[spoilers] Off balance, missed the bus

[shallow_thought]

Yeah, I wonder if it's worth thinking about a cheap granary before you lose EXP, given that your nearby health resources are all wheat ...

I think it's EXP you lose and PHI you keep right? Well, at least you get the option to change EXP - I can't imagine it's worth holding onto once you've got the three cities out.

I did start an EitB Kurios game just to remind myself how things worked, but I doubt I'll be much more than moral support here.

[DaveV]

No, I keep EXP and swap out PHI. For the health, I guess? As you say, it's going to be pretty worthless once I stop building settlers.

[shallow_thought]

Sigh. That's exactly the sort of thing I meant to check by playing the test game. Except that I forgot to double-check .

[DaveV]

Still exploring; I moved my warrior onto the eastern ancient tower and found an ancient tower to the northwest with my scout. I need to do a lot of scouting, since my cities will ideally be 7 tiles apart. If someone shows up with a scout, though, it's game over. And three of the other four players have either double hill moves or double forest moves.

[DaveV]

I found a decent spot for my second city; both scouts are returning home to play defense.



Demos show one of the creative guys matching me on GNP, despite my prereq bonus:



There's at least one other player with all land tiles in his BFC. 18750*4 = 75000. 21000 + 14000 = 35000, so the other two add up to 40000. Either 21000+19000, or 20000+20000. Land heavy starts for three out of four.

[shallow_thought]

Oh well, with the boring lack of variety in food resources EXP may actually be worth something in the mid game after all.

[DaveV]

It's mackoti. What an unpleasant surprise. I could have taken a coin-flip shot at his scout, but didn't like the consequences of losing. Now he can take a 25% battle against my guy.



I have his graphs now. Score, power, and culture are all dead even. The others show him working hammers over food to crank out his mud golem.

[DaveV]

Every turn when I open the save, I kick myself for not passing up my first turn and settling 1S. Then I could use the grassland wheat, a strictly better tile than plains wheat under Apprenticeship, and have another good commerce tile in the reagents. Plus, of course, an extra hammer and 25% defense bonus. The worker would have arrived at the same time, but I would have lost one turn of commerce.



mackoti's scout wandered out of visibility, but hasn't been eaten by an animal yet (no drop in power). Everyone but miguelito has discovered their first tech, almost certainly Agriculture.

[DaveV]

I revolted to Religion and Apprenticeship: the advantage of starting with Agriculture. I was depressed by the demographics until I realized that everyone else is probably researching Calendar and receiving a prerequisite bonus. Plus, the two Creative players get +2 on their GNP.



The opponent with the low power is mackoti; his scout apparently died, either to an animal or another opponent. I haven't seen any animals with extra XP, but it seems unlikely he could have reached the next player after me.

[DaveV]

I've definitely gone in a different direction than the other guys:



My first two worker actions were farming one of my floodplains, and building a plantation on the floodplain incense. That's put me behind on food and growth, but #1 in GNP. And I'm OK with that.