PB81 - Continental Drifters (TBS)

[Hitru]

There's really good discussion here so I would also join as a dedlurker.

I do disagree that CRE gives 30 hammers per city in comparable manner as EXP or IMP. The latter 2 are absolutely needed, while border pop can be delayed or even not needed before later in game with carefull dotmapping. Also IMP/EXP give the bonus immediately and get the city running faster, which means faster snowball. I agree that CRE gives more options though.

I will also say that you need a plan for culture and border pops. It can be religion ( my favorite ), Henge, CRE or something else.

I think EXP start looks really good, but trying to break CRE/PHI America is fine too. In EXP start I'm not sure I would grow to 6 before settler though, depends a lot how good 2nd city spots we have and how the overall micro works out.

[The Black Sword]

Great to have you Hitru too.

Regarding the later micro, yeah it's not finalised, have to see what we find. Same with thrawn's BW first run, although I think it will be hard to beat getting the cows online earlier, some of the worker turns there could be redeemed with a plan for the 2nd city site. We'll have the 10t while the worker gets built to have a look around. 

Been thinking about this too

 You can theoretically build a quick Library for colourless GPP while teching toward MC, then when MC comes in you can build a forge, hire an Engineer specialist for a turn when the GP is about to pop to guarantee a GE, then use him to rush 'Mids.

And the timings look quite good to me. If we hit Writing around T45 and whip/chop(2t) in the library immediately then we have 17t to get through the 450b of Metal Casing. Then 1t Forge, 1t Whip, 1t Eng. 19t total to tech MC is a pretty tight timetable and really can't afford getting thrown off course, but sounds doable with judicious cottage usage early. After that we can farm everything and go for specialists+hammers.

There would be quite some engineer pollution from the Mids and the Forge's engineer. But getting a GE for another wonder isn't a bad thing, even if it isn't as cool as settled GS. 

We're definitely putting one bulb into Education too, so Oxford and discounted universities aren't that far away tech wise. That's already 27bpt from the settled GS, so they are possibly still viable a little later than I expected.

[Hitru]

I think you can't really have too many GE in early game, especially in game this small. We will have good wonders available to us.

And we can take forge engineer of after Mids are done and easily rush GS from another city after if we want before Mids city would produce GE.

[Hitru]

Regarding leader I think we do not want IND with Ameeica as idea is to use GE for Mids + any other wonder we really want. So rather Phi/Exp I think.

[Hitru]

Also as a minor detail: With only 4 river cottages and 9 cottages in total I have seen better starts for academy play. But if you guys want to try settled GS I'm ok with that. It's nice to try new things now and then

[The Black Sword]

In defense of Cre, I went and took some pictures from the last game I played it(PB59):



Settling on those jungled gems was pretty important here, and Cre gets us the 2nd ring pigs.

The northern city gets 2 extra resources from Cre. You might say we should settle first ring pigs and then the marble doesn't count. But we didn't have the tech for the pigs yet and it was the best city to get up and running.

Probably a non-Cre civ splits this up into 3 cities, and Cre has saved us that.



The southern fish city gets 2 resources and two LH lakes from the pop.

The gold city could be moved 1SE but then it still loses the copper and the plains hill plant. There's also some horses north of the X still to be revealed.

Probably a non-Cre player is again looking to settle 3 cities here instead of 2, settling a sheep/copper.

[The Black Sword]

Regarding leader I think we do not want IND with Ameeica as idea is to use GE for Mids + any other wonder we really want. So rather Phi/Exp I think.

Yeah, I hadn't thought it through before, I think this free GE is too good to turn down, and we don't really mind focusing expansion a bit and delaying the GS slightly while we wait for it. So Ind is not offering much then.

[Hitru]

My aim was not to say that CRE is bad, I think we have reasonable balance in place. I'm ok with taking that if we want to go with America

[Hitru]

We can pick America and get PHI leader on the way back. Naufragar is looking to kill someone fast with AGG/CHM pick. Need to keep that in mind.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, grabbed America. If anyone has strong feelings for Cre vs Exp here, this is your last chance. I'm on the fence, going to play through a Cre sim to see what it looks like.