[spoilers] Pindicator Steals the Mapmakers Naming Theme

[GT]

Alhambra on flatlands? Sacré Bleu!

[pindicator]

I know, especially with it being a coastal city. But I'm chasing the food here!

[Mjmd]

What is the culture on the horse tile? A lot of times tiles take a turn to flip over even if it shows majority control.

[Tarkeel]

But I did not grab the horse tile. Shoot, I was really hoping to work that when the city reached size 3.

Based on the percentages shown, it should flip your way next turn. Tiles have a graceturn when you get majority culture before flipping.

[pindicator]

025

I feel there's something insightful to say here:




Or maybe I'm just being a jerk?

We swapped civics again on t23, getting out of Caste and back into Serfdom.




Decided to get out of Organized Religion. It's going to be nothing but units from us for a while, and while I could have waited until the barracks in the capital finished, Org Rel is now costing us 1gpt so I didn't think getting 1 hammer was worth 5 gold here.

We've improved the deer camp for the capital and the farm for La Fontaine:




Loaded the worker back onto the galley. I really wanted to get a lumbermill at the capital, but we need to get 2 farms down for the capital by t32. In the meantime, we started a settler this turn that will be triple-whipped and go onto the island. If you've noticed, I'm trying not to whip off of any of the bonus tiles, so that's why we grew so high to start our new settler.

At La Fontaine, we do have time to chop a forest for our swords. I could have improved the fur tile, but I think this is more important.

And up north our 3rd worker has made it to the plains deer where he will improve that in time for Alhambra to reach size 2. Then Alhambra works the horse for size 3, so glad we got that under our culture.

[pindicator]

028

I'm starting to get upset at the map.




This is Yuri's far coast. Notice all the bonus food. How you can't go 3 or 4 tiles from any food without running into another one? You can pick multiple spots on that far coast to settle a city that will pick up multiple food tiles.

Now let's look at mine:




Where the hell is the food? I've got 1 crab on the coast by the iron and that's it. You have to go SIX tiles in multiple directions from that crab before you run into the next crab to the south, or SEVEN tiles to the next one to the north. The nearest food at all is the deer that is 5 tiles away. I was intrigued by the map being green but not lush when I assumed everybody got that puzzle. When it's just you, it's a big fucking miss. It's not like I'm down 1 bonus food; I need multiple bonus food to make up the difference here.

Sorry for the harshness Tarkeel, but when you make maps this mirrored these kind of differences get really big.

If I had Yuri's start I'd be looking at settling cities instead of rushing to conquer barbarians.

Rant aside, I did triple whip a settler this turn. We're going to settle the island and this is a bit of the risky part of my opening. Without having decent defense we need to hope that nobody (Thoth) is going to send a galley out to randomly terrorize the far side of the map. But this island city is going to do 2 things: It's going to get me horses set up right away so I can start getting a couple horse archers. And it's going to give me 3c trade routes. This is why I'm not giving anyone open borders: I don't want to clue anyone in to the fact that I have an island city.

Oh, I guess the new city will do a 3rd thing: it's going to make triremes non-stop.

Hoping to attack the barb city by t35. Maybe 36.




I really admire what Scooter's done here. After bulbing an early Civil Service and getting into Mercantilism, he's now researched Music first. Ballsy, but I'm assuming he's going to leverage that Great Artist into an artist bomb somewhere.

[Tarkeel]

Sorry for the harshness Tarkeel, but when you make maps this mirrored these kind of differences get really big.

I get where you're coming from, but I can't really discuss it while the game is ongoing, but I'm happy to talk about it after.

[pindicator]

Well I do appreciate that Tarkeel. I'm still hoping to find something that makes this make more sense in the end, and my rant look stupid. Maybe Yuri accidentally got more and the rest of us are more like me? I have intentionally kept my scouts with my neighbors and not tried to uncover scooter or Thoth.

I'm just running out of differences to explore.

Though my screenshot before wasn't the best for comparison, I went back and found where I turned the camera 90 degrees:

009

Interesting map: it appears we are all on a giant ring with our capitals facing the center.  If true, someone loves Vikings:




It's very green, but it's not very lush - notice the lack of bonus food, which makes for interesting dotmapping.  The north is easier to build towards, but the south has a bit of a barren stretch without good bonus food tiles. 

[Krill]

Should have played a random PB66 style map...

[pindicator]

It would have been my preference.

030

Yuri, what are you doing?




If this was a bigger map then I would be all for this.  But going for a shrine or multiple religions isn't going to help you in this small map.  There's too much going on too soon.

Commodore has done another big civic swap on t28.  He then double whipped what I presume is the settler for his 4th city.

After the screenshot I whipped La Fontaine. I'm not real keen on whipping this city much, but it's working 2 unimproved tiles and I need to preserve overflow so I can keep bringing units out fast. This will overflow into a 5th sword next turn, and my 6th sword will come out of Alhambra. We moved a worker to the forest north of the capital to chop out a horse archer from the capital. So 6 swords and 2 horse archers will be ready to hit the barb city on t35. From my sims I should have this easy.

I messed up the worker micro - was only supposed to leave the road SE of the wheat half done, and the worker out of La Fontaine would finish it. Now I need to move another worker to the forest, and I think I can juggle things around - but it's just a lesson that I really should be cancelling all worker turns at end of turn. Best practices I suppose.

But I also had a bit of a micro epiphany today. I didn't need to build 2 farms to get the capital back to size 8 by t34. I could just work the farm over the hamlet this turn, for one turn. So that freed up a bunch of worker turns and in turn I figured out mostly how things were going to go through the early 40s. General plan is on t34 we're switching to caste to get our Great Merchant out from the capital. The workers finish the road to the barb city, and then build tile improvements for the capital. Eot39 we birth the GM, and t40 we need to have enough cottages down - and one plains watermill. Then we revolt to Bureaucracy & Serfdom. Thought about Slavery for a couple of reasons, but really with Bureau and a watermill we can get settlers done in 6t, which is faster than whipping and regrowing. I want one settler quick for the south because the southern barb city is a little too far away to just lunge towards. Meanwhile La Fontaine keeps pumping out swords, and hopefully we don't have too bad of luck on the northern barb city so that the survivors can head south straight away. Maybe we can hit that one in the mid 40s.

Mid 40s seems late, but we'll see what Comm does.

Demos (taken before the whip):




I've got graphs on Yuri and Comm. Once I get Thoth I'll post them. But so far nobody else is pushing military like me.