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

[WilliamLP]

I could be sold on any of the Red, Blue, Yellow scouting strategies, I think. It seems really unlikely that red will connect back to the capital because then that water channel would have to be a big lake with an island which seems odd in a Civ 4 script.

We really would like to know what the geography is like S and SE of the capital. I think the jungle should indicate we're close to the equator. Whether we're by ourselves, or if there is another land pass to the S is pretty important. The blue path discovers that sooner, but then maybe the warrior will find water quite soon too. We can't really afford to move that warrior very far from the capital, either.

[Plunder]

I would suggest to at least follow red for one turn, and then decide from that what the next move will be.

Although I am most interested in red, I think the blue path is of more use to us.

[WilliamLP]

At the end of the day, we both agree that it's a little more important to see things back around our capital, and I couldn't see why just one turn veering to the SW would be that valuable.




The warrior move found the completion of the lake river, and not much else other than jungle.




Demos:




There's a lot going on with demos and score because this is the turn when everyone's second ring land tiles got included in the calculation. Someone grew to size 3, someone else to size 2. Power rose by 13.

Kuro built a warrior last turn (their power rose on the graph by 2). This turn they had a 14 point score increase. This is too much for just land tiles, so they must have gotten a tech too, and maybe a growth. It took them 9 turns to get the tech, which is too much to be Agri, so it's probably Wheel. This might be slightly scary!

Overview shot (mad MS Paint skills in action):




How's our development? I think we're a little behind the curve compared to the leaders, but not so bad, and our capital site is stronger mid game than early game, with so much food. We're digging out of a hole for techs, because of being Arabia.

How's our surrounding land? I'm not blown away. I guess it could be worse. The parts immediately surrounding Kuro seem a little stronger. That gold site will be great.

Foreign relations? Hopefully good mountain ranges make good neighbors? And they have enough to expand into and worry about up N? The biggest worry is if they can send down an opportunistic axe. A good part is that there's nothing good for them to Pink Dot off us They've got a wet corn site, and a Cow + Clam + Flood Plain site they'll definitely want first.

Short term plans? Figure out where the second city site should go. Scout a little more with the scout and warrior.

Medium and long term plans? Get the gold online soon. Figure out our general tech direction, probably either toward Calendar first, or Monarchy first. Figure out if we want to found a religion. Learn where the military resources are, copper and horses. Figure out if we want to make a strong micro play for GLH. My gut is yes since we want the LH in the capital very fast anyway. All of these need to be informed by more map info.[/b]

[Plunder]

I put here some ideas where we could place a second/third city although a lot will depend on where copper pops.
A was your suggestion. B is something that might be reasonable, the idea behind this one is to have a decent amount of hammers. It'll have 4 grassland tiles to work after a border pop, and can share the pigs with the capital.
C Is from a suggestion earlier, I still think it's a decent site, but not for a second city.
D This is where we want our gold-city
E It's a bit vague what I want there, The main thing is that I want to grow to the East so that the gold-city doesn't stand so far apart from the rest.
F A city somewhere far down the road. Could be pretty decent with moai.

It's not easy, there is no site that really stands out as something truly amazing. Lots of forests to chop, that is definitely the key to catch up with our slow start.
As far as I see, I don't think our northern neighbours made a warrior just yet, are you sure the point increase is not a tech? (I'm comparing it to the power increase we had last turn)

[WilliamLP]

As far as I see, I don't think our northern neighbours made a warrior just yet.

Did you check the power graph? I thought I saw them rise by 2k last turn.

I'm not saying it's good but I'd put on the table 1N of B too. It's like B, sharing the pig, but gets one more river grassland to work before AH. Also like B it doesn't require worker turns to get an immediate trade route connection. It wastes a forest and loses the bananas (which will be claimed by the capital border on T51). There's very little we can do with the bananas anyway for quite a while.

[Cornflakes]

Just remember that city sites need to be at least 3 tiles apart, so A invalidates B and 1N of B (and vice versa).

[Plunder]

Yes, I'm aware of that ^.^

[Plunder]

Something that's been on my mind a bit, so I'm just throwing it out there.

Considering our myst. start and our special building, would a monk economy be feasible? I have to admit that I never really placed with a monk economy, so I don't really know what is involved with it (but I can make some educated guesses of course!).

[WilliamLP]

My understanding of a monk economy is when you can have Apostolic Palace, as well as University of Sankore and Spiral Minaret too probably... So every religious building gives you hammers, beakers, and gold. I think it's only really good as SPI (for cheap temples). But if we can get those wonders... sure why not? It probably means bulbing Theocracy to get there first. I don't think this is the game I'd want to try that in, but it's good to throw things out there.

A bit more map info:




Moves showed dyes, jungle, and not much else. We really have a heck of a Calendar / Iron Working start, don't we? There are five (5) resources right around us! I've really been hoping for either stone or marble somewhere, but it's looking very unlikely now. That would make Masonry -> GLH very natural.

But I'm not going to give up on the GLH idea easily. I really really really want it.

The scouting plan is that the warrior will take another turn or two to look SW (being careful of the lion in the fog), while the scout sweeps around and uncovers the rest of the black there. It's probably just more jungle band, but it's good to know resources there, and also extremely good to know if we are connected to anything to the S.

I didn't fully realize that we can see Kuro's growth and forest chops through fog of war:






They grew to size 2 this turn, and you can see they've chopped at least a couple times.

Demos:




Nothing interesting happening. Only 1k rise in power, which was Kuro's growth to size 2.

[Plunder]

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to keep our only warrior so far from our undefended capital. As long as we don't have an army of workers and IW, I don't think scouting the jungle is of such great importance, compared to keep a bit of defence in/near our capital. Loosing our warrior because of an unlucky encounter with a bard/animal would really mess up our already slow start.

Also, at some moment the people will start complaining about the lack of defence. Do you know at what size/turn?