Being a more casual player than much of this field there isn’t that much to say yet. Financial and Charismatic were avoided mostly which means everyone has a start like this with rivers and happiness. There’s no point thinking about the scout before settling in place and revealing the tiles. Tech is obviously Hunting then probably Mining to Bronze to Agriculture, AH, Pottery. Since I’m a full tech behind there isn’t really time for anything else.
Delaying Bronze is probably a non-starter because chop, revolt after first settler, and whip are too essential to early micro. Not to mention strategic information for city placement.
Speaking strategically, me playing Toku might be literally the last civ anyone wants to attack early. Barracks will be everywhere for culture and archers on hills are nearly indestructible before cats and then longbows until at least knights. This security will be really nice if there is an opportunity to attack someone early.
The second city will likely share river pigs and floodplains with the capital for growth unless there are amazing tiles near the sheep.
I’ll wait on meeting neighbours before analyzing other players in much depth.
I just have to share that, it makes me really happy that people are using my post count tool that I wrote in a weird unemployed time in my life five years ago.
Hi, here's your MapCad-generated sandbox to help you plan your opening. You'll need to have RtR 2.0.8.4 installed. If something doesn't work as it should, let me know.
The scout went NW-NW, to cover the most diagonal distance. I'm a fan of exploring a full ring around the start before venturing off. Early movement is totally free, I think for the first 5 turns or so, but maybe I'll have to re-learn the barbarian mechanics soon.
Decent second city sites abound. Either 1W or 1SW of the scout would work, but more scout moves will clarify.
I'm playing casually, and not going to bother with much C&D and demo screen analysis. But, the demos read at 0.16% of land area for my 9 tiles to total land is about 5695 tiles. Map dimensions seem to yield 12,320 tiles so there is quite a lot of water unless I'm missing something. This means roughly 15x15 tiles per person, so assuming we're distributed in perfectly fair circles it might mean I expect to find a neighbour 16 tiles away or so. I'm not going to bother making a better estimate than that, and this seems pretty normal for a PB game.
It looks like there is coast to the south, so the scouting priority is the other directions, to maximize early contacts. I'm not 100% sure whether to read anything from the snow covered trees but they suggest I could be in the north part of the map.
I've got a couple of week to figure out if there is any reasonable tech path other than mining + bronze next. I'm thinking probably not. Early cottages on those flood plains would be nice but I don't feel like this start is going to be bound by research so much in the early game.
My current view of the world still fits on one screen:
I haven't met anyone yet. I seem to be on the NE point of a land mass, or maybe even a peninsula depending on what's going on to the south. I expect my scout to find someone to the west in the next few turns.
Tech is Hunting -> Mining -> start Bronze next. Actually playing this out shows how nice it would be to have beakers toward something else instead of Fishing. I'm considering Pottery next, delaying Agriculture and wasting the prereq bonus. I'm not sure about that at all, but it would be nice to take advantage of the granary bonus and get the flood plains cottaged ASAP. Animal Husbandry to turn the elephant into a 2/3/1 tile would be good too, especially if horses are close.
The second city spot I have marked doesn't excite me very much - dry plains wheat and hill sheep are not the best food tiles around. But it's hard to see how to do better and still share food with the capital. Maybe NNE of the pig can be considered for the natural trade connection to the capital but in the long run that city seems better placed on the plains hill W of the crab.
While growing to size 2 I worked 2 turns of the 2/2/0 elephant tile instead of a 3/0/1 flood plains, to speed warrior production a bit, and it doesn't change the growth turns to size 2 and 3. I'll build a second worker before a settler but I'm not sure yet whether to do that at size 3, 4, or what.
Buddhism and Hinduism went down immediately. And a couple of the players I don't know did not build a worker first. Since everyone, per the demos screen, has a land start with at most a 1-tile lake in the capital, I don't see how this can make sense. I really hope one of these guys is next to me.
I'll grow to size 2 at the end of this turn. It looks like the only player clearly ahead of that pace is Gavagai with the Expansive trait.
I moved my first warrior NE to scout around my back yard, but I should have thought harder about sending him SW to be an advance scout and maybe a micro-buster. I don't want to make enemies yet if I have multiple neighbors but if I have just one, and I'm zoned in, it's inevitable.
I already wish I'd planned my micro more carefully, even thinking harder about going two food under max growth. But, I'm with 8 players (7 this turn) who have built a worker and grown to size 2. So being in the upper third of this start, without my early game bonuses kicking in yet, is great news.
