Scout move to hut gets some gold (better than a map I guess).
So far the spot 1S of the scout looks like a great 2nd city site. Shares a capital food, gets 2 new food resources, gets juicy riverland, all very nice. We'll see what we see with a circle round, but that spot is looking pretty dang good.
I'm appreciating all the grassland compared to the dry plains of my PB13 neighborhood. Won't make a huge difference in the nearterm when all cities are sub size 8 or so, but should mean I have a lot more sustainable tiles to grow to 100 turns down the line.
Still simming the precise movements out, right now it looks like the broad outline is as follows:
get out a worker, grow to size 2, get out another worker, revolt to slavery, grow to size 3 or 4 preparing chops, switch to settler when the chops come in and then whip 1 or 2 pop to finish the settler. I'm getting the settler out in the neighborhood of t26-27, exact timing depends on how many warriors I fit in there, do I build a mine, capital size, etc. But I should have a second city around t27-28, 2 workers, 1-2 warriors, 2-3 pop capital, bronzeworking + 1 first row tech, and some small bits of other worker improvements (roads or mines). At least 1 worker then goes to farm the corn. The other maybe helps, maybe mines, maybe chops.
That feels pretty dang fast to me. Expansive + plains hill start = open like lightning.
Might want to get another scout out early to grab huts and get map knowledge since there won't be map trading.
My broad plan for the first 60 turns or so is basically avoid anything fancy. Wonders are great, I built a fair number of them in PB13, but I think the classical era wonders are easier to get without sacrificing growth and almost as good. If at t60 something hasn't fallen and I can chop it in or something, fine. But I have no designs on beelining stuff, my traits aren't built for it. My traits are built for expand expand expand.
The other thing that's going to shape this game is how dang expensive techs are. Huge size is making teching take forever. I think the largest effect this has is increasing the lifetime of military units. This is good for me vis a vis the Oromo warrior, (which will be CG1 and Drill 1 and the most efficiently draftable unit in RBmod), but what I think si even more significant is what huge will do to classical era warfare. The age of the horse archer will last even longer. So no avoiding HBR until past t100 this time...
Discussion of PB13 follows. I don't think it's spoilerish, all concerns global events of 60 turns ago at the latest and mostly 100+ turns ago. But someone should tell me if anything went over the line. Pretty much everyone left alive besides Commodore is playing in this game though I think. Edit: Is Mack playing? I know he's not one his own but dedlurking/team?
What I realized from PB13 is more than grabbing the key wonder, more than getting the great first to bonus, what determines victory in these giant games is having way more land than other people. And that means killing someone. Mackoti didn't build wonders, he just took a ton of Horse Archers and annihilated a weak neighbor. He was behind tech wise for a bit after that, but he made up for it over time and no one could mess with him int he mean time cause... he had a ton of horse archers.
Compare me. Around t100-140 in PB13 I was constantly ahead in tech. I got the two most significant first to bonuses (Taj and Liberalism). I leveraged these into a belated killing of TBS. But the benefits I acquired from those paled in comparison to what Scooter and Mackoti got from killing their neighbors earlier. Plako actually took the me path, got cool wonders (TGL, MoM), and eventually killed his neighbor (Dhalphir), but correspondingly lagged Scooter/Mack. Doing better than me since well, he's better at the game and probably executed every part of that better, but I think it's the same pattern. Wonders are great, Plako/I are hardly doing poorly, but adding lots of developed cities is better.
So, what does this mean for this game? It means I think I'm more likely to hit someone early (early meaning horse archers/cats). There are a lot of what I believe people consider to be not-great players in this field. There are pretty decent chances someone lets down their guard and I can grab stuff.
Final note. Religions. Religions are awesome in PB13. Shrines are insane. Religions will be even MORE awesome here. I would love to grab a religion, and that might be worth abandoning above philosophy. Buddhism/Hinduism and probably Judaism are out because I don't start with mysticism and i think that hurts expansion too much. But I would dearly like to get one of Taoism, Confucianism, or Christianity. Like I'd delay currency for it. And then tech to priesthood (ok probably getting Currency before that), build a temple, and get that great prophet. Shrines are just that good.
If that fails there's always the approach I took in PB13. Think of your neighbor's holy city as your own. Then actualize...
