[SPOILER] - Suboptimal finds trees, still seeks forest

[suboptimal]

I was also looking at SIP. Barring a luxury in the eastern fog the turtles would be picked first and the pearls second. If there's a luxury in the fog it would be picked before either of those. If it's a bonus resource it would get picked third. Note that there's also a different river in the fog 1E 1SE of the settler -- the northern part of that river segment appears to be a source lake.

Running some initial micro it looks like slinger -> settler could be done in 17 turns, slinger -> slinger -> settler in 20, perhaps a little quicker if we work the 1/3 tile instead of the 2/2 tile with the third pop. Unboosted Craftsmanship would be completed around EoT 33 in either case.

I don't have time for a deeper micro look right now. I'll be able to take a look at it in a few hours or tomorrow morning.

As for the warrior I think it should go southeast and start to sweep south for either tundra or city-states. The settler will clear the eastern fog when the capital is settled.

Addendum

In looking at possible builds and assuming no culture-generating luxury resources in the second ring fog I think getting the Craftsmanship boost is worth it, not so much for the fact that it gets us a third warrior via Agoge but because the added yields from the tile improvements (camp, 2 farms, one not worked) get us population a little faster along with a bit more gold income.

Slinger x 2 -> Settler -> Archer -> Archer -> Warrior completes Craftsmanship around EoT33 and gets us 2 warriors and 4 archers (after upgrades) by EoT 36.
Slinger -> Settler -> Slinger -> Archer -> Archer -> Warrior completes Craftsmanship perhaps a turn or two earlier from the second city's additional couple of turns culture by EoT 36.
Slinger -> Settler -> Builder can complete Craftsmanship around T28/29 and gives us the option to get out two warriors (instead of one) in addition to two archers by EoT35/36.

The city works the rice first, deer second, GFH third and PFH fourth.

The builder would go camp -> farm -> farm to get us 1 2 per turn yield over the unimproved tiles. That extra food gets the capital to Pop 5 four turns earlier (~EoT36 instead of EoT40) and gets us working the turtles earlier. That's an added 6 and 30 over not getting a builder out during the first 40 turns. Likewise if we get the Archery boost we could skip the second warrior and have four archers out a few turns earlier.

The warrior can sweep the southern area while the first slinger heads east/northeast for a bit. The warrior should be used for escort duty unless the slinger hasn't located anything to use for the archery eureka.

[suboptimal]

Turn 1 – You Say Pítati, I Say Potato

Now batting fifth in the order, Suboptimal. First thing to do is see what my opponents are up to. Alhambram and Kaiser have settled, Archduke and TBS have not. Furthermore neither of the settled opponents did so near a flood plain or adverse terrain that would earn them an era point. That all makes for easy score tracking.

As discussed in the thread I intend to settle in place and start working the rice. Before I do so, though, I check the settler lens. It confirms that the tile 1E 1SE of the settler is on fresh water and also shows that the two tiles initially visible in the fog to the east are not on fresh water. There are no floodplains or low coastal tiles in our immediate area. Fresh water check done I settle Mashed, work the rice and start a slinger. We earn an era point for The governor AI initially put the citizen on the deer tile, presumably because that’s the higher yield. However, that would slow down population growth and I want population growth. On the rice the city grows in 4 turns and finishes the slinger in 8 (well, 6 after pop growth); on the deer it grows in 7 and builds the slinger in 4.

Settling revealed a plains hill and grassland stone in the fog, a grassland hill forest 2NE and a desert floodplain and desert hill to the south. The presence of stone is good – instead of putting down a grassland farm to the west of the city center I can cross the river and go farm → camp → quarry in 5 turns.

Warrior moves SE and reveals our first “score” of the map – diamonds on a desert hill along a river:




It’s third ring to the capital but if the area south/southeast of there pans out for a settlement that might be our generator.

Micro note: the slinger will be out two turns after pop growth (EoT6) if we work the rice the first four turns. Swapping to the deer on Turn 3 will delay pop growth a turn and perhaps a turn down the line (to pop 4 at T24/25) but get the slinger out in 5. I don't know that the earlier build is worth the effort.

[Banzailizard]

The presence of stone is good – instead of putting down a grassland farm to the west of the city center I can cross the river and go farm → camp → quarry in 5 turns.  

Is that realistic though?  Basically will the tile be owned by the capital when you have the builder ready to go?  I think the picker will grab the turtles as the highest value 2nd ring title, then it would be down between the pearls and the stone.  That is unless the tile picker takes into consideration your lack of sailing tech. 

