Ok
I have to run.
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[SPOILER] Smegbeth heads to the terrace for a prawn cocktail and beer
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novice, thanks for taking PB18, but I can see enough of the screens to play PB26 turns. I mean, how much can I screw up when there is only a scout to move?
   First order of business. The dot map. All cities that I plant require a first ring forest to chop into a terrace. if a city location does not have a forest it is not an acceptable city location and can be disregarded. This is one of the advantages that CRE has over Inca, and TBH on this map it's look like it's a reasonable dent to Inca's usefulness. Not massively so that I'm unhappy with the pick ,but it is a constraint all the same. The second city location is an interesting on to choose though. Additional preferences are that there is first ring food that is not shared with the capital. Sharing food is not a negative, but given I want to run 4 scientists in the capital ASAP I need both food resources worked at the capital at that point to feed the specs. So that means the main advantage of sharing food resources would be if it occurred earlier in the game, with the second city and not with the third. I've simmed out a few starts where the second city is planted 777 of the capital. It's not particularly far because it requires a border pop and a workboat to improve the fish, and a pier...a lot of investment at a stage of the game where I'd rather use the worker to improve a food resource. It's trivial to get the fur online and a forest chopped for the terrace but the capital takes a harsh hit IMO. I would rather share the rice, but until the scout heads around the southern body of water I'm not going to be able to fot map that area. I'm more tempted to skip the overlap city and settle for the corn and silver on the workshop. Still need to run a sim or two for this, but the capital keeping the extra food resource is helpful, but I will likely have to get 2 workers before a settler so the delay in the settling time is not negligible. Settling to the north east shows no food reources at present, so I would likely have to settle cities quite far apart. Not impossible but there are difficulties in getting enough quechua out to cover everything moving between the capital (needed for happy,) worekrs roading for trade route, and to defend the settler. The one tile lake is something I'd like to do, but that means I need to settle to the north of the inlet which is coastal to get the full 3/0/2 lake yield, and that also affects the location of a rice sharing city for the capital. So right now I'm not set on any specific dot map, because there are constraints with the terrace second build path. I think I may have to just accept a slightly delayed second city, but the third city should be online just as fast and then the saved food from teh terrace should be what enables the quick great scientist.
Here is a copy of the sim, from this turn.
Played around a bit with the sim today, as I can't do much else. I'm currently thinking that I want a city 8 of hte pig, when it pops borders it gets the grass cow and the silver. I can get it settled around T34 with a road in place and a worker ready already chopping one of hte forest, can use the other forest to finish the terrace then work the pig to grow to size 4 and double whip a worker to then help hook the silver and cow.
The micro is a bit fucked up, but it involves building a terrace with the silk for 5 turns, then building a worker with the improved rice until the forest 6 of capital is chopped as second worker action to finish the terrace. Then use avoid growth trick on growth to size 2. Workers third action is chopping forest 88 of capital, this finishes the worker. First worker then improves the sheep, the second worker starts roading to the new city location, but there is bunch of leeway on this. The quechua is used to cover the worker by sitting on hills and seeing all tiles from which the worker could be 22 moved. Barb animals are only the wolf so not a threat to the quechua, barb warriors will not invade culture until average number of cities is 3 per player. Comments on the start: Due to the lack of 2 or three hammer tiles to work, the start has a lot of difficulty stoping growth to build warriors. That means that most of hte overflow that is generated has to be used to complete military units rather than prep workers or settlers. But with a granary, then food is less important because each pop point costs half as much so I can use that food to generate hammers without the pain of delaying growth anywhere near as much as normally occurs. Would this start be better if the forest were on the hills? I htink it would, because it would be a lot easier to get the granary at size one and require a hell of a lot less micro to make it work. There is still a weakness in these actions that there are very few warriors to protect stuff, but economically it's a very quick start for PRO. This micro I've found works due to htte forest layout, so if that was differnt then alternate micro would likely be preferable. Overall, from what I've seen of hte map so far I like the map. Lots of options for how to play it out, and if I had done the snakepick differently then I'm certain that I'd play the start differently.
Minor update. CH appears to the NE a few turns ago. The scout is wandering around the southern body of water, which is larger than expected: I don't believe that it is going to be easy to claim the entire body of water and as such will have an east/west split border with someone. Nothing really interesting has occurred yet.
From what I've seen of the map so far I'm impressed by it guys. Until I find out that CH is 6 tiles away to the north.
Thoth and Mardoc turned up at the silver city site with a scout. Due to the number of turns that have passed I don't believe that they are necessarily our neighbours down there, but still, better chance it's them than someone else. Scouting has taken a bit of a blow. The sea to our east is huge. I don't think I can scout around it quickly enough, so I'm going to back track the scout and check out the green, river filled land to the NE. I do have enough information to do the immediate dot map in that area though. 
I don't think I'm micro'ing this start out perfectly, but as it's a test game I'm not all that concerned.
Tech path has been Agri>Wheel>Pottery>Masonry, then it will go Hunting>Archery>AH. The worker has roaded the tile 1S of the capital, then farmed the rice. It will then go to chop the forests 6 and 88 of the capital in that order, before pasturing that sheep. The capital has built a granary for 5 turns whilst the rice is hooked. It will then build into a worker, then when the first chop occurs on T21 the granary/terrace will finish. Avoid growth T22, grow to size 2 eot23, size 3 eot24, second chop arrives T25 to finish the second worker, then grow to size 4 eot T27 with a quechua finishing before growth to size 4 (don't really care when, it's in time to defend the worker roading to the silver site). The settler should finish eot33, settled T35, and the capital is capable of whipping a second settler around T41 and settling it within 2 turns. At that point, it's all about preparing for the library and early double GS, using the second and third cities to continue expansion and provide additional units. |
