[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[scooter]

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.

I was thinking about this too... If we do have a situation like that, I think we should be able to bluff our way out of the situation. It depends on the timing really, about half the tiles surrounding Sandograd are only defogged one tile away. Some spots 2, so if they come through a spot 2 tiles away, we're fine. If they come from 1 tile away but they moved before us on the turn that we spot them, we're also fine, so long as we manage to make the move before them.

[scooter]

Great, I'm guessing that's got to be city #2 unless we see something amazing down in the south. I don't know how we ourselves would use the stone - I don't think we'll be doing a lot of wonder-building early on - but if there's a limited amount of stone on the map, then we might have a valuable trading item... If everyone has stone then forget that idea, but this seems far enough away that maybe not everyone has it...?

[Sandover]

Your guess is as good as mine regarding the stone.

To be honest I don't really like that spot for our second city, it's too low on production. We need masonry to hook up the stone (waste of beakers pre-IW) so we'll only have one single good tile until pottery, and then we end up running a lot of cottages in a city that should be shurning out praetorians at a rapid rate. If there's copper in the area then great, lets settle there. If not, I very much hope we're able to find someplace better.

[Sandover]

Turn 6:

Found yet another far from optimal resource (wine). Lets pray that we'll discover a decent food resource and a few more hills around that flood plain when we move further south along Shades.

[Sandover]

Turn 7:

Not very eventful. Two more turns until we reach the hill.

[Sandover]

Turn 8:

Found an empty plains tile. Only one step away from the hill now.

[Square Leg]

first few turns are pretty boring hey!?

[Sandover]

I'd go as far as to claim that describing our current situation as "pretty boring" is an understatement. "Amazingly dull" comes to mind as a better phrase to use in this context.

I wonder what rego's team is up to atm. They're the last ones to play this turn and I wouldn't expect a team of four supposedly rather active players to be so late playing their turn during a weekend unless they're discussing something important. But what could be important enough to cause a hold-up at this stage? Warrior movement?

Nah, figure it got to be a coinsidence. Shame I won't be able to play another turn before going to bed though.

[scooter]

Yeah I didn't write anything after the last couple turns because there's nothing to add really, just not much going on...

Maybe they met somebody? It seems early to get contact though... Though we know the map WILL be cramped so it's not ridiculous to think that they could have met someone.

[Sandover]

Maybe they met somebody?

Lets assume they did. What would then cause such a hold-up? The most likely explanation, due to travel time, is that they found another exploring warrior and are discussing how to react to that situation (i.e. backtracking to defend vs. searching for neighbours capital vs. continuing regular exploration process).

If we assume that
-both warriors started two tiles away from their starting settlers going in a straight line from that position towards each other
-the warriors met two tiles away from each other
-rego's team didn't move their warrior yet that turn (hence the delay)

we end up with the following

2+2+2+8+7=21

when calculating the maximum possible distance between the starting settlers, for a meeting to take place on turn eight. 21 tiles definitly sounds like a likely distance on this map (huge, low water, 17 civs), but if we assume that all of the above actually happened we're making a pretty damn large assumption.