Miguelito gets tricked by magicians, but Bob isn't fooled. Kaiser rules from behind.

[Miguelito]

Weird I cannot quote properly ...

Did I understand you correctly in you not having vision on the grassland S of Rice?

That looks different on your screenshot.

So the only animal surprise vectors on the city/Settler (assuming max 2 movers) are:
- S of Rice (3-3)
- all of the eastern ocean tiles (8-9, 9-9)

You can get the right format by using the reply button below a post. Then you change to View Source mode (rightmost button or Ctrl+Shift+S) and can copy/paste the code (can also be inserted in the normal view).

You are right, we can see that tile. So it's actually only the ocean tiles.

Anywhere else we should have vision on before moving the Settler to the hill. I personally would likely approach this on the risky side, especially as I believe you can see the bare grassland S of Rice as well so the only two surprise tiles would be the two eastern Ocean tiles.

In any case the only place to really cover for the Settler is on the city tile itself, where the Scout can also directly double as defence against the Griffon or any other animal infringing on our settling timeline.
For that you could stage the scout which is currently running dwarf defence and the Settler NE or NE-NE of the capital and then go with the Settler on the hill, see if there is any animal and then move the Scout accordingly.

You could even risk getting the Settler in position to move on the hill and then move it without cover in case there is no animal on any visible tiles.

Not going to risk the settler, that's a game over scenario worse than Auror pillaging our wheat.

The problem is even a combat 2 (guerilla) scout is pretty likely (25-30%) to get killed by a griffon. So we would definitely have to move the scout first, see if the hill is safe, then move in the settler (or not). We'll have the new scout the turn after to clean up in case the first scout dies. Another issue is what happens if a bear happens to walk on the hill E of the spot just on the turn when we want to move there.

Also the scout keeping Auror in check will likely have to do just that. Luckily it seems the NW scout is getting through and will be able to take that job.

[Miguelito]

Ok, let's get going with the best part of reporting:

MAP COMPLAINTS  

naufragar, I hope you are still around to explain and justify how this can happen:



Some turns ago I reported how I was suprised by seeing the first size 6 cities on that screen, while we are happy capped at five. But that could be epxlained by three of our competitors having enchantment mana which gives a happy face (while our mana does next to nothing, but that is a mod complaint, and there is no dev left whom I could annoy with my ranting).
However, size 7 means that someone must have a luxury (or am I embarassingly missing something?).
And in fact, while I have taken demo shots regularly I could have looked closer at them (usually only interested in food/mfg):


So somebody's* gnp is far above the average. I went back to old shots, and rival best gnp shot up from 22 to 27 on turn 22.
* well it's not Auror, so Cairo or mack who are the other 2 with enchantment mana
Possible explanations:

• That person has a calendar resource at the start. We don't have that, the ones that we can see are 9 tiles away from the starting hill
  
• mackoti moved his settler similar to us (he can while still settling on t1 because dwarf) and went agri->mining without calendar, then proceeded to mine a gems or gold
  

BUT apparently they also have the resource connected. So is the happy on a river? That would be very good for them. Or did they manage to finish exploration after the other techs by turn 27?


Re: actual game - I've made a little effort to paint Bob's dotmap onto the map, and made a proposal myself:
(caution 6 MB of images under the spoiler)

Bobs:



mine:

So, we're doing some things differently. I read Bob's advice, but I think I disagree with the point of making sure no tile gets unworked:

• The map is huge. I think our expansion is rather constrained by immortal costs than by available land.
  
• Covering every tile leads to tightly packed cities, but with Cre we can go a bit looser and claim more land in the process. I'd rather grab a good border spot by expanding wide than cover every hill in our vicinity.
  

But the main premise of my dotmap is to make the green dot (A1, S of gems) work as a 3rd city. Bob's cyan dot (A2) is the better long term city, sure, BUT:
we're looking at the settler coming out around turn 50, around the time we finish mysticism, meaning we have to revolt, then research AH which should take 6 turns, then we can start to improve that cow. Meanwhile the dry rice is pretty underwhelming as well.
In contrast, the proposed green dot can take the wheat, growing to size 2 within 2 turns! This is also beneficial for the capital, as it has that huge food surplus, but with GK wants to work hammers, and also can't grow all the time. (The wheat may still go back to the cap for settler builds, but even then it's weaker then the forested plains hill mines). Furthermore, the workers can go straight towards improving the wine for the next luxury. Mid term the city will be pretty mediocre, but can grow one capital cottage and a few more in the forests for the orange dot. Long term with ancient forests and sanitation farms it will have enough food to work the tiles unique to its BFC and can be middling but useful.

