Cornflakes Goes Classical ... or Quantum?!

[Cornflakes]

   

2 huts worth 150 total gold raided. Ivory and gold luxuries, horses, and copper located already. And TONS of riverside cottage land.

[Cornflakes]

   

Found furs in the tundra! 3 early luxuries are more than I was expecting, and a clear nerf to CHA so glad I didn't go that route. SPI got a a free revolt to OR + Confucianism so I whipped my granary at 23/60 on T10, with a perfect half full food box then swapped back to paganism to save 1gpt on the civics. Settler timing is a T22 3-whip, or ... T22 2-whip with 3 turns of production into the settler. The first real barbs begin appearing T20, so I have about 7 turns of vulnerability to get Copper connected. I'll be able to pre-camp the eastern deer since the religion makes the borders pop on T20. Plan is to have the copper pre-roaded before founding the city, and I'll fog bust with the two eastern scouts (which were popped from huts, by the way). Plus I'll have 2 archers, and the capital can crank out more archers if needed. I should be safe to secure copper.

On the mini-map you can see my initial scout ended up funneled north due to huts and hills layout for extra vision. Since I built another scout as my first build, I decided to bite the bullet and slogged through the jungle with the starting scout. I'm now on the north side of the jungle belt. I found the coast on the east side as you can see in the screenshot. So I'll edge my starting scout northeast to make sure I don't miss my northern neighbor, then turn west. My built scout is going deep west in the south. I'm bouncing along the tundra headed to meet my western neighbor because the tundra spawns wolves, whereas the plains and grassland spawn lions.

[Cornflakes]

Yuri met me and then disappeared back into the fog in an unknown direction ... presumably his scout either met mine in the west, or bounced past my borders. I'm penciling him in as my western neighbor. In the north Scooter's archer made contact with my scout, so Scooter is definitely my northern neighbor. I did not tempt him with my scout and kept out of range. His capital name is ... interesting:

   

Is this for real? A ruse? Purely thematic with his naming scheme? Culture victory is probably the most achievable victory condition other than conquest vis 3-city elimination. Personally I think conquest is most likely unless everyone is very careful with their border city placement.

I'm pretty well decided to skip Pyramids with my first Great Engineer due to all the lush river valleys available to cottage. Instead, I'm heavily considering to rush Sistine Chapel for the oodles of border culture that will provide. Border culture will play a key role in both personal safety and neighbor conquest, and I want to ensure that I am on the right side of the equation. +10 culture from cheap temples (SPI) and cheap monasteries (PHI) sounds delicious ... not to mention the Great Artist prize on Music.

That is still a long way off ... 2000-ish beakers at a time our current rate is a measly 10/turn

[Cornflakes]

I remembered that I could use culture overlay on the global view, and I spotted this:

   

Blue American and green Arabian culture, and not quite where expected. Commodore is my western neighbor, Scooter is northwest, and I spotted Yuri's scout in the east this turn so it appears he is my northeastern neighbor across the jungle.

I showed the log with recent hut results. All my early huts were gold. The map pop revealed a good bit of the center with a jungled gems between the two hut signs. The left jungle hut is still there to claim, and that is where my scout headed this turn. But I'm going to have to decide now if I want to first backtrack and meet Commodore. I think it will take 2 turns to meet Commodore since I only remembered the culture overlay at the end of the turn, and so moved my scout in the opposite direction towards the hut this turn.

[Cornflakes]

Commodore is still size 1! What is he doing? Building a settler at size 1? And what about his worker? With only a size 1 city he only needs 1 improvement so he must be chopping. But surely he could have finished a settler now with a double chop. 5 turns for the first improvement, 4 turns for each chop (including the turn of movement). Ok, that would still leave him at 1 pop for a couple more turns and a settler in motion now.

[Cornflakes]

I almost goofed and let Aerther go unhappy without military police, which would have delayed growth to size 6 and the settler whip by a turn. Fortunately I checked the demographics first and noticed that I was at 50% approval rating before moving the archer! This might be the one time ever where that stat has had any meaningful value

Here is where we stand domestically:

   

Sign mode is highlighting the copper tile. I decided to give up a couple worker turns of movement in order to pre-road the copper for a quicker connection. Capital's borders popped 3rd ring end of this turn so I couldn't camp the deer first without delaying the copper hook by a turn. Now I'll be able to camp the deer > move to 2nd city center tile on the same turn as the settler (along with another archer escort), and start mining copper T25 immediately when the 2nd city is settled.

The archer on the copper now is building up fortify bonus and popped +5 experience from a hut so has 2 promotions available. So it will be able to take C1/Shock if a barb axe shows up in the narrow window of vulnerability.

   

And our capital Aether. Size 5 with a granary and grows a pop every 2 turns with the food surplus, and a very healthy base hammer yield for this stage of the game. This archer completion is sync'ed perfectly with growth to size 6. Then put 1 turn into the settler, and 3-whip leaving all of the yummy improved tiles worked.

[Cornflakes]

I sent my western scout back south to meet Commodore. Right on his door step I popped a map from hut (on the tile where I'm standing in the screenshot) ... but it doesn't look like I'm actually going to make contact I promoted C1 before ending turn. If it was just the bear I'd have a sliver of hope, but the wolf is there to guarantee the kill.

