[Spoilers] Kaiser tries to remember the new AI difficulty

[MJW (ya that one)]

What if someone wants to actively support Persia by making peace and thus offering the surprise war declaration?

Wouldn't work because there's a 10 turn wait before Persia can DoW after the peace treaty. Too slow. And no one would want to help Persia at the start of the game with a +2; it would be only after they fell behind a lot and their attacker would get 10 extra turns on top of that.

There's lots of leaders who don't work in MP because of humans being proactive so I don't so what's special forcing Persia to always war.

[Kaiser]

Sorry for the delay, I pick Greece/Gorgo

[Woden]

Confirm: Gorgo/Greece

[Woden]

Here is your start...
   

[Kaiser]

Thanks, I updated some post at the beginning with player pick analysis and to complete the map settings.

[Kaiser]

Settling decisions
Looking at the map, it looks like my river ends where visibility ends, that means there will be no second city to settle on this river. So we have to decide on settling in place or moving. I do not see a reason to loose a turn by crossing the river as we would also loose immediate access to the grassland-hill-forest-deer (GHFD).
So it boils down to:
1. settling in place (SiP)
2. settling SE on coast (SoC)
3. Settling NE on the plains hill (-1 turn)


I can currently see the southwest region as a region for districts, as there is the only good campus spot visible next to the reef. However this would mean to harvest the cattle, rice and stone. Mayber there are some mountains or antoher reef to the NW or NE?

Not many amenities to be seen apart from the whale, let us hope to find some more with other cities.

Production wise this city is very well situated as there are loads of hills, many of them even sustainable grassland-hills-forest (GHF). The many forests enable potential quick growth strategies by harvesting rice and cattle (too far away at the moment to do this early enough) as I can either chop them or leave them as they are equal to pre-Apprenticeship (which comes relatively late). Also there is the amazing GHFD.

Food wise the only early game farmable region is SW and is the same region as I currently see the best district placement, this is bad if I want to use the plains hills to the NE for mines as I will need the food then. This also somewhat invalidates the 3. NE settlingPH idea as it will bring us farther away from the fertile regiond and closer to the unsustainable plains hills while also costing us 1 round for settling later.

Disasters
No floodplains to be seen and also no volcanoes in sight, this means we can likely get only hit by droughts (aqueduct can counter these later for the populations loss) and potentially some sea level rise later on (unlikely). A good spot for our capital

I think the general idea will be districts NE, mines NW and farms SW, we have now to decide on:
1. SiP Seems stronger as it is
- safer lategame against naval invasions
- has easier access the GHFs
- will be able to benefit better from anything in NW or NE direction
2. SoC seems weaker
- coastal start means better adjacency harbor
- earlier boats (easier golden age, better coastal scouting) possible
- amenity (sailing) first ring
- will bring Sailing Eureka


All in all the differences between these two choices are relative minor and the key information to decide are hidden in the fog NE and NW. While we cannot check the NE fog, we can check NW with the Warrior and I plan on moving the Warrior NW to see what is hidden there before settling.

Please feel free to sanity check my argumentation and chime in if you have suggestions, I will try to be better at taking advice

[Kaiser]

Growth perspectives:
Worker wise we do not really need to build mines at the early stages due to the many GHF and PHF nearby the capital instead we can consider:

1. improving the resources
- rice +1 +0,5 housing and an Eureka for Irrigation
- stone +1roduction and an Eureka for Masonry
- deer +1 +0,5 housing (was this not changed to give +1 : instead?)