The pink dot is a reach to get the cotton into border. Moving it 1E and placing a city W of the cotton may be better.

The light blue dot in the SE could be moved 1W in case it is a border to somebody.

Else I tried to make the possible border cities hill plants, ideally such that the attacker would have to step on flatland.

[naufragar]

naufragar, I hope you are still around to explain and justify how this can happen:

To explain would require spoilers and to justify would require explanation.

[Miguelito]

The fact that you think it's justifiable is enough of a spoiler

But I'll just remain in my righteous indignation. If somehow we don't win this game, this is the reason, clearly.

[Bobchillingworth]

Bear in mind that, in addition to potential map imbalances, it's possible that someone has benefited from an event which granted them happiness (temporary or permanent), and/or gotten a lucky free great person. Don't expect the sort of balanced and predictable experience players would demand from a CtH or KrillMod game.

[Kaiser]

Thanks for the thoughts on city placement, what I like better about bobs plan is that he claims signigicantly more land into the West which very much looks like a contested region and my understanding is that we should be leveraging our strong early recon units into and advantage.



Not being able to plant B so you can plant A1 still looks like a big drawback to me as it is:
- a very well defended city (Hill, Peak for vision, river S)
- claiming land in a good direction, becoming 2nd line later
- later being a 2nd line city and a strong production powerhouse
- "Covering every tile leads to tightly packed cities, but with Cre we can go a bit looser and claim more land in the process" :P

However, I am likely undervaluing the early advantage A1 brings over A2, for that reason I will try to find the time to compare these two settling spots (and probably a A1 to B variant as well)

All in all, I wonder if we should be more audacious regarding the cities in the W (from N to S).
- BobOrange seems like a defense liability, one NW would only slightly improve that (5 river crossings into the city, no river crossing attacks are on our side)
- BobCyan I like a lot more than MigCyan as it claims the valuable floodplain valley and is a much better city (3 Forests, 1 Hill, better defenses to the S thanks to the river)
- Bobpurple has only the river as defense (in good directions though), but could be shifted to E to be on a hill. In any case, it brings the peak for vision and claims another valuable production area. It also fits well with B for spacing.
- BobYellow might be invalidated by pushing BobOrange up but this region looks juicy with its rivers.

All these locations do not need immediate road connections (if the B location is connected by road) for defensive troop movement as there is a forest connection.
Support cities would be B and PigCow/PigFishCotton (it feels wasteful to loose the fish Bob! What do you guys think of the spot in between yours to get PigFishCow?).

I would really like to understand better how much time we have for the BobYellow area, Auror came from the South apparently, meaning we have to better be claiming land in that direction quickly.

@Bob:
Do you know when barbs start to spawn?
How much could we improve MigCyan with Water Mana? (Every desert to plains? Can we change the FP)

[Miguelito]

Bear in mind that, in addition to potential map imbalances, it's possible that someone has benefited from an event which granted them happiness (temporary or permanent), and/or gotten a lucky free great person.  Don't expect the sort of balanced and predictable experience players would demand from a CtH or KrillMod game.

You mean they settled the free GP? That would explain the GNP difference, which a happy event alone can't. I still think a luxury resource is the best explanation.
Anyways, my map complaint was meant lighthearted and in the spirit of keeping up with tradition, but evidently I don't have a good hand for internet humour. Fwiw I still appreciate naufragar making the map a lot, and I am sure he had soemthing in mind with it. Maybe the gems/gold is unique for us, as a lux that comes a bit later but is stronger, or maybe we have other advantages over other players that we can't see yet. And as I said, I'm just here for some fun before mack wins anyways.

