[pb72 spoilers]: the esteemed gentleman's literature and book club

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for covering the turns, Tarkeel! NBD if you missed a turn with the scout. It looks like Xist10 has missed a turn or two as well. I know the rule about competent opponent land wars, but we may have to start planning a PYFT war.

I think that was just PBSpy acting up, it missed the turn I did.

Since I have no idea how to use the dotmapping tool in BUG, I'll just talk about the proposed city layout using words.

ALT+X and CTRL+X; one is for editing and the other is for toggling visibility.

I was really happy to see that floodplain valley as well. That's prime land and definitely makes sense to move the capital there medium term. The original capital probably makes sense as a National Epic city, or heroic epic maybe?

The city with the cow + sheep looks strong, but we won't have AH online by the time the settler is ready. That's why I want to get the scout over to that wet corn sooner rather than later. That city can't share a wheat, but getting that 6f tile online ASAP seems to be the way to go for a second city. It would probably just be a worker pump, not a lot of room to share cottages. Then the cow+sheep can be city 3, and then the floodplain valley after that - that would be around when pottery comes in and we can start on granaries and cottages in earnest. I'm waiting on a full view of the starting area to do simming in earnest.

Yep, that's what I meant by bridging the gap to floodplains through the north, so agree with the scout moves. Curious to see how we best hook that corn.

[greenline]

The worker will have a couple turns to road before he starts chopping into the settler. I'll sim what that means for getting the corn hooked shortly

[Tarkeel]

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but safest to do so here as well: I'm leaving for a week or so with no access to civ, but will try to read the forums.

[greenline]

Shouldn't be an issue, Tarkeel. I'll be around the whole week for the turns.

Played another double turn. The landscape around the corn is less than ideal:


I still think the corn is the best shot for city #2, because there is no efficient way to share the capital's wheats. Any city that could would be parasitic, without any new food of its own. Perhaps Krill had wanted the player here to SIP so that a city sharing the wheat and getting the grass cow would be legal. Oh well - going on the info on T0 moving the capital was the right call. There's no benefit to shoving more water and land across a canal in an already awkward capital.

Long term, city 2 couldn't do much else besides work a few cottages. Very short term all it can do is work mines, the corn, and whip. Is this a case where it's worth building lumbermills? In BtS, I'm used to having all the early cities prioritize cottages, but it seems like cities 3-5 would be picking up the slack here, with their fertile river terrain.

[Tarkeel]

I like the plains hill northwest of the corn slightly better.

[greenline]

Continuing on with the naming scheme, with the first worker produced, we have a new author to discuss:




Nathaniel Hawthorne, I think, makes for a good starting point for a theory I noticed when thinking about books for the thread. I now suspect that there is a pattern in the United States, where most, if not all, of the great authors of literature were either born in the South, or at least spent long enough living there to get an understanding of the culture. I also think that the North, for all of the industrial wealth it has given the country, has also produced some of the lackluster authors imaginable. And what better place to start on that controversial point, than with Hawthorne?

Hawthorne's most famous work today is The Scarlet Letter, a novel that could charitably be described as an American answer to Jane Austen. It is a story of a woman who betrays the conventions of her society, and examines how she is punished for it. Less charitably, it could be described as someone taking these nice sounding ideas, and feeding them into a machine that paints the text, in grey, onto a grey rock, surrounded by seagulls wearing grey sweaters to celebrate National Fog Day.

Judging prose is not the easiest thing to do in the world. Most of us can easily identify mistakes in spelling in grammar, and laugh at them, but it's harder to say exactly why some writers can make vibrant descriptions and some can not. For old novels, I tried to come up with this comparison. The Canterbury Tales, a story written around 600 years ago, still manages to be fairly easy to read and is often snappy and enjoyable - despite being written in Middle English with many words being foreign to us today. Meanwhile, all of Hawthorne's work, despite being only 200 or so years old, comes across like it was written 2000 years ago, and was translated from a different language. Jane Austen, who wrote only fifty or so years before Hawthorne, did not share his the qualities of his prose either. 

This is already a pretty bad look for Hawthorne. But if I was to continue being charitable, and decided to let the issue of prose slide to focus on the ideas of his work - they are dreadfully shallow when carefully examined. The Scarlet Letter asks the reader to suppose if all the shame involved in the early Puritan colonies was entirely necessary or needed... and little else. His many short stories set in the Puritan time period address equally insightful topics, like Hawthorne's apparent fear of pagan witches dancing outside in the woods. Chaucer would have laughed this guy out of the room.

I believe that, if the North had possessed a supply of talented authors, Hawthorne never would have been taken as seriously as he was. But being a man willing to pen any sort of significant writing, he succeeded at being a bigger fish in a small pond.

[greenline]

I like the plains hill northwest of the corn slightly better.

That would definitely be good if there was any seafood. I'll have the scout move further in that direction to confirm.

[greenline]

been sick, mostly just scouting (north has some real crap land, barely worth a screenshot). a bit concerned on the latest info i saw in the demos




Everyone grew to size 2 a turn before I did, because of the turn lost moving the capital. But now I'm behind the leaders by 3 CY. The most reasonable explanation is that the other players had some kind of fish resource, and micro'd the hammers to have a WB out when the capital hit size 2. But if the starts aren't identical for resources, are people taking advantage of some kind of banana forest or something I don't have? Guess we'll find out.

[greenline]

good news: the second city site has another food resource. bad news: i'll need to slip in another workboat from the capital somewhere.




Demos are a bit more encouraging now, as we are tops in MFG even if bottom in CY, as capital starts the settler, so it won't be that far behind people who hooked a seafood (thanks, 2/2 ivory!). The worker has a couple of turns before BW comes in to start a road to the second city, which won't be wasted as it will get that first PRO trade route going.

[greenline]

BW in. Research set to fishing next. Then AH, then pottery. Here are the copper locations:




This one is pretty miserable. Buried in the tundra, hard to get to, no easy food.




This one doesn't necessarily need a city, and we may want to skip settling for the copper if there's no food on the sea that the WB will uncover next turn.