Getting to know Krillmod before it changes again

[Krill]

RtR mod 3.0.0.1.e with corrected, up to date (or at least believed to be so) DLL. No additional changes.

[taotao]

Scout revealed a couple of ivories, since we already were inclined towards SIP, I did that to get more info. We have 2nd pig, nice to get both food with 1 tech . Also clams in south, we could have a city sharing pigs and getting clams 1st ring.

Ivory's nice, one extra happy at AH

I could play turnset until finishing the worker. Or maybe even until growing to s2, since domestic decisions seem rather straightforward until that. Scouting plan: E-NE, do a little circle and then check lands south of cap, since they seem interesting. In east there's a floodplain, and we could have new settlement connected via river.

Sounds good in general. My instincts also tell me that we should grow after the first worker, but do we know that a for sure or might it be better to start another worker (or even settler?!) until we get the first pig hooked up and we might get quicker growth? (then again, in MP it could be good to have a warrior just to make sure an opponent doesn't pull any shenanigans by declaring and parking their scout on our food...)
Tentatively I'd say that 3S1W of the capital looks ok:ish for a second city, but I'll probably prefer something on the river (sharing the other pig) for instant trade-routes (and I actually don't mind settling on the ivory if going further east wastes floodplains).

Very early I think a bit longer turnset is ok due to lack of decisions but after that I think turnsets of 10T would be ok, what do you think?

10-15t/set sounds good once the game gets going for real. Early on longer is fine. And we could always stop when there's a more important decision to make.

Have you gotten your computer to work yet? And have you done the fix to your hosts file, which enables simultaneuous log ins to the pitboss server?

Yes to both. Of course, I haven't logged in to an actual pitboss yet, so don't know if I've gotten it right, but quite likely I'm all set

[von Adlercreutz]

I played until worker was completed.

Scouting to east:

Nice resources, gold for early happy and some commerce to help keep expanding. How to settle? I'm thinking about a short-termist solution: settle on the ivory, share pigs and grow to floodplain, get connection via river. Then 1N of gold would get all it needs in the 1st ring.

South:

Here the fish and clams can't both be settled. I think we should ignore the fish, it requires a border pop and is further away so no food share. Settle 3S1W of cap as you suggested? I don't think it beats the river spot as clams are only marginally better than flood plains and require hammer investment.

I was glancing the tech tree and noticed that forest preserves were a bit earlier than I was used to:

They work like cottages and come at IW. I thought the forest improvement changes were only brought to SMEG. Well good to play a test game to notice these kind of things. I need to give some thought when these would be any use.

What to do regarding builds and tech? I think growing to 2 and then worker is good, there is quite a lot of use for workers. The terrain makes worker movement inefficient though.

Techwise, I think going for early reli anymore would be too risky, someone would most likely get a myst start and take them before we would have a chance. Stonehenge otoh, could be good practice for wonder micro and our start has a ton of hammers + imp. How much would the border pops be needed though? My city spot suggestions assumed no SH, taking stuff into the first ring. We can settle quite conveniently that way imo. The teches seem to come quite fast, so there is some leeway to do something else than worker teches and BW-pottery.

Does the map make you want to go for any specific wonder? Quite a lot of coastal for GLH, even though it's nerfed.

[taotao]

How to settle? I'm thinking about a short-termist solution: settle on the ivory, share pigs and grow to floodplain, get connection via river. Then 1N of gold would get all it needs in the 1st ring.

I guess part of the answer depends on how we want to handle Boudica. On the ivory is one off coast which I'm generally not that keen on. On the other hand it lets us keep lighter garrisons as she can't hit us in one turn at least. Unless we grab a religion or stonehenge I'm afraid that she'll get cultural control of the tile 1S of gold which will cut our naval forces in two, but I don't see that much that can be done about it reliably. Should we aim for settling getting SH and settling 1N of gold (which I agree is the best spot) quickly and just hope for the best?

The fish and clams (in the south) can't both be settled. I think we should ignore the fish, it requires a border pop and is further away so no food share. Settle 3S1W of cap as you suggested? I don't think it beats the river spot as clams are only marginally better than flood plains and require hammer investment.

