[SPOILERS] yuris125, pitboss 76

[yuris125]

Oh, and also, when I made the sandbox map and loaded it, one of the first things I realised was that settling in place doesn't give me a good tile to work before the first border pop.

Never mind this, I forgot the copper resource in my sandbox - that changes things quite a bit

The idea I'm toying around at the moment is settling the first city on the wine NW of the pig, and the second on the coastal plains hill. Gives me a more inland capital with hopefully more riverside to cottage. Problem is, I would have to settle it on T0 for it to be my capital, and I won't be able to reveal the area on T0, due to forests in the way of scouts. And if there's nothing in the fog, this city only has a single +5 food resource - is that good enough for a capital?

I also played around with Music opener, one idea I had last night was to build a cheap early temple, hire a priest to birth a great prophet, use the prophet and artist to bulb Theology and Philosophy, switch to Pacifism to make a great engineer for Apostolic Palace, and generally try leaning heavily into religion. Unfortunately, both prophet and artist have Divine Right higher than Philosophy in the priority list. Skipping the prophet and using the artist for Theology bulb and an engineer for AP is still a thought, but that would mean researching Music just for denial purposes (at a risk of being in a race I could lose), when straightforward Civil Service research and cottage spam are likely more beneficial

On Vikings, I recognise their power, especially after it was clearly shown in recent games, but since we haven't played many medieval start games, I thought we could give them a chance. But if better players think they're banworthy, I'm not going to object, much as I would prefer no / minimal bans

[yuris125]

While I'm pretty certain that Music opener is nonsense (or I'm just not seeing something), what Gandhi definitely can do is build a cheap temple, get an early great prophet for Theology, follow that up with a great engineer for AP, and take full advantage of both temples and monasteries being cheap. No idea if it's good / as strong as what other combos can do, but it does sound fun

In the sandbox, I got Theology T32 and great engineer was due on T60 (didn't play all the way there, sandbox isn't that useful without more map info)

[yuris125]

So I think I'm fairly committed to Gandhi of Russia as my preferred choice

One thing sandboxing showed me is how accelerated medieval start is compared to what we're used to with ancient start. As I mentioned, I was able to settle cities 3 and 4 on T25 when I deliberately went for fast settlers. That build skipped the 3rd worker, so those cities worked a lot of unimproved tiles, and going this fast may not be viable. However, settling a 3rd city in early 20s and 4th in early 30s is easily doable. I expect we will have 6-7 cities by T50 - the map will fill up fast, and players will start looking for expansion through aggression. I thought at first that we will be past the knights era by the time aggression starts, but based on this early tests, we are very likely to see the first wars with most militaries still built around knights (or units good against knights)

The two picks so far confirm that people are already planning for war. Vikings are obviously supposed to be aggressive, and Commodore's pick is clearly designed to have access to triple-promoted mounted units out of the gate (barracks + stables + vassalage + theocracy = 9XP, enough for 3 promos with Chm). With this in mind, even if I do reach renaissance in a competitive position, I would be happier to have access to superior mounted units than to powerful, but expensive UB

Montezuma of Germany is the backup option, which gives me Grenadier replacement UU available at Chemistry, which benefits from Agg. But I think it's questionable how effective 1-movers would be against this field - if there's someone playing this game who's likely to die to a stack of 1-movers, it's me

Mansa of England is the last option (Fin to speed up stock exchanges), but England uniques feel kinda meh. Redcoats die to grens just like normal rifles, and stock exchange's bonus of +65% gold rather than +50% doesn't feel impactful enough

[yuris125]

I'm off to bed - if Scooter doesn't pick Russia, please feel free to post it as my pick

[yuris125]

So we ended up with two aggressors (Thoth and Commodore) and two players who hope to be left in peace (Scooter and myself). Pindicator probably plans to do something with Conquistadors (and frankly it feels like there's a lot of plans for aggression with Curis), but his leader pick suggests a more defensive mindset, so I'm putting him somewhere in the middle

With gers, Commodore has potential to get four promotions on his mounted units out of the gate, if he finds 2 more XP (a settled general?). Scary. I don't think he plans to do anything with keshiks, probably way more value in building settlers and infra in the early game, but can't discount that danger either

My plans will heavily depend on who my neighbours are, but rough outline: Civil Service -> Feudalism / Machinery / Engineering in some order -> Guilds -> Gunpowder -> Nationalism -> MilTrad, then the Rifling path. Paper fits in somewhere when I'm ready to bulb Education and build research labs. Music is also needed, and could be prioritised if I don't need to worry about defences too much and artist is still available. Philosophy needs to fit somewhere, but not a priority (Scooter is in pole position to found Taoism, he has easy access to the first great scientist, so the only question is if he wants to spend it on Philo bulb)

