[PB63 - Spoiler] JackRB attempts to avoid the sophomore slump

[JackRB]

That gems tile looks good especially if we can share some food from cap. How badly do we need commerce, is tech assumed to be the bottleneck for us?

How do you plan to get culture, is founding religion needed/important? If it is, then need to check what kind of competition we have but maybe Judaism could be founded fast enough with gems fueled eco?

Tech is somewhat of a bottleneck right now - although that's only from my very early game analysis up until the first settler. It might be worthwhile though, there's far too much food at the capital to use all at once. Will obviously need to scout around the area, but 1W from the mountain peak/1NE from the gems picks up gems first ring and can work the wheat and/or oasis tile.

Culture I'm usually pretty happy with winging it, last game in PB61 I was able to pretty universally get all food resources in 1st ring and so was able to make do without - I don't remember building any monuments for example, and Libraries sufficed. Will have to see though, if the local terrain is unfriendly to us non-CRE plebs we may have to go that way, and if we're in need of an earlier source of culture, the early gems would definitely come in handy and become a much higher priority, maybe 2nd city worthy?

[JackRB]

Turn 1 - Turn 2 (3960BC - 3920BC)

It would help if I actually subscribed and got new turn emails as a reminder, I'm terrible at remembering otherwise.

Scout moves: Turn 1: 1NE-1SE, Turn 2: 1S-1SE
I decided to continue scouting down towards the SE river area, and we found more gems! woo. as well as another food resource and a fair number of plains hills. Can also see the river ending into the sea in the south.



planning to scout the river delta, then maybe try and loop back around - looks like there's two seas either side of us, which can make scouting in a circle around our capital a little awkward? but im not complaining, good land here as usual

[Tarkeel]

Did you not end turn intentionally?

[JackRB]

Did you not end turn intentionally?

er, no. thanks for the spot.

[JackRB]

Turn 3 (3880 BC)

Heh, I keep predicting seas looking through the fog only to end up seeing small lakes. Guess I should just keep my mouth zipped.
(Also, playing with tile yields on I'm finding helpful, if only to catch the odd riverside desert tile floating about etc.)

[Tarkeel]

(Also, playing with tile yields on I'm finding helpful, if only to catch the odd riverside desert tile floating about etc.)

I've asked Ramk to fix those, they were supposed to be floodplains.

[Hitru]

N of scout looks like possible 2nd city spot. Would prefer to have something good east of gems to settle strong city grabbing gems in that case.

[JackRB]

Turn 4 (3840BC)

more scouting, more lovely lakes. city on that plains hill next to lake could be good down-the-road, if only to take advantage of lighthouse-fueled lake tiles. the desert tiles have also magically gotten fixed into floodplains tiles.



RE: city on plainshill, 1S of cow, does look very good for a 2nd city, close to capital too. My other candidate in my mind currently is 1NE of pigs, however its weaker in pretty much every way [less FP, more hills, splitting food from capital] except for being to share more tiles from the capital. I agree that the gems are a little awkward without more food lurking behind the fog.

[Hitru]

I don't like 1NE of pigs that much as it does not add any new food to the empire, which 2nd city should more or less always do.

[JackRB]

Turn 5 (3800 BC)

Borders popped, revealing a little bit more of our surroundings, and scout reaches the western sea edge, revealing a plains deer and a clam (1SW of scout, I've perfectly positioned camera so resource bubble doesn't show up!). Most intriguing is the 2-tile stone island. Free internal ICTR and stone to boot (although what would we use it on? and is it worth sinking hammers into that rather than the bog-standard wonder of "more settlers"). This definitely looks designated as 'our' offshore island however, and so I'd wager a fair number of others have similar easy access to said islands.



Scout should really start rotating back again, I'd like to see if there's anything interesting just beyond the river valley just uncovered as that's where early expansion is likely to be, plus just seeing if we can pair food with those gems.