[PB63 Spoilers] Ginger and Lazteuq find a way to peace

[Ginger()]

ORG: It's no longer cool now that everyone and their mother has it this game   . Weaker GNP trait than FIN, but receives power spike at Code of Laws, LH boost is also nice on what is probably a wet map.

   

  
Fuck me that's a lot of water/islands, This is fairly discouraging as the more small crap cities you can fit, the so much better Org, Cre, Exp become. And there's 3, 3, and 2 of them in this game. At least only one FIN and the lucky Colossus winner will be enjoying the coastal tiles. This does not bode well for Mr. Gandhi's oddball traits. I should've trusted my gut about Ind or Org. Oh well, I'll put faith in my ability to scale. I have to repeat to myself that I would never beat this field by playing 'normally', and I think it's natural to get pessimistic in the era that your traits are weak though. 
 The wheat by the lake is a strong candidate for second city, can effortlessly grow onto the 2F2C and support expansion. The short term plant is on the plains hill, but that leaves it production starved and almost necessitates the stone city to plant on the desert. So what I'm thinking is to plant the wheat so it can grab the 2 plains hills after borders pop, and allow it to get Moai up in reasonable space of time. This allows the island to go directly on the stone and save worker turns that could be better spent elsewhere. The only thing that messes up the white dotted plan is seafood in only the red dot's island city BFC. The silver lining is that Pyramids falls farther in people's priorities with the water wonders in play. 

Cow is irrigated but no commerce so must be a lake or oasis. I'm debating whether to poke the cow, maybe see if there's someone up there, or start heading east now. Do we need to gauge neighbor distance or is scouting perimeter priority? I'm leaning perimeter, that Cow is either a midway point or closer to someone, and that knowledge won't necessarily help me in the next 35 turns. 
If we decide to go AH after Pottery (after teching BW/Hunting/Agri/Wheel/Pottery), I think we continue on to Writing. Reasoning being that it speeds all later techs up and that pig lets the capital regrow after 3 pop whipping the library. 

Looking back at the original spreadsheet I'm wondering if I shouldn't try mixing it up with double worker, so that the settler and its farm get started pronto. Growing to size 3 is only 2 turns behind chop fiesta plan, and almost finishes a Scout/Warrior, and with SPI it adds to option to early revolt and drop 30 hammers whenever needed. Sims will come back when I see more of the map. However if we want to grow to size 3, we need to stop working on BW and finish Hunting one turn after worker completes so he can camp the Deer. I'm teching BW right now because Hunting is fast and we're going BW second at the latest.

Laz, I agree that if we're doing it early, we plop it in the capital, however much it is paining me that there are only 5 riverside tiles (6 if we want to cottage grass hill ), but there's a lot of food for Rep specialists. I think that is the play unless a gold/gems is discovered in the river valley to the north, then we reconsider the timing and location of first scientist.
Alternative is to bulb Math, saves us a settler and we just fort the Stone and chop Pyramids somewhere with Forests. I’d like to avoid that if at all possible but short term gains are powerful

[Lazteuq]

Thanks for pointing out that extremely important rule, Civac. I really should know better by this point. Forts are so annoying.

I like your thinking of planning for building Moai quick. However, I don't like how 1W of the wheat is a pretty weak city early on, especially before Lighthouse. I think it's valuable for the wheat city and the island city to be able to share the capitol's fish, even though they'll crowd eachother later. Based on my PB60 experience with Civac, I think we don't need to worry that much about hammers for Moai, because you can build it mostly with whip overflow in a high-food city. Also settling on a plainshill is of course nice, and then it lets another city go on the other plainshill farther north. Even when gunning for Moai, I think the plainshills are more valuable as city tiles than as mines.
I'm not worried about crowding out the island city's tiles. All it has to do is exist and work the seafood we presume is out there in the fog.

I'm not sure what to think about growing to size 3, it's probably fine. It would be nice to get another unit done to send south or southeast. If a 3-2 whip can help accelerate the second worker or settler while also finishing a unit, then I think it's worth it, but I really don't know.

Yes, 5-6 cottage tiles is kinda bad for a bureau+academy capitol, we'll just have to wait and see.
That math bulb idea is crafty, but feels excessive, since we do really want a city on the stone island for ICTR anyway. Forts also take a long time to build. I think like 8 or 10 turns?
If we build mids in the capitol, there won't even be many forests left once we're done with the first few settlers/workers, so the Mathematics bonus isn't that big. I do think bulbing math even just for reaching Currency earlier is still decent, but maybe it makes more sense for the second GS. Since we're PHI that second GS might still be early enough. I don't have enough bulbing experience to say, you probably know better, Ginger.

I think the scout should definitely go to the cow next, and probably keep going north a bit more. Next turn we'll see. Since settling the northwest looks appealing, getting the scout down south isn't as important anymore.

I guess that land to the west is probably an island at a halfway point between civs. At first I'd been thinking it was a mirror of our own land, but then I realized the tiles don't quite line up.

