[Spoilers] Suboptimal - Welcome to the Tlachtli of Blunders!

[suboptimal]

Turn 3

One bookkeeping item I didn’t look at last turn and reloaded the save to check – everyone else.  Everyone but Japper settled on Turn 1.  As of Turn 2 Japper has also settled.  

The city-state didn’t do me any favors by moving north to meet me during the interturn.  I move SE then SW, revealing Preslav on the coast:



Their quest is the inspiration for Foreign Trade.  One warrior is garrisoned in the city, no sign of the other one.  The city graphics also show they are building a monument. By my count that will complete around Turn 20.  The +2 bonus shows up in the GUI (after twiddling the buttons in the city panel) and the first Eagle Warrior updates to show completion in 8 turns.  My moves complete I hit Next Turn and put Turn 3 in the books.

The coastal location and the poor yields of the first ring tiles have me thinking that I’ll leave this one alone for the time being and perhaps take it later on.  A city-state that I can locate elsewhere will probably have better yields and be more productive and useful with less improvement on my part.  I think the best use this city-state will have will be as a Builder generator.  I can park a couple of Eagle Warriors down here and farm Builders out of it – it won’t be building swordsmen as it has no valid spots for iron (no hills) so I should be able to do that for quite a while.  I’ll use the bonus until I get a fourth Eagle Warrior out and then declare war on it.

[suboptimal]

In further testing I tried the double Encampment start that we’ve been discussing here and hit a bit of a speedbump….check out the following two screenshots from a specific test of this situation:




The Builder on the Campus can put a charge into it but the Builder on the Encampment cannot.  None of them can put a charge into the Encampment. What the heck?  I’ve not been able to find anything on the interwebs as it relates to this.  Can a lurker confirm this, either by providing a web pointer or running a quick game to see if they get the same thing happening or if it’s something with my particular installation? Nevermind -- looks like it's legit. I usually didn't do a 2x Encampment start in the test games. New test games, even after a full reinstall, do not allow Encampments to be charged.

[TheArchduke]

The coastal location and the poor yields of the first ring tiles have me thinking that I’ll leave this one alone for the time being and perhaps take it later on.  A city-state that I can locate elsewhere will probably have better yields and be more productive and useful with less improvement on my part.  I think the best use this city-state will have will be as a Builder generator.  I can park a couple of Eagle Warriors down here and farm Builders out of it – it won’t be building swordsmen as it has no valid spots for iron (no hills) so I should be able to do that for quite a while.  I’ll use the bonus until I get a fourth Eagle Warrior out and then declare war on it.

Yeah, a good secondary target and training/builder farming facility if there ever was one. If we can find another CS in 7-8 we are good, else, kill Preslav anyway.

But there is no better CS for the EW strategy then a military one you do not want to keep around. Nowadays only Kabul is worth it.

[suboptimal]

Turn 4

Open the save, both of Preslav’s warriors have made their presence known – one has come out of the city to the plains just NE of the city center, the other has emerged from the western fog is is on the grassland forested hill just west of the floodplains wheat.  Eagle Warrior moves NE-NE to the northern wheat and will enter the jungle belt next turn.  I’ve decided that the Eagle Warrior being built will head north to the river up by the sheep and see what’s there.  

In something that I do not understand, the tile picker is going for the southeastern wheat instead of one of the 2nd ring stone tiles.  I don’t know why this is as both of those tiles, at 4 total yields, should go first.  The only possibility is that the tile picker takes into consideration total yield availability.  I checked my EoT saves for Turns 2 and 3 – Turn 2 was picking the southern stone, Turn 3 was picking the NW stone.  

[pindicator]

Maybe they secretly changed the code at some point? I know I have not experienced results with the tile picker that would line up with what you posted in pbem6

[suboptimal]

Turn 5

Looks like we got a two-turn day in today….not going to be an eventful one, I think. Too early for that. Open the save. No sign of barbarians and no one has gained in population yet, so no one is working a 4 tile. I have a simple choice with the Eagle Warrior – NW to stay along the river or NE to parallel it. I go NW, revealing a forest tile. Next turn I’ll move onto the forest hill tile to the NE and see what’s around.