If you intend to spend money on the tile where does that leave you for your main objective of a rush.  You need gold to upgrade units after all.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Feel free to cheerfully ignore all my micro advice, as we all know it's not a strength of mine. 

Let me just think out loud here:

- Do we even want to quarry the stone at all? I guess it will boost Masonry and Craftsmanship, so that's, let's see...32 beakers and 16 culture, in return for 1/3 of a worker. Except the worker won't come out before Craftsmanship anyway so we lose the 16 culture. Doing it in order to work the tile doesn't really seem worth the builder charge, since you could work the 2/2 hill for the same yield for free. Nubia's ability only applies to mines, correct, not quarries? I'd say harvest the stone into something good - like a shitton of archers - except overflow is busted and we'll lose a LOT of production that way. Better to chop it into the Ancestral Plaza or something instead down the line. And if we DON'T improve the stone, what do we improve? That's a tough one, since no other improvements seem that good - mines just give us yields equal to the PFHs, we DO need fishing boats down the line but we don't want to work the turtles yet...Hell, I guess quarry for the eureka makes the most sense. 

- If I had to guess, I bet that we'll find tundra to the north. Generally grassland north of desert means we're above the jungle belt = northern hemisphere. Too soon to tell, but the presence of deep ocean to the west also suggests we're either on a large inland sea OR on the northwestern edge of our continent. It'd be good to nail that down quick - if we're NW, then we want to scout east and south first. If we're on an inland sea, then we want to scout west and north to find neighbors! 

- I get that we need a slinger out quickly for archers, but I just don't trust slingers for barb-busting. I usually like warrior first. 

- with this start, settler before builder for certain. 

- Gonna go reread Cornflakes' PBEM11 report again. He had really strong micro in that game and I think made it easy for me to grasp.

[suboptimal]

The presence of stone is good – instead of putting down a grassland farm to the west of the city center I can cross the river and go farm → camp → quarry in 5 turns.

Is that realistic though? Basically will the tile be owned by the capital when you have the builder ready to go? I think the picker will grab the turtles as the highest value 2nd ring title, then it would be down between the pearls and the stone. That is unless the tile picker takes into consideration your lack of sailing tech.

And this is why I don't like early morning turns that are complicated or playing when I haven't gotten enough sleep (had friends over for a late night on Saturday). I miss simple things like the stone not being claimed by the city in time. The rush is key; no money will be spent on tile purchases or anything else until 160 is secured for slinger upgrades.

As for the tile picker the pearls will get picked before the stone. The picker "should" prioritize land tiles over coast tiles but the score adjustment for luxuries is higher than the score adjustment for coast vs land. It should go turtles -> pearls -> stone and then flip-flop between the GFH to the northeast and the PFH to the southeast.

Let me just think out loud here:

- Do we even want to quarry the stone at all? I guess it will boost Masonry and Craftsmanship, so that's, let's see...32 beakers and 16 culture, in return for 1/3 of a worker. Except the worker won't come out before Craftsmanship anyway so we lose the 16 culture. Doing it in order to work the tile doesn't really seem worth the builder charge, since you could work the 2/2 hill for the same yield for free. Nubia's ability only applies to mines, correct, not quarries? I'd say harvest the stone into something good - like a shitton of archers - except overflow is busted and we'll lose a LOT of production that way. Better to chop it into the Ancestral Plaza or something instead down the line. And if we DON'T improve the stone, what do we improve? That's a tough one, since no other improvements seem that good - mines just give us yields equal to the PFHs, we DO need fishing boats down the line but we don't want to work the turtles yet...Hell, I guess quarry for the eureka makes the most sense.

I ran some micro with getting Craftsmanship the hard way vs. getting it with a builder boost. It's in Post #31 but Ileft out turn timings (and added in a warrior). Here's the rundown/recap:

Slinger (EoT 6) -> Settler (EoT 17) -> Builder (EoT 22) -> Warrior (EoT 26) -> Archer (EoT 30) -> Archer (EoT 33) -> Archer (EoT 36)
Builder camps on T24, farms rice on T26 and farms grassland on T28. Craftsmanship completes either mid- or EoT 28 depending on how we micro civics
The camp on the deer starts generating 2 per turn additional income for unit maintenance. The extra food from the rice gets us to pop 5 four turns earlier which gets us working the turtles that much quicker.

