[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Tarkeel]

More options are always good, but I'm not sold on moving white 1N. Spice as a tile isn't itself that strong, and it might be better to plant a fishing village on the spice itself down the line. It's also a duplicate, so not that important to claim straight away. Actually, white where it is would be a pretty decent Moai: 12 coasts (2 w/food), 4 grassland workshops and a grasshill, with the cow and ivory rounding out the set.

My gut is that whatever we do with White, it won't be until we've settled an island city, and Yellow is just going to have to prioritize a Monument ASAP to pull in the Ivory for us.

I could actually see us settling on white, using the ivory to build a monument for the cows and seafood.

[scooter]

We are moving thanks to Mjmd. I like to think this is him repaying me for saving a game he went on to win at my expense, so maybe this is a good omen for me this game. However, I've scouted the whole island, so there hasn't been much to talk about. Here's a quick catch-up of where we're at.






Someone at 6f suggests a WB-first player is working their improved seafood. However, nobody has grown to size 2 yet.





The north end of our starting island. Islands everywhere, finding time to squeeze out a scouting WB is critical.






Nothing super interesting yet. I think in the confusion over the various restarts I mixed up my plans of whether to tech AH or BW first. In any case, my BW-first case was farming the Sheep after Corn, which I fell out of love with. However, I have in fact teched BW before AH, so that is what we are working with. I need to test whether it's instead worth mining the bare plains hill next rather than farming the Sheep. It may line up nicely to go mine -> chop -> pasture after completing the Corn farm, but I need to test it.





Tech path right now is BW-AH obviously, and those techs are due at the end of turns 19 and ~31. From there it opens up a little bit. In the world where we build a Monument at Yellow to pull in Ivory, Hunting needs to be after Mysticism because the Ivory cannot be worked until a Monument is built.

My gut is that whatever we do with White, it won't be until we've settled an island city, and Yellow is just going to have to prioritize a Monument ASAP to pull in the Ivory for us.

I could actually see us settling on white, using the ivory to build a monument for the cows and seafood.

However, going with this comment, if we settle White fairly quickly, then we can likely delay Mysticism further. Tech-wise that feels quite a bit better because Wheel, Myst, Hunting, Pottery, and Sailing are all needed, so pushing Myst down the list helps a lot. Wheel-Hunting-Pottery-Myst-Sailing for example feels better than Wheel-Myst-Hunting-Pottery-Sailing, just as an example. So I like this thought.

[Zed-F]

If you do indeed settle white next to Ivory, does that move Yellow back onto the desert tile?

[Jabah]

but then you need mysticism as White without popping borders is quite useless...

[scooter]

If you do indeed settle white next to Ivory, does that move Yellow back onto the desert tile?

but then you need mysticism as White without popping borders is quite useless...

DETAILS DETAILS. Pro thread engagement tip: fire off half-baked ideas that you haven't fully thought through regularly. Guaranteed to get replies.



Anyway, a couple vaguely noteworthy details on the last two turns.





This was from yesterday when I got my Corn hooked. 7F was a very surprising number for someone to be at. This implies one of two things. Either 1) someone has a Fish and went WB first, or 2) someone has a mirrored-ish start and elected to improve their Sheep first. Or some third reason I haven't considered. The second one is what it looks like for me. It's a weird move, but it does bring the tile online 1T faster, so maybe that was the reason? Tiny bit more on this below.






Reworked the start as best as I could. Worker is going to go mine the plains hill, then move NE onto plains forest, chop to completion into a settler, then spend a turn pre-chopping an east coast forest waiting for AH to come in, stop, and pasture the sheep. Unta grows to size 2, works Corn/Sheep for 1T, then swaps to Corn + plains forest hill for 3T. This gets the capital to size 3, work boat complete, and mine complete all on essentially the same turn. This means on T23 we can start a settler at size 3 working Corn/Crab/Mine. With one chop to aid, the settler comes out EoT29 and settles Yellow on T32. I don't have precise plans for after that, but in general we could get a second WB quite quickly after that, hook the other seafood, and hand the Corn over to the second city to tide it over while we get its Cows pastured. Or go straight onto a second worker which gets said Cows online faster. Undecided for now. The latter sounds better, especially because the Sheep pasture enables the Corn handover regardless.


This could all get thrown out as we do find out Copper location next turn. I do not care about hooking Copper, in fact we should not do so for a very long time. But it is still a juicy tile that is reasonably likely to be close by, so plans could change.


(The scout has nothing to do so is headed to defog that one spot I skipped.)





Note: I am first in the turn order.


One player hit size 2 last turn, otherwise I am the "first" to do so pending other players playing this turn. Someone hitting size 2 last turn to me sort of soft-confirms that they improved the Sheep or similar first as I mentioned above. The reason for this is I came 1F short of hitting size 2 last turn, and the only way it would have been possible to do it sooner would have been pasturing the Sheep first. So I assume someone did that for whatever reason.

[scooter]

Bronze Working in, and we may have to consider swapping settling priority back to Blue after all.






I hate settling spots that cannot share a food with the capital, but this spot is now so good first ring that it barely even matters that the Fish will have to wait until T51. In fact, if we settle Red right around T51, we can seamlessly give away Blue's half-food in the form of a plains Cow over to Red immediately which may aid in the quick production of a Monument for Red's Fish.







Yellow was already a weaker medium-to-longterm city, but the Corn share propped it up. But now the gap between them is wide enough that I think there's a lot to gain by simply getting the stronger city growing sooner. Tarkeel, any strong feelings on this?

[Zed-F]

I tend to agree. Also concentrating in the south first gives you more time to figure out how to line up ducks to optimize placement of yellow vs. white with respect to acquisition of Mysticism, which I think will simplify your choices there.

[Tarkeel]

I agree that settling blue first looks good; it can use the cows to push a workboat for the crabs while growing. Probably too hammer-focused for a whipping post, but that's not a real problem here.

I don't see much use in settling red early. It's main purpose would be to grab the cows if we whip blue, to first push a monument for the fish. I guess it can share two grassland cottages for the capital, which does have some value.

Similarly yellow's main value was taking the corn while the capital got whipped. I'd much rather settle white first for inner-ring ivory, and move yellow back onto the desert. Early sailing to connect ivory was always in the cards here.

My preference: Blue>White>Red>Yellow. Also, could we codename these sites in some way other than colours?

[Zed-F]

How do you settle white before yellow, though? White has no food without yellow to get the grass cow in culture. That would require prioritizing Mysticism much earlier than something more like Blue - Yellow - (White or Red) would.

I’m not sure whether Yellow should be on the desert. It does get access to a couple more land tiles that way, though we don’t know whether any city near dyes / grass cow might also use them. However that does cost the ability to share ivory.

[Zed-F]

Need a scouting workboat just so we have something new to talk about