[59] Miguelito and Rusten move stacks to berimbau rythms

[Rusten]

I think we should go SE one more time before circling back. My likely scouting path based on current knowledge would be SE-S, SW--NW, NW (plains hill).

[Rusten]

Logged in to see the scouting and see the contour of our southern dotmap already, with each city having an "old" food resource in 2nd ring and new resource in 1st. Looks promising, but will wait a few more turns to map out the rest before making an official suggestion.

Glad you took the time to go south. Helpful to know the landmass ends there.

[Miguelito]

NW-NW next if you ask me. We can check W of the peak for seafood.

Few rather rmeaningless stats, but what else is there to do:

• t2 -> 3 rival total land increased by 11k -> one Cre player whou founded t0
  
• t3 -> 4 the increase was 49k -> the Cre players who founded t1. There are six Cre leaders in total (hm, I should make a stat about that distribution. In fact Charriu has made it somewhere in the mod thread already)
  
• t4 -> 5 it's 11k again for one non Cre player who founded t0.
  

For reference, had we settled in place we'd be gaining 11 tiles with the border pop; with the spot we've chosen it'll be 10, same for the PH that was debated. 49 increase between 5 players is a strong argument against strictly mirrored starts then.

[Rusten]

Agree with your move. Keep in mind that animals can start spawning and we don't have hunting bonus. IDK how conservative we want to be in the future, but I'd at least be hesitant to walk into fog without spare movement or defensive terrain.

[Miguelito]

There are six Cre leaders in total (hm, I should make a stat about that distribution. In fact Charriu has made it somewhere in the mod thread already)

I did not bother to dig in that thread and rather did it myself:

Exp 3         mining 9
Chm 4        fishing 8
Imp 8         agri 10
Org 7         hunting 8
Agg 5         wheel 9
Phi 3          myst 6
Pro 3
Cre 6
Fin 5
Spi 4
Ind 2


Ramblings:

• People still give a lot of value to Imp. I hope Rusten's assessment of it not being that useful on this map holds. Just 3 of the Imps start with mining, with second techs being agri/myst/hunting. I think only TBS with China can justify going BW straight. We've seen that having to tech mining->BW it is really hard to speed up the first settler meaningfully with chops (although with Imp we could whip 2 turns earlier). Agri is a bit cheaper than mining though, which should speed up BW by 2 turns for them.
  
• Org is very popular, we would have taken it as well. If it is better than Fin late game remains to be seen, but it also has 3 very useful cheap buildings.
  
• Agg has received some heavy buffs and is pretty popular. I've never understood well what exactly the barrage promotion does. Is it that it increases the collateral per catapult, but the max collateral damage and the number of units effected remains the same? So basically you have to build slightly fewer catapults. And you can promote to accuracy with just the barracks. Also interesting to see how much the -50% unit maintenance affects things, it sounds like a pretty tall number for sure.
  
• Six Cre starters could make for annoying neighbours. The last time we started next to Cre we resolved the culture war by actual war asap, but we may not have that option available here.
  
• Only two Inds gives them their niche, but also makes wonders a feasible option for everybody else, moreso as they are both rather slow starters, and not terribly intimidating players.
  
• Pro used to be very popular in previous CtH games. Apparently here people wanted something with more long term value, although otoh early commerce should be very helpful on the huge map. But we'd likely not have picked it either if not packed with something really strong
  
• Surprised by the popularity of agriculture and wheel (we are part of it, but we had little choice, and it is somewhat synergistic with Pacal). 11/12 civs with agriculture and 9/10 with wheel got picked! Agriculture is of course very important, but in CtH it's usually better to research it and take a more expensive starting tech. Wheel is problematic with the expensive techs on this map; we resolve this by going straight for pottery.
  

Agree with your move. Keep in mind that animals can start spawning and we don't have hunting bonus. IDK how conservative we want to be in the future, but I'd at least be hesitant to walk into fog without spare movement or defensive terrain.

Will do, although I have to point out that in PB54 when we had hunting we never ever met an animal (but then 2 spears). Murphy's law says that this time around we'll get encircled by bears (although hunting is less important in this version. Our scout has +100% already and would just get another 100%. I think before all of the bonus was on the tech).

[Miguelito]

NW-NW next if you ask me. No need to check the jungle just yet. Marble is nice for the epics, but I don't see what else we'd want it for before Taj (I think we came to the conclusion that MoM is not really our thing because we want to draft musketeers).

[Rusten]

Agreed on scouting.

I hope Rusten's assessment of it not being that useful on this map holds.

*AS* useful. We can get by without it this game and I feel an economic trait is more important. Imp is still a top tier trait, I'd never pretend otherwise. But with it doing less for the 1st settler (due to tech costs) Exp can be just as powerful.

I'm very happy with Pacal FWIW. We've scouted a sickening amount of grassland river which will make financial feel good, and we found a way to go early BW to leverage our cheap granaries.

I'd feel terrible with creative right now, because our dotmap is so good without it so far. If we settle our planned 2nd city we can place our 3rd on the PH between the rice and corn and not need any culture at all. Also a big help in the sense that mysticism will come later than usual.

[Miguelito]

Which PH :D? I would think the northern one. We'd then look at coastal fillers NW of crab and S of spices. I can see the former as Moai unless we find something better.

[Rusten]

Northern, and then a filler for seafood and sharing corn indeed. I was initially thinking on the spice, to borrow the capital's fish, but going south for the corn works too. Either way this is a much later city that I don't see us settling until there's no room.

[Miguelito]

just realized I had not even looked at what the border pop showed:


I suppose there'll be some seafood on the other side of that island (possibly somebody as well).
Fish city sharing wheat is a possibility but not as good as the planned sheep/wheat spot, if it does not bring something else on top. The fish could also be taken by a city on jungle island. Pig is always nice of course.