- whale +1 +0,5 housing
- fish +1 +0,5 housing and an Eureka for Celestial Navigation (together with whale)
- cattle (very late) +1 +0,5 housing and an Eureka for Horseback Riding

2. harvesting the resources
- rice/marsh: Pottery - potentially, as the tech is an easy research but it will probably cost us one Eureka for Irrigation and one Inspiration for Craftsmanship. However we will likely get an instant population out of it which can continue working the marsh for 3 : or any of the GHF
- deer: Animal Husbandry (AH) - very unlikely as it is already a very strong tile for us and we will likely want to keep it if possible
- stone: Masonry - maybe later on, we do not need this tile at the beginning as we already have the GFH with the same yield as this tile improved. Also this tile will need to be a farm to benefit from the feudalism farming triangle boost. So it likely will be a harvest, but probably later on
- fish: Celestial Navigation - unlikely as it to far out and we more likley improve it to get the Eureka, Harbors are right now no urgent matter so this will likely come late
- cattle (very late): AH - due to its placement this will come very late and might well end up harvested or improved, that will depend on the game state

So all in all it looks like the rice is a candidate for harvesting to get an early population lead. We can get the 0,5 housing and +1 as a longterm yield as after harvesting rice and marsh will lower the total yield by -2
The Stone will likely help building a unit or building later on to make space for a farm as well so we can use this area for growth (together with the fish)

Right now the only important tile to improve would be the rice, if we do not want to harvest it, and the deer a nice bonus as it brings +2 gold early.
However we do not need them immediately so we can consider focussing on a decision between Scout and Warrior.

[Kaiser]

Turn 1: Military vs. Scouting



Moving the warrior shows more forests and hills as well as a mountain, so the decision boils down to 1. SiP with the better production potential and the easier start due to the many GHF or 2. SoC for the sailing Eureka.
Even though there weren't any further incentives to SiP I decided to do so as I believe this will be the stronger production city early and the better overall city in the end. As I will likely try to leverage Gorgos culture farm ability with early military.


This underlines the discussed decision against a Builder first strategy as we basicallydo not to improve anything urgently to get at least 4 yield tiles to work. We can decide between Scout and Warrior first strategies, in fact my wife and me had a major discussion on the pro's and con's for our particular situation.

First Build:
Scout - is quicker on flatland or flatland/hill or flatland/forest terrain, however the terrain looks very hilly and woody so it might negate the Scout speed advantage and might even be a "wet" setting for the map indicating many forests and jungles on the map. In order to better evaluate the possibilities, let us do some appeal based guesswork. Here are the rule: 
+1 for each adjacent Mountain, Coast, Woods, or Oasis
+1 if the tile is next to a River or Lake.
+2 for every natural Wonder (+4 for Uluru)
-1 for each adjacent Rainforest, Marsh, or Floodplain.

The only direction the Scout could be using his 3 movement would be
- NE-NW (appeal 4) and 3 forests and a river tell us that there is no forest on the tile NW of it. Likely good for the Scout
- SE-E but there is coast likely turning NE afterwards so not the preferred scouting direction
    - the wheat tile has an appeal of 4 and at least 1 coast and 2 forests, so at least one tile without a forest to move to, the other one is likely coast.
- SW first would then enable going
    - SW-SW (appeal 4) with 2 coast ands 1 forest, so at least one tile without a forest to move tothe other one is likely coast as well. 
    - W-W (appeal 5)  with 2 forests visible tell us that there are at least 3 movement hindering tiles in the fog which are all the fog tiles

The only really quick direction to Scout is therefore NE-NW as the others required at least one turn of additional movement. This is also the direction our Warrior is heading at the moment, and while we can still turn around, we can also just build another Warrior to head either SW or NE.
The goal of a Scout would be to quickly encounter at least 1 or more city states, as we currently have enough time to search the area for 2nd city settling sites with Warriors as well. Deciding for the Scout would mean hoping for favourable terrain (with a current preference to travel NE-NW) and to find a CS in that direction. With the additional drawback that Industrial city states, so 1 type out of 5, will be of limited help for the early game.
 
