Rusten and Hitru turn back the clock

[Rusten]

I think it's silly to not run this as a sequential PB instead of a pbem, but old habits die hard with these guys. I guess they've not been around much to see all the new features and how many problems are solved easily with the new hosting. Zulan/Ramkh hosting is incomparable to the pitbosses I played in 2008-2010.

[Charriu]

That's why we should donate a little bit to them.

[Rusten]

Agreed. Even if I'm not using their service now I have in the past. Thought I'd chip in at least 20 euros or a full month's coverage after seeing Ramk's recent post about it.

[Rusten]

Here's an updated starting area:




So far the decision to pick Aztec looks to be a good one as there's already several new food resources discovered (even if weaker ones). Whipping will be good later on. Also happy that some of our cities are likely to be connected to the capital either by coast or by river both to the NW and to the east -- that will save us a lot of worker turns which allows for some more IMP settlers. This is going to be a very quick start. I should mention that the eastern tiles are fresh water, so that's a freshwater lake in the fog.

Going polytheism before wheel is an interesting proposition, but it's too early to tell still.

[Rusten]

We've met our first neighbour. Maya. On turn 2.




At least it's not SD, but I'll always be wary of holkans early game. The good news is that we'll have graphs even before he finishes BW and that the player is Bob who also picked Hannibal to go with it. Don't think he'll want to blindly rush someone and that he rather picked it for the cheap UB.

As you can see we also found gold. We'll move onto the tile Bob's scout is on next turn for more information, but our initial read is that the 2nd source of gold is meant for Bob and we're not keen on making enemies right now. Hopefully a city of ours 1N of "our" gold will be acceptable to him. Leaving him the sheep, gold and river.

[Rusten]

T3: Torn on where to go with the scout next turn. Was originally intending to circle back after the hill, but it also makes sense to track down Bob the Builder*, those nearby hills intrigue me. More specifically the grassy hill surrounded by open flatland.




PoE naming scheme has been done recently by Pindi in PB46 and possibly NoGas is doing it this game so I decided to go about it a little differently. It will all be related to my starter build for the new league and I will provide clues along the way as new cities are settled. Lots of city names to come from that -- ascendancy, main skills, key items, key passive nodes, etc. As a result the capital is now renamed to "Inquisitor". Hopefully we make it to city 2 before the league is over.

*Wishful thinking, but I prefer this name to Bob the Hun.

[pindicator]

I only did expansion and league names in 46. Plenty of other naming lists to choose from in that game!

[Raskolnikov]

Mayan capitol 3 west of the mountain?

edit: and subscribed!

[Rusten]

Tracked down the Maya capital. It's 14 tiles out which is a lot of space. I've also marked what seems to be a reasonable compromise in settling based on current map information. If he settles towards us first then a city where our scout stands is more likely for food overlap and no tiles would overlap with ours.

edit: Looking at things again that gold is as close to us as to him, so it's not impossible we make a play for it. But right now the main plan is peaceful development. It can be seized later too.




Also got time for my first map rant of the game based on the screenshot below. Did you forget that jungle can spread to pig tiles, Pindicator? Because we're at risk of getting fucked over by the RNG here. If that jungle spreads to the pig we won't have our "dedicated nearby food" until after iron working. Seems an oversight to me. Either the food should be available or it should be covered, leaving it to chance is poor. Particularly annoying because that's likely our 2nd city -- sharing corn with capital and then improving the pigs.

[pindicator]

Also got time for my first map rant of the game based on the screenshot below. Did you forget that jungle can spread to pig tiles, Pindicator?

Mea culpa on that one.