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

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

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.

Cal, barb information here.

[Haram]

Well, it's probably a crazy idea, but what do you think of settling second city south of silk and landing a religion in the following turn?

Adventages:
- it could be a production monster pretty early and we want to have this kind of city, since the capital demands cottages
- wet corn and the cow are great tiles and we want them in our culture asap
- culture would cover peaks soon, giving us a good visibility over the whole north-easter area

Disadvantages:
- we can improve bonus tiles with a 3T delay
- there is risk involved that we dont get a religion (altough there is a plan B, that mitigates the risk a little bit - settle next to corn/cow),
- it requires some coordination, that may be sub-optimal

I know we still have a lot to uncover in our neighbourhood, but we dont have that many topics to discuss at this point What do you think?

[Caledorn]

That's a great idea to add to our sims, Haram! I'm gonna post more tomorrow. Just wanted to post the screens before going to bed.

[Caledorn]

Just some screens tonight - had a busy day, and will have some busy days ahead of me with work.

[Caledorn]

I have a few more screens today than normal. With all these scouting moves, most of the posts will be screens I'm afraid. I have some comments though.

On the screens above you can see the newly revealed tiles from our scout, and also the tiles that was revealed in the SW by the capital culture expansion that I forgot to include when the borders actually expanded. There's a juicy wet corn rice down there that I like. Perhaps a city in the fogged tile 1SW from the floodplain we see is a possibility, but we need more information on the area down there before we go ahead and make any assumptions about that.

The plan with the scout is to move him westwards on the 3-tile high land area he is in now, and then south towards the capital again, so next turn I intend to move him 1W and then 1SW to place him in the forest (as animals have now begun to spawn he needs to be in +defense% tiles whenever possible). I'm starting to think that huts are indeed off, as we haven't seen any so far. However, I've put a red ring around a tile that is obviously water, which may be a hindrance to moving the scout back down there. We'll see how big the lake north of our capital really is soon enough, and whether it is a viable option to move him back southwards so we reveal that area too.

I'm including the demos every turn, as they may provide those of us on the team who have more insight than me into what is going on with the other teams. Demohacking is one of the areas where I really lack skill, so I don't know much what those numbers mean - and I also know that the numbers this early doesn't say much at all about who is doing good or not, as that comes in later.

Notice that we complete mining in 2 turns, so the obvious decision we need to make is this:

1. We go for BW, giving us the ability to chop and revealing our copper, postponing the attempt to found a religion until we have our second city up.
2. We go straight for a religion tech, and then go for BW after that. This will found the religion in our capital, which may not be the best idea - but at the same time it's not a bad idea since the capital is so obviously a strong commerce city, and a holy shrine won't hurt that.

Also, the time for sandboxing comes close. I will update our sandbox when the worker is done and we start our first warrior (I assume that's the best build after the worker completes, yes?) - and then probably again a few turns before our first settler completes, so we know the best spot to found our second city.

[Caledorn]

Looking at the numbers in the demos, there are some things I wonder about:

* Someone has 6000 soldiers. Also someone is making 7 food. This makes me think that someone built a warrior first and have grown their capital city to size 2. That would also explain the GNP of 20 that one team has. However, the population of all teams are at 1000, so based on that no capital can have grown to size 2 yet. So what's going on here?
* Rival worst land area is 14000 sqkm. That absolutely has to be a coastal city with a lot of water tiles, as all capitals borders grew on turn 4 or 5.
* We are one of only 2 teams who have no water tiles in their capital BFC, with land area of 21000 sqkm.

[plako]

Looking at the numbers in the demos, there are some things I wonder about:

* Someone has 6000 soldiers. Also someone is making 7 food. This makes me think that someone built a warrior first and have grown their capital city to size 2. That would also explain the GNP of 20 that one team has. However, the population of all teams are at 1000, so based on that no capital can have grown to size 2 yet. So what's going on here?
* Rival worst land area is 14000 sqkm. That absolutely has to be a coastal city with a lot of water tiles, as all capitals borders grew on turn 4 or 5.
* We are one of only 2 teams who have no water tiles in their capital BFC, with land area of 21000 sqkm.

