Gillette Turn Discussion

[ATrain]

I think Post 188 shows 1).
Post 198 shows 3).

[haphazard1]

I favor settling the second city for the northern gold -- it is a bit farther from the capital but if we want the gold we need to move quickly. And the gold should enable the city to pay for itself. The northern gold seems to have a bit better options for combining the gold with other useful resources than the eastern gold.

This would favor some initial roading towards the northwest, as well as moving the new warrior in that direction to make sure Menagerie has not already beaten us to the site. An initial road segment on the tile NW of the capital could be a good start, and could be worked on this turn. Although we should think about whether we will want a road on the deer camp, and if so build it now to avoid wasting another turn later moving back to that tile. It does not quite fit the "road toward northern gold" pattern so I think we just leave it unroaded.

Scooter, your suggested screenshots would be very useful if you have time to grab them. For #1 the capital currently has two improvements: deer camp and pig pasture. Nothing else.

[Merovech]

I would also like to settle the northern gold.

[scooter]

Ok yeah here's our dotmapping shot that Yuris posted a couple turns ago:



It's annoying because the spot for deer/cow/gold in first ring is the best, but it's so far away. Still though, it's a great spot and we don't need to pop borders that way which is going to be tricky anyways. I'm going to try to plot in a couple alternatives and post it soon. So anyone who wants to give it a stab (highly encouraged), right click and save that picture onto your computer, open up paint, and draw some circles. Then post it back here.

[scooter]

Alright, a quick attempt. Here are the 3 spots I think a case could be made for settling first:



Remember, we may not be able to pop borders for a little bit, so first ring and/or sharing capital sources is a priority. Best to look at these BFC's and just try to mentally use the inside square as the city tiles. Cases on each of them:

Red: Two first ring foods, first ring gold, three forests to chop, riverside with great cottage tiles, locks down location Menagerie could steal. Really, this is a slam dunk with the exception that it's so far away and therefore a little dangerous with some inevitable wasted turns due to distance. No capital tile sharing, which is a really nice thing to be able to do with your first settlement. What we do NOT want is to delay this too long and lose that gold to Menagerie.

Blue: I view this as the "red compromise" solution. This puts us close to the gold and makes it easy for us to claim it, but it's a quicker starting city because it can share deer from the capital. That lets us get to size 2 very quickly and thus whip the granary quicker. Downside is that it has no forests in the first ring to chop. If we settle this, a fast second settler to quickly combine this with red makes sense.

Yellow: To me, this is the best red alternative. Wet wheat, corn, and a luxury all in the first ring. It has the additional benefit of putting us right next to a horse + stone spot, both of which could be really useful if we need them. To me, this is nearly as strong as red in terms of just tiles and not as risky, however the drawback is it's kind of a "backfill" location in that it's away from all our opponents.

Thoughts? I have an opinion but I'll keep it out of this post so as to not taint your opinions.

[mackoti]

I vote red, you know red its my favorite colour.

[scooter]

My feeling is red. Reasons:

1) Secures our border against Menagerie. Keep in mind it also A) helps claim the river area just east of the city and B) those peaks will give us great vision to protect against Menagerie
2) It lends itself nicely to a fast 3rd city where we plant blue. This could easily change based on copper, but a first 3 cities in the order of red -> blue -> yellow makes a lot of sense.
3) Yellow first is settling a backfill site first, so I can't justify that. Blue first is not bad, but it's the weakest spot of the 3 in a vacuum.

So my feeling is red. Floor is open. (open to suggestions on alternate locations too)

[ATrain]

Do we have agriculture? Or will we have agriculture by the time we want to settle?

[scooter]

We do not have Agriculture, so we would need to tech that if we settle Yellow, thus delaying Mining->BW. So that's another downside of yellow.

FWIW, settler is 9T away. We don't need to decide which to settle right this second, we just need to decide on the direction. So if we can come to a consensus to eliminate west of the capital, we can road the floodplains this turn, end turn, and then continue to debate the merits of red. Pictures coming in 2 minutes to illustrate what I mean.

[scooter]

Ok, first the tech screen:



Pottery in 5T, likely looking at Mining-> BW after that. Agri-Mining-BW if we go yellow first. Settler just started in the cap:



Probably straight to a worker after this, but we can discuss that further after we figure out the road issue. And here's the main thing:



If we want to settle north, definitely road the floodplains. If we want to go west, probably move onto plains forest and road OR road the river grass SW of capital.