[Spoilers] This Perfect Place

[Mr. Cairo]

Ok, that makes sense and I kinda remember that now.

However, I went and actually checked my sim properly this time, and it has the cost of hunting at 103 beakers, which explains why it take 11 turns there.

Is the reduced cost in the actual game a result of other civs with hunting? I had always thought that one needed to have met a civ to get that bonus, and that it was applied to your beakers, not to the cost of the tech.

[pindicator]

I would guess that the sim has the wrong Map Size setting. The size of a map influences how technology costs are calculated, and it just so happens that if you were to change the Map modifier from Large (1.4) to Huge (1.5) then that would change to total cost of Hunting from 96 to 103.

I would hit F8 in the sim and check the settings to confirm that this is the case.

[pindicator]

Actually, I went ahead and downloaded the sim and confirmed that is the error. Here's an updated sim with the world size corrected to Large:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B61HHk...kVDalpCVlk

[Mr. Cairo]

Thanks Pindicator, that is most handy.

Turn report: Raven continued SW revealing Ivory, Marble, and Wheat. I guess I was wrong about each player not being given Ivory, since I'm assuming that the Ivory (and Marble?) are "mine". The numbers show where the scout will be going the next two turns, after that it will be going NW of the wheat to find what the coast does up there, then probably heading to see what's north of Wild Child. My first warrior will scout the Jungle to the SE before heading to what is likely my second city site, marked by the X. It looks to be a decent hybrid commerce/hammer city, with food, river grassland, and hills. Of course, that city placement may change once I get BW and see where copper is, which is one of the (many) reasons I think it is always important to get BW before you plant your second city.




I will now be forced to go back on what I put down in the Tech Thread poll and complain about the map. That peak deer is really annoying, since I do like to play with the resource bubbles on, and I just know that I'm going to have to constantly remind myself that that deer is not available when dot-mapping.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ok, so Dreylin and AT got a first row tech. If they were working a 2 commerce tile, they would have 84 (7x12) beakers now, enough for myst, mining, or fishing. Or they didn't have a 2 commerce tile to work, in which case they could only have got fishing. Since they both start with agriculture and the wheel, their worker would still have things to do despite the fishing start, so that isn't absolutely terrible (still think it is somewhat questionable).
The other alternative, that they do have a (good) 2 commerce tile to work means that the starts were not perfectly balanced, since while my start has a good 2 commerce tile, I can't work it unless I happened to be a civ that starts with fishing. That is certainly possible as I don't know how much GJ mirrored the starts.

Also, my math/understanding may well be wrong.

IF IT IS, PLEASE TELL ME LURKERS. I don't think that just saying it's wrong or correcting any mistaken assumptions that I have about how the game works would count as being too much information, and I do really want to start figuring out how to use stuff like the score and the demos screen to get info on the other players.

In other news, I'm visiting friends, so I'll do a proper turn report with screenshots when I get home on Monday, or sooner if I find a long enough spare moment. I'll still be able to play my turns.

[pindicator]

Well, don't forget about the "free" beaker everybody gets each turn for having a city founded. So you only need 11 commerce to get to 84 beakers in 7 turns.

[Mr. Cairo]

I did include that actually. That 12 is made up of 8 from the palace, 1 from the city tile, 2 from the worked tile, and 1 free beaker. So there were three(+) options for Dreylin and AT that turn.
They worked a no commerce tile and had 70 beakers (fishing)
They worked a 1 commerce tile and had 77 beakers (fishing)
They worked a 2 commerce tile and had 84 beakers (fishing, myst, mining)
They could of course switched to working a higher commerce tile after their borders expanded, as I have.

Anyway, all it means is that they could have got a tech other than fishing, which doesn't actually tell me anything, but at least I went through to process to figure that out. Hopefully I can do the same successfully later when it actually matters.

And thanks for replying Pindicator.

[Mr. Cairo]

Ran into Gawdzak to my south. Turns out that the ivory, gold, and marble all lie pretty much exactly between us, so I am going to try and settle out there fast, chopping/whipping monuments early to compete with his CRE trait. However, there's jungle to his north, and my scout came from the NW while I'm to the NE. Hopefully he will not suspect where I actually am, and also hopefully that jungle will encourage him to settle away from me. In any case it makes the decision of where to send my scout easy, since I really need to see the rest of the "border" region to the SE of my capital, after that I'll keep Raven around Gawdzak, try and see where he plants his first city and sends his first warrior. Since I'm settling towards him, my warrior will be in a nice position to both cover my second city and potentially threaten his, depending on its placement and what he does with his warrior. If I can get a good position on Gawdzak early on I will not hesitate to attack if I sense weakness. His Immortals will be quite useful at attacking me, since they virtually negate my PRO archers, and I'd rather not let that happen.

