[SPOILERS] This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. But Mostly Mine.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Scouts and explorers cannot pop barbs. That's always been the case.

I knew this about not popping barbs. I was under the impression that you get better results from huts the greater the strength of the scouting unit so maybe instead of getting 26 gold I would have gotten 36 or 46 (etc). Perhaps this is not the case and it's just a RNG roll determining the gold output and that the relative strength of the unit only applies to non scouting (scout/explorer) units?

In RB Mod, I read that you can only get a tech in the first three rows of the tree. Has anything else changed regarding huts? I didn't see anything else regarding huts mentioned in Krill's change log that I added to post #1 in this thread.

[NobleHelium]

Gold gained is uniformly random within a range once selected as the result.

Well actually that's not totally true. I think there are 2 or 3 gold results that have varying ranges. I forget exactly.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

The highest gold from hut result I can recall from my sandbox runs is ~64g. 26 seemed pretty low, that's why I wondered whether the unit's strength had any effect.

Techs popping from huts continues elsewhere in the game. Last turn it was Barry Lyndon, this turn Dazed. Hopefully both were techs already being researched. :P No one has grown their city to size 2 yet, only the lurker civ has grown to size 5.

[mackoti]

The highest gold from hut result I can recall from my sandbox runs is ~64g. 26 seemed pretty low, that's why I wondered whether the unit's strength had any effect.

Techs popping from huts continues elsewhere in the game. Last turn it was Barry Lyndon, this turn Dazed. Hopefully both were techs already being researched. :P No one has grown their city to size 2 yet, only the lurker civ has grown to size 5.

I remeber getting over 100 sometimes, so yeah on normal speed getting 26 is very low,i think 25 is the lower and no doesnt depend on unit strenght this is not ffh.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I've never played FFH but maybe I heard that about unit strength from someone who had? Or my current opponents have been plying me with bad information for a couple years in anticipation of playing me in this game. That is surely more likely. As always, thanks for the comments.

T13




Apparently population points are only worth one point, as Mardoc/Brick (I need a shorter nickname, else I'll just say Mardoc because Brick is probably doing what he did with me and Xenu in PB11 and that's just slapping his name on the tin and helping only when threatened with loss of life and limb). Here's what I think has happened on that team:

Mardoc - Spain (Fishing/Mysticism) - Early growth to size 2, probably has a coastal start and is building/has built a WB. My guess is that it the work boat is already built and he is now producing a worker. I also noted that Buddhism is in 5% of the world's population, but I don't know how much this is inflated because his city is size 2. It is possible, I suppose, that it has spread elsewhere, although it is highly unlikely that he would have met the requirements in exploration yet to make this happen.

Religion can spread in two ways: via missionaries, and automatically. Religions will only spread automatically to cities which do not have any religion present. Furthermore, automatic spread will happen only if there is trade access (not necessarily a trade route, but the potential for one) between the city and the holy city of some religion. Factors that increase the likelihood of automatic spread are low distance to the holy city, and the presence in the holy city of that religion's shrine.

#Religions already present 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Chance of failure (own city) - 9% 18% 26% 35% 43% 52%
Chance of failure (other city) - 12% 24% 36% 48% 60% 72%

Scooter and dtay popped techs from huts on T12.

No Techs Yet Club: All presumed to be Bronze Working (169b) or Animal Husbandry (172b). Everyone should have had enough research to finish something by now (9b/t * 13 = 117b), so all 1st column techs reachable at this point unless someone is tech swapping to mess with everyone, and honestly, if that's the case then meh.

BGN - Because I like being last in score.
MYKI - Korea (Agriculture/Mining) - Nice change in RB Mod.
Pindicator - China (Agriculture/Mining)
Xenu - Germany (Hunting/Mining)

Let's keep an eye on this group in ~30t and see if we're still lagging in scoring. My guess is that we'll all be doing just fine. There are probably others who have gone BW first but have perhaps had the good fortune of popping a hut too. I'm not digging that deeply into this stuff. While it is possible that someone on my list above has gone for AH early to locate horses, I think that BW is still a much better economic bet because it provides spears against lunatic early aggression and has slavery for the early settler-on-the-move swap. I know Xenu likes a healthy chop, chop, chop in his openings, and Pindicator too knows the value of this. I don't know anything about MYKI, but since he is SO OBVIOUSLY SOMEONE'S SOCKPUPPET BECAUSE HE IS ALSO FOLLOWING MY OVERPOWERED OPENING STRATEGY he will probably be just fine too.