Slinger (EoT 6) -> Settler (EoT 17) -> Slinger (EoT 20) -> Warrior (partial build) -> Archer (EoT 28) -> Archer (EoT 33) -> Warrior (EoT 34) -> Builder (EoT 39)
Craftsmanship hard-completes EoT33

Slinger (EoT 6) -> Slinger (EoT 10) -> Settler (EoT 20) -> Warrior (EoT 25) -> Archer (EoT 29) -> Archer (EoT 33) -> Builder (EoT 37)
Craftsmanship hard-completes EoT33

In all three scenarios Archery hard-completes EoT 24. In the first scenario we have the gold to upgrade two slingers on T29, otherwise it's T31. I also have not attempted to count or yields from a second city plant but a "good" spot will speed up both Craftsmanship and Archery by a turn, maybe two. I have noticed in practice games that hard-researching Craftsmanship results in Political Philosophy getting pushed out to the mid/late 60's, especially if we don't get the Foreign Trade boost.

With the current build we have until the start Turn 7 to decide which route we want to take. Having two slingers out first gets more fog cleared so dotmapping is a bit better; it also increases the likelihood of getting the Archery eureka. Not getting the builder out slows some things down a little bit (pop 5 by 4 turns, miss 30 additional income) but has the initial army ready three turns earlier.

The stone can be harvested, we just need to remember that resource harvests have been nerfed and they're no different that forests now.

- If I had to guess, I bet that we'll find tundra to the north. Generally grassland north of desert means we're above the jungle belt = northern hemisphere. Too soon to tell, but the presence of deep ocean to the west also suggests we're either on a large inland sea OR on the northwestern edge of our continent. It'd be good to nail that down quick - if we're NW, then we want to scout east and south first. If we're on an inland sea, then we want to scout west and north to find neighbors!

We're playing continents so we're likely on the western edge of the land mass that we're on. The presence of cliffs to the north indicate that we are on some sort of peninsula. The warrior is headed south along the river, the initial slinger will go east and then loop north or south as things develop.

- I get that we need a slinger out quickly for archers, but I just don't trust slingers for barb-busting. I usually like warrior first.

The production bonus for ranged units gets a slinger out in about half the time as a warrior and 2/3 the time as a scout. I usually prefer warrior first but in this case a slinger or two now is an archer or two thirty turns from now.

I've actually learned a thing or two about the AI's prioritization. "Everyone" knows that the AI targets ranged before melee. What's "interesting" is that the camp-defending spearman will break fortification to chase a slinger. The spearman will also retreat back to the camp and not attack if redlined (under 30hp IIRC). With some care I've found Nubian slingers to be effective due to the XP bonus. With Discipline slotted you can use terrain to arrange a first strike on the spearman by the slinger. The slinger gets attacked but the second attack redlines the spear and it heads for home. The slinger can promote-heal and give chase, kill the spear for the archery eureka and clear the camp.

Usually.

- with this start, settler before builder for certain.

- Gonna go reread Cornflakes' PBEM11 report again. He had really strong micro in that game and I think made it easy for me to grasp.

Yeah, there were a few tidbits there worth picking up, though don't forget that PBEM 11 was before the change to production overflow.

Turn 2

Found another set of diamonds and some more floodplains.




I'm thinking to move to the northern diamonds to open up the view to the SW and across the river, then decide whether to head SW across the flats or continue S in the hills (empty desert hill being the next likely move in that case).

Everyone is now settled except pindicator. Archduke settled in a location that netted him an era point.

[suboptimal]

Turn 3

Open the save to a barbarian scout standing on the southern diamonds. That means there may be an Archery eureka in this direction. Move to the diamond hill to see what’s around. One can see two entire hexes in all directions with weather and terrain like this...




The wine and bananas make this area quite a bit interesting. The bananas down here also confirm CMF's supposition about being north of the equator. The wine is not fresh water, nor is anything west of the bare desert hill and bananas. Fog gazing indicates that the tile SW of the bananas is grassland. Settlervision reveals only a curiosity, but one that might be useful later - the floodplain directly between the bananas and wine is not one that floods. The other three floodplains are subject to flooding. My initial thinking might be for a city plant on the desert hill between the diamond and the bananas with an eye towards the plantation culture pantheon, a run for irrigation and an eventual Commercial Hub on the non-flooding floodplain.

