[spoilers] Pindicator Steals the Mapmakers Naming Theme

[pindicator]

001

Silver, furs, and deer in the north:

[pindicator]

What's more efficient? Getting the most out of your worker turns or getting your tiles improved faster for your cities to work them? How do you measure efficiency?

I forgot the forested ivory is a 2h tile, so we are getting the 2nd worker chopped out eot5. But then with both workers sitting there - presumably religion comes out during t5 and so borders will expand eot6 (because Ramk said he would put religion in t5 in the tech thread). If religion comes during t6 instead then I'm screwed with this plan. Well, screwed meaning I have my workers twiddling their thumbs for a turn (building a road). But if religion comes on time then we have a decision:

Is it more efficient to put both workers onto the pig tile and get it improved 1 turn sooner? Or is it better to split them up and improve the ivory & the pig?

Oh, I think I just answered my own question: I wasn't thinking about splitting them up for improving both the Pig and the Wheat. That seems like the winner. Then we dont' have to worry about awkward transition time between moving workers from the pig up to the wheat either.

[pindicator]

002

Perhaps a strategy change is in order:




With 2 barbarian cities close by it seems that conquering them quickly is the way to go. City #3 can go on the tile just south of my scout. Then we hook up the iron as quickly as possible and start whipping/chopping out swords to take the city.

Next turn I'll be able to get sight on what is defending the city and we'll plan from there. If it's just archers then I'm going to whip axes and go without the iron.

Demos:




Looks like mirrored starts at first glance: some people working the fish and some working/improving the copper.

Though I'm not sure how someone can have 1k more soldier points unless they built a warrior and haven't settled their second city by now. But everyone settled their capital t0 and their second city t1.

[pindicator]

003 & 004

Is this turn 3 like the game says, or turn 128 like PB Spy says?




2 longbows on a hill.  With full fortify we're looking at units that defend at 12 strength and have 1 first strike.

So the question now is how many swords does it take to crack 2 longbows on a hill?  With 25% innate city attack and another 20% from CR1 we can get their strength down to 9.3.  Shame Feudalism takes so long because with Vassalage and CR2 that would be 6 vs 7.3.

The very next turn I found something disappointing: Yuri showed up from the north.




If the barbarian cities are the halfway point between civs I would find that very disappointing. I'm not a fan of putting "prizes" at the halfway point between two civs on maps to create artificial races. The land grab is the race already; you don't need to make the reward more swingy. Also, it makes me think this map is quite small which would favor players that went for civs with immediate benefits. Mongolia & Scandinavia get a lot scarier, for instances. At least it's a tech combination to my north.

Now we need to rush to swords all-the-more if we want to get to both cities before both neighbors.




Or maybe the answer is to rush the opponents and not the barbarians... Settle city #3 on top of that horse and start pumping out horchers, for instance?

[pindicator]

Quick sim: 10 swords vs 2 longbows on a hill. 1 version with barracks (CR1 swords), the other without any XP on the swords. 20 trials for each trial.

Unpromoted Swords On average, it took 6.5 unpromoted swords to win, though 5 was the most common result at 9 out of 20. 5 was also the best result, and the worst result was needing all 10. I'm guessing 5 is where 1 sword high-rolls then it gets a lot more favorable to win. I wouldn't come with less than 8 units in this instance.

CR Swords On average it took 5.1 CR swords to win, and again 5 was the most common result. 3 was the best result (1 out of 20), and there were a lot of 4s (5/20) and 8 was the worst (1 out of 20).

I think from this we want to build barracks in our first 2 cities and then get 6 swords to go attack with. I'll have to see how fast I can do that while putting out settlers.

[Tarkeel]

Wolfpack Tower is an island fort occupied by scoundrels.

003 & 004

Is this turn 3 like the game says, or turn 128 like PB Spy says?

Yes. The game started on T125 instead of T0, so both counts are correct (and off by one, as usual).

[pindicator]

I love it Tarkeel. I'm going to use it

[pindicator]

005

And our religion is....

Will not use the first missionary on the capital but instead to pop borders in city #3. Turned out to be an unnecessary decision because religion spread to the capital end-of-turn anyway.

Thanks to Serfdom we chopped out our second worker from Doue-la-Fontaine:




Work boat also finishes eot.

I need to make a decision: galley or barracks out of the capital next. With the religion spread I'm leaning barracks, and rushing towards getting swords out and conquering the barbarian cities down. (Not going for players because players will react to a power increase.)

And finally, lets see who the RNG favors the most:




Which one of us started next to the holy mountain?

[pindicator]

So one interesting thing I'm noticing about this map is: "Where is all the food?" Specifically the bonus food. Outside the starting area and the barbarian cities there seems to be a dearth of it. So far a single plains deer and two crabs on the opposite coast are all I've seen. Which in turn makes grabbing the barbarian cities even higher priority.

I would settle the island city with my first settler to take advantage of PRO and getting 3c trade routes, but if I have to take the deer from the capital then I'm not sure if that is worth it - we need to be claiming new resources and getting more food.

Right now I currently lean towards settling 2N of the wheat and getting 5 turns in caste to pop borders quickly. I would need to also take advantage of that time to run merchants in the capital and get at least halfway to a great person for Civil Service (still feel like bulbing CS is my best bet for getting the snowball rolling faster). However, so is conquering the barbarian cities and we need to get the Swords out before Machinery is done because they're going to have the better hammer efficiency than maces.makes.

Still, that would mean I need to make another work boat out of the capital next: get some exploring done off those islands to the west and then be ready to improve the clams as soon as borders pop in city 3

[GT]

Get that Jewish Space Laser to work!