[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[Krill]

I've tried a variation where the capital sits at size 4. It isn't pretty. Worker eot11, mine grass hill, work boat eot18, fish hooked T20, worker 2 eot32, settler1 eot36 with 3 forests chopped. But this still allows BW>Fishing if we started with Mining and the work boat arrives when needed. This whole scenario is actually very easy on tech, everything can be researched when needed, we don't need to start with any specific tech. Work boat first is still better though.

I don't think we can push the settler out with a single worker present. Delaying 2 turns doesn't matter if we can use the second worker to speed food hook up (ie I feel a better metric is not time to first settler, but time to food tile improvement in the second city). This doesn't really matter for the purposes of choosing leader and civ though. We know Fishing/Mining has value, but we only need one of these, and starting without either still doesn't affect it. We just improve the rice before chopping the first forest, and we would still have worker 2 eot28, settler eot33 and both workers available to road together to either city location.

The real issue is that we can only build one warrior or scout and stick with these time frames.

[Krill]

Starting sim save and worldbuilderfile here and in second post.

[Krill]

So Inca and Mongolia...

Joey, I don't want us to pick Rome. I don't see us getting into a position to pull off any sort of rush, and I'm not sure I really see us getting massive value from Forum. I'm not sure I feel much of anything between Portugal, England or Carthage though.

Are there any other civs you think are going to be worth picking, because it's looking more and more that if we go leader first, we might get last choice of civs. Do we want that?

[Krill]

I'm going to run a Babylon sim. I hate myself for it, but workboat to worker might actually work to then get a chopped granary before the settler. If tech works.

[Krill]

...And tech doesn't work. Babylon doesn't work because there are too few hammers. But it turns out that the fastest start is to improve a bare plains hill first and go worker>garden>workboat, and reach size 2 eot25. Which reminds me of PB1, starting a worker, interrupting it for a work boat, and then finishing the worker.

TBS, can you please move one of those forests onto a plains hill? Pretty please? It's a bit cruel to give only 4 food food tiles and then a 5 food seafood but limited production. What's the going bribe right, anyway?

[Krill]

List for reference:

Fishing only:
America
Byzantium
Dutch
Greece
Japan
Spain
Vikings

Fishing and Mining:
Carthage
England
Portugal
Rome

Mining only:
China
Ethiopia
Germany
India
Khmer
Korea
Mali
Maya
Russia

Edit: actually, we probably want to start with two of Agriculture/Fishing/Mining. I don't think it is at the level of a need, but we can't fit BW in before we need Agriculture, so if we don't start with two of those techs we have to get both start techs before we go to BW.

[Krill]

Shall we risk England?

[Krill]

Purely subjective now: the start is a shitshow. It has no good shareable food tiles this side of Sailing and a galley, the third tile is junk until CS, and we haemorrhage hammers to get it up and running.

I think we leave open a play for the GLH, not that we can afford it, and commit to FIN and just hoping we don't get rushed.

[GermanJoey]

You're posting too fast, hold on!

[GermanJoey]

Ah, I knew Variation 3 seemed too good to be true. Well, drat. If only we could pick a civ that starts with Agriculture, Fishing, AND Mining!

An early granary for this start does seem like a decent idea, especially if we have a Cha leader. There's really only two valuable tiles to work for this start, and therefore we'll want to do a lot of whipping. The fact that our settler will overflow quite a lot of hammers on completion is another good granary indicator. Without a Pro leader though, we'll probably want to budget a second forest chop to complete it in a timely manner.

I think we can get away with only a single worker for our settler for the same reason the granary is a good idea - all of our capital's tiles suck and therefore don't need worker attention.