RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[Sockboy]

Methinks Conan heads SE next.

Pegasus, I'll have a look at your starts either tonight or tomorrow. My gut feelings are that getting the warrior out before the settler for settler3 is a great idea, but I'm not sure we get many benefits from your settler4 option, the only real benefit I see here is the faster regrowth to size 3.

My biggest concern is that we need to make a decision on these (sheep) potential options as soon as the worker pops, which is like 5 turns now. So far we're not even agreed if we want settler3 or 4 (whichever variant) and I'm not convinced that 4 more turns of scouting will change that. The other options are matched until we hit size 3, which is much further away, long enough for us to have a better idea as to where the settler is going.

[WarriorKnight]

...but the only two suitable ones I found we're "Adieu" and "Enough talking!" The second one is quite funny, but could be taken the wrong way

Well we went with the 2nd one. Here is the message we sent.

Well met indeed!

Greetings to the mighty DIM triumvirate! We tremble in fear before your mighty scout. What you report sounds very much like what Conan has seen, we fear we do not live in the land of milk and honey. We look forward to many years of peace between our two mighty civilizations. Has Hernan by chance happened to meet any other civilizations? If so would you be so kind to let us know and possibly give us directions so that we might meet them also? We would also be willing to do the same in return. We're also wondering if you had any thoughts regarding NAPs, we're happy to discuss this further if you are interested

Enough talking!
A4.

P.S. "Enough talking!" is a quote from the film. We assure you that it is not a sign of hostility. See the attached picture.

What is the attached picture? Well...



Fairly appropriate for our civ.

[Sockboy]

Ok, I've had a look at options C v A.

My thoughts: Both are good, and quite similar. We can get consecutive workers out after the settler with either option, however option C has the settler delayed one turn, this in turn delays the workers one turn each. So effectively we lose 2 worker turns. In terms of regrowth, C is faster by a turn, but the whip is one turn later so the capital regrows to 3 on the same turn in either option. I think those are the salient points. The other benefits are marginal IMO (slightly earlier warriors with C, a bit more food in the box for A - essentially C has a few more hammers and A has a bit more food) In terms of research they're basically identical as far as I can tell (time to pottery is not necessarily a good indicator as once we plant the second city we'll be at reduced research).

A final point, option C removes the flexibility of queuing a warrior rather than a barracks whilst building a settler/workers. This is because it has too many hammers and completes on the turn we start the settler! The overflow ends up completing the settler one turn earlier and we don't get enough overflow for consecutive workers, which leads to another turn of 0 growth at size 2 (rather than at size 4).

I'm still leaning towards A, but they're much closer than I originally thought. I'll have a look at B V D in a minute. My biggest issue remains the time at which we need to choose to work the sheep over the rice, we really won't have a good idea as to where the settler is going/how soon we need it.

[Sockboy]

Ok looked at B v D and again comparison is very close. I've had to re-jig B as the original version had us farming and then working a farm, that tile actually has a forest on it, so we can't do that until after BW comes in.

So the new version B also has a 3rd warrior out before the settler, I don't think we're interested in going straight from 2nd warrior to settler. This delays the settler til turn 34, but gets us workers on turns 39 and 40. (BW comes in at turn 37). I've got warrior 4 marked as coming out on t41, but that could just as well be hammers into a barracks. I'm pretty sure we regrow to size 3 in 4 turns (t45?).

D, gets us a settler at turn 33, but the best I can manage with the workers is turns 40 and 41. It might be possible to get the first one a bit earlier, at the expense of another turn of 0 growth, not sure we want to do that. Best case we lose 1 worker turn (I suspect it's 2 though). It regrows in 3 turns though, so that should be t44(45 if we take an extra turn of 0 growth). That one actually gets warrior 4 out before the workers which we can't change for a barracks (need the overflow for the workers).

So recap I think D gets us settler one turn earlier, but workers 1 turn later each. It also lets us regrow one turn sooner.

B lets us choose barracks over 4th warrior.

One thing to note, is with either of these options we have a number of free worker turns in the middle, essentially after he finishes the mine he's free until we need him to chop the forest. These turns could be roading towards the new city site, roading forests in preparation to chop or even preimproving tiles for the new city (provided such tiles are within our cultural borders, so mining mostly I think). I think he's got time to improve one tile and one road or three roads. Maybe a touch more.

I can't really choose between these two, I think B is very slightly better purely due to less worker turns lost, but IMO it's really marginal.

Overall I'm still in favour of not working the sheep. (I prefer A to C and don't care between B and D, so work the rice)

[ad hoc]

Well dims scout had disappeared so i moved warrior SE as discussed, looking better all the time

[Sockboy]

Finally some decent land! We'll want to check it out a bit more with Conan, but looking good! SE next? Or S? Thoughts?

[Pegasus]

Cheers for the Analysis SockBoy

I think it was always looking based on our previous conversations my counter proposals were going to lose to either A or B You have actually made these options in your analysis more appealing to me though. Lets just hope we can get Conan closer to home before we get any nasty surprises.

I vote we go SE with Conan next as that should reveal more of the fog than S.

[Sockboy]

No probs Pegasus, make sure you keep coming up with options, because it's easy to miss something if you don't question every assumption

C&D wise this turn saw a global increase of 3000 soldier points. We know some of that came from Athlete and Kalin, for two reasons, their points rose this turn and they were previously rival minimum. Given the points increase I've got them down for a tech (Looks like ancient era techs are something like 6 points a piece, although we're sitting on 11 points for two techs, weird. Is it 5.5 points per tech?) I've got them down for Mining(90), but the other possibility is Hunting(72). I think those beaker numbers are correct. Anyway it's taken them 9 turns, so unless they've been sand-bagging they should be at or around 90 odd beakers last turn, which suggests Mining.

They've also grown so they're also likely to be the owners of one of the warriors whose ownership can't be completely determined. If they've grown they're weren't making a worker/settler.

The only other bit of info I could find was from the Espionage screen which shows DIM and us both having 8ESP against each other. We're likely their first contact. Once this hits around 40 points we should keep watching it, if they stop spending points on us we'll know if they've met someone else (although not where or necessarily when...)

Thinking about DIM, if they've headed straight for us, and us for them. Then that would put the gold somewhere between halfway and a third of the way from our capital to theirs. Assuming an equal spacing of capitals, we're looking at something like 20-30 tiles between capitals. We're scheduled to get a warrior out on turn 20, so maybe we're safer than we think for the moment? I know that's a lot of assumptions to draw any conclusions from...

[Sockboy]

Turn rolled over so I shifted Conan SE. More forest down there, I propose SW next turn.



Quite a few score increases too, I'll have a look through them and report what I find, there's a combinations of city growths and techs.

[WarriorKnight]

Actually, I think we should go SE. The reason being that the capital's borders will expand onto that hill on t26 (long before the settler) giving visibility onto those tiles.