[SPOILER]PB58 - Mr. Cairo residing over the remains of Serdoas Library of Knowledge

[Charriu]

Looking forward to hear your thoughts about your pick. Especially as you are the first player picking Ethiopia

[Serdoa]

I wrote some drafts over the last days about my picks but always decided not to send them. Mostly because I was unsure what I would actually pick and simmed quite a few different ways to play this start - wildly differing in their effectiveness. But it became very apparent to me that simming starts without having the rest of the land uncovered leads to a very... pointless doing. Why is that?

With most starts, you'll have some Agri-resource for food. Or just seafood. In both cases, the decision is easy, you need Agri or Fishing. Mining and BW come afterwards. AH often even later, if you do not have Pigs. There is some variation, but tech is in my experience seldom a bottle-neck in terms of your micro-plans. You'll have to move some things around of course - and you can't plan for your copper / horses - but the former is mostly trivial and the latter just means better tiles to work if you can improve them and no change to your plan if you can't.

This start is different as it has no "easy" resources. 

1) Clam: 4-food when improved. In terms of building settlers and workers (which is what we mainly want at the start) it is as good as the unimproved Deer. Running it through my sim, going Boat -> Worker -> Warrior (grow to 2, Anarchy) -> Settler -> Warrior -> Worker -> Settler -> Settler is - in turns of turn numbers - just 2 turns slower than my fastest start. But if we compare it on the same turn (T40) it is:

- up Fishing in tech
- down 1 warrior
- down 13 hammers in the 3rd settler 
- down 1 pop point 
- down ~7 worker turns

And on the question: Is Fishing worth that, the answer is a healthy "NO". Because we can't even work the clam for most of the time as we want hammers for the settler, not food and we want a 6fh-tile like the cow (really 7.5 for IMP-settlers).

2) Cow: Good resource, but the tech is hard to get. I thought about starting with Agri/Hunting, directly researching AH and improving the cow. But if we have Hunting, why not improve the Deer as well, grow to 2 and work both? That really is the smarter choice, as both are good tiles and the Deer helps us grow.

3) Deer: Our only 5+ food tile. There is no question that it has to be improved.
a) because else we need 8 turns to grow to 2 and
b) because we need either Hunting or Agri as prerequisite for AH

Not going for AH is a possibility, but then we need to get Hunting even more as it enables our only high yield tile. Not matter how we look at it, Hunting is pretty much mandatory. One can go Agri/x for the start and research Hunting -> AH and finish in time to not waste worker turns. But that delays BW - and what is the worker to do then? Nothing, that's what he's going to do. So we need to get a tech that gives him something to do, The Wheel. Which does delay BW and therefore chops and whips even more. 

In the end, I've decided for Hunting/Mining as that still allows me to decide if I go a BW -> AH or a AH -> Wheel -> BW start. I would have taken Khmer if they had still been available. As they weren't I was stuck with Russia, Germany and Ethiopia, none of which I'm fond of. I've picked Ethiopia mainly because I have picked Russia in PBEM78 and Germany faces the same issue as Russia: UU and UB come so late to not matter much, so better to get a civ which UU and UB might make a difference (but they won't most likely). 

Btw: Getting out 3 settlers by T40 is easy with this start - my current one has those 3 settlers + 3 warriors + 2 workers on T40. If I just focus on settlers, I probably can do 5 by T40 - not counting the newly built cities and what they might be capable of. However, how do I support these? Workers? Warriors? Roads? Improved Tiles? The real issue with this start (and going IMP) is not overdoing the settlers. I basically did so in my sims and had to dial myself back to make them sensible - I wonder if my opponents ran in the same problem and realized it or if they have great micro plans that do not in the least consider how to support the new cities ... or defend them. The latter seems a current theme in the games I've played in the recent past.

[civac2]

I have considered Germany before also for a start that demanded Hunting/Mining. You can bulb Chemistry very efficiently. In this way you get the Riesengarde at a moderately similar time to the Oromo and Riesengarde is a superior unit.

[Serdoa]

You are certainly right civac. I'm not sure it will matter much in the end though, but we will see.

[Serdoa]

Suppose I am impatient, but is there a reason that SD has posted after Ramk has told us that the game is up and yet has not even logged in? And Jowy did claim his civ but didn't end turn? I really don't want to already now start publicly asking them to play their turn and in general I'm ok with someone needing more time - I do that myself sometimes - but it's fucking Turn 1 with a start that could be thought about for 3 weeks, playing it should be a thing of minutes...

*sigh* I hope this is not a sign of things to come...

[Charriu]

Well in the case of SD there is the excuse that he scheduled a game of Among Us on Wednesday. This was scheduled before the game was up.

[NobleHelium]

Au contraire, it is turn 0!

[Serdoa]

Well, the game has finally started. Apparently SD forgot - after posting memes in the tech-thread as reaction to a post by Ramk telling us that the game is running - that the game... is running. My reaction reading that was somewhere between   and  

In other news, pindi obviously forgot the food around my starting zone so I guess we'll have to restart. I mean, look at this:



Am I honestly supposed to settle my first city 5 tiles from my capital? Not that that has any good tiles to share anyway... The issue I see is

a) settling 2W of the whale would be fine if I was CRE, but I am not
b) settling 3W of the whale would be fine if there was not a big lake nearby which I suppose has 17+ (I can see 15 already) tiles and therefore one can build boats in there so I want to settle on the "coast"
c) settling 4W of the whale is most likely what I have to do because if I want to settle on that lake, the other tiles are worse. We would have
- grassland (2S of wheat), again I'm not CRE and I don't want to settle on good FIN-tiles
- grassland (2S,1E of wheat), again I'm not CRE and I don't want to settle on good FIN-tiles
- plains (4W of capital), has no food at all
- grassland (3W of capital), has no food at all
- grassland (1W of cow), has no food afaik currently
- plains (1S of cow), blocked by capital
- grassland (2S of cow)... well, that has nothing to do with a city to the south

So, a potential first draft, that will most likely change looks like this:



Though looking at it now, 3rd city should maybe be down 2S of the cows to share them and clam with the capital. Not really good use of the land though... in any case, none of these spots work if there is not at least some sea-food down there in the fog.

Astute observers will probably have noticed already that I have city ruins and a road 1W of my capital. I assume pindi forgot to remove them, but I like to imagine that he has them there as consolation for the missing food. My micro plans do not assume a road there, so at best it would save me 2 worker turns which I think does not warrant tinkering with the game-files. Especially as in reality it will not even do that, because my micro plans assume much chopping so it would just speed up pasturing the cow by 1 turn which I won't have pop to work at that point.

[pindicator]

Thanks for posting about the city ruins and road. Not supposed to be there, and I've PM-ed Ramk to remove them.

It's something I missed when in one of my worldbuilding sessions I had started from the player last in turn order then realized too late all the AIs had founded cities.

[Serdoa]

Thanks for posting about the city ruins and road.  Not supposed to be there, and I've PM-ed Ramk to remove them.

It's something I missed when in one of my worldbuilding sessions I had started from the player last in turn order then realized too late all the AIs had founded cities.

I was considering not too post it for exactly that reason  oh well, as always, honesty gets punished