Thanks for the map input Kaiser. It got me thinking again about B (Bob's green) as a second city again. I was discarding that because of the wine, but upon looking closer Cre is helping us there, because the capital will pop its fourth ring eot 56. So that is like a 5-6 turn delay on the wine, which seems a good trade for a better long term dotmap (the cap would likely not have a great tile improved to grow onto anyways). Drawback is not sharing the gems/gold, but I think that's ok as well. I have to point out though that the peak is useless, as we get the same vision from a border pop after three turns. I'm not quite sure yet if I like that it invalidates the double seafood plant, as well as my blue dot which I like for defense.

Another thing that I learned yesterday is that you can't cast spring on floodplains (in Extramodmod which I played an SP game on last year you could). If in a distant future we get druids and/or the second FoL hero Ywain* (?) they can improve the FP from desert to plains though (and optionally to grassland). Nothing to plan for though. I also found out that even on a plains floodplain you can't bloom, as the FP and forest are mutually exclusive terrain features.
This somewhat lowers the urgency for us to claim that valley in my mind. The floodplains still be great when cottaged, but not the uber terrain that I imagined.
Spring will still be useful for regular desert/desert hills including the city tiles. If we have just those 2 mana nodes I would not want to spend one on it though. But I'm hopeful that we'll be able to trade for it with Dave for a while to get some adepts with it.

* btw Bob there's the solution to the airship on a peak scenarion

Roads will still be needed fwiw. A scout travels 2 squares on forest but 4 on roads. Also trade routes, although we could partially use the rivers.

I'm attaching the svg file with the editable dotmap. You can open it in inkscape or whatever program you use in case you've got something more professional.

[Kaiser]

Thanks for the file, I was thinking along the lines of this.



The ones with broken lines are lower priority and might even be shuffled around for optimization.
- City2 still here, right?
- City3 to push into this direction, can share the wheat but needs a worker to mine its GHF, AH can be delayed but the cow is better than the GHFmines, Gems will be a nice addition later but not urgent as we already have a source. Needs road connection (capitol -> SW -> SW -> SW) which can be completed with a road onto the cow to connect Cyan and Purple
- next I think we probably want to get City4 to establish another good city and prepare a push for the N river valley later, latest here we will need AH for Cow and Pig. Also needs a road (Capitol -> W (FP) -> NW -> NW) which can be completed W -> W to establish trade connection to Orange and anything else in that N river valley
- Auror seems to have come from the S, so claiming Cyan and Purple (which I really like with the River/Peakit is only attackable from E, NE, N without malus) next seems wise as long as we do not find another neighbor close to Orange (location needs likely to be discussed)

As you can see, I am assuming that the E and especially the SE are dead ends, it certainly is a good idea to verify this before leaving a glaring hole in our territory there.

btw. thanks for the hint for the Peak, you are absolutely right. This reminds me to remember you that I have no experience whatsoever in playing this game (or CIV4 BTS) in Multiplayer, so take all input from my side with a big grain of salt. I am basically writing stuff to poke you in order to find good decisions :D

[Old Harry]

I liked the map joke.

[Miguelito]

I think that's workable Kaiser. You'd want to priorize dark blue though (very likely 4th or 5th). With AH it has a high foodhammer output which we need for sustained expansion. Another reason not to only settle in one direction only are the immortal costs which will hit heavy, but a bit less so if we cover the first ring first.
I also don't agree on some of your roads but let's leave that for later.

However, I've now toyed with moving B one tile north. Heresy, for certain, as we move off the plains hill, but that city is a lot better with a floodplains and three cottage tiles shared with the cap. It also is not that much worse defensively. As long as we cover the PH with units he can only attack over flatland forest, where he only gets 15% defense bonus. With our recon units we'll want to be attacking out typically.
Here's the dotmap:


I like that we can get the double seafood plant. Pink may or may not be moved 1E. I just wanted to grab the cotton early. I don't like the overlap with red though (the corn has been scouted since). Blue would maybe need to be moved towards one of the hills if it were to become a border city (btw, the hill 1E is exceptionally good defensively as it forces an attacker to step on desert).
White 1W as you had it can be bypassed/backstabbed by dwarves who walk 2 moves on hills, hence why I moved it that way.

Order: yellow, green, cyan, pink, orange, white, blue, red, dark yellow, brown, purple

I liked the map joke.