[Spoilers] It's time to be casual again

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I think I'm always going to vote for no barbarians now. Considering I've lost my first 2 units to barb animals in the last 2 games I've played... Actually, I think I said the same thing after the last game and then promptly forgot

This isn't really spoilerish, but I was one round of combat off loosing my first warrior in PB31 to a 3% success attack by a lion. We all know that the early combats are swingy yet people still love barbs! It cost me quite a few turns in 27 hooking gold too loosing a warrior to warrior in a 5% odds battle. Bah!

I guess I did let out a spoiler there, didn't I?

Just a little. Not really too important though :P

[AdrienIer]

I think I'm always going to vote for no barbarians now. Considering I've lost my first 2 units to barb animals in the last 2 games I've played... Actually, I think I said the same thing after the last game and then promptly forgot

Well version 3.0.0 of RtR gives scouts +300% against animals (and nerfs bears/lions/panthers), which makes them basically harmless to scouts and warriors. I realize that it may actually be the way to go : you still have to protect your settlers and workers in the early game, making no-military openings risky, yet everyone gets to scout until barb warriors appear. No barbarians has a downside of allowing extreme farmer's gambits with low risk involved.

Interesting ideas. Would love to see a play at a SE - a casual game is perfect to trial it! I feel the mod has made them a tiny bit more viable. Lategame you have the environmentalism bonuses, and also the SE is easier to bulldoze into a SP playing field for quick hammers when needed. Also though remember that if you set up an academy and have rep scientists running there this can be powerful. For lategame space play it is common to have a Wall Street city as a GP farm that only runs scientists as you get the full benefit of Wall Street independent of the slider.

Mercantilism+rep+environmentalism is really strong, I underestimated its impact in PBEM68 where going into merc+rep pushed me from 3rd place to potential runaway, which was my downfall.
I assume you mean a wall street city that runs only merchants right ? Yeah that would make a pretty good city.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I think I'm always going to vote for no barbarians now. Considering I've lost my first 2 units to barb animals in the last 2 games I've played... Actually, I think I said the same thing after the last game and then promptly forgot

Well version 3.0.0 of RtR gives scouts +300% against animals (and nerfs bears/lions/panthers), which makes them basically harmless to scouts and warriors. I realize that it may actually be the way to go : you still have to protect your settlers and workers in the early game, making no-military openings risky, yet everyone gets to scout until barb warriors appear. No barbarians has a downside of allowing extreme farmer's gambits with low risk involved.

Interesting ideas. Would love to see a play at a SE - a casual game is perfect to trial it! I feel the mod has made them a tiny bit more viable. Lategame you have the environmentalism bonuses, and also the SE is easier to bulldoze into a SP playing field for quick hammers when needed. Also though remember that if you set up an academy and have rep scientists running there this can be powerful. For lategame space play it is common to have a Wall Street city as a GP farm that only runs scientists as you get the full benefit of Wall Street independent of the slider.

Mercantilism+rep+environmentalism is really strong, I underestimated its impact in PBEM68 where going into merc+rep pushed me from 3rd place to potential runaway, which was my downfall.
I assume you mean a wall street city that runs only merchants right ? Yeah that would make a pretty good city.

Yes sorry - farming and running merchants is actually a better use of the wonder as you get the full use all the time and can run the slider higher for the super cottage Oxford.

It also means that you can use a newish city for it which hasn't needed cottages to mature.

Speaking of barbs - we could have landed our choke city in 22 if that bear wasn't floating around - we could have war declared and sat on the tile there. Would it have worked? Who knows - would have been interesting for lurkers.

[Mardoc]

The lion had 23% chances of winning, so obviously he won... We won't have much more scouting done by the time the settler comes.

Humbug. Well, at least we've got one circle scouted.

If we're not getting any more info for a while (aside from hopefully copper/horse locations), now's probably the time to hash out a dotmap. I don't expect to have enough time to propose one from scratch until the weekend, but I'll start noodling on it, anyway.

[AdrienIer]

I'll try to put down some signs next turn, to propose a dotmap.

[AdrienIer]

What do you think ? I made it loose, do you think it should be made tighter ?




Only the x just east of the capital needs a border pop ASAP, the others can wait.

[Mardoc]

What do you think ?

I like the three eastern cities, don't see any way to improve those.

I think I would move the Black Sheep city 1S, onto the jungle hill. That way we can delay culture and still share the cap deer, get its own food, and decent other tiles. And clear a jungle pre-IW .

I'd also like to move the pig city 1S or 1SW. That brings it in range to share the deer, whale, and the sheep, and only gives up coast. This one is less obvious - it's mostly just that I feel like four capital food tiles is extreme overkill, but you never want to leave food unworked. So it's a second city to build foodhammer units and/or whip, to help use up the food.

I made it loose, do you think it should be made tighter ?

I want to - sharing tiles is generally good, and better when you're Imperialistic and whipping a lot. I don't see much in the way of good ways to actually tighten this up, though, and still grab new food tiles with new cities. Maybe add a city 1SE of the marble, later as a filler city once at least some of its shared food has been claimed by culture?

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A possible alternate for the west end: we could put a city right between the pig and rice, on the coast, add a city 1SW of the marble for shared pigs/deer/marble/plains hill, and leave the east cities the same (well, move the black sheep city south still). Seems like this would be a faster start, but still let us share around food. Maybe add a city on that west corner grass hill if the pig/rice city is too rich - especially if there's anything decent in the fog. Worst case it still lets us share the rice and work some cottages or mines in between whips, right?

[AdrienIer]

Ok this is interesting. What I could see is :
Move pig city 1S, move "black sheep" city 1S on the jungled hill, add a city SE of marble to share the eastern cow. It's not great but it's tighter.

[AdrienIer]

Where do you think we should send the warrior ? There will be another one after that so we can do whatever we want with him. I'm leaning towards sending him west for now.

[Mardoc]

West seems reasonable. I wouldn't wander too far, we'll want a warrior for both the cap and the new city, but he can explore a bit while we're still working on getting there.

Er, hmm. Unless we can hook bronze and rely on the ability to emergency whip some axes, that is. Then warriors might as well scout indefinitely.