[PB66 Spoilers] Miguelito and Ginger split the bill

[Ginger()]

City scrying?
Hold a unit with fortify, right click to activate go-to, hover over a square, and see the fortify button light up bright blue when you hover over a city.
I scanned in that direction when I saw the river start again on the other side of the mountain range, looked fishy and mirrored.

I can’t see the relevant tiles in that screenshot, is there a land connection in the fog west or south of that grasshill signed “scout”? If it’s a dead end, I don’t think we should scout it, since Barbarians are on and we will need to fogbust there before settling anyways.

[Miguelito]

City scrying?
Hold a unit with fortify, right click to activate go-to, hover over a square, and see the fortify button light up bright blue when you hover over a city.
I scanned in that direction when I saw the river start again on the other side of the mountain range, looked fishy and mirrored.

I can’t see the relevant tiles in that screenshot, is there a land connection in the fog west or south of that grasshill signed “scout”? If it’s a dead end, I don’t think we should scout it, since Barbarians are on and we will need to fogbust there before settling anyways.

Never heard of this, but also couldn't reproduce it - does the unit need to be unmoved yet? I tried with the scout after moving. Honestly I'd want to havethis patched out for future games, but now that it's part of the game...

Someone has a fish:


(superdeath? )



There are so many unjungled calendar resources that we can debate calendar before currency. A riverside grassland incense (I think this doesn't even appear on normal mapscripts?) is a 2/0/7 tile  . So that alone equates 3.5 domestic overseas routes, not even counting the happiness.  Would just need marble to make it a no brainer (not actually. We really want them mids. And who would plan for getting both against human opponents ?)
I like the blue dots, we just need a decent spot 2N1E of the dye or so - and if your intel is correct, that will be contested hard. White dots seem clearly worse, starting with the no food dye city. Moai on that hill could be debatable, especially if the land on the other side isn't an island (so nobody could plant for the crab first ring), but it would still be a slog to get up, and not so great so as to throw over other plans for it.

I suppose we will need a micro plan at some point. So far I've been lazy. Do you want to participate, or just throw in quips on my elaborations? Do you prefer a spreadsheet or sandbox? I have usually planned in a spreadsheet until about the third city, and after that go with medium term mini plans and try to find a general direction for development.Generally I've been oo chaotic to keep a sandbox updated properly, but if you want to use one I can try.
Relatively short term we have to decide whether to go sheep or pigs first. Instinctively I'd go for sheep because we need so many techs asap, but I think your plan for the ultrafast settler had the pigs first? Also, what were the details on that? You mentioned something about warrior overflow?

[Ginger()]

There are so many unjungled calendar resources that we can debate calendar before currency. A riverside grassland incense (I think this doesn't even appear on normal mapscripts?) is a 2/0/7 tile  . So that alone equates 3.5 domestic overseas routes, not even counting the happiness.  Would just need marble to make it a no brainer (not actually. We really want them mids. And who would plan for getting both against human opponents  ?)

Phi OP
Calendar first is looking good. Possible hiccups I foresee with Pyramids are that we might have to build it in the capital (slows down cottaging and Palace-enabled 6->3 settler whips), because I don't see a lot of forests. But yeah I agree it's a priority. I think HG is also on the shortlist if we're going for Math->Calendar ASAP. 

I suppose we will need a micro plan at some point. So far I've been lazy. Do you want to participate, or just throw in quips on my elaborations? Do you prefer a spreadsheet or sandbox? I have usually planned in a spreadsheet until about the third city, and after that go with medium term mini plans and try to find a general direction for development.Generally I've been oo chaotic to keep a sandbox updated properly, but if you want to use one I can try.
Relatively short term we have to decide whether to go sheep or pigs first. Instinctively I'd go for sheep because we need so many techs asap, but I think your plan for the ultrafast settler had the pigs first? Also, what were the details on that? You mentioned something about warrior overflow?

