[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Luckily, the unusual, scattered placement of the mountains on this map will help out significantly on that front, with almost all visible tiles being aqueduct-eligible.

We might want to consider going for Machu Picchu with the way mountains are set up here. With China in the game, it might be risky but they should have plenty of other "better" wonders to build. One issue though, with the lack of lots of hills, we will need to be careful of the forests we chop, better to keep them around for lumbermills. Also, if everybody's starting island is like ours, they probably are thinking the same about Machu Picchu.

[ljubljana]

We might want to consider going for Machu Picchu with the way mountains are set up here. With China in the game, it might be risky but they should have plenty of other "better" wonders to build. One issue though, with the lack of lots of hills, we will need to be careful of the forests we chop, better to keep them around for lumbermills. Also, if everybody's starting island is like ours, they probably are thinking the same about Machu Picchu.

Isn't Machu Picchu actually the only wonder not boostable by China, since it has to be placed on a mountain? If so, I doubt we'd have much competition for it. That said, it's very pricey at 400 hammers, and only boosts theaters (which never get built in large numbers), CHs (which we'll likely deprioritize in favor of harbors/Cothons), and IZs, so I'm not sure it'll be worth it until fairly late in the game.

I definitely agree about not chopping forests when it can be avoided. You can probably get away with clearing jungle for a similar boost, but I'll probably need to get along mostly without chops this game.

[Woden]

We might want to consider going for Machu Picchu with the way mountains are set up here. With China in the game, it might be risky but they should have plenty of other "better" wonders to build. One issue though, with the lack of lots of hills, we will need to be careful of the forests we chop, better to keep them around for lumbermills. Also, if everybody's starting island is like ours, they probably are thinking the same about Machu Picchu.

Isn't Machu Picchu actually the only wonder not boostable by China, since it has to be placed on a mountain? If so, I doubt we'd have much competition for it. That said, it's very pricey at 400 hammers, and only boosts theaters (which never get built in large numbers), CHs (which we'll likely deprioritize in favor of harbors/Cothons), and IZs, so I'm not sure it'd be worth it until fairly late in the game.

I am not sure about if China's builders can apply production to Machu Picchu. They might be able to add production if standing next to it, will have to test. And don't discount CHs, you can get pretty adjacencies with Harbors. I am not saying build them everywhere but if placed right, you can easily get some +8 CHs (which also gets the Free Inquiry bonus). I agree that it isn't something to chase right away but if it is still around later, might be worth it.

[ljubljana]

I am not sure about if China's builders can apply production to Machu Picchu. They might be able to add production if standing next to it, will have to test.

I haven't tried it myself, but civwiki claims that China can't rush it. Probably still worth testing if we end up going for this, though.

And don't discount CHs, you can get pretty adjacencies with Harbors. I am not saying build them everywhere but if placed right, you can easily get some +8 CHs (which also gets the Free Inquiry bonus).

Yeah, good point. I guess those of my cities that don't go Cothon-Campus-IZ won't really have anything better to do with the 7-pop district than a CH, which will help further fund our huge navies in addition to the Free Inquiry beakers.

[Woden]

Turn 12-Vikings
I think I found a decent 2nd city location...
   

So far, no real production but will get an luxury right away and a +3 harbor and can only be attacked by a melee ship from 1 tile. The other option will be by the horses and stone, which I should know more about in about 5 or 6 turns.

[ljubljana]

I think I found a decent 2nd city location...

Yeah, that looks like a decent site. Very low production for a second city, though, as you mentioned, being stuck on just 4-5 hpt for a long time unless there's something else in the fog...though it doesn't look like there's going to be many sites all that much better around here either...

Turn 13 - Phoenicia



Scout attacks, hmm. It'll probably do so again next turn no matter where we move, so I decide to just heal this turn and hope it bangs its head against our defensive bonuses again. I usually tend to be pretty conservative about scouting with wounded units, since it always seems to undermine flexibility with respect to barb camp spawns, so the healing will be nice too, though I'm not sure it's worth sticking around long enough to get closer to full health.

I'm tentatively eying the tile 1NE of the warrior for a city down the road, btw. It has a weak Cothon relative to the warrior's tile, but way better production from bringing a bunch of forests into the second ring, and is also in a natural harbor with respect to melee ship attacks. Food will be an issue, but the fish plus plains wheat will at least be the first tiles grabbed by the tile picker, and that plus a trade route should be just enough to get it to Feudalism farms in okay shape. It's not worth founding until we have at least one trade route and preferably Cothons unlocked, though, so it's probably 3rd or 4th city material at best. In the east, founding on the mercury still looks like the best of a really unremarkable set of options, but that's definitely not second city material either.

[ljubljana]

Turn 14 - Phoenicia



Not much to report - scouts continue to scout, but find very little of interest due to obstructing forests. We should have enough map knowledge to start putting a pinmap together up here in a few turns, though.

[Woden]

Turn 14-Woden
Capital grew to 3 population. If I drop the bananas for a 2/1 tile, settler finishes a turn early but growth drops for 10 turns to 33, so I stick with the faster growth. I might be able to time it right to grow instantly when the settler finishes...
   

