[SPOILERS] Hoarse Lord DaveV speaks softly...

[DaveV]

June 5-10 for sure, I may be spotty after that. I'll try to to give you an update to let you know how it's going. Surgery is June 5, he's supposed to spend 3-6 days in the hospital, then he'll have several weeks of recovery. Not sure how much hand-holding he'll need, he's a big boy, but the game is less important than getting him back on his feet and ready for college in the fall.

[DaveV]

Surgery is very early tomorrow morning. I'll try to check in over the weekend sometime, but no guarantees. Please play the first turn(s) if the game kicks off. Planned city naming scheme: triple crown winners.

[Commodore]

Good luck, I pray all goes well and he's back up and around soon.

[DaveV]

OK, I'm back, I think. Surgery went well, recovery will be long and slow.

[Commodore]

OK, I'm back, I think. Surgery went well, recovery will be long and slow.

Glad to hear it. Uh, is this going to start? If you don't need me to cover I could take a crack at the map myself...

[DaveV]

Yeah, it would be good to get the game going to keep people from losing interest. I *was* kind of hoping to have someone looking over my shoulder to keep me from going into mode, though...

[Lord Parkin]

Your start:

[DaveV]

Turn 0.

Settle in place seems like the best move. It's not going to be an overwhelmingly strong capital, but good enough (I hope). But first, let's take advantage of the extra movement and vision on the settler to do some scouting:




Northwest or west looked like the right direction to settle because of the rivers, and that's even more the case now. Unless something really great appears in the fog, my first city will go south of the cotton.

For completeness and sandbox setup, here's the south:




Demos:



Assuming mirrored starts, someone moved SW and is working the deer (at least one of the guys who played already has less food* and more hammers than I). I'm getting extra GNP because of pre-req bonus (yay for Agriculture start!).

* Three players with 5 food would give 15 total, and the average would be 3, not 2.

[Commodore]

Looks solid all-around; this is basically pure Aristofarm goodness. I guess the only question is "warriors or horsemen?"

[DaveV]

I guess the only question is "warriors or horsemen?"

My money is on horsemen. Assuming 3x2 rectangular arrangement of civs, 84/3 = 28 tiles separation horizontally, 52/2 = 26 tiles vertically. Not exactly a rush map; we won't be bumping into each other until 3rd ring cities. Wildlands/Raging means waiting for a strong unit to search for victims trading partners.

The score mouseover shows 1529 land tiles (35% of map area, circumnav is in play (spoiler: Ellimist gets it )), which gives almost exactly 255 tiles per player.




Ellimist didn't settle. Maybe he's trying to lessen that distance from someone?