I'll be honest, I'm feeling a little disengaged from civ atm, partly it's other games, irl ww, and stuff like my upcoming vacation, plus maybe a wee bit of plain old burnout. If you can, I would appreciate if you could do the heavy-lifting with regards to the early micro. I'll happily kibitz when I have time, and I'll let you know when I'm ready to take a more active role.
For my part I've always done sims, rolling back the saves when I find that I'm missing a couple hammers or beakers, but I'll leave it up to you if you want to use a spreadsheet.

the tricky micro bit to my pig-first plan is that we spend 3 turns at size 2 before the pasture finishes. Of those three turns, 2 should be spent working the sheep, and 1 spent working the floodplain. This just barely lets us grow in one after pig finishes (and we swap to pig) and the two hammers from the sheep tile squeezes out the settler.

[Miguelito]

Yeah, I don't see a dedicated hammer city for pyramids yet either, but let's conclude the scouting circle. A city doesn't really need much more than a granary and improved tiles to build it, so it can also be city 4 or 5 I believe. With 3 forests (switch we should really use for expansion) and 3 mines I don't think the cap is particularly suited, besides the massive food surplus. Maybe there's a lot of forests around that incense in the south, or the city W of orange might have lots of hills - although it will be a border city and likely lack food, so probably not.

Btw, what's been of the opponent analysis? Do you still like writing one? I'd not I'll do something short, just to have a bit of discussion and get on the same page.

[Ginger()]

I'll organize the listing by player personalities. 

Let me chill (and eat you later):
Tarkeel + civac - Mehmed (EXP/ORG) of Spain
  Civac is the early micro, Tarkeel is the long-game advisor. Civac has lamented his tendency to turn an extremely early F/H snowball into mid and late game stagnation, so that's where Tarkeel will jump in. This is reminiscent of their PB62 combo, maybe they'll get to play with the Spanish toys?

Mjmd - Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of Zulu
  Mjmd has really, really good micro and is just an all-round solid player, but always manages to drop the ball somewhere. He's a bit like Hannibal, he can get victories, but doesn't know how to use them. A quick look at his recent history in 59/60/63 shows a propensity to get embroiled in pointless Ele/Cat conflicts while his neighbors tech ahead. In diplomacy, he oscillates between strong pragmatism (which saved both of our games in PB63, as we ended up top of the pack) and half-inspired small injury strikes like in 59/60. The pick is an amplification of Mjmd's usual skillset: expansion, balanced economy, and early warfare. 

Amicalola - Washington (CHA/EXP) of Khmer
  Somebody wants to play with the Aquaduct toys   CHA because it's synergy with EXP and because it helps the Math beeline tech path. Amicalola is very good and a balanced builder, but I fear for the long-term economy behind this pick. Washington is a huge early-war scare, but that isn't typically Amicalola's style, and there's not much for this combo to look forward to between Math and Military Science. Other hiccups I foresee with this are Amica's distaste for cottages and a diplo-hit from what will surely be a high score in the early game. 

Vanrober - Zara Yaqob (ORG/CRE) of Mongolia
  You probably have a much better read on Vanrober than I do, but at cursory reading of his threads he seems like he has strong fundamentals if a bit prone to mood swings (I'm a hypocrite). This combo is one that I originally considered for this start and it's very basic and steady. Creative sets up favorable borders, and the civ pick keeps the option of an early HBR assisted by Org. Alternatively if he wants to wait till Guilds, he spams Libraries and Courts and techs merrily away. It's a hedge pick that can easily pivot between what attack timings it wants. 

Along for the ride:
Magic Science - Sulieman (IMP/PHI) of Greece
  I don't know much about MS, he's been on civ hiatus a while. What I saw in PB63 was competent, although he probably should've declared on me when Mjmd did too. The pick is early trait to not be food, plus some delicious culture bomb trolling in the midgame. Phalanx is good, but will need to have converted his Artists into concrete gains by the medieval era in order to survive. 

