[PB65 - Cornflakes] Rising from the Ashes

[Cornflakes]

The tile 2W of stone is revealed to be wet wheat. Seriously, that site just about defines "uber-land midway between players". Here's a quick dotmap of that area.

   

BLUE - MJMD's likely target city location with 1st ring wheat, 2nd ring cows + gold
PINK - My aggressive location. This is the uber-location that grabs All The Resources dares MJMD to make me pay.
GREEN - A less aggressive location that leaves him the cows and clearly on "my side of the line" at 5 tiles from my cap and 7 from his.
YELOW - stepping-stone location that can share the capital deer for quick start, picks up new deer + gold. After looking at it further, Yellow is probably best 1E on the plains hill, with the idea to pick up gold with Green dot. The risk though is the MJMD plants Blue and invalidates anything else that I could plant to pick up gold. Yellow 1N is a compromise location but plains deer is not enough food and this would be a terrible 2nd city.

Would settling the GREEN dot be received as a sign of cooperation and compromise? Or would that earn nearly as much ill will as PINK? Green is still a 3-turn walk from the capital for reinforcements. I would still need Archery to secure Green as 2nd city. Argh, I wish those resources were spread out a little more and apportioned between us. My scout is circling back now to to push back the fog south of Green and west of my capital to see if I have something less contentious available for 2nd city.

[chumchu]

Tough position. Blue and Green look like good border cities but both of them can not exist at the same time.

Blue and Yellow might result in a stable border along the red line but he will have an advantage. He gets more of the contested tiles, especially the stone. Your city will also be flat land while his is on a hill behind a river.

Green gives him the option to plant a city 1W of cow and another 1 NW of the wheat. That would give him decent resources and some defense depth. This leaves Green low on food but defensible.

I would not see Green as an outrageous city in the way that Pink is. Pink gives you access to his capital with 2-movers.

[Cornflakes]

Misclicked the scout this turn, backtracking through explores territory not exactly sure how it happened, I think I right clicked accidentally while zooming right after login. Not a big enough deal to reload. Now if that had been my worker sent off exploring randomly …

[Cornflakes]

Due to the scout backtrack I decided to shorten the circle right now and defog the tiles to the west of the capital instead of circling back later. Located a few more resources but reinforced the initial observations that we have some dry dry lands to work with:

   

Here's my stream-of-consciousness assessment of this position. Little editing, wall of text warning

We have tons of forest to chop, but are a long way from bronze working. And there's no way I could justify delaying AH when the combined yield from those two cow pastures is +6.

Production potential this game is huge. In fact, if I could stay solvent and avoid strike from unit maintenance I could potentially crank out enough units to brute force my way across the map It's only a 6 player game, after all.

Connect stone
Chop Pyramids > Police State
Chop forests into military
Mine the plains hills and allocate resources such that each city can achieve 20 base production/turn and 2-turn HA from each city.
Burn down the world
Bask in the glory as tyrant over the charred wasteland

That's fools talk though. This production also screams BUILD ALL THE WONDERS. I could hit the top of the tree for early PHI Great Library. I could rush the monk wonders (PHI now gets +100% construction of Monasteries). I could Oracle Monarchy. Serfdom would simultaneously cut a turn off each forest chop while also scraping together a few more commerce from farms. Farmed plains in GA yield a decent 2/2/2 with serfdom. Commerce is extremely tight but a Prophet will bulb Theology and scientist can bulb Math for boosted chops, and I funnel commerce into other prerequisites. This is starting to take shape. What do I need first? Expansion obviously.

That yellow "stepping stone" city is looking mighty fine now. Steals deer from capital for rocket booster start. Picks up 2 food resources + gold. It is flat land, but close enough to defend easily. I can screen for Impi and run the Swarm of Warriors defense if needed (2-turning each city in a pinch) but at 8 tiles from MJMD and 3 from my capital that would be a dedicated choke from him and he probably has other neighbors to consider as well as his own expansion. The one bummer is that site misses the Stone and makes it hard to pick up without an aggressive plant towards MJMD, and that might be the deal killer. Yeah I don't like anything else up there except PINK. Ok, rethink this with GREEN DOT locked in.