BFC fish has been netted for 7 food. GNP 20 could be researching something with prerequisited or someone is Creative and of course 2 commerce from Fish could also help to increase GNP.

[plako]

Please turn Ctrl+Y on. Lot easier to see tile values.

Now that you didn't go immediately towards Religion you should try to time it when settling your 2nd city. I would try to optimize timing so that you get pretty much fastest settler out and religion founding at the same time.

Also be very careful with your scout. Baby steps is good idea and 2 moves only to forested hill. If you really want to risk it, 2 moving to forest is also ok. I would also try to round back towards capital if possible through SW and map out best possible 2nd city spot. Especially areas west of your capital should be checked offering chances to share Pigs with capital and adds at minimum wet rice and hopefully something better. Also city in the south would be good candidate. Connected with river+Rice+cottage+sharing ivory.

[Caledorn]

BFC fish has been netted for 7 food. GNP 20 could be researching something with prerequisited or someone is Creative and of course 2 commerce from Fish could also help to increase GNP.

Ah! Thank you That's definitely a useful thing to remember in the future.

Please turn Ctrl+Y on. Lot easier to see tile values.

Now that you didn't go immediately towards Religion you should try to time it when settling your 2nd city. I would try to optimize timing so that you get pretty much fastest settler out and religion founding at the same time.

Also be very careful with your scout. Baby steps is good idea and 2 moves only to forested hill. If you really want to risk it, 2 moving to forest is also ok. I would also try to round back towards capital if possible through SW and map out best possible 2nd city spot. Especially areas west of your capital should be checked offering chances to share Pigs with capital and adds at minimum wet rice and hopefully something better. Also city in the south would be good candidate. Connected with river+Rice+cottage+sharing ivory.

Ctrl+Y turned on for the screenshots!

That sounds like a very good plan. I have started BW for now, as mining completed (also note that Agent427/TBS/johns and elum/mackoti completed a tech too, as our three teams are now at 38 points - neither of those teams started with mining, just as us, so it's a high chance that's what they completed too).

As for the scout, I am doing my very best at keeping him protected. I assume though, that it is better to move him at all, even if into only a regular hill or regular forest, than to not move him, or backtrack him into lands that we've already discovered? I move him one step at a time btw, just in case he needs to withdraw a tile due to an animal. Your suggested path or rounding back down to the capital in the W is the exact plan I have too, so I'm happy to see we concur 100% on that

Just as a general comment for the lurkers: I hope you will forgive me the heavy screenshots in this thread. Since we're four players on the team, and I am the most green one of us, I want to present the other team members with as complete a picture as I can. I will begin to spoiler the screenshots though to conserve space. Also, would it be a good idea to actually make a separate webpage just to post screenshots? I could find some simple PHP gallery thing where I could folder images into the various turns, and just post the link to the current turn folder. Let me know what you think guys (Such a feature would not be implemented for a few weeks as I have more important things to work on websitewise - but I should be able to get it done within a few weeks if the interest is there).

Turn 7 Screens:

Turn 7 Demos:

[Caledorn]

Ugh. It looks like we have a slight problem getting the scout back down to the capital in the W. That lake is bigger than it looked, initially.

On the other hand, it looks as that landmass up there is some kind of chokepoint, so we might want to contemplate settling a city there at some point in the distant future, for instance on the desert hill that gives us access to the cow and the wet corn. That's all theorycraft at this point though, as that's a bit far away from the capital, and definitely not among the priorities we have right now - strangely enough

Turn 8 Screen:

Turn 8 Demos:

NB! I have gone back and spoilered all the screenshots I've posted from the game in the posts before these latest ones. Should make the thread a lot more navigatable for the lurkers.