[SPOILERS] Seven Isabellas of India

[SevenSpirits]

Some thoughts on everyone's openings:

The best five techs to get ASAP on this start are Hunting, Fishing, Mining, Bronze and Wheel. Bronze requires Mining, and Wheel is useless until after Bronze.

(Animal Husbandry is good too (assuming there's horse in the empty grass tile, which is almost certain), but it's somewhat redundant with BW, and BW is more necessary.)

I started with only one of those (luckily, the expensive one, Mining) and will be getting the others quickly. Fishing comes last because getting an axe out is more important.

Nakor started with Wheel/Mysticism which is probably a bit worse than my start despite being worth a few extra beakers. Being able to get the copper mine up quickly is just very useful. In any case, he'll almost surely end up with the same few techs as me, unless he goes AH rather than Fishing next.

Jowy and Athlete both lucked out and have two of the important starting techs. Jowy's techs are better though, as he started with the more expensive mining compared to hunting, and has a warrior instead of a scout. Both went worker (for the deer) -> workboat, probably the best possible economic opening. Additionally, both are aggressive, which means they can defend the initial barbs much more easily. However, I am a bit worried for Athlete, as he doesn't have a single warrior yet! Though it's extremely unlikely he'd lose his city, being pillaged by two barbs is entirely within the realm of possibility and isn't very stoppable if they decide to do it.

Reverend had the weirdest start - Agriculture/Wheel. Agriculture is actually useless for this start, and wheel isn't useful early. Luckily, he's Babylon, which means amazing Bowmen vs those barbs. So he went hunting/archery/AH and will get the sheep and horses hooked up way before the rest of us. Problem is, after that he is pretty much capped for production until Mining/Bronze, and can't leave his island until Fishing/Sailing! There is no way he's getting the Great Lighthouse, at least.

My rating of the map so far: 9/10. Very interesting! The hunting resources especially are very clever, and they add an additional cost to getting into a wonder race - the player more willing to permanently lose a hammer can win it. My one complaint is I think Agriculture as a starting tech is punished too much. Either the sheep at the barb city should have been a corn, and they should lose one seafood; or maybe the sheep in the capital should have been a rice. (But with the latter, AH loses out even more to BW... hm. Maybe deforesting the hills would combat this well.) Anyway, my compliments.

[SevenSpirits]

Looky here, we have a single barb warrior venturing towards me.



Since it's a 2v1, I decided to force the situation and take him out. (Otherwise he'd either run away (bad) or only be willing to attack my guy with 5% defense (not much better than me attacking).) It's a pretty guaranteed 1 for 1 in the worst case, which is better than if 2 guys are coming at me together. The result:



Flawless victory! Cool, I now have a free warrior. (And 4 XP!)

In a far away land, Athlete appears to have slaved out a warrior at the 0-turn penalty, going down to size 1. (At least, I believe he finished a WB and Bronze Working 2 turns ago, so he must have revolted last turn, and I don't think he had time to start a warrior.) He's just one turn from growth, too. That hurts. Worst part is, even if he's only being attacked by a lone warrior like me, that warrior will be able to get forest cover and possibly do some damage. I think his best move in that case would be to block both camps with the warrior and the scout, and hope the barb attacks the scout and takes damage so he can finish it off before it can pillage.

[SevenSpirits]

8 turns later...

Chopped the southern hill forest into the end of a worker. Next turn they stacked up to road the copper so I could build a 2-turn axe.

Every turn after that I've roaded one more tile on the way to the barb city. The axe will (unless he and his entourage are closet pacifists) capture the barb city next turn and I'll connect it to the capital immediately.



My growth was stunted a bit compared to the other players as I really emphasized production (and, a little bit, research) for the quick second city, which will not only start growing and building things, but will add 5-7 commerce. (Two for trade routes, the rest for working tiles... at no deficit for quite a while because of the capture gold.) I guess we'll see in a while if this was a good choice! At least I'm not whipping for a while. That would definitely be bad, with no granary and amazing production tiles to work.

I'm building a barracks at the moment (though it will switch to a workboat next turn when I have Fishing). The reason is, I'll have approximately 49 spare hammers before I can start working on the lighthouse. So I'll leave a mostly-done barracks in the queue and can whip it for +30 hammers when the GLH is almost done, if necessary. The other option would have been to to almost make an axe and a workboat (or something like that). I think the two extra turns toward the GLH might be better.