YELLOW-1E (Code Name Y1E) misses the sheep and gold, but leaves those two for GREEN to pick up. Basically the thought is for Y1E to be a quick starting 2nd city while buying time to connect copper or get archers on the field and ensure that I can secure GREEN, as well as popping borders onto the northern deer to jumpstart GREEN, while the coiling up worker labor to quickly improve GREEN. On the other hand Y1E is a very poor city long-term with no unique resources. Is the boost to the snowball enough to make it worth a settler? I think I can do better. Looking further at GREEN dot I see that the eastern sheep could also function as the rocket booster resource. And that sheep can be picked up from a 2nd city located west of the capital which would also grab another Deer.

2nd ring ocean fish somewhat ties my hands in locating a city to the west of my capital. Constraints:
- I need to leave a decent site to pick up that fish. Plains hill with lighthouse lake is OK. Other option is 2N of fish.
- Need to have the sheep in BFC to eventually transition to GREEN
- Need to have the capital's Dear in BFC for rocket booster start

Result: Capital 3W1N (Code Name C447, using numpad navigation). Bonus: The non-riverside bare grass 2N looks like a good candidate for Horses [copper suspected in one of the 3rd ring plains hills to the northeast, or 4N1W of capital]. Outside chance the copper is on the plains hill 6W of the capital, which would make for a decent fish/copper filler city that can steel deer to get off the ground. C447 is 3rd ring to capital for lower maintenance, capital's deer for rocket booster start. 2 resources to improve after CRE border pop. Can grow 2 cottages for the capital as well as share a riverside grass mine. Has 2 forested plains hills for emergency unit production in the short term, and paves the way for a rocket booster start on the next high-value city at GREEN DOT. Overall I think we check all the boxes for a good 2nd city location. Good enough to plan micro around until the first warrior can push back some fog in the northeast.

[Cornflakes]

I found 2 more seafood resources, and had a forest grow:

   

The forest grew 1NW of the capital just after my worker made it through to the deer. 1 or two turns earlier and it would have delayed connection of the deer and all subsequent micro by a turn, including the settler Dodged a bullet there. But that forest still may impact my larger plans. I was considering Pottery ahead of Bronze Working to get a couple cottages down but I now only have a single non-forest riverside grass Pottery isn't going to pay for itself. Scratch Pottery then, and hit BW directly after AH.

I've been ruminating on the bulb chart, especially considering the fact that I can more easily generate prophets than the typical game. After the cheap prerequisites of Meditation, Polytheism, Priesthood, and Monotheism ... Theology > Code of Laws > Civil Service. Theology would come much earlier than needed for Apostolic Palace but I can still build it when ready, but importantly the 2nd prophet I birth can bulb Civil Service! I could potentially Oracle Code of Laws while working through the cheaper prerequisites that unlock the Theology and Civil Service bulbs. My capital has extremely high production potential and Bureaucracy would essentially grant me Industrious trait. Tack on Organized Religion for +75% production of all wonders, and add in Stone for University of Sankore and Spiral Minaret (unlocked with 3rd Prophet bulb).

Capital can sustain size 8 happy cap with gold + religion + temple. Food constraints limit +8 surplus allowing us to work 4 plains hills. Therefore base production at size 7 could be 24 hpt = 42 hpt for non-stone wonders, and 54 hpt for stone wonders (not to mention AP bonus hammers, or future production potential when windmills allow working more hills). If we can get past the poor initial commerce and utter lack of cottageable tiles in the first 75 turns then we should be golden.

[Cornflakes]

Pindicator (PRO/IMP America) met us a couple turns ago, and I have located him 18 tiles due west. If we extrapolate that placement into a 52-tile wide map we can infer 3 players in the north, 3 in the south, about 17-18 tiles East/West each, offset into a zig-zag pattern. [EDIT:: and presumably land on the east/west wrap?]

