[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T4 I think.

Looks rock solid to me. Cal, there's your answer.

[spacetyrantxenu]

If you guys are depending on me for factual information you're gonna have a bad time.

If you hadn't already settled maybe I could have suggested wandering with the settler and dodging animals for 25 turns to see what would happen.

[SevenSpirits]

If you don't select a tech you don't lose beakers, you'll find that the game selected a tech for you. T4 I think, but Scoopin's PB13 thread can confirm that. Anyway, probably not the best choice to let fate intervene, even if it somehow worked out for them in that game.

You can have no tech selected without consequence during the production phase of t0-t4. In single player and PBEM games, this means that on t0-t4 you don't have to select a tech, but you should select one on t5 before ending turn. Pitboss* is different: the production phase happens at the start of the turn instead of at the end. Therefore in pitboss you should select a tech on t4 before ending turn, so that it is selected at the start of t5.

* Technically, the distinction is between sequential turn and simultaneous turn games. Sequential turns pitboss works normally, just like single player and PBEM, which also use sequential turns. In practice, when people talk about pitboss they are talking about simultaneous turns pitboss unless they say otherwise.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thanks Seven.

For Xenu, you got a smiley because it is in on the joke, knowing that your grasp of civ mechanics is tenuous at best. Trust me, I know better (than perhaps anyone) than to trust the finer details to you. Remember when you forgot to pay my bills while I was wandering the wilds of Wyoming? Minor detail, only a day late. Thousands of dollars later...

Seven gets the actual, legit in recognition of information that is well reasoned, completely defined, and rock solid in the take-it-to-the-bank kind of way. Thanks for the thorough explanation. Feel free to drop mechanical tidbits like this from time to time.

Xenu,

Much love.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Actually I don't remember that. Maybe that was the problem?

[Caledorn]

I think we will go mining first, as the sims we've done showed that we will gain nicely from the additional hammers from the mines. After that we should either go BW for chopping and to reveal copper, or we will take an early religion in our capital.

As for scouting, I think we will go NE first to see what's up there, and we'll make a decision based on that whether to continue in that direction or if we want to check NW too.

We should probably make a decent sim to check what turns we can expect workers, warriors, settlers and of course techs are completed.

What's your input, plako?

[Caledorn]

I played the turn, moving the scout 2NE to the hill, and selected Mining as our tech. Not much to say at the moment, as we need to do some simming and set up a MM plan.

We can either continue to scout up in the NE next turn, or we can move the scout over to the NW part, as there appears to be 2 rivers up there, and also that juicy banana.

[plako]

All looking ok.

Were barbs on? If they were, Remember to proceed with caution after T5. Especially, if huts are off, there is no need to take risks.

[Caledorn]

I believe both barbs and huts are on, but I must admit I am uncertain about the latter until I see one...

Scouting moves aren't the most exciting thing, as per usual, so just offering a screen of what we can see, and also the demos at the start of T3. I should probably modify my ini file to play Civ windowed, as the screenshots are rather huge in my 2560x1440 resolution.

I'm not sure where to move the scout next, although that's really a minor decision - I'm thinking it's either NE-N, or SE-SE (since it will be T4, the scout should be safe). So far it looks like we've got two inland salt water lakes, and the terrain we have unconvered so far in the NE is rather uninspiring except for the dyes and the cow up there in the NE. BGN mentioned the possibility of a settler pump in the grass with river there, working a cow and 3 mines, which sounds like a nice city. It will eventually also give us access to the dyes there, but those aren't much good until we get Calendar obviously.

[Caledorn]

I figured I'd play the turn right away, since I'm going to bed, just in case the turn flips while I'm asleep. I don't want to be the last one to play every turn because I overthink stuff.

Wet grass corn and plains cow with silk for later .. Yum!