[Ginger()]

   

I suspect that lake up north is near someone else, but I'm going to prioritize scouting a circle (or square, given Civ4's funky diagonal distances) around the capital for the time being. Hills in our second ring have revealed more land, and it looks like Animal Husbandry is a top priority for us, possibly before Mysticism and Pottery. I played some practice games against the AI and found out I could use balanced resources to simulate these hyper-rich maps, and now I understand why RB is so hot on IMP (which is typically scorned in singleplayer meta). The wealth of this land is has me feeling like the monkey from the neuron-activation meme, and I need to grab it all . I figured we'd leave the debate of the island city for later, and bring it up after a scouting workboat has a look around. I've put some speculative city sites around with X's or ?'s.
Of course that mineral (it had to be a silver, didn't it  ) resurrects the academy question, but I'll forget it for the time being and think about it later, for a fair comparison a sim is required. I like the fact that we can fit a nice core of commerce cities around the two rivers, things looking good if the game goes long. I also found this hilarious gem  https://youtu.be/YdXQJS3Yv0Y playing in my singleplayer game , which had my sides in stitches for a full 5 minutes, well played Charriu 

Laz you asked about how I like to use PHI. I love it as a recovery trait from economic doldrums. In trouble? Not anymore, you picked up the necessary tech to catch up. You can get a sudden payoff that temporarily brings you back up to speed, or sprint for a key tech. Also if you're really stuck saving gold, you can pop a golden age, and finish Currency or CoL or whatever gateway is holding you back. The value of an Academy goes without saying. That's Classical/Medieval use of PHI. 
For going into Renaissance is where this trait comes into its own because it immediately catapults us to the key techs we need. Here's a couple examples:
What would a Steel lib look like? It would look like 6 great scientists (Philo x1, Edu x2, Printing Press x1, Chem x2) and a Merchant or two needed to power through Engineering, Gunpowder, and Lib itself. Plus whatever random crap Artists/prophets we toss in for a golden age. Alternatively you skip Machinery, single bulb Lib, then go Machinery/Engineering and tech through Chem instead of bulbing (you need Printing Press to unlock Chem bulb unless you skip Paper unlocks and go through Guilds, which is potentially faster but doesn't let use take advantage of the Liberalism bonus for Steel). This path is the biggest payoff, but is vulnerable to competition sniping Lib while we're chipping away at Gunpowder and Engineering.
The Mil Trad Lib path synergizes with a Great Engineer (Taj) if we get one, but would consist of teching the very expensive Music/Nationalism prerequisites, 1 merchant should do that, and then triple bulbing Edu and Lib itself is easy. This can be awkward because it requires skipping Machinery, but is much faster than Steel. 
Astronomy is also sometimes weird because it requires no CoL, no Meditation, and no Civil Service/Theology, but is also remarkably fast and can be done with 4 great scientists for Machinery, Optics, 2x Astro. This one is map dependent and I think we're on a Big and Small-type system, I believe most if not all players will be on our main landmass, so conquest value of Galleons has me skeptical.
Bulbing is not flexible and requires a little forward planning but Golden Ages and Trade Missions do not, and Gandhi in particular swap to Caste at will for Merchants as opposed to the usual Library-spawn. The worst case scenario for our trait use is that we 'have to' 'dump' spare scientists into golden ages if a good bulb path is blocked my necessity. 
 Imagine that, 'being forced' into golden ages, against your will...   This, like talk of the island city, is drifting far into the dangerous territory of future chicken numeration, so for now I'll be focused on REX, and trying to shoehorn Judaism into our tech plans somewhere.

[Charriu]

Great that you liked it. But I can't take credit for this. Both idea and implementation weren't from me. I think idea was from Mjmd? and implementation from Ramk.

[Charriu]

In case of Astronomy. Don't forget that Galleons now also require Paper.

[Ginger()]

Found borders in the fog to the north, my hunch about the lake was correct. Turned east to avoid contact. The capital is exactly 12 tiles straight north. The color is a deep blue/purple, which I assume to be MJMD's Sumeria. This complicates the plan for the silver city somewhat as I should now probably plant it on the floodplains to first ring the Silver and Cow, if I plant it on the original riverside plains forest I run the risk of inviting a forward settle. The Cow by the lake is along our midway line, so I should try to plant it, probably 5th or 6th city material. This border is a little unstable because it is wide, so if I plant the Cow it's probably IW after Writing. I know Vultures famously lose to Axemen on flat, how do Praets stack up against Vultures?

[civac2]

Vultures are a bit better than axes against praets in most relevant situations. The difference is too small to really matter though.

[Ginger()]

Encountered Mjmd’s scout further along the northern river. I will probably be settling to crush the floodplains so I can first ring the resources. Feels like the uncreative play. The good news is he’s neither Cre nor Exp/Imp or Boudicca. The bad news is that he’s not green and this map is a little tighter than I was expecting. Workboat finally will finish once this turn rolls and I’ll start on a worker. I am debating between double worker or worker settler. Time to go back to the simming board

[Ginger()]

A question for the lurkers while I toil away in the sim mines, what general criteria do you use to judge if an opening calls for double worker or worker settler?

[El Grillo]

Double worker accelerates your overall growth curve more, but worker->settler with the goal of connecting copper or horse can be more active on the map earlier against other players (and barbarians when those are enabled).