Annoying to have to orphan seafood. I actually think we have 4 options for city location here.
- 1E of clams is the snowball location. Settle as city 3 or 4, share pigs, share cottages and generally just do what the empire needs.
- 1SE of clams is similar to option a, but takes a bit longer to get started. Upside is that it'll grab wine for when we get monarchy.
- On the flat desert gets a couple more grassland tiles, and trades 1c for 1f (fish instead of clams), but doesn't help the capital with any cottages.
- Finally we could settle on wine. PH and 1st ring forest makes for a slightly quicker start, but slightly worse end configuration.
In honesty I don't mind that much whichever option we take, but if we're getting SH I'd lean towards c or d to invalidate any celtic city on that part of our continent. Part of my reasoning here is also that I actually believe that capital will want to hold on to those western pigs for most of the time which slightly nerfs the value of a...

Techwise, I think going for early reli anymore would be too risky, someone would most likely get a myst start and take them before we would have a chance.

Religion-wise I don't think we stand a snowballs' chance of landing buddhism or hinduism. Monotheism might be possible, but I think I'd rather not go for any of the early ones (Confucianism might be worth considering though remembering that we're organised).

Stonehenge otoh, could be good practice for wonder micro and our start has a ton of hammers + imp. How much would the border pops be needed though? My city spot suggestions assumed no SH, taking stuff into the first ring. We can settle quite conveniently that way imo. The teches seem to come quite fast, so there is some leeway to do something else than worker teches and BW-pottery.
Does the map make you want to go for any specific wonder? Quite a lot of coastal for GLH, even though it's nerfed.

On this map and with this leader (basically any non-creative/aggressive/inca, but even more so with imp) I'd definitely go for SH in SP. In PB27 I'd doubt our chances though, but here I believe we could get it if we wanted to, and it'll definitely be good even if we can do without for the first few cities.
I actually did a couple of quick tries during my lunch break and we could get it on turn 38 at least,but that was with no new improvements at the second (ivory) city (founded t32) apart from roads, so still far from sure it's the best way...

What to do regarding builds and tech? I think growing to 2 and then worker is good, there is quite a lot of use for workers. The terrain makes worker movement inefficient though.

In my first try I actually went worker-worker-warrior-settler and thought the micro seemed decent (Can for instance use the silk for worker instead of growing on grassland forest. Also, warrior completes on same turn we'd grow to size 2...). Will try growing earlier and compare late today though.

I was glancing the tech tree and noticed that forest preserves were a bit earlier than I was used to:
(edited out the picture)
They work like cottages and come at IW. I thought the forest improvement changes were only brought to SMEG. Well good to play a test game to notice these kind of things. I need to give some thought when these would be any use.

Wow, that's news to me too!
I guess most of the time the chop-hammers will outweigh saving the forest, but for instance in tundra...

[Commodore]

Settling to avoid being boated can be a valid MP concern, but I don't ever think an AI has boated me.

[taotao]

Settling to avoid being boated can be a valid MP concern, but I don't ever think an AI has boated me.

Yeah I know. This game's kind of strange though, since it apart from being an introduction to rtr3 also doubles as preparation for PB27. Therefore I'm never quite sure what mindset we should play this in. Neither one of us would have any trouble beating a monarch AI so I guess it's really a matter of how many and how big restrictions we should put on ourselves in order to simulate a competitive MP environment.

[taotao]

Hi von A! (btw. how would you like to be referred to? vA, von A, C-J (Carl Johan), Adler or any other name?)
How would you like to play this? I definitely think worker-worker is the best approach here. I've played 'til t40 and though I actually managed to get SH on the same turn (t38) with worker-warrior I was way behind on tile improvements and worker from the second city. The question is then of course if we want to go for SH? I did some quick scanning of the larger PBs here and the earliest SH I saw was Ruffs' t35 in PB18 while in one Lewwyn only got it on t61 (if memory serves me right). Quite often (in large games) it seems to go in the t37-42 range.

Does the map make you want to go for any specific wonder? Quite a lot of coastal for GLH, even though it's nerfed.

Not sure actually how much I want to say about my general view on wonders as I guess one of advantages of being new on a site is that we'll be more unpredictable (but then again, starting this thread alone gives away quite a lot of info). I think I can safely say at least that in general I'm quite close to the general consensus on different wonders here at rb.
In this case I'm not hugely attracted by GLH. It's an expensive wonder so I'd probably need to know I'll get some offshore cities before deciding to make a run for it.