By the way, Warrior #3 stays at home because otherwise I would be paying unit supply! I left the guy with XP back so he couldn't lose a 50/50 against a barb warrior while guarding the workers. (That is most likely what the two warriors will do.)

[SevenSpirits]

No update for a while - I've been hoping to determine whether anyone else is racing me for the Great Lighthouse but can't be sure yet. In any case:

I captured the barb city as planned on t32. (Rev did as well, via what was, I believe, one dead and one successful bowman.) Moving to the south, I can see the edge of an additional island down there.



I made a pretty irritating micro mistake (before the capture), as follows: I had tested it out and knew that the governor would choose the best tiles, so I just left him on. And I looked in the city and it was fine. However, I then moved a "defender" out of the capital, reducing me to within one of the happy cap, and the governor decided that growing was now bad, because unlike the test game I wasn't in slavery. Frig. So I'm now two turns behind schedule because of that.

Anyway, it's now turn 41, and I've just committed a little bit more to the GL plan: I've been working on a lighthouse, and started researching Masonry. The reason I think I have a good chance is that it looks like other people are going for AH early and only one worker so far, which wouldn't leave enough worker turns to chop all the necessary forests and mine both hills. (Having a horse pasture shouldn't make up for that.) But we'll see how it turns out!

As far as I can tell, Jowy doesn't have a thread, which is odd. I guess I will post what I think he's been doing in case it gives people information they wanted:

He started off worker -> workboat, working the deer the whole time. He then added the seafood, oasis, copper mine, furs, and something at successive pop levels, growing the quickest of anyone. This allowed him to capture his barbarians third (I think) - right after they grew to size 4! - and now has an extremely strong position. His tech path was Hunting->Bronze->Wheel-AH(/Sailing)?->in progress.

IMO, AH right now is a mistake for anyone who hasn't at least gotten a second worker. Sailing should be higher priority, if only for galleys. However, I also think people are likely to get AH over sailing, due to the two sheep, though of course I can't distinguish their choice. All I can tell is that Jowy still lacks Masonry, which he wouldn't if he had researched Sailing->Masonry straight up, so I think he either got AH or has decided against GL.

[SevenSpirits]

Does anyone know at all how the "top 5 cities" screen works?

It is no longer in order of population - I'm guessing this means that buildings matter too?

[T-hawk]

The Top 5 Cities screen is always in order of culture. Size is the tiebreaker.

[SevenSpirits]

Ah, that is very handy to know, thanks! Though I think it must be a combination of population and culture:



First and third place must have a culture level over second and fourth respectively. So assuming no one made a monument in their capital, those are both the creative players. But then, the only explanation for 2nd being ahead of 3rd is the pop being TWO higher.

Btw, from top to bottom in this pic: Reverend (creative), Jowy (charismatic, 7 pop), Nakor (Creative, 5 pop), Athlete.

(It occurred to me while writing this that Jowy has some reason to make a Monument, as bad a move as that would be right now. But aside from other things making that extremely implausible or impossible, I'm 99% sure he lacks Mysticism anyway.)

[T-hawk]

I think turn order is relevant in a PBEM, since the screen is based on culture right at this instant. Any players who go before you in the turn order have an extra turn of culture on those who go after you.

Also, have any religions been founded? Those add culture.

[SevenSpirits]

I'm last in the turn order, and no religions have been founded.

I guess it's possible a random event threw things off. There's also revolting to slavery. But I can't imagine these things overcoming creative.

[SevenSpirits]

Anyway...

Full speed ahead on the Great Lighthouse plan!



I just chop/finished that second mine, whipped the end of the lighthouse, and grew back immediately. Right now it is due t54. Subtract 1 for each forest I chop, and another 1 if I whip the mostly-done barracks. (This would have been a 2-turn difference, due to 9 more hammers in the barracks, if I hadn't screwed up the tiles earlier.) I may skip all that though. Other players' production numbers are staying comfortably low and it still seems unlikely they are going for it with the pattern of tech gains and whips. Most likely I'll just chop the one resourceless forest.

A big priority after that is to get up to four cities. I'm not even getting any extra trade route money before I get a third one! Rebel Miners is going to pop out a galley soon enough and AC will most likely be on settlers/troops for a bit. Tech plan after AH is Grainery.