I pinned the second city location by the horses and pinned out some districts. This will probably be a better 2nd city than the spice but still need to see what is in the fog for final determination.

[ljubljana]

Turn 15 - Phoenicia



So that's where that scout went. Well, this could be pretty annoying if the camp is close by just to the south of the capital, especially with those horses in range. At least we have two warriors in the area and some chance of cutting it off due to its prior damage. There's still a good chance that the camp is way to the south by your capital, too, if I'm understanding what you said earlier about the start-of-game camp spawns correctly, though wandering this far north would have been quite an adventure for the scout if so. Hopefully we'll find some way to kill it with one of these warriors, which will grant the often-tricky BW eureka if successful. The eastern warrior in particular has a tricky decision to make between staying put next turn (ideal if we think the scout's about to turn SE towards a camp near your capital) and moving west onto the hill (which we'd need to cut it off if the camp's over there).

Scouting reveals that the western area runs into the ocean much more quickly than I expected. That's definitely going to mess with the tentative pinmap over here, though I'll wait until we defog the last few tiles before redoing it. Those tiles are looking increasingly critical, as there more or less has to be some good stuff down there (since I otherwise don't see any even vaguely viable second city site, and TBS wouldn't do that to us), but we also might have an activated horse camp there soon too, which would be a total disaster if it forces a poor second city off on the western peninsula.

CoL comes in, and I swap to God King/Discipline. The capital hits size 3, and swaps to max production - we'll get the builder in 2, then the settler in 9 (maybe 8 after the horse pasture). We should be set up for a quick regrow to size 3 afterwards, then I'll swap to fish/turtles/horse to push for size 4. After the settler, the priority builds seem to be a boat, a builder, and a monument in some order. Probably the builder first, since I'm planning to use it as a second boat after improving two tiles. Actually, it's not too late to think about doing the same with the first builder, if you think that's a good idea? We could use the first builder on the two fishing boats and the second on the horse and sheep without setting back the capital's growth curve all that badly, especially since we're nowhere close to needing the Craftsmanship inspiration. That said, it's also possible that we don't need that many scouts, and that it's worth giving up one to hook up the rice/marble or a tile at the second city, as well as accelerating the horse pasture to save time on the early builds.

Wow, it sure is lucky we scouted west on the first turn of the game here and miraculously found that first barb camp quickly enough to keep it from activating. With the shape of the peninsula over there giving the scout nothing to do but stumble into our capital, and the horses we just found (!!), any other direction would have very likely meant an activated horse camp on turn 5 or so, which probably would have knocked our team out of competitiveness by itself .

[ljubljana]

Turn 16 - Phoenicia



So here's the situation with the scout. It's likely doing one of two possible things - heading east or SE via the tile marked '1', or heading south or SE via some tile off in the fog, with the latter somewhat more likely due to the lack of a barb camp in the east (though I admit I don't fully understand the vagaries of the activated barb scout AI). That gives 5 possible placements for the scout next turn if our warrior stays in place, marked A-E. If we don't move, and the scout made it all the way to the tile marked '2' on its last move, the worst-case scenario would see it move to 'E' next turn, in which case it'd get away. We can block this by moving to 'C' or 'D' ourselves, but then if it heads to 'B' or 'A'. it could slip past us that way.

So, what to do? A few factors ultimately tip the balance in favor of moving, IMO - firstly, the scout is probably more likely on balance to be heading S than E due to the lack of a camp in the E, making a move to 'A' in particular especially unlikely, and secondly, we can still get a hit in if we move to 'C' and the scout moves to 'B' next turn, whereas if we stay put and the scout moves to 'E', we get nothing. Moreover, in the unlikely but scary event that the camp is in the fog right here (in which case we have no chance to stop the scout), 'C' will give us a defensive bonus to weather the upcoming onslaught. Therefore, I commit to the move 1W onto 'C':



Looks like that was the right choice, and it has no chance to slip past to the south now. I don't know why it didn't move to '2' given that it had the movement points to do so though? I guess the camp must be pretty much directly SE of the scout's current position, such that that tile is no closer than the one it moved to...well, that, or there's just some quirk of the scout AI at work here that I don't understand. Anyways, if it retreats next turn for some reason (which I don't think is very likely?) we'll still have a bit of a dance to do here, but I think we have good odds to block the activation and eureka BW now. Meanwhile, the second warrior's plan is now to defog the one remaining tile here, then the two coastal tiles in the NW, then to head back to the capital to heal, since we need to keep one warrior behind to deal with the inevitable camp spawns.

In other news, look at the nice GP location 1 NW of the scout. We can surround that with some pretty crazy campuses, which is probably the ideal use of the GP for Phoenicia in this situation, since we'd have trouble using it to buff Cothons. I'm still not sure where the next city's going, but hopefully I'll have a better idea next turn - the answer's probably something like 'at whichever of this motley set of sites is least food-starved', since many of these will be solid down the road but really need free Phoenicia trade routes to be effective (an ability that seems likely to really shine on this map, or at least in this neighborhood). That conflicts with the other goal for the second city, though, which is to build the GP without blowing a million gold on tile buying...well, maybe we'll get lucky and the capital will pull in its campus tile soon and save us a huge headache. Probably not, but maybe .