TBS does a thread

[The Black Sword]

Thanks for the PM superdeath. Looking forward to the screenshot!

Now I need to find out what the mod did to these leaders ...

[superdeath]

[Charriu]

Now I need to find out what the mod did to these leaders ...

Just fire away with any questions.

[The Black Sword]

Really not liking my leader options. I think Phi/Spi/Ind are probably the top tier traits in this set up ... and in my 9 different leader options I hit precisely none of those.   I'll post my pick tonight/tomorrow morning, need a bit more time to mull over the options.

[The Black Sword]

Alright, we'll go for the synergy bait that is Mao of Carthage. Half priced Cothons that give buffed trade routes from Pro!

I have a feeling the Natives or Rome were actually the better civs, due to the starting techs, but I can take some bait every once in a while right? 

Of the traits I'm offered it seems like Exp is the strongest available. In terms of early buff traits, both Imp and to a lesser extent Cre are nerfed by this advanced start - they won't effect my 2nd city which is their biggest snowball factor. Fitting in Granaries seems a step too far for 500 points though so I think Exp will be at full power. 

If I want Exp, I'm stuck with Pro. I'm a little skeptical of this trade route bonus compared to Fin and Org. But maybe this is the map for it, since I'll probably have two cities with a trade route between them from turn 0? Also the advanced start will probably accelerate hammers more than beakers, another bonus to traits that give early beakers instead of later ones. It will be interesting to find out at least. The small map size leans away from all these traits to be honest, as mentioned I would have prefered some Phi/Spi/Ind options, but we'll make the best of it.

[sunrise089]

Thanks for making a thread, I hope you keep reporting on the game!

[The Black Sword]

I'll try.



So, this was the first thing I did. It seemed pretty clear that I'd want 1 city by the corn/fish and 1 by sheep/wheat. 

The border pop in Utica seemed better than buying visibility of the hill to the south to found on. I also wanted more visibility to hopefully find a good spot for a third city. In hindsight this border pop(costs 25 hammer/points) seems a bit weak, I won't have the tech for the sheep for ages. I can just hear Krill's ghost in retirement complaining about pastures at Animal Handling.

The Carthage location is suspect too, maybe it should have been on the other plains hill for an immediate trade route. I could have border popped and bought the fishing boats. But I didn't have full visibility, I certainly wasn't going to pay any points for it, and my fallback city 3 location was on the sugar.

I would have loved to put city 3 on one of those cows in the south but I wasn't allowed for some reason. Perhaps there's another civ in that direction.

After thinking things over for a while I just didn't feel I could justify spending the next 100 points on anything other than a settler. I could have gotten 3 unimproved pop points instead, which make 3hpt, or the sugar city which makes 5hpt and some money. I could have gotten The Wheel to accelerate towards cheaper granaries, but would that really be as good as 75 early game hammers/points? I had 175 points left for improvements after this 100, and while another 30 or so might have been worth spending on that, it would leave 70 points with poor options to choose from. So I put the 3rd city on the sugar and gambled there would be something useful in the fog ...



I lost that bet. 

My last points were spent on Agriculture(50) and 2 workers (120). Agri simply had to be bought to bring the farms online immediately, even if a direct 1h -> 1b ratio is terrible. 2 improvements vs that 2nd worker is an interesting dilemna, to give both of my main cities a strong start. The worker felt stronger to me, but I didn't realise that they take the first turn off so it was probably a closer trade than I realised.

Anyway, the whole thing leaves me feeling a bit unfulfilled. Hadru and Utica have a trade route, but it's not boosted by Pro until 5t from now when the capital's border pops and it comes onto the trade network. I wonder if I've ever settled a 3rd city as weak as Hadru.

With full visibility from the start I guess I would have put the capital inland on the 2nd plains hill, pushed Hadru 1 tile north for the resources, border popped it instead of Utica and bought 2 farms instead of the 2nd worker(since it would be hard to reach the Utica corn with a worker from the south cities). All cities would be on the same trade network getting 2g routes immediatey ...

We'll have to work with what we've got though. I set up some tentative micro but it needs to be refined a bit.


Originally Carthage would build it's own workboat and Hadru would start a worker. But I'm last in power in the demographics screen, it feel like some people might have bought a warrior or 2 and the map is pretty small, only 87 land tiles per player. So I did the responsible thing and got an earlier warrior from the cap. 

Btw, the last 5 points I didn't spend turned into 5g, that I think will result in me hitting BW 1t early.



Some wildly different openings here. Someone has a size 5 city, which feels like it has to be wrong to me. A lot of people have a size 2 cap, which I don't hate. Starting your cap with 2 resources improved and working might be better than a crap 3rd city.

[superdeath]

[sunrise089]

Thanks for the update.

I think the city planting limit is just based on tiles from your starting spot, as indicated by the gray shading.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, the gray shading tells you where you can settle but it seems inconsistent. The hill in the northeast is further away from my cap than the tile west of the marble in the south. 

Vague plan is to get out 2 settlers, revolt into slavery when they're moving then immediately whip/chop in granaries. My tech rate will collapse as I settle the 5th city though, so I'll have to see what I can do about that. I'm getting out 4 warriors in the meantime, which instinctively feels like a lot to me in an opening but I guess it's actually less than usual for your 5th city. Also we usually have an opening unit for scouting, we don't here. So we'll be way behind on scouting compared to a normal game. And with a tight map it might be more important. I probably shouldn't feel bad about extra units.