Some or all of us are using CQUI. However, I’ve noticed that the CQUI interface gives you a bit more early game information than would otherwise be available. Specifically the civ score banners in the upper right as compared to the information available in the world rankings displays. The world rankings do not provide numeric values for any of the rankings until you’ve met someone. CQUI, however, identifies the player and shows their military power and science rates. Because of this I can tell from CQUI that rho21 has met a scientific city-state due to a 5 rate, while the World Rankings display just shows him in first place.

I am going to suggest that for future PBEMs that want to use CQUI it may be good policy to have its use be all or nothing. I haven’t explored enough to see what other info is displayed by CQUI, particularly as it relates to opponents, vs. the base GUI.

[suboptimal]

Maybe they secretly changed the code at some point? I know I have not experienced results with the tile picker that would line up with what you posted in pbem6

It's possible that they did -- all of my tile picker work in PBEM 6 was based off a deep dive into the Civ 5 source code for the tile pickers.  We are typically seeing "correct" behavior based on that code but with several exceptions - the wheat tile being among the picks here, a couple of coastal tiles getting picked in one of the Archduke v Cornflakes duels and your own apparent experiences.  I have to assume, at a minimum, that there have been changes made for fresh water and potentially non food/production/gold yields.  Without exhaustive in-game testing, a code release or attempts at execution tracing the core game dlls we just won't know.  And that's good for the majority of the game's community outside of RB, CFC and the reddit so there's no rush there.

Do you have any examples you could post for a look see? 

For what it's worth, the tile picker is now back to the NW stone.  So long as I get both of the stone tiles before the wheat I'll be a happy Aztec camper.

[suboptimal]

Turn 6

Let’s see if anyone was working a 3 tile to start….nope...everyone is still at an empire score of 6 and at 1 population. Looks like we’re all in about the same (lack of) food boat. It remains quiet around the capital with no signs of barbarian scouts. I move the Eagle Warrior NE onto the forested hill and….



End of the river and a barbarian scout in the desert, along with a plains incense. Nothing visible to the north or west is fresh water or coastal. I think my next move here is to go across the river NW into the open plains. That will give me the option of going W or NE depending on what the fog and Settlervision reveal. I am curious to know what’s west of here, mainly to see how much room I have between me and the coast. I also don't want to inadvertantly miss a city-state in that direction...the built Eagle Warrior is going to defog the desert and parts north so heading west a turn might be worthwhile. There’s also a river on the western edge of that gypsum that heads back into the fog in this direction.

The tile picker has moved back to the SE wheat. Begin the Begin will culturally expand in three turns – if it grabs the wheat I will most likely buy one of the stone tiles at 50 in order to have a 2/2 tile to work. The southern stone would give me a little bit of fog visibility for any tundra barbarians that are out there.

[suboptimal]

One concern is now put to bed, as it were. It turns out I didn't fully understand how Aztec builders charge districts.

In a game tonight I accidentally learned that in order for an Aztec builder to apply a charge to a district the city must have that district selected as the current build. Of course, one can put the district in as the active build, spend the charge then change the build back to whatever was in the queue.

[suboptimal]

Turn 7

The barb scout has moved to the stone and is displaying on the Exclamation Point of Sighting.  This is fine, my past experience with barbarians under my intended strategy is that they show up and stand around while getting pelted by a slinger.  That’s a bit of a ways off, though.

Eagle Warrior crosses the river to the open plains, revealing some grassland to the north and additional open terrain to the west. Settlervision shows that it’s all lacking water and there are no cities present; yields don’t show any natural wonders in the fog.  The grassland, combined with the jungle just south of here, indicates that I’ve nearly reached the equator of this map.  If there’s a city-state in the area I should be upon it in the next few turns.  



The question for next turn will be whether I head west or head northeast. I think the best move here might be to move 1 tile west, see what’s revealed in terms of tiles and on Settlervision, then move the second tile NW or W depending on what I see.  

In foreign news it looks like RFS-81 has picked up a population as his empire score and science rates have both gone up accoding to CQUI.