   

Red lines indicated approximate midpoints between Pindi, MJMD, and I. That ocean fish makes that area really awkward for Pindi to dotmap. Any city that picks it up would be flatland for him and would either have corn 2nd ring, or would leave corn to be picked up by an aggressive city on the midpoint line. I want to prevent Pindi from locking down the midpoint and I think my ORANGE dot accomplishes that nicely. It's a hill location behind a couple hills to hinder mounted attack. Picks up the corn 2nd ring while making it even more awkward for Pindi to grab the corn 1st ring. It's 2 tiles closer to my capital and easily reinforced from GREEN and BLUE. Attack vectors from Zulu are safe on the diagonals. If I can get a Madrasa in quickly and push 3rd ring borders out I can completely secure the wheat in the north.

Orange + Green together will establish a solid front vs. our CRE neighbor, and Madrasas should allow us to hold that long term. I'm really liking my pick for this map. CRE will grab a bunch of 2nd ring resources in my cities boosting expansion. Cheap Madrasa look like they will allow me to push out and maintain an extra ring of border which percentage-wise on a tight map is a big swing in territory.

Here's a glimpse of the east now that my warrior has had a few turns to explore.

   

My scouting efficiency has been atrocious this game. Horses unfortunately did not pop on the naked grassland north of C447 like I was hoping. When I saw them in the east I sent my warrior down that way, only to realize afterwards that the few tiles I've uncovered so far would have been revealed anyway by the 3rd ring mountain in the east. I really want to circle this warrior north/northwest to screen towards Zulu ahead of the settler but instead I've wasted a couple turns of movement southeast, which means I'll either have to shorten the radius as I move counterclockwise or forego the screen. Given that I'm settling 3 tiles from the capital I think I'll delay the screen, explore wider arc, and plan on arriving a few turns in advance of the 3rd settler for GREEN (eta T40) at which point the screening will be mandatory.

[Cornflakes]

Curiously, Pindicator is not allocating his EP spending. I would expect Pindi to stay on top of his EP allocation to get graphs quicker. He now has 9 invested towards me while I have 20, so he put 4 turns @ 2 + 1 turn @ 1, meaning he met a third player last turn.

[Cornflakes]

Someone founded Hinduism last turn which had to be their 2nd tech. My money is on BING of Agriculture/Mysticism Inca. One more food tech then Polytheism makes sense. Although that puts him very far away from Bronze Working + Wheel for copper connection.

Another curiosity I discovered is that I am the *ONLY* player to grow to size 3. I'm sitting on my 4th turn at size 3 so there's no way anyone else is growing to 3 without getting a settler out first. Which given 3 great resource ties at 6 foodhammers each doesn't make sense to me. Admittedly I'll be splitting off one of those tiles to my 2nd city and then working a plains forest hill for a while so maybe I'm mis-playing.

[Cornflakes]

Northeastern neighbor is revealed to be India (sucksatciv) peeking out of the fog. Haven’t made contact yet but will next turn. I think. Or I could avoid contact, settle on horses, and chariot rush

[Cornflakes]

It appears that Superdeath is my eastern neighbor. Haven’t found his territory but I spotted his warrior to Pindicator’s west and I’ve located everyone else’s capital culture. I’m getting 20% known tech bonus on Bronze Working now from 4 rivals knowing it.

Buddhism was founded so two Mysticism civs picked up an early religion. How early with Oracle get built? On this hammer heavy map the Oracle might be worth taking an earlier/cheaper tech. I was pretty strongly considering heading that way after Bronze Working now that I have worked techs, but with both religions down I’m wondering if someone might build it before their second city??

Vacation micro said that building a 3rd worker was better before the 3rd city, even though the settler would have completed just about perfectly on the turn after Bronze Working was finished. Let’s hope that either bronze is already in my borders, or that I don’t need bronze ASAP to fend off an Impi rush looks like I’ll be overflowing with worker labor for the foreseeable future. Good thing there are a lot of forests around for chop chop chopping.