   

It looks a lot more brown and river-less on that side of the continent. I would definitely be more interested in Pyramids from the looks of his starting position than I am from mine.

My settler is on the move!

   

And there's a bear helping fogbust to my northwest, along with my own scout to the west. To my northeast and east I have 2 scouts and at least 3 lions running around. My own scouts have been dodging the lions trying to keep the lions alive to assist in barb busting. Next turn the archer + settler + worker all converge on the plans forest hill where I'm settling city #2, and 3 turns later I connect copper and put emergency hammers into axes in case barbs decide to get frisky.

[Cornflakes]

I present to you: Stoichiometry

   

I'm no chemist, but the simplicity of Stoichiometry once you really understand it was quite astounding to me. In fact, it all boils down to unit conversions with one key insight: you can't go grams > grams, you have to go through mols first! Just remind your self of that every time, and you're golden. And balancing chemical equations? If you can add simple fractions like 1/2 + 1/3 then I guarantee you can balance equations and understand stoichiometry!

Not only do we get numerous practical applications from chemistry, we also gain an insight into the nature how elements combine into compounds in discreet numbers, leading to the atomic model, protons and electrons, the periodic table, etc. I almost called the city Avogadro's Number since that is such a key insight. And stoichiometry leads into thermodynamics, but again that is all based on empirical studies and not on a fundamental understanding of what is actually going on "under the hood". Again, I'm not a chemist and I don't ever use this in my daily life but I find the simplicity fascinating.

On to Civ! My next city is penciled in for the WHITE dot between horses/stone in about 5 turns. My plan is to found with 2 archers in place, and an axe immediately afterwards (2-turning should be do-able after the settler). Contingency if barbs show up is to simply slip in the axe first. The cost will be a stacked whip anger, but that is not the end of the world with Hereditary Rule and Wines coming online.

In the west my emissary finally made contact with Commodore:

   

My scout took out 3 wolves on the journey west so those will be replaced with real barbs shortly. It would be kind of funny if my scout clears all the harmless wolves from around Commodore so that axes start spawning there.

We are 19 tiles apart. I signed the midpoint. I have a nice line of hills on my side of the line. Blue gets a 2nd ring grass pigs under the scoreboard. Yellow grabs gold. From what I've seen, I'd be happy to stop here and not push commodore further. In a normal game I'd probably try to rush a border fortress forward to the hill 1E of the cow, but 3-city elimination is a different dynamic to consider. Instead of lightning rods to absorb an attack, border cities become liabilities towards elimination. Perhaps it would put me in a better overall defensive position, perhaps not. I'll keep my options open as that map fills up. My scout is going to continue to the west coast because I want to see how much backlines Commodore ended up to work with.

[Cornflakes]

Forgot to mention that one person researched Mathematics according to the KTB numbers. Unfortunately I checked the tech advisor after meeting Commodore and not before so I don't know for sure whether that is Scooter or Commodore. I didn't see a telltale score increase from Commodore and I think scooter's score is too high to just be creative culture so I'd guess scooter has Mathematics, and Commodore will pop up with Metal Casting in a turn or so (same cost at Monarchy which I'm getting next turn, except that it doesn't get double arrow bonus so may take slightly longer).

[Cornflakes]

   

Horses were pre-roaded and the pasture will finish next turn I'm going to probably put a pair of chariots on zone defense and finish the pair of Phalanxes before any more settlers. With the player city count increasing, there may be a wave of barbs rushing borders when we cross a threshold.

At the capital, the first Winery will be completed turn after next. I've been wondering about the commerce situation. Classical start is a new frontier for me. Our happy cap is now 7 with wines and will be 8 with ivory (+1 in capital). We popped 400g from huts which will fund the early game, and the wines are nice at 4c each, but we need to start peppering the landscape with cottages shortly. I need at least 1 more worker before plinking down another city.

We scored a free Confucianism spread to Stoichiometry already which is nice. Saved us a few OrgRel hammers on the granary whip but didn't really affect the actual growth curve since an earlier whip would have just been on an empty food box. The border pop will pick up ivory and floodplain which is nice. I'm hoping we can pick up a quick spread to Maxwell.

Our first real barb

   

I just played T35 and I'm a little surprised that I didn't spot my first real barb until 13 turns past their earliest appear date, and only the first in my area this turn, despite 3 scouts running around and a long culture border. 3rd city was a turn slower that I thought because I guess I can't count, but it was settled on T33 and nobody else is at 3 yet. Although according to the Top 5 it looks like everyone has size 4 capitals so we could see settler whips any time.

First barb axe I saw was to the south of Commodore:

   

Thankfully Commodore's border pop pushed my scout out northwards and not right back in front of the axe. I've spotted the west coast to Commodore and I are edged a couple tiles west of center, leaving me about 10 tiles of backlines on my side to around 5 tiles on his side. This just reinforces that I don't want to get greedy and push past the hill border sites that I marked. I want to lock down Yellow for gold and wheat soon. I'd guess maybe T45, whipped out of the capital?