[spoilers] - pindicator is excited for the next Realms Beyond league mechanics

[pindicator]

032

Going by the blue dots, the game thinks I should have settled Pig first ring. I don't blame them; that may be the better spot if I wasn't so worried about the 2gpt expenses from this city hampering my tech rate. I do agree with the blue dots on where my 3rd city should go, however. Anyway, we'll leave that a mystery for now

Going by PBSPY we are the 7th civ to get our second city down, right in the middle of the pack. Considering this is the farthest I have ever gone with a 2nd city in a pitboss game here, I'm pretty happy with that placement. I'm also really concerned about what that says about the variance in starting positions. But I have to remind myself that these games aren't won and lost by how fast you get a 2nd city out.

With that said: Onslaught




Worker finishes from the capital at end of turn, so we'll have a road connection and trade routes in 2 turns.

I haven't settled on exactly what I am building next in either city yet. I really like pumping some settlers here while there aren't any neighbors. But I think I need to get 1 more warrior out of the capital first. Just to be a little safe. Barbarians start showing after turn 40 and I don't want to throw things away by riding too close to the line here. So I think it's going to be a warrior, followed by a settler that is aided with a chop and a whip, followed by a work boat (for the Clams or for exploring?) and then another settler. One of those settlers is likely going to claim the fish north of the capital, just to get a cheap city down that works fish and makes it so I don't have to worry about barbarians in the peninsula. Another will go stake out more land to the east. But if copper shows somewhere juicy I might reconsider.

Finally, I don't know what Onslaught is doing yet either. I have some work to do this weekend.

[Miguelito]

I would think the peninsula is fogbusted already? Been a while, but afair barbs can't spawn on fogged tiles if you can see an adjacent tile?

[pindicator]

Barbs can't spawn within 2 tiles of a unit even if you don't have sight on those tiles.

There's 1 tile east of the peak on the peninsula and I really have had bad luck with barbarians in these multiplayer games

But even if not that tile, I could use another warrior for fogbusting to the east.

[pindicator]

034

I had a notion to go for a religion right after Bronze Working, but thankfully someone landed Hinduism before I could make the attempt.

EDIT: Both Rusten (India) and BeardBeard (HRE) finished techs last turn. Could be either. Give a slight nod to BeardBeard since Rusten is SPI and I'd expect him to take Meditation to get the temple up. Although .... shouldn't they both want a temple?




I could go for Meditation, but I have a feeling this is going to spur some other people into trying to land their own religion. What it does for me is now I will now have to get culture at Onslaught by a monument. I won't quite be ready for granaries since a lot of my early cities are going to want to whip out a monument first. Sailing is also very tempting because I clearly have ICTRs available to my south. But I think Sailing still wants to wait a little bit as well: I can't imagine ICTRs really being worth settling for their own sake until city 4 at the earliest. Maybe Animal Husbandry is the correct choice to reveal more bonus resource tiles.

[pindicator]

Forgot to upload a pic, but Bronze Working just came in and I have 2 sources of copper. 1 is near the capital, NE of the cows. The other is to the south, at the Fish/Stone/Pig location.

Before this turn I was leaning strongly towards settling the Fish/Wheat/Sheep up north next and then the spot near the copper shortly after. Now I need to decide if the copper changes that order. It just might

[pindicator]

Copper definitely worth settling next- that production is too valuable right now. We would need to mine the copper and then the city really can be left to its own to get everything else it needs and then some. The downside is the copper comes hooked up - so unless I want to sever trade routes and sabotage my own commerce I'm going to have to make do with 2 warriors. At least copper city will have the production to get us an axe if I go for it early.

I'm still thinking that 2 settlers in succession out of the capital is the plan. Copper as mentioned above and then Fish/Sheep/Wheat up north is both valuable and close. After that a pause to get granaries up and then the next wave of settlers pushes south: pig/stone/fish/copper is the big prize but far, so the cow/wheat in the center of the landmass will be first, and also it leads to the gems in the east. Finally I expect my offshore city comes around this time. If I can get granaries down by mid 50s, hopefully we get these cities down by t75. I'll try to post a dotmap soon. Ideally we have a library and start running specialists around then too.