Warrior
The warrior ties nicely into Gorgo's bonus as it helps defeating barbs and thus farming culture. As the nearby terrain is very rough, it might be the better long-term decision to start with a Warrior first to get another unit for Scouting and barb hunting as the Scout is to weak to do the latter.
Building a 2nd Warrior will enable us to search two areas for barbs to kill to farm culture and keep the barbs managable. It will also help us in protecting our later to come first settler and builders better.

In the end we went with the Warrior first, as I have a gut feeling that there is a lot vegetation around so that the speed difference in scouting would not matter that much. However this also means we get our 2nd unit later onto the field, so let us have a look at this as well.

Growth vs. [b]Production [/b]



We also have to decide on the tile worked by the capital:
- Grassland-rice-marsh (GRM)
- PHFD

Working the GRM means favoring city growth for production as we would work a 4 tile instead of a 2 3 from the beginning. Assuming a build order of Warrior (40), Scout (30), Settler (80) and the use of the PHFD and the GRM starting with the 2nd pop, here is a rough overview of the effects

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By turn 28 we have caught up in production (so at 150 total) but have 12.8 more food in the bin, so will grow earlier to the next population as well and will start gaining also on the production side. As a side note, by turn 28 we have also earned additional 4.5 : and 2.8:culturue by going for earlier growth.

We could finish the Warrior one turn quicker by working 3 times GRM and once PHFD, but this will shift the growth to 3 pop one turn later and will lower the resulting gains later.

Seeing this numbers and continuing with our decision with the unit production to play more to our known variables and less to chance (of finding a city state early), we decided to go for the working the GRM option as it is the better long-term strategy.
The clear drawback is that it will delay us even more down regarding scouting due to the later production date of units. This could potentially end with us getting no first to meet envoys. However I prefer playing to my strengths than hoping for luck.

[Kaiser]

Turn 1: A new beginning

Military vs. Scouting



Moving the warrior shows more forests and hills as well as a mountain, so the decision boils down to 1. SiP with the better production potential and the easier start due to the many GHF or 2. SoC for the sailing Eureka.
Even though there weren't any further incentives to SiP I decided to do so as I believe this will be the stronger production city early and the better overall city in the end. As I will likely try to leverage Gorgos culture farm ability with early military.


This underlines the discussed decision against a Builder first strategy as we basicallydo not to improve anything urgently to get at least 4 yield tiles to work. We can decide between Scout and Warrior first strategies, in fact my wife and me had a major discussion on the pro's and con's for our particular situation.

First Build:
Scout - is quicker on flatland or flatland/hill or flatland/forest terrain, however the terrain looks very hilly and woody so it might negate the Scout speed advantage and might even be a "wet" setting for the map indicating many forests and jungles on the map. In order to better evaluate the possibilities, let us do some appeal based guesswork. Here are the rule: 
+1 for each adjacent Mountain, Coast, Woods, or Oasis
+1 if the tile is next to a River or Lake.
+2 for every natural Wonder (+4 for Uluru)
-1 for each adjacent Rainforest, Marsh, or Floodplain.

The only direction the Scout could be using his 3 movement would be
- NE-NW (appeal 4) and 3 forests and a river tell us that there is no forest on the tile NW of it. Likely good for the Scout
- SE-E but there is coast likely turning NE afterwards so not the preferred scouting direction
    - the wheat tile has an appeal of 4 and at least 1 coast and 2 forests, so at least one tile without a forest to move to, the other one is likely coast.
- SW first would then enable going
    - SW-SW (appeal 4) with 2 coast ands 1 forest, so at least one tile without a forest to move tothe other one is likely coast as well. 
    - W-W (appeal 5)  with 2 forests visible tell us that there are at least 3 movement hindering tiles in the fog which are all the fog tiles

The only really quick direction to Scout is therefore NE-NW as the others required at least one turn of additional movement. This is also the direction our Warrior is heading at the moment, and while we can still turn around, we can also just build another Warrior to head either SW or NE.
The goal of a Scout would be to quickly encounter at least 1 or more city states, as we currently have enough time to search the area for 2nd city settling sites with Warriors as well. Deciding for the Scout would mean hoping for favourable terrain (with a current preference to travel NE-NW) and to find a CS in that direction. With the additional drawback that Industrial city states, so 1 type out of 5, will be of limited help for the early game.
 
