Genghis Machinates

[GermanJoey]

Initial Thoughts, stream of consciousness:

1.) Given what you quoted about Ceil generating hundreds of maps, and that blanket of trees, we can conclude that the mapscript is unquestionably Totestra, possibly without even the Full Of Resources option checked, given the uncanny dearth of food. Raw dog Totestra, lord have mercy.

1b.) Totestra maps tend to be big and have lots of water, even when you try to make them small. We might not get to do much Impi shenanigans. Freddy of Dutch momentarily sounded appealing again until I realized how insanely slow he'd be with this start. Picking Augustus and blitzing Henge might have some merit too; Henge is so good when your food is spread out.

2.) I think we don't really have any other option but to wander, and I say that as Realms Beyond's #1 "Hates Wandering" guy. We have literally 3 workable tiles BFC until we clear some away with BW. Mining -> BW seems very obvious here, especially since our worker can't do anything after the corn and sheep are improved. The Zulu's expensive starting techs and the Oasis should help deal with that, I suppose. Blegh, gambling at T0, hate that. Our game will be dictated by a damn gamble, one way or the other.

3.) Our scout will be on the settler, I assume? Then, onto the plainshill sheep, the one tile that can see anything, and see if there's a reason to move onto that (but I think that's coast below the oasis so probably not... or is that a river?). So, most likely capital tile is 2N, which is a 2 turn loss for a 1T gain on the starting worker. The capital is actually a very nice site long-long term with all those river-adjacent tiles, but it needs a bunch of farms before it can even consider cottages, blegh...

4.) If we didn't want to move, we'd want to do something like, farm the drycorn while growing to size 2 on the oasis, immediately start a settler at 2, then go mine the sheep, which gives a 5 food + 5*1.6 hammer = 13hpt into a settler. Tragicly bad. But, I'd rather have Imp here than any other trait. Might even be worth swapping into Slavery early, and whip out the first settler? 1T lost, but then a settler whip is worth 4 turns of production...

5.) That bare grassland tile is actually insanely suspicious now that I think about it. Gamble that it's copper and settle right on top of it - T25 Impis? (kidding) (or am i...? )

and, baby woke up, that's it for now

[Ceiliazul]

Yes, all units stacked at t0.

[The Black Sword]

Freddy of the Dutch should be off the table IMO. We don't need fishing for this start for a while and it's not obvious that we'll have much water cities to make use out of the UU and UB. The start is not great for Phi either. The only argument is if we could divine the mapscript and it was one full of water. How sure are you about Totestra? I don't really know much about the topic.

On the other hand, the start is pretty well suited to either Genghis or Augustus.

My natural inclination would be against moving with the info we have. If the scout starts on the settler I don't think we get any new info on T1(oasis hide visibility IIRC). There are two potentially interesting plains hills, 1 retains the corn, the other the sheep/oasis. Is that tundra to the north btw? If we don't get something to make up for the extra resources in the BFCs then I think they're both negative moves. I guess we could move both scout and settler NE, next turn have scout check the one(oasis?), if it's good move to it, if it's not take the other?

SIP isn't too bad I think. 15t worker, 6t to connect the corn gives us plenty of time to get to BW even if we choose Zulu. Size 5, working the corn, and 4 mines(including the sheep) is exactly 15hpt and food neutral for perfect Imp synergy. Need to work cottages somewhere though ...

The question is whether others will get a souped up RB start with a plains hill and two food resources.

[Mardoc]

I wish there was just a few standard settings we could pick... imagine if game setup was as easy as posting: "Anyone up for a new 8 player PB game? I'm fine with RB Standard Settings B, C, or E. Vote for which option in your signup." ... *7 posts and 3 hours later* "Ok, looks like Setting C is the winner. I'll try contacting some mapmakers

It depends, a lot, on who's organizing the game and how big it is. A lot of the PBEMs do get set up smoothly. Someone posts 'hey, who's in for a game with X mod, these settings not open for debate', gets four volunteers and moves on.

Here, though, it was players-first, not settings-first. So of course there's more negotiation required, because the standard approach of 'just sign up for the next one if you don't like the settings' wouldn't work here.

[GermanJoey]

start with Genghis:

http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/rb31_start...wordWBSave

i just took my starting sim from another game, which was a 68x44 Torusland IIRC, and replaced our start with ours here.

As far as how sure I am about Totestra? Uh, I'd say about 90% or so? That mapscript generates maps that are very pretty to look at when zoomed out, but very, uh, uniform when zoomed in. So, you get huge regions of desert, forest, jungle, etc, and starts that look like ours here would be uncommon. (evidence "A") I don't know any other map script that makes stuff like this except for Arboria, but then we'd have like 5 grass forest deer in our BFC. (evidence "B") IIRC Totestra was originally created for FFH2 roleplay games or something like that, under the name "Perfect World." It's very popular for MP maps on RB because the terrain shapes tend to be very "natural"-looking; IIRC, like half of the PBEMs and PBs from the last year or so have had maps based on Totestra. (evidence "C") It spews out a lot of garbage though, so you have regen the map quite a lot until you get something good. (evidence "D") Personally, I've used it to make 5 or 6 MP maps so far, I think, and the PB27 map was an amalgamation of 5 different totestra-generated maps, so I'm pretty familiar with what its output looks like. I've always heavily edited the map though.