I did some looking around to see if I could figure out anything about the land in the fog using Appeal. It turns out it's possible to guess quite a bit. Here are my guesses/suppositions, with numbers in () indicating the tile's appeal and the appeal that's visible. I'll be curious to see how accurate these pan out to be

- The tile NE of the stone (5, 4 visible) is a forest
- That GFH NW of the stone (3, 2 visible, one inferred above) has open land to its NE
- The GFH E of the stone (4, 1 visible) has forests (or a mountain) on all three tiles in the fog
- The PFH 3E of the capital (3, 1 visible) has forest NE and either E or SE with SW and one other edge being open
- The tiles in the fog east of the wine (0, -3 visible) are all forest as a mountaintop would be visible
- There's probably a jungle in the fog SW of the bananas (-1, net 0 visible), because
- The desert W of the bananas (-3, -1 visible) is north of two jungles
- The other deserts are a bit harder to figure out - from W of turtles to SW of southern diamonds they have appeals of 4, 1, -1 and -1. The SW-most one probably has jungle SE based on the prior point.
- The NE-most floodplain (2) has forest NE of it
- The non-flooding floodplain (2) has forests E and SE of it
- The desert W of the turtles has a forest to its W (SW is empty as the desert to the SE has an appeal of 1 from the turtles hex)

I think moving the warrior to the desert hill next is the right move as that should reveal a few tiles to the SW and at least a few more across the river. We could then make a decision as to whether we continue to follow the river or turn the warrior west. Also up for discussion is if we want one slinger or two before we get a settler out - that decision is one to be made for Turn 7.

In other news, Pindicator has settled, but nowhere that earns him an era point in the process. No other score changes at present.

[CFCJesterFool]

I would get the settler out asap. You can always have the new city work on a second slinger. Imo, I think a builder or a scout is a better build for Mashed after the initial settler.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The jungle belt basically confirms that we're northern hemisphere, and thus, almost certainly on the NW end of a continent. If I had to guess, then, our neighbors are most likely S and E of us, with city-states lying in between. Woden may have given each player some backline city states, too, but I think it's less pressing to scout in those directions - ie north and west. So, my vote is that the warrior press on south. 

I'd also like to reveal all the tiles around the wine and bananas. While I think the desert hill site isn't bad - 2 diamond mines and bananas first ring, very nice - I wonder how it compares to settling across the river, between the wine and bananas. 

Cons: It pushes the diamonds second ring. 
Unknown tiles to the east and south.

- This seems manageable because the tile picker will certainly prioritize those diamonds, and we don't want to work them right away anyway (no food and little production until improved, yikes). 

Pros: It makes both bananas and wines first ring. 
These seem like the two tiles we most want to work with our starting pops, and so settling with wines in the first ring gets the city up just a little bit faster.
- However, we need to grow to size 2 anyway before we can work both, and the time it takes will probably have the tile picker get very close to choosing the wines anyway. 
- Gives up a flat desert tile that's perfect for a Nubian pyramid, letting this city build districts VERY quickly. 

Honestly I think both sites have merit, and I'd like to see the rest of the tiles nearby. And, of course, there could be a glittering fertile river valley to our east that we haven't scouted yet, so it's always a little silly to make settling decisions on turn 3. 

Speaking of, I'd go settler before slinger #2. A new city with Nubia's production bonus can kick out a slinger very quickly, so we'll soon catch up on that front, and I like getting out as rapidly as possible. After the settler, I'd favor either a builder (if we go for diamonds, might even be worth to spend only 1 charge on the rice and use the other 2 for extremely lucrative diamond mines - +10 gold from those two tiles once improved, if we can feed them!) or a warrior over another scout/slinger (warrior is a bit better at barb whacking, and we'll need at least a handful of melee units to bring down walls).

[suboptimal]

Settling on the desert hill would make the wine the first tile picked. However, without culture that would be a long time coming (17-18 turns). Settling between means that the diamonds are 1st and 2nd picked while the city works the bananas and the wines (and builds an archer in 9 turns). We'll see some tiles east of the river next turn

Regarding the build order I think settler -> builder with improvements at the capital is the way to go. Warrior before slinger would work, though it would become warrior -> archer given archery's estimated completion time. In this case I also wouldn't hold the tech to get a slinger out - that frees up 80 for something else. Doing this and building an archer in City #2 gets us 5 archers and two warriors on the ground by Turn 34 since City #2's slinger start becomes an archer midway through. Jester, I don't think a scout build is warranted - the archers move as fast as scouts and are more effective if they get into trouble (and can clear barbarian camps if needed).

[suboptimal]

Turn 4

Warrior moves to desert hill, gets a view of everything around except for the hex SE of the bananas.




Holy crap that area is fertile. Irrigation would be a priority down here, as would Goddess of Festivals. Both the newly revealed bananas and the jungle hill to the west are shown as fresh water; also note the cliffs on the SE edge of the jungle hill. The second wine tile is not on fresh water. Also note that the river turns east one hex past the bananas. I think the warrior’s next move is to the riverside bananas.