[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

The scout was at 98% health, I figured that was good enough to press on. If you feel strongly he should heal the last 2% first, let me know.




Finally, a really compelling reason to research agriculture!

I'm thinking of NE for the scout next turn (potential really strong city site right there) and then continuing east. I figure the eventual warrior can take care of the immediate SE.




Still no power change, which is just fine by me. Next turn we'll get a score increase from fishing, and also we'll see Kuro's graphs for the first time. Then we can pick them apart to see if we can figure out what his starting moves were.

[Plunder]

That looks pretty good there! What about walking around the little lake?
I'm not sure if we should rush to that gold with our first city. No silly semi-pink-dots like in the demo1 game.
But if we move east with our 2nd city, it would be reasonable for a 3rd city.

[WilliamLP]

About rushing to the gold... I'm not sure if it's a good idea either, but there's no way 6 tiles from our capital is a semi-pink dot?

We're first in score, haha. Though it's just from being the only team to start with two cheap techs, because our starting techs suck... Anyway, scout move:




Wow. Maybe not so crazy after all? How crazy would it be to try and land a religion in that city right away for a quick border pop?




Micro in the capital accomplishes two things: We grow to size two on the same turn anyway as long as we get 1 food surplus this turn. And the extra hammers both speed up the work boat after we start working the pig, and also speed up the second work boat. We'll be working the pig mine next turn.




Our GNP is up, through researching a tech with a prerequisite. I expect it will go up again next turn when Kuro finishes BW, and we also get a known tech discount. Global power went from 31 to 47. Two techs were researched, and so they were both BW, which is worth 8000 soldier points.

And, we now have graphs on Kuro. Let's see what we can see:




Score just tells us that they haven't researched a tech yet. I'm nearly certain they'll get BW next turn.




Power reassures us that they didn't do a crazy early warrior start.








This is kind of puzzling. What do we know?

- They must have a 2/1/1 capital I think, because of the low points of their prod and food graphs.
- They started working a 3/0/1 tile, probably an unimproved river food resource? Then they switched to a 0/3/0 tile, around turn 7 or 8.

Why would they do this? The openings that make sense are WB first or Worker first. And if they have a 3/0/1 tile, worker first would make sense. But they're not researching Agri so maybe they want the chop-accelerated double worker start.

I think we can rule out WB first, or else they would have grown to size 2.

So if they were going worker first, and they have a PH forest, why didn't they start with it? Maybe they forgot they were EXP and had a bonus? Or is there a better explanation? I'm kind of confused. If they went worker first it must have finished by now, and they're still working the 0/3/0 tile, which could be the second worker or a WB.

[Plunder]

pg. 13 and 14 we have a view on their capital. it's indeed a 2/1/1 capital, and at least turn 8 they were working the forested plains hill.

Worker first would make sense... maybe they forgot about the exp bonus?
their gnp is higher and then drops, that could also be a floodplains ->forest plains hills switch.

[Plunder]

Sullla put up a review on the starts of pitboss 12 http://youtu.be/cjz3iqX6AVY (if you are a player in PB12 DON'T click this link!)
Maybe we can learn something from this. I hope he'll comment on our start too at some time.... (hint hint ;-) )

[WilliamLP]

Cool, thanks. I'm not going to say anything about PB12 here, just to be on the safe side of spoiling something. I am lurking it though. Sullla is mostly talking about leader and civ choices there, though it is interesting. Maybe he can criticize our RNG though, since there were clearly better leader and civ options available.

I am enjoying playing and thinking about this start though. I don't think I've ever played a game where I seriously considered going to turn 50 without agriculture!

[WilliamLP]

Not a very exciting turn. Two teams got BW this turn (global power rose by 16). This includes KuroBaII. Scout move:




This looks like it may be an east coast, which is great news if so. I think the scout should poke his head in there to see for sure, and also look for even more seafood. (How many seafood-themed pastas are there? )




TIL: The known tech bonus really isn't much right now. Reference is here. With 10 players we get a 3% bonus (30% / 10) for every player we've met who has a tech, so the maximum increase this way is 27%.

Retep grew to size 3, with no worker yet, and they are working 11 food, which may mean three flood plains! Still that's "only" a surplus of +5 but it still seems pretty strong for right now. Not to mention when they can cottage them up.

[WilliamLP]

Scout:




It would be nice to move NE to check for seafood in the rest of the water but there's no way that area is in our near term settlement plans, so next move will be SE-S I think.

Demos:






No power increase. Kuro is researching a tech with no prerequisites. Maybe agriculture, maybe wheel to hook up copper in their capital. If the latter, gg, been fun and nice knowing you.

Retep (as SPI) whipped a pop point, turning 26 food into 30 hammers. It's probably a WB, since a worker would be impossible this early.

[Plunder]

I think they have an axe out now? Their power graph jumped upward!

edit: never mind, I think it's just a warrior. I mixed up who wipped (sic?). but none the less they have a unit out. It'll take about 11 turns to get to us, but I don't think they'll take that chance and leave their city undefended.

[WilliamLP]

They had an 8k rise in power, which is the value of Bronze Working.

And in order to get copper and axemen without wheel I think they'd need to have it on their capital tile?