this fennbandit thread is a font of knowledge [sorry]

[Fenn]

Turn 1 scouting:


Well, that was fast. A city 1NE of the Sheep could share the Ivory, but it's probably not going to be our first choice unless there's good stuff out in the fog. That Fish tile taunts us with its distance, only a city across the channel can work it. Do we want to move SE-NE or E-NE next? We probably don't need vision on the opposite side right now, since we can't go there until Sailing (speaking of, I should do that pathing trick to see if it's a separate landmass).

Also, Demographics for if we want to try analysis:


Looks like one person is working a 2-commerce tile; probably riverside+resource?

Also interesting, Land Area is the same for everyone. Does that mean we all have one water tile in first ring?

[wetbandit]

I think SE-NE makes sense. Let's get a look at what's over there, that is a huge offshore area. Perhaps it is another continent a la PB25. I think we'll have the extra moves with the scout to scout everywhere else around our area.

Guessing that 18 commerce is Willem with Creative and researching a second tier tech? Perhaps AH. Creative is only +1 so not sure how to account for the extra, other than a second tier tech, given that it looks like everyone is working their 1/3/0 tile. Unless he/she has a 1/3/1 tile.

Everyone has one water in first ring and is 3 CY 5 MFG. I'm guessing the starts are nearly mirrored.

[wetbandit]

Moved SE, found a crab, vindication! 1NE of Sheep appears to be a viable city.




Demos are identical to last turn.

[Fenn]

Very nice, that could be a second city if there's more good tiles in the fog. The issue is that it's a bit of a dead end expansion wise, even if the nearby landmass is inhabited.

I tested the quick Hunting path with the Pottery route and it works out fine, so I think we can set tech to Hunting and not worry. I'm coming around to Bronze Working before Pottery though. Pottery doesn't help us in the short term, but Bronze Working lets us get a second Worker and an early Settler.

[wetbandit]

I agree, I don't think it's the ideal second city for the reasons you've stated, unless we pop copper there.

As to BW, I think what you've said is also important with the pottery path: we don't have the pop to work the cottages when they are done. When pottery is finished t33 and the first cottages are built closer to t38-t40, then we will have the pop to work those tiles. This issue is revealing a potential tension between our two traits: PRO makes certain tiles so much better (in the case of the ivory) or situationally better (mined PH) than a cottage.

Fonts or salads?

[Fenn]

Yeah, it'll be very important to keep our cities specialized and not make hybrids everywhere that try to build everything. I mean that's true for any game plan but it's especially so for our combo to avoid the temptation to generalize cities. As long as we stay disciplined the PRO hammer bonus may be beneficial to commerce cities by letting them spend fewer turns working mines/Ivory to get infra up, and more turns working cottages.

I'm not feeling any inspiration on the salad front, so fonts it is. Plus fonts feeds into my appreciation for Undertale.

[Fenn]

Turn 3:
Moved our scout NE and spied a floodplain! And perhaps another FP to its east; we'll find out for sure next turn. It's a little shame that those grassland hills won't get the PRO bonus though.


In the demos, the average Soldier rating ticked up by 250 points.



Actually, there was something I wanted to say regarding the MFG values - since we're getting an extra two hammers into the Worker from the PRO 35% bonus, would that be reflected on the demographics screen? Yet it shows everyone as having the same value, so I imagine production bonuses aren't counted here.

[wetbandit]

Nice catch with the demos, because this is important: Average soldier count went up 250, which means a 2000 point increase, which means Hunting/Mining or SOMEONE BUILT A WARRIOR. There's no way someone could have researched hunting in 3 turns if we assume similar starts. 4 turns even doesn't make sense with these starts.

It wasn't the person with 6000 soldiers initially, so we can rule out TBS (as if we needed to confirm him not going warrior first) and GJ/Brick (similar to TBS). It also wasn't the lowest count at 0, so we know it's not Haram either.

So that leaves: Jowy, GrimLin, Tsargon, Borsche, and Scipio. I'm going to guess it was one of Tsargon or Scipio, as I think they are newish to RB and so may come from a different play style background.

I googled Undertale and are you talking about this new game? http://undertale.com/ Is it worth it?

[wetbandit]

To your other point, I don't believe that modified hammers show up in MFG, only base hammers do. We can confirm that with our demos, for instance. But wealth builds show up in GNP.




Great find. 1SW of Pig is a great second city, but orphans that crab for an overseas city. Two moves next turn, E-NE or E-SE? Think E-SE is better because we'll be walking back towards the capital and can unfog it then. Capital borders pop next turn so we'll get sight over a few of those tiles and can decide after that too.

Creative borders expanded, hence increase in land size.

[Fenn]

1SW of the Pigs would also orphan the Sheep to an overseas colony. 1NE of the Sheep would pick up three food resources and make a good GP farm down the line, but it's still a dead end for the moment. E-SE next is fine by me, but I think next turn we should start heading north.

I don't think we should worry too much about whoever built a Warrior; we've got good odds they don't neighbour us and building a Warrior of our own this early on would slow us down a lot. If we lose to a Warrior before T20, well, at least we didn't have too much invested in the game.

Undertale is indeed worth it. The battle mechanics are a fresh take on the usual RPG combat, and I grew to love the story too - it does the sort of things that are only possible in a video game. The music's excellent too. The demo on the site contains the first 20-30 minutes o the game if you want to try it out.