Just got back to my room, and I found it in CIV4CivilizationsInfo.XML -- it's PLAYERCOLOR_LIGHT_BLUE.
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picklepikkl embarks on the Fool's Journey
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So, it's a little unclear what's going on with the save at the moment, since the turn order seems to have been set up wrong. In the meantime, here's what came of my playing in the sandbox.
Bronze Working first seems best here. The obvious alternative is Wheel->Agriculture, to waste minimal worker turns and enable improvement of both my resources. The issue is that this creates far too much time where my workers don't have very useful things to do -- enabling chopping right away allows for some elegant timings and gets me my first settler (along with a second worker, a second scout, and a warrior) on t21. Chopping as early as possible also has the nice property of giving my snowball a boost -- the faster I churn out those initial workers and settlers, the faster they can start creating further value.
April 4th, 2016, 17:45
(This post was last modified: April 4th, 2016, 21:42 by picklepikkl.)
Well, after some small amount of delay and confusion, we're off to the races!
![[Image: pbem74-001.jpg?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/fh71ue8nsus7nek/pbem74-001.jpg?raw=1) I founded on my start and sent my scout to the only hill I could reach and reveal new tiles from. Good heavens that's a lot of food -- two grass cows! I may have to rethink my tech path to squeeze in AH earlier. I'm kind of confused by the map shape here: REM said that this was a modified Donut, if I remember correctly, and I think I see the inner sea to my north and west, but there's a spur of land going that way, so maybe not? I'm pretty sure I'm in the southern hemisphere (since I see coniferous trees to my south), so I assume I'm in the bottom left or bottom right of the map; if that is in fact the inner sea, bottom right, but as I said, that's ambiguous. Right now I will chalk this one up as "confused" and worry about it more when I have more information; I'll probably send my scout anticlockwise in a circle, to reveal first-ring city sites, and my second scout will go in a straight line wherever seems most interesting. As for the naming scheme: as my thread title alluded to, I'm going with Major Arcana of the Tarot for my cities. The Fool's Journey is a way of looking at the trump cards of the traditional Tarot deck as a story: the Fool's story, as they set out and learn important spiritual lessons. I'm very new to Civ 4 and even newer to Civ 4 MP, so what better theme for me than that? ![[Image: maj00.jpg]](http://www.learntarot.com/bigjpgs/maj00.jpg) City 0: The Fool Our hero, ladies and gentlemen. The Fool's numbering signifies that, while they are part of the Major Arcana, they are set apart; the jester is the one for whom the rules of society don't quite apply, and it's the Fool who represents the individual making the journey to wisdom. They are empty, but looking to be filled. The Fool is innocent and naive, but full of faith (which is why they make the journey at all). Still, uh, they'd better keep their mind on the practicalities of what they're doing (watch out for that cliff!) and not just trust that everything will work out for the best. Extrapolating this description to your gentle narrator is left as an exercise for the reader :P. I also screenshotted the demographics screen, in the hopes that maybe a future instantiation of myself will know enough about how to C&D that he will want this information. The only thing I can glean is that, from my top spot in GNP, Sian is researching something that doesn't have a prereq (though I forgot to check what my opponents' civs and leaders were -- oops). (April 4th, 2016, 17:45)picklepikkl Wrote: Well, after some small amount of delay and confusion, we're off to the races! The map was originally a small donut as different maps come up with different dimensions. A small donut is 40x40. However it was wiped clean and started from scratch. The only reason I said that was so people could generate an accurate sim should they wish. So also I wouldn't read anything into what tree types are where - i didn't spend that much time on it to get the trees right!
April 5th, 2016, 09:05
(This post was last modified: April 5th, 2016, 09:07 by picklepikkl.)
Huh, thanks REM. Guess I can't make any assumptions about map shape, then!
...though given that the map is Flat, I can make the deduction that we're probably in some roughly rhombus-shaped configuration, each with two neighbors and someone made slightly farther by the tyranny of the Pythagorean Theorem, because I can't imagine any other way to balance a 4p setup without map wrap. Possibly I just need to imagine harder! The second turn came round to me and I sent it on via the shiny new tracker email; still not sure how to actually access the tracker, but hopefully it does someone some good. I made sure to check my opponents; one player had changed his civ name for flavor (as have I), but I was able to deduce what it was based on what's been made public about the picks in the setup thread. Sian & greenline: Huayna Capac of Mali The fact that apparently three people picked this across two games, and one person picked almost-this, is making me wonder if I messed up. But I think its popularity actually works to my advantage here: one Industrial leader in a game is a big advantage, but having a second one adds tension that helps everyone else. Obviously they are invested in getting to Metal Casting by hook or by crook. To beat these guys, I'm going to have to use my better sustainability to out-expand and out-tech them before they can leverage their production advantage. Notably, Sian has a bunch of games under his belt, whereas this is greenline's first game on this site, so they may well be as green as I am. I guess I hope greenline is one of my closer neighbors as opposed to along the diagonal. Two out of three ain't bad odds! Jowy: Elizabeth I of Egypt I've read that there's some tension in Financial/Philosophical: Fin wants you to work commerce tiles and Phi wants you to work specialists. It seems to me that a strong way to resolve that tension is to treat Phi not as the backbone of your economy but as a way to lessen the cost of getting the Great People you want to get anyway -- the classic "build library and run two scientists for an early Academy" plan takes less time for a Philosophical leader, meaning the cost to your civ of not working whatever tiles those scientists could be working gets cut in half. Now, obviously, if your marginal tile is some garbage like 1f1h or uncleared jungle or whatever, specialists have hardly any cost to them, but we're on such a lush map that I don't imagine that being the case any time soon. So yeah, I respect this choice greatly, and Jowy is a very experienced player, so I imagine he and Sian will be duking it out for the top spot. To be honest, I'm bummed out that we didn't end up going with a game setup where the greenest players were put together -- this half-and-half makes it seem likely to me that the more experienced players will target the relatively weaker ones and only then turn their attention to one another. I certainly feel like I have a target painted on my back, since it's public information that I've been playing Civ 4 for like a month. But I'm going to give it my best and try to ensure that anyone who tries to snap me up knows that they've been in a fight  .
April 6th, 2016, 09:02
(This post was last modified: April 6th, 2016, 09:03 by picklepikkl.)
Exploration continues. There's a strip of land to my northwest between two bodies of water. Not sure yet whether it's a peninsula or an isthmus. Probably I won't explore far enough down it to find out; my initial scout needs to keep identifying potential sites for The Magician. My second scout will probably go down it, though, since on any map as hand-crafted as this one, there will probably be something interesting down such an obvious corridor.
In other news, Sian's score increased and rival best Soldiers increased, so I assume he just finished Hunting. I'm willing to bet that everyone had essentially the same capital site: plains hill start, flood plains deer, irrigated plains corn. I know it wasn't a perfect mirror because someone had a higher Life Expectancy; with no Expansive civs in the game, they must have had more forests in the city's inner ring than others (IMBA IMBA CLEAR FAVORITISM REM WORST MAP DESIGNER I'VE EVER SEEN). (April 6th, 2016, 09:02)picklepikkl Wrote: In other news, Sian's score increased and rival best Soldiers increased, so I assume he just finished Hunting. I'm willing to bet that everyone had essentially the same capital site: plains hill start, flood plains deer, irrigated plains corn. I know it wasn't a perfect mirror because someone had a higher Life Expectancy; with no Expansive civs in the game, they must have had more forests in the city's inner ring than others (IMBA IMBA CLEAR FAVORITISM REM WORST MAP DESIGNER I'VE EVER SEEN). Someone could have got forest growth too... Or I may have miscounted 
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