I think I'm going to build my settler at size 4 with 2 workers and 2 warriors to come out EOT 34. That's nearly a full min-max of food growth. You know you have a good micro plan in any game when you just barely make it, and I'm 7 food and 6 hammers over. I bet one of the micro wizards here could come up with a way to get slightly more out of this, even if only an extra warrior. I could save a couple turns on the second city and build the settler on size 3, but I think I need the commerce from the extra tile. And this way gives me a little room for adjustments when copper is revealed. (Or isn't?!)
I remember, I used to believe in more warriors early. They're useful literally forever as interior garrison and the cheapest unit for this purpose, and they mean I can ignore barbs (with good fog bust placement) when others are sweating during the bum rush phase. But this position looks safe enough so far that I think I'm fine. Especially after the capital expands culture on T49 it doesn't look like there's so much fertile breeding ground for barbs from very many directions.
Being AGG / PRO, I have the chance to consider aggressive pink dot options. Have fun taking on fortified CG2 archers on a hill in the bronze ages. But I'll wait and see who I'm next to, first. It's too bad Mindy isn't here! This may be the game where I'm ready for some .
I scouted some cyan tile bleed to the west. Maybe some tetrachromats can distinguish Korea, Persia and Maya at sight but I had to go to hex values. I'm only 95% sure, but it looks like it's Finarry as Augustus (Ind / Imp) of Persia over there. Yikes.
This is not the team I prefer to be next to. They have to be in the top three predicted to win this game? (Along with Mackoti and TBS.) They work perfectly as a team and they sweat the small stuff in a game that is about compounding advantages through small choices. They're better than me in terms of game knowledge, tactics, strategy, map awareness, adaptability, creativity and intangibles. Probably better humans too. But on the other hand, I'm betting I'm not their first choice of neighbor either!
Persia has great starting techs for this mod, Agriculture and Hunting. But it's the kind of civ I was worried about getting if I re-rolled, pure vanilla factor. The immortal is not a very useful unit for multiplayer and the apothecary is about as "meh" as possible. Health is not going to be a major factor in this game. Finarry is one of three to have Ind, which means they will go for wonders. The Imp trait presents a classic strategic matchup, their accelerated horizontal growth vs my vertical growth with the Protective granary bonus. This means their first few cities will be ahead of mine. (Probably all the rest of their cities too, but for different reasons. ) The military advantages I have are very far from nothing, though.
On the map, the stone is, obviously, a tremendously important strategic resource. The vertical line through it is equidistant from our capitals - awkward! I need to think a lot about my game plan. They will have the first plant in this zone, likely with city #3. I could easily see staking a site like 1W of the stone. (I drew in "W" but it now looks pretty suboptimal for them, since it would allow me to settle on the wines.) "Y" might be my move if they give me the chance to settle it. I'm not expecting to have that chance, and I'm not even considering putting my second city down that far away - that's a noob play. "Z" is the Mindy plant, it would be a declaration of war for the rest of the game for either of us, basically. There are no convenient hills on either side of the line for a defensive front line city, perhaps a very deliberate mapmaker move.
I play by a code in multiplayer games which is basically, don't make moves that aren't in my long term best interest against proper play. I might have some contempt if the player is much worse, pushing while knowing it would pointless vs a better player, but this is most emphatically not that situation. So this is why I'm not considering extremely aggressive plants that would lead to an economic disadvantage vs the field. The flip side is, if my opponent makes such a move my new game goal is to prove that they chose unwisely. ™ All this being said... I see now, if I'd have sent my first warrior W to march to their capital, it could have been interesting.
I need to keep in mind that there's certainly another player to the S or SW of me. Aside, I don't know if I ever showed it but there's an ice tile at the top of my view, so this is the north edge of the world. I'm glad to be on the right side of why cylindrical is less fair than torroidal!
Since I know my dear readers are concerned: the scout in the screenshot survived the lion attack with 30% HP. I'm still debating whether to make contact right now or delay. Probably delay. I may be in a situation where I know where they are but they don't even know I'm a neighbor yet, so I don't want them formulating a perfect micro plan to min-max their border grab quite yet. (Of course there's a strong possibility they've seen my tile bleed too.)
Here are demos from turn 21:
I'm just showing off because this is likely to be the only point in the game when I'm #1 in food. My victory celebration was helped a lot by being one of the first to play the turn, when none of the other civilizations have allocated their new tile yet.
![[Image: 0-map.JPG?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3m1ob6uywit91nj/0-map.JPG?raw=1)
![[Image: 16-map.JPG?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3w1sik7mnjuvu4/16-map.JPG?raw=1)
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![[Image: 20-map.JPG?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/bhteb62z1wda8g5/20-map.JPG?raw=1)
![[Image: 21-demos.JPG?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh5ct1b43p60mud/21-demos.JPG?raw=1)