JackRB - Lieu-Ye (Org/Pro) of Carthage
  Jack is surprisingly good despite his inexperience, he defended very well in 63 and in 61 was dead so quickly only because he fell for Bellarch's diplo machinations and initial first-strike trap hook line and sinker. I think his problem is that he just doesn't spend enough time either simming or looking at the map and planning out his long-game plans or covering his angles. He's said as much in his threads that he finds the asynchronous playstyle of pitboss hard to engage with given an addictive gaming style, so he just mails in his turns. I have the same problem with asynchronous pitboss games, but cope in the opposite direction by making each turn into an hour's gaming session. 
The pick screams GLH, PRO is good if there's islands available, looking at the map we've uncovered so far, I'm unsure. Cothon is actually a good build now that the circumnav bonus is attached to it. 67h after forge and OR isn't too bad. 

Alhazard - Napoleon (CHA/ORG) of Egypt
  Hasn't been around in ages, don't know enough to judge. Napoleon is a bit of an odd duck leader, not sure why, but I can never intuitively grok what his intended direction is. For early, mid, and late wars, there are all better combinations, so he turns into an awkward hedge that has some early economy with CHA and some late with ORG, but not a lot of tricks up his sleeve. The traits are individually defensible and usable but I don't see them interact meaningfully in the decisions taken when building an empire. Egypt needs no introduction.

Psychogamers:
Superdeath - Hammurabi (AGG/ORG) of Vikings
  Maintain graphs, respectfully follow his power spikes, and cover the surprise angles* and you'll do fine against SD. I have a great appreciation for his wealth-build MFG economies but working loads of mines has not helped his tendency to stunt his empire's growth. A problem compounded by his love of super-early wonder gambits. I love that he's willing to fall on his sword in defense, nobody should be making an easy lunch out of him. Besides, I don't think his chronically undercottaged empires have much nutritional value. *The trouble is there's gonna be a lot of surprise angles with Hammer of Vikings. Priority on open borders and careful monitoring. 

Gavagai - Suryavarman (CRE/EXP) of Aztec
  [PB 64 spoilers] You can read my thread Mig   . 
Gav loves his super-duper-hyper early leaders, multiple picks of RtR Mao, and second time picking CtH Surry. I don't like the Aztec pairing tbh. CRE + Mys civ is sloppy picking. The only defensible times are for Arabia (madrassa) and Byzantine (early defense from culture, since you get nukes at Guilds). Sacrificial Altars are in my opinion the most overrated UB in the game, especially with mod changes to buff mills and workshops. Simply put, Sac Altar is a happy UB, and happiness isn't such a big problem at the CoL era, unless you're Oracling it. Plus I find myself in cycles of either very few whips or extremely heavy (read: decreasing population) desperation whips, and Sac Altars help with neither, only with keeping a consistent whip cycle in the midgame. 

Piccadilly + plemo - Tokugawa (AGG/PRO) of Rome
  Germans sure love their nonsense early warring, don't they? I feel like Superdeath was born in the wrong forum sometimes. This pick is incredibly obvious, and in Piccalemo's capable hands, very dangerous. The problem with the pick is that it demands and signals early war, but I doubt there's an awful lot of way for the neighbors to avoid it. Absolute disaster for our late pick if we start aligned against them, although I have confidence that if we get a freebuild we can compete with them even if they get a free lunch elsewhere. 

GeneralKillCavalry - Kublai Khan (AGG/CRE) of America
 I wasn't quite sure about this alignment, GKC strikes me as a reasonable man who just suffers from some engagement issues. Propensity like Gav to prioritize early wars and is skilled at handling them, but can also builder in peace, I've seen it in live game ladder lobbies. Kublai is a bit of a mixed bag. Not sure what Agg will be doing for him except encouraging his worst instincts. Cre is decent, and I think the America pick is to provide some passive economy via the UB... unfortunately I don't see this trait combo heading anywhere quickly except into a neighbor, with questionable odds of success.

[Miguelito]

I misclicked the worker. Can this be fixed, please? Was meant to go onto the deer of course.

