Smackdown Starting positions

[Krill]

Issues that now occur with the Mehmed pick at the coastal site (assuming Fishing/Mining for second civ, nothing else really matters):

Mehmed wants Sailing fourth (BW>Pottery>AH are the obvious first three techs). AH should finish either T18 or T19, it depends on rounding, if it is T18 then the worker on gems can go straight to pasturing the cow. Sailing would take 5 turns to research without overflow, I think it is possible to get it from eot of river start so can 1 turn a lighthouse from settler overflow and stick with 1 worker at the coastal site, other choice is to 1 turn a worker.

Mainly it's the coastal start that goes up to T25, the river start is a lot more variable depending on tech and set up for either library rush, a granary or more workers etc. I wouldn't trust the beaker total much past BW either, but it's a vague running total taking into account adjusted beakers and tech modifiers.

Micro plan for the first 25 turns.

[Krill]

Seven ran some numbers to check the Sailing ETA, and came up with Sailing due about mid T23. I think GLH is buildable by T35 using overflow from a settler and worker whip (overflowing out about half the wonder cost), 2 forest chops and production from mines between the slaves whilst regrowing. It's tempting...and it doesn't really take much from ordinary expansion (minus not overflowing out workers etc etc) when worker constrained.

[SevenSpirits]

I looked more carefully through Krill's plan (which overall I like) and discovered a couple slightly wrong numbers in food and hammers. Because of this the commerce numbers aren't exact either since I think we will want to work at least one different tile. I also noticed a place in development of the coastal city where it can whip a granary earlier and net +1 food using the avoid growth trick.

I also tried running it in our sandbox (in hotseat with river start going first) and noticed that you still get your 1 free beaker while in anarchy, so the beaker numbers are slightly off again. There's also a happiness problem in the coastal city. So, this is a nice starting point but it still needs quite some work.

[SevenSpirits]

Playing around with the sandbox as the inland start I wonder if we should focus on that one more. Krill's plan had us teching in the correct order for the coastal start, but the inland start has some really strong tiles which it might be nice to get going sooner. (It really wants AH, Pottery, Writing ASAP and doesn't care about BW or Sailing.) Worth playing around with.

[Krill]

Just checking, you've been using novice's sim in hotseat mode to do these tests? No additional changes we need to know about?

[SevenSpirits]

Just swapped in the "correct" civs/leaders/techs and made the inland player go first (since I guessed there were more likely to be tech bottlenecks for the coastal player solved by the inland one, than vice versa).

[novice]

Picks so far:
LAM: Darius
4H: Bismarck
RMoG: Huayna Capac, Maya
Smack: Mehmed, Sumeria

Remaining picks:
4H
LAM
LAM
4H
RMoG
Smack
Smack
RMoG
4H
LAM

[Krill]

Seven has run a few sims and it looks like AH>Pottery>BW>(Writing) is the best opening tech path. It's possible to go worker>warrior>worker>granary>warrior>library at river, and workboat>worker>granary>warrior>settler (triple slave) and still get the settler around the same time as BW first.

Workers at river go cow>sheep>wheat and the second worker goes for the gems. Worker at coast goes rice>plains hill mine. Main issues at coast are ensuring a warrior is built to sit in the city before it grows to size 5 if not slaving, and size 4 if you have slaved. I think Writing could be put off for Sailing if the light house was wanted, and to give time to get a settler out of river but for the first three techs that order isn't really possible to beat. Coast isn't that tech dependent whereas river really needs AH first. We tried Pottery first and it doesn't really do much (as you'd expect) as well as worker first at Coast.

[Ichabod]

Maya and Korea picks seems to indicate people will go for religion early. I think we should make some sort of plan to grab one of the late religions, maybe a bulb for Taoism (considering philosophical trait). I think we'd be on a very thight race for both Judaism and Confucianism. Theology and Divine Right aren't the best techs to be aiming for, so that leaves Taoism.

[Krill]

They are fighting over Henge, they need Myst to get it fast. I don't know why, Bismark will never lose that race. Huayna was a bad pick unless they get something like GLH or Mids.