Bulbs - Theology (prophet), Education (scientist), Printing Press (scientist), Replaceable Parts (engineer), Chemistry (scientist). Maybe Divine Right with an artist, especially if I get the Music one - depends how heavily I want to lean into monk wonders. Astro is a potential scientist bulb, but requires getting Education and Printing Press out of the way before Gunpowder is researched, and I don't think that's happening. And waiting to bulb it after Chemistry would probably be too late

Liberalism - I'm probably in a position to contest the free tech, as I'm likely to prioritise Education higher than others. However, Liberalism itself has next to no value. Science boost from Free Religion would be welcome, but Theocracy is almost certainly the required religious civic in the mid-to-late game, and since my plans include Apostolic Palace, I don't want to go no state religion. Free Speech is only useful for cultural victory, I don't see myself ditching Bureacracy for it. So the only value of Liberalism would be as a discount on an expensive tech (Steel, Rifling, maybe Democracy or Communism if I decide to go that way)

Wonders - I have a reasonably firm plan for the Apostolic Palace, doubt it will be contested. I would like to try for Sankore and Spiral Minaret. Great Library and Hanging Gardens are in the "nice to have" category, only question is if I will have hammers to spare for so many wonders. MoM and Colossus I think lose value in a shorter game. MoM will give maybe 4 extra golden age turns - is it worth the investment? And Colossus has a short shelf life, with Astronomy likely becoming a required tech relatively early. Longer term, I'd be happy to get Statue of Liberty, but can't plan that far ahead. I could also see myself considering Chichen Itza if the aggressors are next to me

[Tarkeel]

since my plans include Apostolic Palace, I don't want to go no state religion.

Note that Apostolic Palace does not depend on your current state religion, it's only used at the time of building. This is unlike Sankore, Minaret and Sistine.

[yuris125]

Oh that's good to know. AP is like the only wonder with a poor Civilopedia entry, it doesn't even mention the extra hammers!

[yuris125]

Moved scouts W-N and E-N as planned




That gold certainly is reason enough to delay the second city - it will probably go N of the pig, but we'll see if scouts reveal any other interesting info next turn

As I said, I don't love the starting hill as the capital. It does have 3 food resources and not that many water tiles. But I see at least one of these resources going to another city. If the southern island doesn't have other seafood, the island city will have to take over the fish; if it does, I will probably want to give the wheat to the 3rd city. There's only 5 riverside grassland tiles, and with so much food this city will probably be the primary GP producer for a while - not ideal for a bureau capital. But on the other hand, I don't want to go wandering in search of something better - and if I do find something significantly better, moving the capital is always an option

So after moving the rest of the units, here's where we are on T0




For the naming scheme, normally I'm not creative with it, and happy to use the default names in the absence of a better idea. But I don't want any association between my in-game empire and real world Russia. Not right now

So I take the easy option of looking for inspiration at games I play besides Civ. Lately I have been obsessed with Brotato, the entry to the genre created by Vampire Survivors that grabbed me the most. So I'll just go ahead and name my cities after characters from that game. There are 44, which should be plenty for this game. The capital is named after the starting, the most vanilla character

I did remember to revolt to HR and Serfdom. No reason to switch to OR for now. Flipping between Serfdom and Slavery will be an interesting mini-game, I want to be in serfdom as much as possible in the early game, I love 2-turn chops. But getting caught out without access to emergency whips could be game-ending

One final note on the worker, the plan is to chop into worker in the non-coastal city (2nd city in this game) - my result from pre-game sandboxing was that it's a better first worker action than improving the copper

[Tarkeel]

One final note on the worker, the plan is to chop into worker in the non-coastal city (2nd city in this game) - my result from pre-game sandboxing was that it's a better first worker action than improving the copper

Interesting! One of the weirdnesses of advanced era start playing out.

[yuris125]

Yeah - in an ancient start game chopping so early wouldn't be an option, but here we start with 1 worker for 2 cities, which is woefully insufficient, and getting the 2nd worker asap works out better. I wouldn't be surprised if I will want to chop the third worker before improving the copper - especially since with the move of the second city, copper is not shared between them, and the capital will want to prioritise food resources over copper, even when it's improved

There's much sandboxing to do, but tentatively the capital's build order is workboat (likely chopped once the borders pop) - temple - galley (don't know yet where the island city fits in the settling order, but I do want the deer improved asap) - settler, while the 2nd city gets out a worker or two, then grows building a forge (possibly will change that to library with the gold reveal), and whips/chops a settler at size 4. Capital will work on a settler at size 6, after the galley. In sandbox its first settler was completed by chopping the island forests, and it immediately went into another settler, which was whipped. But whether or not that will end up being the plan depends on further map info - in particular, I don't know if island forests should be chopped for the capital or be left for the future island city