[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Sandover]

Chopping straight away it is then.

Didn't think anyone would actually favor the mine, but I thought it was worth asking the question either way. I intend to keep you in the loop so expect more of the same in the future. Hopefully the game won't ever become so dull that I won't be able to find some work for my trusted advisors!

[scooter]

Well apparently some people think it's horribly unfair of lurkers to chime in, but I'll take my chances.

Delaying the worker 3 turns means delaying the settler and thus your 2nd city 3 turns. These things snowball, and you've got a lot of forests. Your worker finishes on turn 15 and moves onto a forest, it does nothing on turn 16, and starts chopping on turn 17. If BW came say on turn 19 I would do the mine, but not in this case.

I don't see a problem with advice on basic strategy like this one. Some of the meta-gaming stuff might be a different story, but this seems completely fine to me. Thanks for the input!

[Sandover]

Turn 4:

Sandograd's borders popped and the warrior moved on top of the wheat.

As you can see there's a couple of peaks to our north and more river grassland to our east. The desert in the south is just a desert, so made the right call not moving down there. There is however at least one flood plain at the western river. The warrior revieled nothing of value and sadly there doesn't seem to be any hills at all close to the wheat.

Next border pop is due in 22 turns.



I've come up with a suggested path for our warrior. It places him on the forested grassland hill down in the south west in five turns, and will let us know if there's any more resources next to that river. Is it too dangerous to keep him away from home for that long? If he takes this path the soonest he can be back at the capital will be turn 13.

If that path is not ok we might be better off checking out the NW diagonal instead, if you think that potentially being back at Sandograd on turn 11 is acceptable?

[Sandover]

Lurker task:

We need a name for that river to our west. Important: it has to begin with an "s". Easy huh?:neenernee

Is anyone creative enough to come up with a name worthy a river within the SsS Empire?

[scooter]

Yeah I think we're good with that scouting path, that seems fine to me... We can get an extra column of land defogged if we move 1SW next and go straight down that way, but I'm sure you know that. If someone were to get to our capital by turn 13, I would think they would have to be pretty lucky unless this map is even more cramped then I'm guessing it is, so I would think we'd be fine until then for sure.

One we hit that grassland forest hill, I would say keep looping around counter-clockwise maybe? Like at the very least, just keep going 3 tiles east to the plains forest hill and continue looping around. If we stay within two tiles of our borders, I think we'll be fine no matter what. I don't know if that's what you were planning on or if you were thinking go straight home after that? Yeah it's still technically possible for someone to get their first in that case but the odds are low. The two big things we need to defog is this river to our west we're working on now (a second food resource would be great!) and our river on the east side as well. Land to the NW/NE also looks green...

[Sandover]

I was thinking we should keep looping around, though if we continue to stay 2 tiles off our borders we will get beaten in a race back to Sandograd if an enemy explorer decides to get frisky. Once we start chopping forests there's always the chance that we might manage to chop out a warrior in case that happen though. Also, one thing we should be aware of is that it's impossible to check out the garrison in Sandograd without a sentry promotion or by actually entering our territory.

[Sandover]

The turn just rolled over so I'll log in and make our next move soonish. Gonna stick to the purple path for now.

[novice]

Plains riverbend 2W of your corn looks like a possible 2nd city site.

Are you looking for real or fictional river names? I would suggest well-known river names prefixed by S, so how about the river Shades?

[Sandover]

Yeah Novice, that's the best possible spot so far with such limited scouting.

"Shades" eh? Approved!

Going to play the turn now.

[Sandover]

Turn 5:

Brave explorers of the SsS Empire have found a stone deposit located on the western bank of the river Shades. Creative minds in Sandograd are already speculating that the stone could be used as building material to construct buildings of a magnitude never before seen within the young empire. Those cunning of diplomacy are currently engaged in a frantic discussion, considering the possibilty of founding a new settlement at Shades, in order to bring the river and the region it controlls into the supreme rule of the empire under the guidance of the mighty "S".

Likely city spot 1S of the wheat. Would have liked a few hills but a city founded on that spot will get 5 river grassland tiles in addition to the wheat and stone, plus 5 forests in the BFC (not counting those already inside our borders).