Rusten and Hitru turn back the clock

[Rusten]

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.

No worries, there's a lot to look for when creating a map, just too bad that no one else noticed either. Hopefully it won't come into play. We're sending the scout back to camp the tile until we have our warrior out*, but sadly the jungle might spread before we have a chance to counteract it. It will delay our scouting, but losing the tile would be absolutely disastrous so it's the lesser evil.

*Forest and jungle can't spread to tiles occupied by a unit

[Rusten]

This game is going to last a few years isn't it?

Couldn't even fit in a single extra turn over the weekend in the 'move scout' phase. Get comfortable everyone. 

[Rusten]

The west just got a whole lot more interesting.




I want it!   City 2S of marble seems very worthwhile.

[Rusten]

Some talk about the early game as I wait for a new turn that will finally hold some new (scouting) information.

Main goal: Settle both golds backed up with units and settler spam the hell out of the region using IMP and gold commerce to fuel it. Gold tiles fall off heavily but they're immensely powerful for the starting turns, so we'll definitely try to settle the marble spot. It's closer to us and in a prime location defensively too. 
Secondary goal: Complete the Pyramids and MoM to bolster the empire long-term.

The how: 
Very happy to have chosen something that gets off to a flying start because we'll need all the hammers we can get in this early phase. The 2nd city should go for corn and pigs for rapid development, and the idea is to pop the borders with religion. At least this time I won't lose to a tie coin flip if I don't get it. If nobody's researched polytheism by the time we finish BW I feel we have a good chance of grabbing it -- we can delay things like the wheel if we settle on the starting river. If this city also grabs copper somehow then that's even better. If not then it's likely city #4 is settled for this purpose (with #5 going 2S of marble).

-With 2 golds commerce is not the bottleneck and a wonder like the Oracle is much less important. If it's still available at a convenient moment we will chop it with marble, but there are more important things to focus on here.
-In early conversations with Hitru I briefly mentioned the possibility of bulbing mathematics to help build the Pyramids, but that's not going to be possible here I think. However, with double gold I think we can just research normally and still be in time. If we have 30-hammer chops and OR we should be doing OK even without stone, but if we can find stone as well it would be most excellent. 
-The early GPP will likely be a GM for currency, which means that we can put our normal beakers into calendar instead which will improve all our incense tiles and unlock MoM which is busted in this CtH version (please nerf it Charriu). Our capital should be able to reach close to double-digits by the time we finish CoL, so spawning the currency GM will only take ~5 turns upon CoL discovery.

[Rusten]

Still no jungled pig and we're almost there with the scout! 




As you can tell by the screenshot I've been tracking Bob's scout. It finally left our view this turn, but it did so moving NW which has one important implication: Bob has not scouted the seafood near the gold yet and he might not for quite some time as his 1st warrior is likely to check out his west. His view of the gold spot is this:

This makes it much less likely that he plants an offensive city in the region very early and increases our chance of being the first ones there. He knows about the Banana and the lay of the land between the gold and our capital, but not of the other resources.

[Charriu]

There is a 0.1% chance for a jungle growth on the pig each turn

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid749105

[Rusten]

Nice, thanks for looking into it! I thought it was 0.2%, so we're in slightly better shape than I thought. 

But reading on, are you sure you're correct? Your example says 0.1% with a road on the tile, and I thought that halved the chance. We don't have a road.

[Charriu]

Ah yes totally forgot about roads. It must be 0.2%

[Rusten]

If you're wondering why there's not been an update for a while it's because every turn the past week was spent like this with the scout camping the pigs:




You can thank Pindicator for the lack of reading material.  But the warrior will be in place soon to take over.

[Rusten]

Things are finally happening in this game. We founded Hinduism this end of turn and settle our 3rd city (copper) this upcoming turn. Lined up so that we could guarantee religion in Pledge of Hands (2nd city). 3rd city has nothing useful in 2nd ring short term.




The copper might come in handy because it looks like Bob has chosen death.




If he settles on the sheep (why would he?) we can live with it, but if he settles where I expect him to, between the sheep and pig, then he's dead to me.