Assorted thoughts five turns in...
The Map
Well, the map is clearly not the map we wished for. Noble often likes to chide me about lack of clarity when I do things like create new games which result in me looking for a game of similar skilled players and ending up against mackoti, Seven, novice and Serdoa.
Here though, Noble thought he was pretty clear when discussing his desires for the map but our definition of 2.5 rings to conflict and pindicator's obviously are quite different. What we've seen thus far looks pretty lush and quite tight. I didn't think we'd be getting to Act 10 on our city list - now I'll be surprised if we get to the end of Part I with naturally settled cities. That's ok, as long as its the same for everyone, which we can presume it is, but it isn't what we thought we were getting.
Beyond that, rampant speculation suggests that we probably have a neighbor in the south. I might guess maybe southwesterly, as to sort of border both us and Superdeath. We're going to try and get quick eyes on SDs capital and then try and meet some more foes to hopefully pick up a beaker or two from known tech bonus.
Otherwise, not a lot to say until BW and AH come in. We're betting that either the tile NW or 3N of the cap has our copper in it, given the likelihood that it is close and the way the forests have grown around those tiles.
Neighbors
Superdeath is literally the worst neighbor to choose. Generally speaking, it is favorable to neighbor the weakest player in a game but by all accounts, Superdeath is also batshit crazy. He seems like the type of dude to lunge himself into a forever war with the first dude he meets and not only because he's done that previously. The key for us is not letting that override our decision making. Yes, we have to plant cities with that sort of thing in mind, but at the same token if we're so worried about forever war with Superdeath that we throw ourselves into a forever war with Superdeath, well, then we lose. And we don't even have fun doing it.
The biggest potential positive would be Superdeath's other neighbor being someone he has previous issues with. Is there anyone in this game he has previous issues with? Well, I sure hope so and I hope they're just as close to him as we are.
In terms of other neighbors, my spidey sense tells me Rusten is close, but I literally have no reason to think that other random intuition. I guess I don't really care about the rest of the neighbors because they're all roughly the same. Bob might be the least skilled of the remaining players but what he lacks in skill he makes up for in aggressiveness, so we're not really any better off with him than say, Lewwyn. Also, all the players in this game are pretty aggressive, ourselves most certainly included.
What's next?
Well, the main thing is to decide where to put our cities. Once we decide that, we can settle on the proper worker/settler/warrior ratio. Noble and I would like to get a warrior into the silver area before Superdeath can get a settler there, just in the interest of avoiding insane pink dots. We need a better name for those, but a Commodore is already a plains cow tile, so I'll take suggestions.
Beyond that, the settling sort of determines both A: How many workers we need to get the city settled and instantly productive and B: When the next settler needs to be. Obviously the contested-ish silver site would be an ideal first spot for territory claiming but its slightly awkward to get there, requires that we rejigger our tech plan and needs early culture in it to claim the area. Mackoti obviously would settle the site and then chop Stonehenge in it 5t before anyone else thought about building it, so maybe we should do that. I'll try to remember to post a map swatch that works for dotmapping but the city in question here would be on the PH west of the wheat tile closer to us.
I've said before that if Civ feels comfortable you're not playing to your highest potential. Well nothing about this start feels comfortable so either we're playing well or we have a really low ceiling.
The Map
Well, the map is clearly not the map we wished for. Noble often likes to chide me about lack of clarity when I do things like create new games which result in me looking for a game of similar skilled players and ending up against mackoti, Seven, novice and Serdoa.
Here though, Noble thought he was pretty clear when discussing his desires for the map but our definition of 2.5 rings to conflict and pindicator's obviously are quite different. What we've seen thus far looks pretty lush and quite tight. I didn't think we'd be getting to Act 10 on our city list - now I'll be surprised if we get to the end of Part I with naturally settled cities. That's ok, as long as its the same for everyone, which we can presume it is, but it isn't what we thought we were getting.Beyond that, rampant speculation suggests that we probably have a neighbor in the south. I might guess maybe southwesterly, as to sort of border both us and Superdeath. We're going to try and get quick eyes on SDs capital and then try and meet some more foes to hopefully pick up a beaker or two from known tech bonus.
Otherwise, not a lot to say until BW and AH come in. We're betting that either the tile NW or 3N of the cap has our copper in it, given the likelihood that it is close and the way the forests have grown around those tiles.
Neighbors
Superdeath is literally the worst neighbor to choose. Generally speaking, it is favorable to neighbor the weakest player in a game but by all accounts, Superdeath is also batshit crazy. He seems like the type of dude to lunge himself into a forever war with the first dude he meets and not only because he's done that previously. The key for us is not letting that override our decision making. Yes, we have to plant cities with that sort of thing in mind, but at the same token if we're so worried about forever war with Superdeath that we throw ourselves into a forever war with Superdeath, well, then we lose. And we don't even have fun doing it.
The biggest potential positive would be Superdeath's other neighbor being someone he has previous issues with. Is there anyone in this game he has previous issues with? Well, I sure hope so and I hope they're just as close to him as we are.
In terms of other neighbors, my spidey sense tells me Rusten is close, but I literally have no reason to think that other random intuition. I guess I don't really care about the rest of the neighbors because they're all roughly the same. Bob might be the least skilled of the remaining players but what he lacks in skill he makes up for in aggressiveness, so we're not really any better off with him than say, Lewwyn. Also, all the players in this game are pretty aggressive, ourselves most certainly included.
What's next?
Well, the main thing is to decide where to put our cities. Once we decide that, we can settle on the proper worker/settler/warrior ratio. Noble and I would like to get a warrior into the silver area before Superdeath can get a settler there, just in the interest of avoiding insane pink dots. We need a better name for those, but a Commodore is already a plains cow tile, so I'll take suggestions.
Beyond that, the settling sort of determines both A: How many workers we need to get the city settled and instantly productive and B: When the next settler needs to be. Obviously the contested-ish silver site would be an ideal first spot for territory claiming but its slightly awkward to get there, requires that we rejigger our tech plan and needs early culture in it to claim the area. Mackoti obviously would settle the site and then chop Stonehenge in it 5t before anyone else thought about building it, so maybe we should do that. I'll try to remember to post a map swatch that works for dotmapping but the city in question here would be on the PH west of the wheat tile closer to us.I've said before that if Civ feels comfortable you're not playing to your highest potential. Well nothing about this start feels comfortable so either we're playing well or we have a really low ceiling.
I've got some dirt on my shoulder, can you brush it off for me?
![[Image: t005-demos.jpg?raw=1]](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3p2w0e08xk6npa9/t005-demos.jpg?raw=1)
![[Image: OYzun7i.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/OYzun7i.jpg)
