[SPOILERS] joey and scooter's thread: FUN THINGS ONLY

[scooter]

I'm intending to play this one pretty differently from how I usually play. I'm going to be updating sporadically (by my standards anyway), putting significantly less effort into this than I normally do, and I'll be mostly making strategic decisions by "what sounds like the most amount of fun" rather than "what gives me the best chance at winning." I'm mostly just not up for another intense game, especially as PB13 still seems to have serious legs. I will not be the winner of this game.

I think a general goal will be to give 1 good and substantive update every 10 or so turns with almost nothing in between. Who knows if I'll actually follow that, but that's the kind of effort I'm aiming for here. So if you were thinking about ded-lurking my thread, I'd suggest either global lurking or picking someone else who is going to be taking this game more seriously. My pre-game analysis may boil down to highlighting a couple players that sound like they have fun leaders/civs and ignoring the rest.

I don't intend to play a troll game by any means, but if I decide that chariot rushing a neighbor sounds like fun and has a reasonable shot at success, I'll do it. If I decide farmer's gambit sounds fun, let's go with it. If I want to name a city after my favorite chocolate candy (Reese's, duh), I'll do it. That's the plan anyway . Shaka of Ottomans gives me a few options which is cool. I mostly just don't want to sit on the sideline for the most ridiculous game ever run here, even though I still think it probably crashes and burns hardcore at some point.


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CIV PASSWORD: funfun

[scooter]

Wow, there's like 30 other threads, and mine is dead last on the list. Thaaaaat's a new experience for me.

I guess I should explain why I'm keeping my choice. I got Shaka of Ottomans.

Shaka (Agg/Exp): Aggressive is one of the best traits in the mod, and the new Expansive is actually pretty solid now, particularly on a seafood map. I'm going to get a metric ton of cheap buildings, not to mention quick-building workers & work boats. The Hammans will be cheap too. Most importantly, it's flexible. I can realistically 1) rush someone 2) heavy farmer's gambit if it's seafood heavy 3) standard builder start, and I'm equipped to do all 3 of them fairly competently. I didn't really want to come into this game with pre-defined idea of what to do, and Shaka does a nice job of giving me those options.

Ottomans: Above-average civ. That's about all I have to say, since I already mentioned the cheap Hammans.


Overall, this is probably one of the best 5-6 rolls out of the 33, so that's pretty solid. My favorite out of all the ones I saw was probably Ragnar/France, which weirdly enough Q re-rolled (??). But I'm happy with what I've got.

[scooter]

Guess I should update or something huh?



This screenshot is like weeks old - from before the restart, but here's what I logged in to see. So I've got a wet wheat and a dry wheat for food. That's not awesome, but it's solid, particularly with the addition of the plains hill plant for a nice 10T worker (EXP bonus). Anyway, I figured there's no way I'm moving away from the wet wheat given what I see, so all I really need to figure out is if there's any reason to move away from the dry wheat.



Tile bleeding suggests more trees that way rather than resources, so moving west is a no. Next I checked if there was anything north, and there was not, so SIP was obvious enough.



Turn rolled, and it was time to move scout, press enter. Due to the presence of snowy trees, I'm in the northerly part of the map. That means I'm more likely to find good city spots and/or neighbors by going south-ish, so I started by going southeast:



WHAT. Mapmaker mistake there with the grassland floodplains I'm assuming, but man this capital would have been notably improved by settling 1E. Such is life. I'll probably tech Mining-BW first since I want to find copper asap (I'm Shaka on cramped map), but I'll leave it unselected for just a couple turns to be safe. Sure not going to accidentally tech archery like we did on 13 again.

My capital is named Carnival because the theme is "things that are fun" and who doesn't have fun at a carnival?

Fun thing - creating a new folder for this game really puts things into perspective on how many games I've been at least moderately involved with:



Yikes?

A reminder that I'm playing and reporting this game very casually - much more so than the last few I've played - so please calibrate your harsh lurker thread commentary accordingly.

[scooter]

So it's time for my promised occasional update. T4 brought the first major news of the game.



Netted a cool 36g, but more importantly I met Oxy of Greece. I don't know a whole lot about him. From what I understand, he just won PB14, which is in close competition with PB3 and PB7 as the Worst Pitboss Ever. My basic understanding is that he's competent - not overwhelmingly strong, but certainly not bad either. I also see some stone out on the water - guessing that's meant to serve as a dividing point between players. Anyway, I moved back onto the wine so that Oxy wouldn't know where I'm at. Hopefully that worked.



At end of T4 I was scheduled to pick up another hut with the capital borders. This ended up being wildly successful.



Wow, the one tech I considered grabbing and delaying Mining-BW for. Vaguely tempting to drop everything, tech AH, and chariot rush some fool (already have Agri/Wheel because I'm Ottomans), but I'll proceed. I'll have to see if I can slip in an early cottage or two. So I've got some really solid land to my east, buffed by the accidental grassland floodplains tile:



Not pictured is a fish in the water NE-ish of the spices. This whole region will make for a great core. My scout is gonna swing around to the southwest of the capital, where I'm expecting to find a neighbor - or at least figure out where Oxy is located. I suspect the foggy area in the northeast here is a safe backlines, but I'll defog it with a warrior soon enough.

