Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Azarius]

Cockaigne's placement was very fortuitous

Fortuitous, genius. Tomato, tomato.

I'll be honest, I preferred Gaspar's location until copper showed . Obviously I underestimated your keen foresight .

[Gaspar]

Road the forest instead of the plains maybe.

Yep.

How close do you think Dtay''s cap is to yours, and how much closer to you do you think the two fish spot is to you? Cockaigne's placement was very fortuitous given the situation (hopefully not Gavagai mk 2.) Also, are you still taking requests for unit names? I'd like to see a chupacabra running around if so.

Worker got whipped this turn, Chupacabra he will be. Right now the workers are Loch Ness Monster, Abominable Snowman and Hydra. I'm not naming military units except in exceptional sitatuions.

Re: Dtay's cap - I think his cap is roughly the same distance from double fish as ours is from the Moai spot. So its closer to us, but not by much. If so, its a critical chokepoint. Its not so much that we need to settle there as we can't afford to let him.

Cockaigne's placement was very fortuitous

Fortuitous, genius. Tomato, tomato.

I'll be honest, I preferred Gaspar's location until copper showed . Obviously I underestimated your keen foresight .

My placement was better with the map information we had at the time. The gold resource is what changes the calculus - that deer/corn site would have been awkward, forcing us to settle next to the gold with the food 2nd ring and further away for micro purposes.

Anyway, after the frenzy of discovering gold and such, there really isn't much going on this turn. We've got a little bit of shady micro going here and there due to plans changing on the fly but that's neither here nor there.




The original plan...

Eden whipped its worker as said above. It will get 37h of overflow which were originally going to be the Horse-drawn dtay expeditionary force but now will go into a granary. New worker will move to the forest NE of pigs next turn and then chop. We'll be making 2h/t the next 3t. So next turn, 39h into granary. Turn after that (51) we swap to warrior to prevent hammer decay and then on 53 we swap back to receive the chop and complete the granary. We grow EOT53, so the micro is slightly less than ideal, but it is what it is. Anyway, after growth we finish the warrior and then at size 4 we swap to a settler which we'll 2-whip. It's especially annoying because it gets 13 foodhammers/turn which is ideal for a 3-whip but anyway, ends up being a 5-turn settler. The whole process takes 12 turns which leaves us with 4 free worker turns for Chupa.

After realizing that sucked, we're probably just going to do the settler at size 2 in Eden. The overflow plus a chop means we get the settler in 4t, which is actually faster than we really want it, since we can't get the roads down and it will be defended by just 2 warriors. So if he's headed there with a settling party with real units... well, we're probably screwed. Anyway, that's the germ of a plan at the moment.




The situation in the north is more straightforward. We did a bit of a Commodore and sent the worker out unescorted. Cockaigne finishes its warrior and covers next turn, so danger averted there.

Anyway, we're lagging behind on power a bit so these next few turns where we play a little risky pre-horse/copper are our potential for the "losing the game to 2 chariots" moment that Seven made me promise to avoid.

[NobleHelium]

Looks like sending the worker out was fine to me, you could see the tile NW with the warrior because it's a hill.

[GermanJoey]

If worse come to worse, losing the game to only 1 chariot I think still technically counts as keeping your promise.

[Lewwyn]

T50:



Next turn:
We chop the forest in eden.
Snowman worker moves to S of copper to road
Warrior from Val goes to Double fish.
Cock works the pastured horses and still grows to 3 eot.

Other than that shouldn't be anything we need to do.

Demos:

[NobleHelium]

Turn on detailed city info, noob.

[Gaspar]

t51 was super quiet. Biggest news was dtay pushed out to 4 cities. Since we can't see his culture, that's good news.

Valhalla started its settler this turn. It'll 3-whip it on t52, get to the city tile on t54 and settle t55. Eden's settler completes EOT53, gets to the city tile on t55 and settles t56. So there's that - basically a little slow to 4 cities but decent speed to 5.




That's really about all there is to say. Cockaigne is growing on the Granary, will swap to a worker and whip it at 4. Valhalla will do a chariot after the settler. Horses are hooked now - copper will be t60, which is a little dangerous but I think we'll be okay. We're going to need one more worker in the south soon but otherwise we're in pretty decent shape.



There's a handful of things to consider going forward which I'll outline in a post either later today or tomorrow.

[Lewwyn]

Just a note that the chariot will complete in 1t in the capital after the settler whip.

[Gaspar]

t52 - Nothings going on, no big deal.

Because this was a super quiet turn, rather than a typical report I thought I'd discuss some of the decision points coming up.

