Gavagai manages his personal GULAG

[Bacchus]

Grimace civstats log:

Code:

9/1/15 3:30 pm        A new turn has begun. It is now 3600 BC
* 9/1/15 3:30 pm    Grimace    Score increased to 47
8/31/15 11:45 pm    Grimace    Logged out
8/31/15 11:45 pm    Grimace    Finished turn
8/31/15 11:44 pm    Grimace    Logged in
8/31/15 5:06 pm        A new turn has begun. It is now 3640 BC
8/31/15 8:27 am    Grimace    Logged out
8/31/15 8:26 am    Grimace    Finished turn
8/31/15 8:25 am    Grimace    Logged in
8/31/15 1:22 am        A new turn has begun. It is now 3680 BC
8/30/15 10:30 am    Grimace    Logged out
8/30/15 10:30 am    Grimace    Finished turn
* 8/30/15 10:30 am    Grimace    Score increased to 41
8/30/15 10:30 am        A new turn has begun. It is now 3720 BC
8/30/15 10:30 am    Grimace    Finished turn
8/30/15 10:28 am    Grimace    Logged in
8/29/15 2:08 pm        A new turn has begun. It is now 3760 BC
8/28/15 10:19 pm    Grimace    Logged out
8/28/15 10:18 pm    Grimace    Finished turn
8/28/15 10:13 pm    Grimace    Logged in
8/28/15 6:18 pm        A new turn has begun. It is now 3800 BC
8/28/15 8:30 am    Grimace    Logged out
8/28/15 8:30 am    Grimace    Finished turn
8/28/15 8:24 am    Grimace    Logged in
8/27/15 8:25 pm        A new turn has begun. It is now 3840 BC
* 8/27/15 8:25 pm    Grimace    Score increased to 35

[Bacchus]

Grimace is clearly getting some benefit from working fish, looks like he is 3-turning techs. Is that possible? At least it seems like he does not have access to BW and won't have for a while. Probably will get it by the time the Settler comes out though.

[Bacchus]

Villagers gave a map in a somewhat useful direction:



There's land at the green arrow and some ice flood plains at red, looks like 4, possibly 5. This is a peninsula that's "ours", I guess. I am again happy about how we've planted the capital.

I am not sure whether I want the scout to go find Grimace and confirm strategic resource availability, or to go east. The east lands look very difficult, frankly.

The land is again all plains and tundra, but there are some nice plants, especially directly 1S of the jungle gold, and the plains-hill, first-ring-forest-deer plant that works well with the dotmap, and can quickly push out a settler all on its own due to the extra city hammer and a 6-yield resource.

Grimace and Tsargon still have no contact. Tsargon is putting 2 EP into us a turn, so he has another neighbour. Looks like Tsargon is to our north-east, in the middle of the continent, surrounded by peripheral civs. Annoying position, if so, but really great for us, we are definitely not going to be a priority for early aggression from Japan's side. I wonder whether Grimace has a third neighbour to his north (Tsargon would be to his east). I don't think we have another immediate neighbour, there is just no land to fit a civ somewhere at Grimace's latitude (supposedly Tsargon) and then another to its south.

We are the first on land, with 21 tiles.

Also, Joey, I know this is all mathematically balanced and stuff but of the 16 land food resources discovered so far, only 3 actually yield 5f, and they are located altogether, visible on that there picture. Except for this corn, grass deer and hill pig, we have: 3 grass cows, 2 plains sheep, 3 plains/tundra deer, 1 dry plains wheat, and trolltastic 4 plains cows. In other words, that's 9 dry rice equivalents, of which 8 can't even theoretically be irrigated, because pastures.

[Bacchus]

Oh, sorry, 18 land food resources, because how could I forget to count the sugar!

[GermanJoey]

Well yes, but you have a lot of them. I mean, you can't have 4 wet corns in every city, right? And a cow, either plains or grass, is certainly a much better tile than a dry rice. Have you tried simming out your start at all? I'm very surprised to hear that you think your land is poor quality...

BTW, I also count 4 5+ food tiles in that screenshot, not including your capital's wet wheat further north, nor your orphaned fish. You could also farm the floodplains if you wanted even more food tiles.

[Gavagai]

Regarding city order - I don't think it is really a choice. Gold is too powerful to be given to only one of the players, I bet that everyone has it. So, we must take it woth our second city if we want to have any relevance in early tech races.

[Gavagai]

Also, the land is very Pyramids-friendly.

[Gavagai]

Mids however are problematic because of the reason already demonstrated by early religions: in game that big there always will be a noob willing to build them really early.

[Gavagai]

What is bad in settling city3 second is that it doesn't have its own food resource immediately available and will need to take Corn from the capital for a long while. And the capital at that point is going to be only size 2. I'm afraid we will have difficulties with growing it.

[Bacchus]

I'm very surprised to hear that you think your land is poor quality...

I'm not complaining, I'm just pointing out a feature of the balancing math that seems to be at play. If the algo looks at gross food surplus without accounting for concentration, it doesn't really produce "balanced" maps. One wet corn and 5 grasslands, one with horse, say, are much better than 3 plains sheep, two plains and a grassland, even if the total surplus is 4 in both cases. The second set-up will be lagging behind the first the entire game, losing a ridiculous amount of yield over the course of the game. In fact, the second set-up pretty much forces early war, as your only advantage is a somewhat boosted mfg (which only lasts until Guilds/Caste anyway). I think the land is fine, it's just important to understand that it's very different to a grassland expanse with fewer resources.

BTW, I also count 4 5+ food tiles in that screenshot, not including your capital's wet wheat further north, nor your orphaned fish. You could also farm the floodplains if you wanted even more food tiles.

I wasn't counting the capital resources, as I was only talking about what we scouted.