The last thing to consider is tech. The only thing I really need now is Pottery, and I don't need to go for it right away because I'll be busy with settlers in the very near term. I'll want Writing, Sailing, AH, and Masonry, but none of those are needed immediately. So I'm starting to think about pushing for religion again. I can get Meditation and then Pottery only comes 1 turn after I would ideally want it by. That means if I get beat to Meditation then I don't really lose time to Pottery after all. So I'm strongly considering that. But maybe sticking with the bulb plan for religion is prudent: I'm already getting monuments for culture in cities 2 & 3. It would be nice to use libraries after that, since they aren't that much more expensive. And even though I didn't say I wanted any one tech right away, there's a lot of them that I want eventually.

[pindicator]

036

Bronze Working is in. Behold: copper!




I really don't want to share food at the capital and end up with 2 mediocre-growth cities, so instead I'm going to settle my next city on the plains forest and improve the copper. City 3 then just works the copper getting lots of wonderful production: first for a monument and then whatever else I need: work boats, workers, axes, maybe galleys down the line. I don't expect to build a fast granary in city 3 because I don't think we're going to do much growing here until after Sailing and I decide to make a lighthouse.

Both my workers start chopping this turn. The capital worker is chopping into a settler, which I normally don't like doing but I really want to get mines on those hills at the capital. And now with the copper showing nearby we obviously need to mine that as soon as city #3 goes down. When I was set on city #3 going up north to the fish, the worker at Onslaught was going to chop out a work boat for the new city to work improved fish right away. I'm actually thinking about still chopping out the work boat, and instead just scouting with it. But another idea would be to chop out a 3rd warrior before the copper gets hooked up. I guess I could not chop anything until Pottery comes in, but then the worker starts running into problems of not having anything to actually do. I'm kind of leaning towards the work boat though: lets get some exploration in and see where the neighbors are.




To the east there's more food and more good locations being uncovered. That plains hill south of the sheep is looking like it could be a good spot for a city. Hopefully our scout survives against that bear; that would get us to 5 hp and able to cover more terrain before the barbarians start spawning.




2nd copper to the south. There are really only 3 good spots to the south and then everything after that is filler.

[pindicator]

039

Whipping out a monument in Onslaught




Work boat is going to scout north. My scout is starting to head that way, but I think there's a branch to the east and I'll maybe backtrack that way instead. Next turn we whip out the settler for city 3.

Don't mind the worker. There's a dearth of things that need doing right now, so we're going to set some roads down for the eventual city that's going to happen by the Fish.

[pindicator]

040

Well, this is a dangerous neighbor. (EDIT: OH borders bleed through in the fog.)




I don't think I've had the privilege of neighboring Old Harry early on before. Him and FinTourist did ravage what was left of my civ in PB18, if i recall, and he is always one of the strongest finishers in these games.




And OH has found my core at about the same time.

Settler whipped for the copper. Still going for a technology I don't expect to finish.

[pindicator]

Turn 041

This is an interesting layout.  If I didn't know the setup was Big & Small I might have thought it intentionally done:




Both OH and I started on peninsulas connecting to a larger landmass.  From what I can see he doesn't have a great view of the mainland so perhaps he didn't think to rush into it quite as fast.  Also, from what I've seen in the north it's a lot more snaky smaller peninsulas, so maybe OH didn't get as good an impression as I did to the good cities that are to my east and his south.  However he's been scouting there now and at least has seen the gems and the wine; perhaps the stone even.

EDIT: He also just settled his 3rd city so he clearly has access to more land beyond that I cannot see

My goal now is to try to box him out.  Well, it is impossible to actually box him out.  But if I can get a central position on the continent then every city he will settle will be more difficult to defend.  So after settling my planned cities on the Copper/Fish and then the Fish/Sheep/Wheat, I will want to get the Sheep/floodplains spot to the east, which should suit me well.

I've been forgetting to check but we do have graphs now:










City #3 gets settled next turn