[PB59] Tarkeel is alone against the darkness

[Tarkeel]

Welcome to Lovecraft Country!


I mentioned in the signup thread that a big game was an excuse to take the game a little less serious than 58, and I'm not going to keep track of tech and cities like I did there. With no scoring it's not really feasible anyway. In a game this size it matters more who you start next to, and the field seems to be very strong.

I've decided to go with Lovecraftian horror as my naming theme this time.

The password is

horror

[Tarkeel]

An overview post will come here at some point.

[Tarkeel]

Given that we'll have a randomized selection of two leaders and a civ I don't think it's much use to have too deep thoughts about what we want to pick. Suffice to say that I'd happily pick a ORG leader as we're playing on Emperor for a change.

[Lewwyn]

Your first Civ choice: Egypt

Your first leader choices: Qin Shi Huang, Hannibal

Starting screenshots will be posted in a couple days. You may wait to finalize a choice until then. You may reject or accept any of these choices. You will have a max of 2 more choices of civ and a max of 4 more leaders.

[Tarkeel]

Hannibal of Egypt actually sounds like a decent combo; CHA war chariots with FIN for later punch. Qin's PRO/IND isn't bad either, but I'll wait for the start to decide.

[Lewwyn]

Here is the starting screenshot. Let me know when you've decided whether to lock in either the civ or leader or what you'd like to reroll. Confirm in the next two days please. I will be rerolling for everyone that rejects either civ or leader or both once I have all confirmations for this round of selections.

Your start:

[Tarkeel]

That's a very interesting start, with quite a lot of varied resources. The obvious big question is whether to move to the plainshill with the scout before settling, I guess I'll find time to do some sims later. Starting with Agriculture and Wheel could lead to early pottery in this start, and at least nobody will be rushing me with war chariots.

I think I'll lock in Hannibal of Egypt.

[Tarkeel]

I think there are two options for settling the capital: In place or the obvious plainshill with the scout.

Moving to the hill opens the possibility for a workboat first. With some finaggling of tiles we can have the workboat out when Fishing completes on T10, and grow fast to size 3 to build a settler. Researching Hunting and AnimalHusbandry we can have the settler out T33, with Hunting and AnimalHusbandry researched. The first city can then be built on or west of the western silk for shared resources and instant traderoutes.

Settling in place we're more likely to go the traditional BronzeWorking first route, and can whip out a settler on T33 with decent overflow into the second worker. Going AnimalHusbandry first only delays the first settler by two turns, and leaves our capital at size 4 with good worker improvements.

It seems like Lewwyn has done a good job balancing these two options, but I think I'll go for settling and place and probably planting the second city near the start. The changes to coastal FIN in the latest version of CtH does hurt the workboat start though.

[Tarkeel]

Lewwyn was kind enough to inform me that I'd forgotten the third option he'd balanced for, settling on the sugar.. In fact I'd forgotten to add the sugar to my sim at all! This location is very intriguing in that it lets us work more of the high powered tiles than either of the other two options. I've tested going workboat/fishing first and then on to either BronzeWorking and AnimalHusbandry. The AnimalHusbandry variant looks pretty strong with settler out T34, capital at size 4 and the fourth tile (ivory camp) coming online. BronzeWorking has it's settler out two turns earlier (T32) by whipping down to size 2, and it doesn't have the sheep or ivory hooked up anytime soon.

I still have to check if it's worth going worker first in this location. Given that Egypt wants to know where horses are located pretty soon, I think the AnimalHusbandry version wins out.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 0 (4000 BC) Once upon a time...
The start location actually is slightly different from the picture, as two pieces of river has been removed, but that shouldn't be an issue.


I mentioned that I've been checking out three different locations for the first city, with some different tech paths for each. The one that won out is C3, settling on the sugar and going for BronzeWorking first. While early horses are important for war chariots, it's equally important to actually be able to build them so I'm going for chops and slavery and hopefully some good early cities. Below is a rough plan for the first 35-ish turns:

V3 Mining->BronzeWorking->Fishing->Hunting
Settler built T30+T40
T0 Move settler
T1 Research Mining; Start worker; Work Sheep
T10 Mining->BronzeWorking
T13 Worker->Warrior; Worker move SW, Road 1/2
T14 Worker move NW, farm
T19 Worker move SE, road 2/2
T20 Worker move E-E
T21 Worker mine
T25 Warrior->Settler; Worker move SW
T26 BronzeWorking->Fishing; Revolt; Worker chop
T29 Whip; Worker mine; Work corn+mine
T30 Settler->Workboat; Work corn+sheep
T32 Work corn+mine
T33 Workboat->Warrior

I'm not sold on the concept of rushing someone with my chariots, but some are needed to keep the barbarians outside the gates. A quick look on the demographics show that someone did settle in place, but the majority of those who've played so far moved their settler. I'm assuming that everyone got similar settling options, so it will be interesting to see what people went for.