Warrior
The warrior ties nicely into Gorgo's bonus as it helps defeating barbs and thus farming culture. As the nearby terrain is very rough, it might be the better long-term decision to start with a Warrior first to get another unit for Scouting and barb hunting as the Scout is to weak to do the latter.
Building a 2nd Warrior will enable us to search two areas for barbs to kill to farm culture and keep the barbs managable. It will also help us in protecting our later to come first settler and builders better.

In the end we went with the Warrior first, as I have a gut feeling that there is a lot vegetation around so that the speed difference in scouting would not matter that much. However this also means we get our 2nd unit later onto the field, so let us have a look at this as well.

Growth vs. Production



We also have to decide on the tile worked by the capital:
- Grassland-rice-marsh (GRM) for 2 3
- PHFD for 4

Working the GRM means favoring city growth for production as we would work a 4 tile instead of a 2 3 from the beginning. Assuming a build order of Warrior (40), Scout (30),  Settler (80) and the use of the PHFD and the GRM starting with the 2nd pop, here is a rough overview of the effects on growth and production turns for the different two starts.



By turn 28 we have also earned additional 4.5 and 2.8 by going for earlier growth. We will also have caught up in production (so at 150 total) but have 12.8 more in the bin. This will let us grow earlier to the next population as well and will start gaining also on the production side when growing to 5 pop.

We could finish the Warrior one turn quicker by working 3 times GRM and once PHFD, but this will shift the growth to 3 pop one turn later and will lower the resulting gains later.

Seeing this numbers and continuing with our decision with the unit production to play more to our known variables and less to chance (of finding a city state early), we decided to go for the working the GRM option as it is the better long-term strategy. The clear drawback is that it will delay us even more down regarding scouting due to the later production date of units. This could potentially end with us getting no first to meet envoys. However I prefer playing to my strengths than hoping for luck.

[Kaiser]

Turn 2: C&D starts

Not much to do after the decisions taken in turn 1 than execute. However this is the time to also start the C&D and try to deduct the first pieces of information. Let us start with the movement first, we continue in the NW direction and see that a Scout could be relatively quick in the northward direction and get to the coffee field in 2 turns.



Checking the scores  we see that Cornflakes is out of the original order regarding the culture slider. As he plays Rome this is due to the +1 culture he gets from his free monument in his capitol.



 The_Archduke and Suboptimal have both one era score and thus a total score of 8. Their era score can come from either:
- settling in a danger zone (near volcano, on a floodplain)
- settling in a difficult terrain (snow, tundra, desert). Remember that in generated maps The_Archduke's Russia will spawn close to tundra and Suboptimal's Nubia close to desert
- from being the first to find a continent

I am not 100% certain, but as nobody else gained an era score and The_Archduke is the starting player, I believe it must be the last position as everybody discovered his continent during first turn. It also makes sense as The_Archduke was the first player to play on his continent and Suboptimal the first on another one. If the map consists of two major continents, this means there is a 4 player continent and a 3 player continent.
This would imply that we are on the same continent than The_Archduke, as well as Alhambram and Dark Savant.
The other continent then is Suboptimal, Cornflakes and Pindicator. No Rome next to me, yay




Rome's ability not only hepled Cornflakes to shuffle the culture ranking around but also shows off with a 8 for empire score as he has two buldings in his capitol (palace and monument).

Running theory right now is that I am on the continent with more players, hopefully also more CS and place. This actually means that earlier scouting would be of a bigger importance to find as many CS as possible as there likely is a higher competition for them. We can still change but I am unsure if I should stick to my plan or go for production into a Scout instead of growing my city as fast as possible. Any advice?