Solid start thus far, I definitely can't complain.

[scooter]

Remember how I popped Pottery from a hut a few turns back?



LOLOLOLOL.

Unfortunately, no horses in sight:



Darn, stupid early chariot rush would have been fun. Anyway, I'm planning on a settler at size 2 and settling 1E of that grassland floodplains, and getting a couple super early cottages down. Longterm, I'm thinking about moving the palace to that city. I can grow it to a fairly absurd size, and I can get 9 grass river cottages (and a few non-rivers too), and I can easily settle a ring of cities around it to grow the cottages so that I can mature them quickly. If I move the palace around the time I'm swapping into Bureau, I think I can have quite a strong capital early on, and hopefully use that to swing a tech advantage with which I can kill someone. Something like that. Super rough strategy outline there, but I think that sounds fun, and I'm aiming for fun ideas, and mega-cap + kill sounds fun to me.

Also, is Gavagi playing in this game? If so, is he near me with exposed workers? I'm asking for a friend myself.

[mackoti]

I know you lucky to bad no horrses would have been fun...

[NobleHelium]

Gavagai is not playing in this game but there is that dude we've never seen before...

[scooter]

Update time, I'm going to attempt to continue the "quality over quantity" style reporting that I've aimed for in this game. Current turn is T23, but I'll rewind back a bit.



Ran into Oxy's scout again (we had met quite a bit earlier). Anyway, at this point I decided to quit following the river and head inland. The river seems to have been placed with the goal of allowing you to be "close" to other players without actually being close. Clever. More on that in a minute.



On T17 I started my settler. I went worker first, build a warrior (and starting a second one as a safety net more than anything) while growing to size 2. A few turns later I would farm that second Wheat to speed the settler even further. I also found horse.



Given the river blocking me from the neighbors I've met, chariot rush is not in the cards it appears. T19 had some interesting scouting notes:



Borders! So I was eagerly trying to figure out who this was. At first I concluded it was either Nakor or MYKI (Korea and Maya)... I was pretty happy about that, since neither seem likely to be especially intimidating neighbors. However, the shade didn't seem quite right for either of those. That's when I remembered Bacchus of Persia, which is who it turned out to be. Bacchus is interesting. He's neither outstanding nor bad. He's made some especially interesting choices in 13 that suggest to me that metagaming may not be his strong suit, but I'm not 100% sure on that since I don't have the full picture in that game yet. He also seems to be a disciple of the "pillage your own tiles when an invader is coming" thing, which I personally think has no place in this kind of game. Just a few notes to keep in mind.



Stone here is pretty interesting. I thought for sure I was coming up on a neighbor, but I would think stone would be roughly in the middle between two neighbors from a balance perspective, so maybe I have a lot further to go? Would be odd for this to be easily claimed by someone else. Anyway, if I really am that far from another neighbor, then this map setup really is interesting. Seems to me that Commodore is using rivers to artificially increase the amount of land we each have - so that we're clustered together without actually being realistically close together. If so, nicely done. I don't think I can really comment further than that without knowing more, though.



I did survive the lion, in case you were wondering. I healed a few turns, then I moved onto another plains forest hill when another lion came nearby, and I may stop there and finish healing. Preserving the scout is more valuable than instant information in a non map trading game. Who knows, this may be the rare game where people use the Explorer unit seriously.



At this point I had the second wheat hooked, which put me at #2 in food. Considering that food had 4 hammers to go with it, I expect this is pretty good, and I may have one of the earliest settlers.



Which brings me to the current turn. Very fertile land all throughout here, and the abundance of rivers means FIN is tamer on this map. It'll still be very strong, but honestly RB Mod FIN is probably like 3rd or so best trait at this point. The river valley west of here makes me think "someone's starting position" - but I don't think stone would really be that close to someone. So who knows.



I think EoT27 will be one of the fastest settlers under the circumstances. The worker will start a chop next turn that will go into a second (EXP) worker, so I should have 2 cities and 2 workers quite early. Hopefully I can turn that into something. No, I'm not simming/sandboxing so that's a mild disadvantage, but we'll see what I can turn this into.

[Ceiliazul]

excellent updates. "quality over quantity" is nice to keep the post count managable for us lurkers who don't have browsing rights at work.

[scooter]

Thanks, Ceil!

SPOT THE COPPER.



Assuming it's in the fog west-ish of my capital. Still, not exactly nice and close.



Finished my settler quite early. The settler was sped by 1T with a chop, and significant overflow is going to go into a quick second (EXP) worker. Slavery revolt on the way as is required by the unwritten rules. After a reload, I settled my second city as intended.



Instant 5F tile. Liiiiiiittle bit of a boost I think. I haven't really watched novicestats at all, but I think there's a pretty good chance I'm the first person to settle a city. That's pretty fun.

Hunting should finish just in time to improve that sheep after cottaging my uber-tile. The one problem is that Zoo will cap out in happiness quite early. I have a feeling HR is going to be big for me. Longterm I have big plans for Zoo, but that's going to take some serious time. I like that double fish spot up there as an early Moai location.



Tied for first in food despite having 3 population. Someone out there has a 5 pop capital. Yeah. I've got a nice start.