REM goes on the Sudric Express [Pitboss 33 spoilers]

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I recently read this about the story below. http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/thomas-the-t...ragic-tale I remembered this tale and to be fair this is quite a horrid story. Essentially - have some agoraphobia and don't want to help out? Fine we will lock you up forever. They don't try to let him out until he is the only one that can help out too!

[Commodore]

Sudric, actually. http://ttte.wikia.com/wiki/The_Island_of...d_Railways

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So Eot 8. 1 worker whipped in cap then overflowed into 1t workboat, 2 workers whipped out in each other city. most resources set up. Caraval and rifle builds could be anything, tempted to move to science builds (better as have markets and no libraries) as this will store overflow hammers and chops until a settler build.

I am saving all chops for settlers only. From here I can either chop out a settler straight away and get it eot 263 or build more improvements and get it eot 265. Undecided which is best, also partly depends on where religion goes (about a 60/40 split to henry the third city.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So I bit the bullet and settled there. Might make making the most of that eastern coast a little tricky, but the short term benefits of 3 easy to improve tiles are huge. 1E would probably had made long term dotmapping a little easier and saved a forest but nevermind. I want to claim as much land as possible fast here.

No build decisions to make as it is workers all around (jumped back in and renamed the cities). I whipped both now Thomas and Henry but for some reason civstats only gave me 1 score drop. I guess I have fast clicking skills. That should REALLY mess with anyone trying to work out what I 2 pop whipped on the third turn!

Still want to make sure that the flood farm is the right call... I think it is with the growth boost but need to just make sure.

Map style is looking like a water heavy lakes map. Less keen for a caraval now. Probably shoot my explorers for the wrap and use the units for local exploration.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ok already made a micro/mechanics mistake - this is where having a deadlurker would come in handy...

This idiot wanted to road to Edward when all I need for the route is to road the FP tile and due to sailing and astro instant route... Bah. Cost me 4 commerce so not huge but notable. At least this allows a route to Henry quicker too now I can work this into the micro. Doesn't effect hammers in the box with the caps bonus re beuro.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Another turn... More workers! I was worried until I saw others slaving on civstats. I thought I had made a major mistake and hadn't spotted something that made slaving weak. Thankfully 2 others have slaved, so basically half are and half aren't currently. I would be interested to know what the other are doing if not slaving as this is kinda the perfect time to slave - high happy cap, free granary, no improved tiles to work. Cap this off that growth back is insane and we have a perfect storm!

So 4 workers now, Thomas has the floods farm completed and works a 1 turn workboat, and other workers move to road between it and henry and road to the gold. These will all finish the turn of border expansion so I can get the pigs online 2 turns after and gold 3 turns after so I don't have to work unimproved tiles.

Edward has his worker start to farm and builds another worker. Both Edward and Henry will be whipped again for workers next turn.

Scouting shows lots of nice resources, I will explore more with the slower units before deciding where to lay my next cities down. Demos are obviously poor as I am whipping more than most. I would say around t10-15 we will see who has had the right opening plan as that is when my cities will start to shine.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

2 further turns done.

Whipped 2 more workers 253 in Edward/Henry, and started my road both to Henry and to my gold to allow quick hooking once my culture expands. Kept the SE rifle in borders to prevent loosing GPT for support.

Actually ended up building a workboat in the cap for a little close exploration and to help quickly set up and awesome city site out east which I have a SS of later.

Also met Gaspar of fin/org of dutch. I like this combo, and it would have been really helpful already actually as having levees/dikes accessible just for being waterside would have helped immensely and freed me from the rivers a bit, and of course with growth so cheap it will make 2/1/3 water tiles REALLY powerful for them as long as they can build the dikes in the water cities. Basically as long as they claim a fair proportion of the land they can make it very productive.

But I am also saying this with knowledge from t255, where it looks like the map is one of those toro repeating duplicate things. My east (first) and my west (second) have a very similar look to them of corn/tundra/hill/plains/copper, with that unusual freshwater fish next to it.

This has thrown me a little as the plan was to settle that ASAP with the first cap settler (that I am now able to whip EOT262 on best effort) but I am cautious that this might be a little stretching for a 4th city. That tile is 8 tiles walking dist or 7 crow flies from my cap, and 11 to the similar tile on my west side. Even if I put my rifle there a couple of cheap units will wrest it from me. I think it is needed to lock down that border on the assumption of a repeating mass but maybe not first now. At the same time if I can take that spot from Gaspar then I will both have a huge land advantage and nice land borders! Heres to rushing those imp settlers!

Workers finished the road, will start pasturing and mining for the cap next turn. Edward now has corn. The one build I am ambivalent about is the research in Edward. It was supposed to be research to hold the worker overflow and the chop from the forest iron hill until I could get some settler bonus on it. However now with the map knowledge I think a second rifle to allow me to hold that city might be a better move. Also if I do go there I need to find some time from the eastern workers roughly 5 portions of road to speed him there... That is a lot of road time to find! As I type this I feel it might be more realistic to grab the plains hill to the NW with the pig/incense/clam first ring.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Other thoughts - I am now assuming a mirrored start, so more intriguing as to where people settled... Gaspar put down 2 cities second turn. Did he just do this for trolling factor as where I settled I could have held putting down the cap until the second turn, and roaded the FP which would have been best play and not depended on which turn the cap was settled. However a lot more options are viable with the dikes!

BGN also didn't settle first turn. This is more interesting as with the Spi they could have gained cap output on T0/250. No idea where they went, really couldn't have seen a better choice.

Of note also is my land area is a fair bit lower than everyone elses. Can't really see many other viable choices for cities without serious overlap which I think is counter productive in this era start. Unless they played with a turn or 2 of culture building in the cap? Not something I tried, and I was scratching my head of what to build so might have been a good idea. Nevermind now!

Any lurker questions? Mildly concerned that Gaspar might try and irritate the micro of Henry... Would be annoyed if that were the case. Will now try and get the exploring rifle back to deter this happening...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Settling plan out west

Ambitious, but defensible. And also if it is mirrored, would garentuee the corn. Indeed should I settle the hill on my side!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I'm gonna be doing a culture build next turn - to make sure I don't trigger the culture bug I make sure the build queue is empty save this - is this right? With the mined iron 5 + 1 city tile + 2 engineer + 25% I can get a 1 turn BFC to start a sheep pasture from the workers the turn after.