I'll do a big picture dump and a proper report covering the last few turns tomorrow.

[Mr. Cairo]

Turns 6 - 11 report

The only thing of interest for most of this was Raven's explorations, so here they are:

Since it looked like more coast to the W of Wild Child, I sent Raven south


Uncovered gold, and sent Raven to the south of those mountains, intending to then circle back around east.


Here is where I should have seen Gawdzak, but for some reason I didn't, it's not like I even rushed through these turns, so there's no excuse really. Although the border does kinda look like the river.


Here is actually running into Gawdzak's borders. Since I haven't seen his scout, I'm going to assume that he hasn't looked to his north yet, which is good for me. I'm also hoping that the jungle discourages him from settling in my direction.


Revealed more of the land to Gawdzak's north, and it's pretty lacking in food so far, so hopefully even more reason for him not to settle towards me.



Dotmap



City 2 (Anywhere Is) will be my main production city early on with it's grassland mines, transitioning into a hybrid city with all that flat grassland cottaged.
City 3 (Memory of Trees) will establish my foothold claiming the lion's share of the land between myself and Gawdzak, ideally. Although there is not a lot of food; it will have to borrow the pigs from Anywhere Is, it has forests to chop, and with a few farms will turn into a good hammer city. Also, it has great defensive positioning: in order for an attacker to avoid the river crossing penalty they have to go onto flat land, making them vulnerable to a counter-attack.
After those 2, I'll fill in the land on either side of the line formed by those 3 cities. At the moment, the coast looks the most promising, but I'll have to explore SE of Wild Child, also, there may well be more land to my north. I'll explore it with my second warrior.

Current micro plan:
The settler completes T27, with Anywhere Is (York in these screenshots) being founded on T29.


Overflow goes into another worker, which will be accelerated by chopping the forest 1S of Wild Child. Then worker #1 will go and improve the pigs by Anywhere Is, and worker 2 will head to the forested hill 2S of Wild Child and chop that into a Barracks at Anywhere Is, which will allow it to be whipped as soon as that city grows. The cap will work on a warrior and put 2 turns into a barracks while growing to size three, before slow building a worker.


The first 2 workers will improve the deer and build a mine, then a couple of roads while worker 3 finishes, then two will go and chop out the settler, while the other builds mines.


Anywhere Is will build a worker in 5 turns at size 2, then grow onto mines. At size 4 (5 with the Ivory) Anywhere Is can work the deer (the pigs probably donated to city 3) and 3(4) grass-hill mines to become my main production city early on. The Cap at size 5 (6 with Ivory) working the deer, wheat, sheep, mine(x2) or cottage x2, and whale lake is pretty good at building settlers and workers, and can regularly whip off the whale lake for infra and military.


Current plan has city #3 founded on T49, with 4 workers out. The other plan, to build the settler before the worker in the Cap, has the city down 2 turns earlier, but behind a worker, so I rejected that one.



I'm not going to plan micro for much beyond this, since it is all dependent on where copper is, and more importantly, where Gawdzak settles.
Tech-wise, AH after BW, followed by The Wheel, Agri, then Pottery so I can start getting out those cheap granaries.

[Mr. Cairo]

Revealed a bit more of the land around Gawdzak, which included a desert flood plains NOT on a river, which I think means it can't be improved upon. Fog gazing into Gawdzak's land reveals what is likely a similar lake to mine, probably with whales. I'm debating whether to move onto the hill 2S of the scout to get a better view of his capital. I've been reading up on some older PB that Gawdzak was in, and the general consensus seems to be that he is a technically excellent player, without any personality quirks that would react badly to me doing that. Also, I doubt that there'll be much peace between us in the long term, since he's likely my closest, if not only, neighbor.

But here's a question for the lurkers: what does "casual" actually mean in this PB? That the players won't take everything personally? Or that we're not going to do the things normally done in a more "competitive" game? Things like declaring war to scout, or killing an enemy scout that lands next to one of your warriors, or opportunistically attacking/dogpiling. I'm currently assuming that it's the former, but kinda want to be sure of that before I do anything that might be deemed against the "spirit of the game".