This game feels very impish

[Coeurva]

Hi, here's your MapCad-generated sandbox to help you plan your opening. You'll need to have RtR 2.0.8.4 installed. If something doesn't work as it should, let me know.

For the sandbox, I did change your colour to American blue as just requested. If neither Ref nor Cornflakes are working on the save when I'm done with this errand here, I might quickly change it in the actual map as well.

[The Black Sword]

Thanks Coeurva.

[The Black Sword]

We're off!



I figured there was no way I wasn't founding in place, so I settled first to get some information on where to scout. Third ring pigs with a river connection sounded good so I went that way. Now founding on the banana looks really tempting. My first worker can go wheat -> wheat -> pigs and the timing looks really nice.



That would look something like this, but obviously I can wait for more info. A 2nd worker + chop opening should also be considered, my intuition is they'll come out about even but we save more forests this way.

The other thing to keep in mind is that those blank tiles are very likely to have resources on them, since they're ringed by forests. Should stay flexible in case copper or horse show up.

[The Black Sword]

Looks like about 230 land tiles per player, which seems quite a lot for a game of this size. PB18 was only around 150 IIRC, but they were not evenly spread. I'm worried the late game might be tedious. In the short term though we have a lot of land to expand into and it might be that expansion is tech limited rather than production limited.

[The Black Sword]

No other good resource in the Banana plant BFC, so that's looking less appealling. Hopefully we'll find something along the rest of the river, I'll be circling clockwise to check it out.

Stone is interesting, I could think about a Pyramids run later. Pericles probably wants an early academy, so even if we fail running the failgold through the academy wouldn't be terrible. I always think someone is going to screw up and build it really early in these games, because it's not really tech constrained. But it fell pretty late in PB18 and PB13 IIRC. I think the sheer number of competitiors scares people off.

[The Black Sword]

Pretty dense terrain, so scouting is slow going. The other banana plant or the plains hill below it are the current second city candidates now. The settler will be slower to get in position but the extra power tiles should be worth it. There's a decent chop opening that grows 22/22, hits worker 60/60 then settler 100/100 ... but leaves the warrior on 14/15 and I'd have to lose a whole turn to get that last hammer. One solution is that banana tile will also be covered in my culture thanks to Cre so the settler wouldn't need an escort.

The more pressing decision was to commit to a line of research and I went Mining -> BW. The wheel is a pretty useless tech for the first few turns, there's too much forest so my workers never pause to do some pre-roading whilst moving. Meanwhile the river around the capital means I can't use roads to speed my first settler to the first city site. Both AH and BW reveal a resource inside the relevant timeframe(my worker finishing the two farms), so BW is better for all the extra goodies it comes with. The Myst line is an obvious nope since I'm Creative and so is Fishing.

That leaves Pottery to think about. In general I prefer to push hammers than commerce in these big RtR games, which is the choice between granaries and chopping. Maintenance is just so cheap that it's very hard to crash your economy. Smaller maps with toroidal maintenance can make you play differently but not here. I ran through some cottage flood plains openings but didn't find anything I liked. There's also the granary but it's way too innefficient to build here without BW anyway.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, best plan right now is:

worker -> grow to 2 -> 2nd worker -> 2 chops into settler(EOT28).

I'll get the scout to circle back to the 2nd city spot to make sure it is safe, if it isn't founding on the bananas should be perfectly fine.

The timings for settler before 2nd worker are all just a bit off, and as a result it's too far behind despite saving a pair of forests.

That should do me until the scout finds something interesting.

[The Black Sword]

City 2 looks amazing. The fallback spot is still fine, I'd just accelerate the coastal spot to pick up the missing resources. I'm hoping I'll find a good city 3 site nearer the capital though. I'm thinking I'll want to rush out the 3rd city before something like size 2 granary -> grow onto FP cottages.

City sites have lots of food so I want happiness - Calendar or the Mids look nice.

Two people, Dark Savant and Aretas I think, are at size 2 already. A fishing start + EXP trait would do it for DS, Aretas would need a lake fish I think ... he's an unknown player so it might also just be a weak opening. When I meet some neighbours I might try pay attention to what they're doing, right now I'm not too bothered.

[The Black Sword]

Actually I think DS would need lake fish too, and top food is only 8. It's possible he's working the fish+ 3h tile at size 2 I guess.

[The Black Sword]

Looks like DS got the first religion too.