[Miguelito]

Ginger already saw it, but here's our horse.
With having to research agriculture BW is coming quite late - like late 30s. And it's likely that we'd still have to research wheel in order to actually connect copper. That has me questioning if we should not rather go for wheel (and probably Pottery) first, and have chariots for security. Connecting horse also requires an awful lot of roads, but who says that with copper it would not be the same? And this way we can at least plan for it.
How I see it playing out, roughly:

• BW first: after farming corn (which btw has awful worker movement, but just have to stomach it) porbably return to farming flood plain? Time the third settler so it comes in with the tech, build the mine while researching wheel and connect asap, which might take until t45 or so however.
  
• Wheel first: possibly 3rd settler right after the second, city 2 starts a worker after growing (or right away on size 1? sounds terrible   -  but we won't have more than 4 improved tiles for a while, hm). Connect horse by t37-40? Of course now we can't whip or chop a chariot, but the cap should be able to get one up in 5 turns, if we plan a bit around overflow. Pottery before BW of course is extra risk (also with respect to barb spears, which we'd need to handle with warriors). Otoh it would give the workers something actually useful to do, considering that we have no early commerce tiles (with tech cost being the same as in CFPB90 )
  

Either way we can totally get axe rushed  . But so far we can assume that nobody has even seen us, and at this point we just have to live with it, right?

We also need to decide whether to send the worker to the pig or sheep in 2 turns. I reproduced your eot26 settler and it sure is very elegant, but with all the tech constraints sheep might still be smarter? I'm down with Covid atm, so thinking slowly, but otoh I could find time to finally set up the spreadsheet, so I hope to produce a comparative sim for sheep/pig and wheel/BW first in time, until the third city. Maybe we should not rush the turns too much in the meantime

Regarding the horse city location, I'd like to consider W of sheep. Downsides are it loses the plains hill (and I think an eventual canal through the pig?) and needs an extra road. Meanwhile it preserves a forest, pushes terrain to the south, and with 2 food resources, 5 forests, the horse, and as many mines as we could wish for it's a plausible Pyramids city (my main reason). The lake city to the west is then badly squeezed between two others, but that is acutally pretty ok for an NE city imo. Either way it needs an immediate monument, which the PH of course gets faster

[Miguelito]

Or what if - hear me out - the orange dot is just not a very good second city? Sure it has the no brainer 6f tile and instant route, but at the same tile there is just no decent second tile before cottages - I find myself building a size 1 worker. It obliges us to research agriculture asap, and on top we lose like 4 worker turns moving.
The alternative I see would be a second worker at size 3 to road towards the horse city (or possibly after the settler, but then we lose a bunch of commerce due to lack of a trade route). That city is very similar to our second city in PB54 - shares pig, horses first ring, monument required for new food (it also needed a work boat though). In that game it turned out pretty good, although we had the inevitable barb spear at turn 46 or so. A religion would be awesome, but I suppose we can't spare the beakers.

I set research to wheel, which will do no harm if we end up going for the corn city anyways.

[Ginger()]

My *feel* (very unsubstantiated), is that the second city on the corn is still good even if it's just size 1 contributing 7hpt towards a worker.
The reasoning I have is that it's a very fast boost to our commerce. Plus 4 from trade and tiles, and maintenance should be -2.
If we're tech crunched and there's not a lot of chops, I don't see much help in going double worker before settler. maybe I'll get to look at the question in depth tomorrow and try and respond before I up and vanish for a week.

[Miguelito]

point taken re: commerce. However, what about safety?


I ran a pretty much optimized sim for sheep first into horse city into pottery:



Prague has 3 culture in its monument, we have an awesome t38 FP cottage (and 3 more turns put into prebuilding others), and the new city will be fine to grow onto riverside cottages.
The bad news is just that we have no more than 2 warriors and BW comes something like t49, maybe 48 with growth .
Probably the cap should be building a warrior or chariot and not a granary. 

I still kinda like it.

Variants to explore: Mining-BW before Pottery, Prague on the PH (significantly stronger short term, but I really like my position...)