[PB66] Tarkeel and civac explore the untamed wilds

[Tarkeel]

Turn 27 (2920 BC)
The scout has been inching north, dodging a bear. We gambled on a forested hill, and spotted this:


My best guess is Magic Science's Greece, but could also be Amica's Khmer or GKC's America. Mjmd is most likely located to the west of whomever it is.

[civac2]

Dear Readers,

I have been remiss in that I have not so far undertaken the RB ritual of bitching and moaning about a start position. At most you would find a mild comment of mine in PB56 that I liked Cairo's starting position a little better. This won't do at all, of course.

So here goes:



First, we have our copper location situated in a foodless wasteland facing towards our enemies.

Putting a city there would be bearable if we could settle additional strong cities for expansion. However, there is no spot in the vicinity in the east.



There are good cities further away but those are not suitable as second city. And in the south



the only spot between corn and pig would very seriously mess up the dot map of the food poor southeast.

We are basically obliged to settle two (initially) weak cities, the copper city and a city east of the capital sharing the wheat which is the least terrible choice for city#2. This seriously retards our chances to win this game as would the other bad option of researching Animal Husbandry over Pottery. AH would be too late for city#2 even then and force settling the weak sharing city in the east anyway.

Compare the second city of Magic Science, most blessed disciple of RNGesus.



F*ck this!

I realize of course this is overly dramatic. There are a lot of resources everywhere. They are just laid out in a really unfortunate way. However, we strongly considered going for an early Oracle and this plan mostly died this morning when we found our copper location. Moreover, I would rest easier if the copper was in a stupid location in our backline instead. And overdramatization is part of the ritual anyway.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 33 (2680 BC)
There's been a slew of new cities founded the last few turns, and finally it's our time.


Civac had a good complaint/rundown of our options, and we're gambling on settling the fertile east and delaying copper for a bit. The copper city will have a nice floodplain valley to grow into, but there's no extra food to speed up the growth, so it will be slow. We also had some plans to settle for the southern marble and chop out Oracle, but that's been put on hold.



Dagnor's Cauldron is a barren wasteland, a large caldera-like cauldron resulting from an unknown cataclysm.

[civac2]

As mentioned above we were discussing building the Oracle to aquire Metal Casting. The Colossus would have been strong on this watery map and prophet points from the Oracle would have enabled a fast shrine. My idea was to dispense with Masonry (contrary to what Tarkeel said; we didn't have it planned out) and chop the forests around Dagnor's Cauldron into the Oracle assisted by overflow whips.

Since the copper is located so akwardly and both copper city and Dagnor's Cauldron are initially weak cities we decided to go on a settling spree to complement them with the two powerhouse cities in the east.



Critically, the tech to improve all of their resources is known. The next problem is the need for worker labor all these cities have. The cities in the east should ideally be connected by a (longish) road and chopping granaries immediatly in addition to improving their food resources is vital to unlock their potential.

The copper city requires a four tiles long road and at least a flood plain farm in addition to the copper mine.



Two workers are surely needed and this investment won't yield much in the way of a return in the short term.

To enable all of this we chop all six available tree into three additional workers followed by three settlers. The exact sequence of cities is not decided yet. After that we will evaluate our position again. However, it's unlikely we can go for the Oracle at this point since there won't be any chops left anywhere. If it goes very late perhaps it is possible to build it in the capital assisted by marble.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 39 (2440 BC)
We've been slowly following the plan, and this turn brings some action:


The warrior tawsked with pre-emptively securing our copper city spots a barbarian warrior just in time to take up position on the forested hill we wanted, where he should have 97% odds to prevail. That's a risk that's worth taking to keep control of the area. The scout will soon swing south for more vision from Mjmd, but he's only just got knowledge of copper so Impi rush seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, our swarm of three workers is busy at work deforesting, and we'll have pottery and granaries in 4 turns.

[Tarkeel]

Oh, and the best news of the turn isn't even visible as I missed it: We got a free Buddhism spread!

[Tarkeel]

For those holding their breath, our warrior held his position.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 43 (2280 BC)
Pottery came in this turn, and micro-genius civac has timed it so that the overflow from our second settle will complete the Granary in Kaladim. Dagnor's builds our fourth worker, two of which are now preparing roadword for the settler to reach Corny in 2 more turns. Dagnor's is building the next settler, tentatively slated for RockyBeach, btu can divert to copper.


A barbarian warrior was trolling in our path, but died to our double warrior escort, so it should be smooth sailing

[Tarkeel]

Turn 45 (2200 BC)
The scout finds a wounded bear (1.0) in the north, and moves to get attack for the more or less free XP. As an added bonus, if we park the scout where the bear is now, that area is fogbusted.


The eastern settling party is ready for Corny next turn.

[Charriu]

And you left that poor wounded animal out in the open. That's cruel. Imagine you could have tamed and domesticated it. Then you could train people to ride on them and conquer the world with your bear-riders.