Finally, the most important development is that I named my worker for one of my all-time favorite hikes in Yellowstone: Avalanche Peak. I have spoilered below due to excessively large image sizes.

View from the top:




This was taken towards the end of July in '06. That's Lake Yellowstone in the background. I had tried this hike before, in early May 2002, before the trail was officially open. It's called Avalanche for a good reason, I suppose, because on my initial attempt (Xenu was there for that debacle) we were just guessing at where the trail was because it was buried under several feet of snow. Predictably, we got off the trail and ended up scrambling on hands and feet up an improbably difficult, scrambling terrain in biting winds until good sense compelled us to give it up. We licked our wounds with PBR and Rainer beer (pronounced Ron-Yay to make it sound fancier than it is, despite this not being the correct pronunciation). But success on the second attempt, in much better weather.

View at the bottom:




Taken after successfully scrambling off trail down a much more vertical descent than the trail would have forced. Who needs switchbacks when you can slide on small rocks? Watch out below!

YNP map, for anyone who is interested. Again, large image size:

Avalanche Peak is in the Absaroka Range, just west of the East Entrance on the park boundary north of the road.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T14




Cyneheard popped a tech from a hut and Barry Lyndon, who is Hatty (SPI/CRE) of Celts (Mysticism/Hunting), is first to Polytheism and the proud founder of Hinduism. No one else got a score increase at EoT, so it appears he did not win a coin flip for the religion. What a shame. I was hoping that at least someone would go for it and come up short, slowing down their opening without benefit. Yes, I'm a bit of a bastard like that.

The main news for me is whether my scout will survive the lion's attack. Odds are very good the lion will attack (95%). My odds of survival are 55.2%, not nearly what I would have preferred to risk but at least I have odds, however slight. IF I survive, I'll promote combat1 and heal up so I can continue scouting. If I survive at .1 health, I'll promote to .5 and spend 5 turns healing. Moving inside my borders would only shave off a turn, so that isn't worth it unless a panther kills me out of the fog. That is something to consider, actually, because I don't have good second ring visibility here.

I promise not to over think every situation in every report for the entire game, but I have exactly two units to move around, and one is about to die. The worker's moves are set for the next few turns at minimum so this is all I have to think about. I have a micro plan to get my second city up on T31, but the location of bronze may change this.

Good news: I have silk. Yay!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T15

I was nervous about losing my scout at roughly even odds to the lion. I need not have worried.

BW due EoT and then we'll see what we see.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T16




My bronze has been located. I don't think this changes my immediate plans, certainly not for my T31 gems city. I'll do a few runs through the sandbox to see what makes sense for settling that location economically. Militarily, if the in-game situation requires an earlier settlement, I can settle 1W of the bronze, but hopefully that won't be required. I'll know more about this area when my capital expands to third ring borders on T25. I doubt I'll be sending my scout up there before then.

The check marks indicate my checks each turn for religion spread (none, in fact with the world population increasing, Buddhism lost ground as a percentage), whether anyone has made surreptitious contact with a darting scout (nope, via checking espionage each turn), whether there are any barbs/units that I missed at a quick glance (nope, via strategic layer all military units), whether there are any cultural borders in the fog that I missed (nope, via strategic layer culture overlay), and my unit moves; the healing scout and my stalwart worker wasting a turn moving to the How Now Brown (Plains) Cow.

I'm pretty sure that covers everything. This painstaking, detailed beyond good sense report is brought to you by Boring Early Game Turns. See you next time!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T17




What a beautiful sight/site! This requires some thought. Is it a suitable substitute for the early gems city? My gut reaction is not quite, but it is worth investigating. Back to the sandbox!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T18




Not much new to report this turn. I left my scout to heal in place for one last turn after being chased away last turn by the returning cowardly lion. My capital grew to size 2, Cyneheard popped a tech from a hut, and that's that.