonders given a possibly agressive neighbor very close on land?
  
• What order would you settle the cities, placing special attention to wherever your prospective coastal wonder site is?
  
• Do you see a Moai city yet?
  

Sandbox.

I think we can safely assume GLH isn't an option.

As always, someone should check my math. Seriously.

Forge = 120h (60h base)
Colossus = 250h (91h base) = (25% forge, 50% IND, 100% copper) - We don't bother if we don't have copper, we just rage at Serdoa instead.
Colossus chops = 55h, needs 5 chops max.

I notice what looks like a forest growth 1NE of the wine on the diamond shaped sea. If we settle a city 1E of the wines as city #3 (four first ring chops), we may have an outside shot at the Colossus, but I doubt it. Someone is going to Oracle MC earlier than they should, I think. We need 391b to get Mysticism, Meditation, and Priesthood (for reference, Math is 385b). That's the best shot I think we have. Going for the city you named "Want", or one as Darrell suggested would at best get three forests (unless we get forest growth, which isn't impossible) in the first ring. We would need to double whip the forge, so have to grow to size four, or spend hammers getting borders to pop in either place. This seems like it is going to be too slow to be workable, but who knows. Do you have an idea of when either of GLH or Colossus typically fall in normal speed games?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I went back to look at early demos to try to determine if anyone had a coastal start. By post 231 everyone had finally settled (T2), with 2metratrollbaiter being the last to settle. Demos from that turn:



Demos from the previous turn (T1) before he settled:



My conclusion is that 2metra did not settle for significantly less land tiles at his capital. Previous to that (well, since too, I suppose), we have the least land tiles in our capital [map complaint lurker give me a number please]. The bottom line is that everyone appears to have an inland capital, so no one seems to have pulled a rego.

If we settled our second city on the coast, we'd have a decent shot at GLH, but I still think we should skip it, set a firm border vs. Warren G, and go for a third city Colossus build, if we decide to go this route.

A question I've been meaning to ask is how we are going to pop borders in our second city. We need to get the pigs in as soon as we reasonably can to get it growing and whipping. I see a lot of 6/3 settler whips here in the future, or perhaps an early library/scientist for a capital academy instead.

In most of the sims I've run, I've settled city #3 on the PH 2N of the pigs east of the capital, usually right around T50/1 as the capital borders pop and we can hook up the pig. Partially this is because I've lacked map knowledge to do a real dotmap, but also for a quickish hammer city to pump out some units. I've tended to lay off the chopping too much until we get to math, but I don't know how likely that is for us.

Anyway, this is random and kinda pointless. If I stay at work much longer, I'll do a sim for city #3 and the Colossus. I'm not doing any real work today and just kind of sitting here.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Very quick run: Oracle completes in capital (with very little worker support) T66, Colossus in City3 EoT 73.







Obviously there is room for refinement, as there is overflow and it took a while to build. I did not realize I would get an extra forest when city2 gets second ring borders, so that's an extra chop available. I chopped twice, the city regrew to size 4 so I double whipped a worker and overflowed/chopped to get the picture above. There are plenty of worker turns invested that could be put to better use elsewhere in a proper run.




Six workers, five warriors, 4 cities, 3 granaries, 2 mints, 1 monument, 1 library due EoT, Oracle/Colossus, 11 pop. Definitely able to improve this, just lack the time right now to do it again.