Supercharrihitstouristicharryshallowdocious

[Charriu]

Is the water near the elephant a lake?

[Old Harry]

Noble: I assume the fog lies and so the advisor-recomended tiles aren't to be trusted?

Team: I've built a world builder file for sandboxing fun. Save it to:

C:\Users\Windows\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\WorldBuilder\

Then launch it as a scenario to get the advanced start goodness. It's currently Alex of England (ie blank as far as starts go) but we can edit in other leaders and civs fairly easily.

Edit: I didn't manage to make it 32*32, so the costs might be a little off. Will have a fiddle with the WB file later. EditEdit: It's right now.

Is the water near the elephant a lake?

Looking at the waves I'd guess the water by the elephant is ocean.

[Charriu]

Is the water near the elephant a lake?

Looking at the waves I'd guess the water by the elephant is ocean.

One really never stops learning new things about an 16 year old game.

[NobleHelium]

The water next to the ivory is not a lake.

I make no assurances as to the quality of the advisor recommendations or the accuracy of the fog.

[Old Harry]

A first glance makes me think we have a couple of options for a start.

The first is to take an agriculture/fish/mining civ and settle like this. With a possibility of settling the island and getting ICTRs from t0 (Charriu's suggestion) if it makes sense.  Alternatively we settle to share the pig and get the elephant.

Agri/fish:
America
Dutch

Hunting/fish:
Greece
Vikings

Fishing/mining:
Carthage
England
Portugal
Rome

The second is to take a hunting civ and settle like this. Hariharialaya needs to settle on the forest to get the trade route. Angkor Thom needs Hariaralaya or a border pop to get the trade route. (Note this is with an EXP leader so we won't necessarily get all this stuff.


Hunting/mining:
Ethiopia
Germany
Khmer
Russia

Agri/hunting:
Natives
Persia
Zulu

Agri/mining:
China
Korea

So are there any other layouts we should test?

[Old Harry]

We did a bit more thinking about civs and starts - we want two of Agriculture, Fishing, Mining and Hunting. There are a lot of civs that fit that bill:

America: Agriculture/Fishing
Carthage: Fishing/Mining
China: Agriculture/Mining
England: Fishing/Mining
Ethiopia: Hunting/Mining
Germany: Hunting/Mining
Greece: Hunting/Fishing
Khmer: Mining/Hunting
Korea: Agriculture/Mining
Native America: Hunting/Agriculture
Netherlands: Fishing/Agriculture
Persia: Hunting/Agriculture
Portugal: Fishing/Mining
Rome: Fishing/Mining
Russia: Hunting/Mining
Zulu: Agriculture/Hunting

Of those America, Khmer, Natives, Netherlands, Rome and Zulu sound interesting. For the moment we're keen on PHI/EXP, so this is what Peter of the Natives (Hunting/Agriculture) looks like at t15.

Hitru suggested putting B by the ivory and settling very tight to let us improve pig along with corn at the start - the tech situation doesn't give workers much to do at the start, so I thought buying Mining and the farm and pasture make sense, then we can complete some workers once we have something for them to do when BW comes in around t10. A and B start at size 2.

Turn 0
Turn 15

Peter of Rome (Fishing/Mining) has a slightly different settling pattern - buying Agriculture, the corn farm and clam nets and settling on the sugar. In this version I built a plains hill mine instead of giving B the extra pop. Will need to test it with the pop instead.

Working the crab and lake allows us to get Bronze Working 2 turns earlier. Expenses are also 1gpt cheaper for the first few turns because B starts at size 1.

Turn 0
Turn 15

What do we still need to test?
- Settling SE and 2W of the corn
- Two cities instead of three
- Starting with workers
- Trying it without EXP
- Peter of Rome without the mine

[superdeath]

With our powers combined, there can only be VICTORY!

[darrelljs]

[shallow_thought]

With our powers combined, there can only be VICTORY!

Well it would scare me. Your opposition is likely to be made of tougher stuff though . I shall lurk here, cheering you on in any case.

I would need to go back and re-read the analysis people did in PB53 (and will almost certainly be too lazy to do so), but I seem to remember that most people felt that buying techs was "inefficient" in some way. Interesting that your analysis seems to be that you need to buy at least one, but it makes intuitive sense, otherwise you end up with bored workers.

Would also be interested in more detail as to why PHI/EXP, although bulbs and cheap granaries in a game where it's not all about getting the first settler out as fast as possible are clearly good.

[Old Harry]

I would need to go back and re-read the analysis people did in PB53 (and will almost certainly be too lazy to do so), but I seem to remember that most people felt that buying techs was "inefficient" in some way. Interesting that your analysis seems to be that you need to buy at least one, but it makes intuitive sense, otherwise you end up with bored workers.

Would also be interested in more detail as to why PHI/EXP, although bulbs and cheap granaries in a game where it's not all about getting the first settler out as fast as possible are clearly good.

I think there's the early game calculus of 3 food = 5 hammers = 8 commerce that various people have expounded. We're on board with that, but it feels like not buying one of agriculture/fishing/mining leaves workers unemployed and cities working crap tiles. We should test if that thinking is right though.

Hitru is going to explain why PHI. EXP is easy enough though - IMP gets a discount for buying settlers but not for placing cities, which we're sure we want to do. So EXP, CHA and CRE are the good early traits, we reckon CRE isn't needed if we dotmap well, so it's EXP vs CHA. If we decide we're starting too quick then we could switch to CHA, but EXP seems good.

I had time for one more run through with Peter of Rome v2:

Start all cities s2, buy Agri and a worker. The worker farms, puts a turn into a plains mine, chops and then we start improving the hunting resources. It takes a while to get the work boat so tech is a bit slower, but we get a settler out quicker and have an extra worker, but 3 fewer scout/warriors...

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Turn 15