First one is settlements. Obviously, the gears are already in motion for cities 4 and 5. But 6 is a matter of some discussion. There's three primary candidates:




Option 1 is a bad choice on a couple levels - firstly, its likely "safe backline." It also captures nothing really mission critical. However it has three big things going for it - it allows us to improve the sheep tile it will share with double fish; it only requires 2 roads and there's already workforce nearby; the next settler likely comes from Cockaigne, which is nearby.




This is the much discussed clam site. The advantages here are clear. It requires no new roads, it allows us to siphon off the wheat to slow the cap's growth down a bit and let it work cottages and it's the most natural next city. The downside is that the placement there and placement of Moai means the only possible locations which capture the wheat tile are marked by the white X's. None of those are ideal because with the lakes you really want any city in that location to be coastal. A lot depends on whether there's actually land below the corn as I believe there is from tile bleed. If so we could plant a city S of corn and no big deal. For this reason it might be wisest to delay this until we get vision on that whole area. Otherwise we'll have to move the clams city 1W and that sort of changes everything.

Lastly...




This city has a lot of things not to like. First off, taking the corn away really weakens Eden as a city and its not long term going to be that strong anyway. Secondly, we'd have to tech IW after writing. And thirdly its not much other than buffer to the south and "grabber of gems." That said, those two things are incredibly valuable. We have a few turns to decide what we're teching next. I'll micro for minimum overflow out of Writing so it probably won't matter immediately, but probably a turn or two of saving gold then whatever we're teching.

That's big decision number two, which I'll discuss in another post later on tonight. For now, here's demos:



As it turns out, 3-whipping your cap isn't good for your demos.

[Gaspar]

So the other prominent question relates to tech and medium-term plan. We'll finish Writing in 3t and there are basically 3 options for the next tech. All turn estimates are probably much longer than reality, since our tech rate will improve significantly once the gold is mined, but they represent tech cost at our current breakeven tech rate while working the cottages.

Sailing (149 beakers, 8t)

Sailing is the "gimme" option here - its the lowest cost and can be safely teched next without any serious impact on other decisions. The main advantage is that it helps pretty much all of the next round of settlements. We're Org, so lighthouses are discounted and hence a lot of those "do we really need a lighthouse here?" questions come down to "30 base hammers? Yeah, do that." A lighthouse in El Dorado, for example, opens up 3 3/0/2 tiles which are welcome, since it will spend most of the time working an 0/2/7 tile. Its less critical in double fish, but 2 extra food every turn for 30h pays back pretty quickly even if the city won't work much coast. The Clams and Gems cities also have lakes which could get the buff. It also opens up Moai Statues. There's really no downside, other than not putting us closer to the techs we really need.

Iron Working (299 beakers, 16t)

IW probably works best as thing we tech after Sailing. Primarily because IW only really does something for one near term city and that city itself wants Sailing. Still, obviously connecting the gems and then making sure to settle wherever our Iron tile is are two yield-based improvements in addition to the obvious boosts of an improved happy cap. Still, those are all good things especially in the handful of cities that would really shine at size 6-7 - primarily Valhalla and Cockaigne right now. The downside here is if you spend 15t teching something, you really sort of want to see a bigger bang than Iron Working provides. Iron's a really crucial resource in 60t. Right now, its just a tile yield.

Mathematics (373 beakers, 21t)

Math, as always, is the gateway tech to being out of the early game. In addition to the obvious benefit of full-powered chops, it opens up our too expensive for what it does UB Hammam (with Masonry) as well as being the gateway tech to the three critical C techs - Currency, Calendar and Construction. Basically, once Mathematics is in, everything we tech is exceptionally attractive... Currency gives the extra trade route and access to wealth builds; Calendar allows access to additonal happiness resources and the MoM; Code of Laws lets us get cheap courthouses in play and could provide religion with luck. The downside here is really that 20t is just too long to be researching one tech.

There's also some consideration to be given to the Monarchy path but I don't believe much. The discovery of two metals basically makes this a "something you get later" tech in my mind. Hinduism fell last turn, if I didn't mention it, so the ancillary benefits of going down this route to make a run at a religion or Oracle are greatly outweighed by the costs. I think my inclination would be to tech to Currency and the see if CoL has fallen. If it has, maybe we go at Monarchy through Priesthood before grabbing CoL for the discount. If not, grab Monarchy right before/after Civil Service.

Anyway, my current thought is Sailing > Iron Working > Mathematics but I could be talked into alternatives. What say you, folks?