Nicolae Carpathia and Selrahc bring about World Peace, UHC, Apocalypse as Sheaim

[Selrahc]

Crafting.

Looks like a pretty good start. We've got a cast iron economic reason to head to bronze working, with those riverside gems covered in jungle. The wines will tide us over economically on the way there.

[xenin]

Agree with crafting as the obvious starting tech - unless pre-settling scouting shows something, there's no grain to farm and no use for it as a calender pre-req visible either.

I think I read somewhere that popping a hut before you have a city means you can't get a tech from it, so may be worth holding off on that for a turn at least.

[Amelia]

By the way, you did say that Hippus will obviously use a horse-based military. My advice? Don't overly count on it.

Remember that our first Hippus player used an archer-based military instead!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

In that cause, I'll make sure to beeling horseback riding, as horsemen counter archers (I think)

Moved warrior 3, spotted clams, ignored it as fishing is a million years away and who needs 4/0/2 tiles when you got. The aristocrats!

Settled in place, who needs ships when you got Pyre Zombies! 2 misses too many hills and has too many junk water tiles, I can get a seaport to build galleys to ship my pyre zombies elsewhere later

Went worker first, working 1/2 tile, went crafting. Current ETA is 10t for worker, 13t for crafting. I'll juggle tiles around later so that worker and research finish at the same time. Wines are 3/0/4 (I think), so that should let me grow to my happy cap. I guess I'm not that scared of FFH barbarians (yet). This could of course bite me in the ass quite painfully.

Settings.

What say you guys?

[xenin]

Hmm. I've never done any c&d analysis so someone needs to check any conclusions I reach, but according to the tech thread the turn order is

Hippus
Ljosfalar
Grigori
Sheaim
Elohim
Balseraphs

and yet only the Hippus have 33 points. That means Ljosalfar and Grigori didn't settle on the first turn right? Looks like the starting settler didn't get the normal promotion -> movement/vision is limited -> unless you later see some awesome resource lurking in the fog that they might have moved a scout to see on the first turn I would assume the starts aren't mirrored. Interesting, as our marshy-winey spot is kind of unusual. Of course, there's the chance I'm completely wrong - there is the potential if starts are mirrored to move 2S and settle for the clams/wine/gems while taking a marsh out of play, but I agree that that's a worse spot - I really don't like 1 hill and one forest hill as the total production of my capital, so it would be weird if two people did that. The only realistic spots I can see are SIP, 1S if you want to be coastal or 1NE if you don't mind resources second ring but you hate marsh, all of which are doable on first turn. I guess we'll find out when we get some more scouting info. Or maybe if someone who actually knows how c&d works can check if everyone tries to start by going crafting?

Other random points:

• From eyeballing the terrain, once borders expand the only place we are in danger of an enemy warrior coming from unexpectedly and crashing the worker-first party is the NE.
  
• I haven't played monarch in a while so I'm not really sure how bad the barbs get, but it should be reasonably safe inside our borders for a while unless someone pops an epic lair and unleashes mistforms on the world... There's also a small chance that a ruins pops a guard lizard turn 1 and the another one to go pillage turn 2 but it's not really worth planning around avoiding the tiny tiny chance.
  
• Can we get a count of the land tiles from score please
  
• I can't really tell from the screenshots but I think we can't see past that volcano to the south. It seems kind of pointless to add a random unworkable tile offshore, so while it may be an epic distraction there's a pretty good chance it's a staging post and there are galley-reachable islands out there.
  

[Selrahc]

I don't really like worker first starts in FFH, because it means bringing the starting warrior in to defend the capital.

I'd rather get the first warrior and scout out and exploring before the animals start to turn up.

If crafting comes in before the worker would be completed though there isn't anything inherently bad against it. Trading early scouting for some earlier tile improvements.

I would definitely not leave the capital undefended if you're building a worker though. With lairs on, barbs can come around frighteningly early.

Swamp terrain doesn't normally spawn on non-Erebus maps. This is therefore either erebus or erebus continent map script, or has been handcrafted a fair amount.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I don't think burnt forests spawn either. I know pyre zombies and acheron does that, though.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Okay, so swap to a warrior, and start a worker when at size 2. Hopefully I only lose a hammer max from decay. And, oh, those weird grass tiles are actually 1/0 marshes, how do we get rid of those?

I'm thinking that I should follow the coast with my warrior and do an arc with my scout. My culture should control that ancient tower thing pretty soon, so no need to walk towards that.

[xenin]

Sadly the vision bonus from the tower doesn't apply just from cultural control of the tile, you need an actual unit standing there to get it.

AFAIK there is actually no way to fix marsh; I don't think even vitalise/genesis work. It's not a disastrously bad tile though - under aristocracy a marsh farm = a plains farm, so not great but better than nothing.

[Selrahc]

AFAIK there is actually no way to fix marsh; I don't think even vitalise/genesis work. It's not a disastrously bad tile though - under aristocracy a marsh farm = a plains farm, so not great but better than nothing.

Yep. No way to fix marsh.

But only four marsh tiles so not a massive deal.