How long do you want me to play the next session? If you chip in today I could probably play this evening. Also, the save would be nice to get (I guess I could simply redo your scouting moves from the original save, but hey, are we still playing a succession game then

[von Adlercreutz]

Sry, I'm quite busy this week, having long work days. Next week will be easier. So I'll send you the save and you can play. I think something like 15 turns is ok.

Did you make a sandbox or just played around with my starting save when you tested the stuff?

I'd like to see a pre-play-plan with worker micro and city builds before + tech before you start and comment on it.

I'm ok with going stonehenge, this start has a ton of prod potential. With imp and a lot of coast, I think GLH would be good too. It seems that Boudica is overseas, so if we do alpha early (or she does) we would get ic tr:s. Going GLH the 2nd city should be coastal though.

Re treating AIs and Boudica:
I have to admit I didn't think about Boudica much when doing the dot map, but you're right we should be a bit more catious with them than in sp game. As to how to treat Boudica, well I've said earlier that I want to focus on peaceful expansion first and she's overseas and not a good rush target anyway. So keep an eye out for her and try to get OBs to improve our economy.

PS: Adler sounds nice.

[von Adlercreutz]

Annoying to have to orphan seafood. I actually think we have 4 options for city location here.
- 1E of clams is the snowball location. Settle as city 3 or 4, share pigs, share cottages and generally just do what the empire needs.
- 1SE of clams is similar to option a, but takes a bit longer to get started. Upside is that it'll grab wine for when we get monarchy.
- On the flat desert gets a couple more grassland tiles, and trades 1c for 1f (fish instead of clams), but doesn't help the capital with any cottages.
- Finally we could settle on wine. PH and 1st ring forest makes for a slightly quicker start, but slightly worse end configuration.
In honesty I don't mind that much whichever option we take, but if we're getting SH I'd lean towards c or d to invalidate any celtic city on that part of our continent. Part of my reasoning here is also that I actually believe that capital will want to hold on to those western pigs for most of the time which slightly nerfs the value of a...

I prefer option b, we're already planning to share another on eof capital pigs. Helping the cap with growing coattges is a lot more important than working regular cottage tiles due to stacking modifiers and I think we should eventually make this cap a research bureau cap even though it has a ton of hills too. But I don't see any other spot for bureau and the thing with cottages is that you have to start them early, it can be better to make a bureau cap out of an ok first city than a perfect 9th city. The city can have a forest prechopped to hook the clams asap.

As to preventing Celts from planting a city, I don't see that as important. They would just shoot themselves in their leg to found such an isolated and foodless city that should be culture crushed especially with SH and very easily razeable.

[taotao]

Did you make a sandbox or just played around with my starting save when you tested the stuff?

I'd like to see a pre-play-plan with worker micro and city builds before + tech before you start and comment on it.

Sorry, I did the "non-kosher" thing of just playing on with the initial save (fortifying the scout to lessen the impact of spoiler knowledge). Thought about making a sandbox, but figuring it doesn’t matter that much when we’re not doing this in a truly competitive setting anyway. Besides, I really suck at drawing rivers

If you don’t mind, I’ll play until BW is completed and then check back with you for discussion before continuing. In that first timeframe there’s only really one matter of great importance in my mind and that’s second build in the capital. I’d like to go with worker seeing: a) movement is slo-ow. The terrain is rough enough that we lose lots of turns just moving from one tile to another. b) I don’t like working unimproved tiles. c) While I don’t mind working food tiles for a worker I’d much rather build settlers with hammers...

If going for a second worker micro would simply be:
t12: Worker 1 (Augustus) moves 1SW (one turn quicker than the other pigs)
Rome starts second worker working unimproved silk (1f2h1c),
Scout moves towards west checking for city sites past rice.
t13: Augustus starts pasturing pigs (1/4)
t14: pasture 2/4 (scout generally make sure to end on defensive terrain/only use 1mp so as not to be surprised)
t15: pasture 3/4
t16: BW finished, pasture finished. Worker 2 at 20/60 with exactly 5t to build (while working the pigs).