That said, yeah, no way for Dutch. I mean we're concerned that IMP ZULU will be too slow here - no reason at all to go even slower! I think that if we want to grow to size 15, 15hpt, it might be better to pasture the sheep. That gives us 7fpt at size 3, so we'll grow up to size 5 much faster. We still hit food-neutral 15hpt at size 5 with corn, pastured sheep, 3 PH mines.

I think it'd help if we sim it out a bit before T0 goes live. If we can figure out some kind of plan we're reasonably happy with, then yeah it'd be better to stay than move. In an attempt to cop your style, and try that whole "be positive" thing: one plus about this start is that there's no need for a quickish granary! 60 hammers saved!

[GermanJoey]

Just now, on my first attempt to sim, a forest grew on our single, bare grassland tile on T3!

[Borsche]

Just now, on my first attempt to sim, a forest grew on our single, bare grassland tile on T3!

Kobe Bryant From The Lakers; Now That's Paper.

[Ceiliazul]

The following worldbuilder sim was produced by joeys mapcad tool for your start:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4288...wordWBSave

[GermanJoey]

Heh, beat you too it Dr. C. By the way, that is a BTS Worldbuilder file, not RtR. The only difference between them is that there's 40 civ slots in RtR, but the base game only supports 18. So, you gotta convert your map first (there's a command that does it mapcad.pl; PM me if you need help, or read the first tutorial) and then run easy_click.pl again to generate the new sims.

TBS, I ran out 1 decent sim so far. Here's where it's at at T50:



http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/tbsnj-rb31...dSwordSave
3 cities, 3 workers, 3 warriors.

The stuff outside of our BFC is just a reasonably optimistic guess at what's out there in the fog. Like, there's gotta be some food out there somewhere, right? (I hope ) So, just put some where it's convenient and see what happens, because why not? I did this kinda thing a lot when simming for PB29, and I found it was really helpful because it can give you a better idea on, like, the implications, I guess you could call it, if that makes any sense? of how a sim is doing, because you can look farther into the future. For example, here I found that instead of growing to size 5, with 3 PH mines targeting 15hpt, that it might be better in the short term (faster, and more flexible) to just grow to size 4 targeting 10 base hpt, with a grasshill mine and a PH mine, because that lets the workers be available to improve tiles at the second city sooner, which is likely to be near one of the two ends of the river, for the free route. Alternatively, I found that if we grow it to size 5, the corn needs to be dedicated to the capital permanently; however, with the "4 plan", we can potentially give the corn to another city and instead use the oasis in the capital. Finally, I also found that a second worker before the settler pays for itself, since it saves worker turns for the first guy and lets them both chop a lot more. Not like we need to be stingy with chops here!

Micro was something like this, transcribing from memory so a few numbers might be off:

T15: worker done; goes to farm corn
T15-19: build new worker at size 1 at 4hpt
T20: switch build to warrior
T21: farm done
T22: worker moves to grassforest 2E of corn
T23-24: BW in T23; chop
T25: chop done on the same turn city is size 2; switch build to worker
T26: worker moves 1SE; 1T mine, then chops
T28: new worker is ready. call him "B", the old one is "A." move B onto sheep, pasture. build settler to absorb overflow
T29: build switch to warrior, max growth
T32: now size 3; A's chop is in; switch build to settler, taking pasture and plains forest for 5hpt
T33: B moves 1N and mines, A finishes mine.
T34: settler done, capital grows to size 4 building warriors
T36: A's mine done
T37: settler plants, in above sim (so much forest congestion that it takes awhile to walk to the site!)
T38: B's mine done
T39: etc etc

The last thing is that since a.) our expansion is slow, b.) we don't need an early granary in the capital, and c.) we have such expensive starting techs + the oasis, we're basically not limited by early tech path like, at all. After BW we want the wheel probably, but then....? Doesn't really matter I think. Makes Augustus a little more appealing, especially with all those trees for chops into wonders...

I suppose tech freedom that also means we're not really constrained by needing the auto-route from the river, unless we wanted to chase the oracle or something.

[The Black Sword]

Thanks for the sims folks.

Regarding Totestra GJ, it seems like the the abundance of trees is the main point. None of the recent RB maps have been made by Ceil, so I don't think that's a point in favour. And I would expect a lot of regens needed for pretty much any mapscript.

Nice job on the initial sim, I'll mess around with it and get back to you. A 2nd worker before the 1st settler does sound like a good idea with Imp. I think the main things to decide are what pick to choose and whether we want to move on turn 1. So a comparison with the fallback option of the northern plains hill might be good. If tech is easy that might be a good idea? We'll have plenty of time and more info to work out a detailed sim when the game starts.