[SPOILERS] Fire and Blood: Nyles Standish and Zalson watch the world burn

[Zalson]

I had this great comment ready to go on what we should do. Maybe he was just saying: "I have archers. Look elsewhere."?

While his placement is super annoying, maybe we press dcodea? I mean this from a purely long-term perspective. Let's get some more cities in the meantime.

[Zalson]

I borrowed your earlier stitch together and made a tentative dotmap.



Red is Volantis.

When I first started, I thought we had a no-brainer in founding on Yellow dot.

But if we don't have fishing -- or we're just interested in blocking of dcodea -- then I think our next dot should be ... the western-most blue dot (that was supposed to be green, good job me).

More I think about it, that's a good spot to seal the western border. Maybe we should pursue that? Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure the placement I'm suggesting will allow us to settle for the crabs. (the more eastern blue dot).

If I am able to get into a sim tonight I'll test our city placement options in worldbuilder. No promises.

Any thoughts?

[The Black Sword]

Regarding turn order, as soon as you see a situation where turn order is important you should observe it IMO. But what is 'important' is open to interpretation and we want to speed the game up and ignore turnsplits as much as possible. So 'Don't be a Jerk' and be honest with yourself about what situations are important.

I don't read OH's statement as saying that 'turn order is not fixed until war is declared', rather it says 'don't fix the turn order until absolutely necessary'. When you declare war it is necessary but there are other possibilities(eg. settling races) too.

I know that's not clear cut but I don't think there's a site concensus. Just be honest and ask for second opinions if you're not sure.

IMO you are not allowed to double move Pindicator in the scenario you presented. But if you didn't think he was threatening you, unintentionally double moving him would have been fine.

[The Black Sword]

Oh, and I had some predictions regarding your dotmap when subbing for dcodea, so it will be interesting to see what you go with.

[Mardoc]

Agreed with TBS on turn split. Basically the thinking is: don't deliberately double move for advantage, but otherwise keep pace as high as you can.

Part of why the rules are fuzzy is a reaction to the other approach. Initially we tried to define the rules carefully, covering every situation. Unsurprisingly, given a site full of optimizers, that turned into contests where people would follow the letter of the rules exactly while still bending the situation against their spirit. People kept finding corner cases where their approach was perfectly legal and yet totally annoying/infuriating. Instead of going for three pages worth of rules, we ended up with only the spirit of the rule. It seems to work better.

[Zalson]

These dots aren't final by any means. I am just useless for playing and commenting on the game right now so I figured I might as well try to help Nyles out with some inane suggestions.

[NylesStandish]

Thanks to TBS and Mardoc for weighing in on the turn split question.

I had this great comment ready to go on what we should do. Maybe he was just saying: "I have archers. Look elsewhere."?

While his placement is super annoying, maybe we press dcodea? I mean this from a purely long-term perspective. Let's get some more cities in the meantime.

Showing the archers as a deterrent is probably the best explanation for it.

I definitely think we should press dcodea and expand in his direction. He has finally founded a second city, but I don't feel he's playing to Joao's strengths to the fullest and we may be able to take a lot of his land peacefully.

With regards to the dotmap, I think either yellow dot or western blue dot should be our next plant. Southern blue dot should definitely be founded eventually so we can get that financial coast commerce, but it's not as much of a priority since all that it really grabs that no other site does is the crabs, and doesn't seal off borders well.

Western blue city could go one tile further west. The biggest negative of settling one west is the increased distance from the capital, although at 4 tiles away instead of 3, units from the capital will still take 2 turns to get to the city. This has the advantage of founding on a hill, picking up the 2 tile lake and the plains forest silk (and denying them to dcodea) at the cost of a grass silk which will eventually be picked up by the crabs city, a couple of grassland tiles and a plains hill.

The western blue site does not interfere with the crabs site; the rule is that cities cannot be founded within 2 tiles of another city on the same continent (I think you can found within 2 tiles if you're on different continents, but the situation where the continents are completely separate and close enough is unusual).

I like the yellow dot. A city 1SW of yellow dot could get the same resources plus an extra cow, but that gives us a city far more distant than any of our others (6 tiles away vs 4 for Volantis and western blue and 5 for crabs city), loses the hill defensive bonus, gets 1 hammer/turn instead of 3 (but gets to work the copper tile), and orphans a grassland and a few coast tiles. I lean strongly towards yellow dot as is, but if we really want to be greedy and get the most food for a Sacrificial Altar whipping city we can try for 1SW.

Also, your dotmap leaves room for a filler city to pick up the orphaned lake, but it would be a very cramped filler city with a total of 3 or 4 tiles to itself. Settling 1SW of yellow dot would also allow for a filler city on the grassland with the "Scout T18" flag on it, but that also would not have much to itself. It would be able to share corn with the capital, though.

I think we settle 1W of western blue dot first, then directly on yellow dot asap afterwards, then either southern blue or something in the north.

[NylesStandish]

I switch Valyria to a settler after growing to size 3 and put a chop into it. Another turn of chopping the copper, and moved the warrior to defend him.

I don't think I checked OT4E's cities last time, but his diplo window shows he's got 3.




Notably, none of our neighbors have met each other. This means that we potentially know more about the map, but puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to spending espionage points.

Dcodea's capital of Alison was whipped, which probably means a worker or settler, which hopefully won't complicate our dotmap.

[NylesStandish]

Yay, more lions.




Finally got rid of that pesky forest blocking our copper; warrior fortifies to protect the worker. Chop is currently going into a monument, so we don't have to wait or whip for it, but we can still switch builds and put the chop into something else before the turn rolls if we think that's a better use of the chop.

Worker in Valyria finished a road on the sheep tile.

Valyria is currently empty, but it's got enough vision and production to safely build a warrior or two if we see somebody coming at us; it's also small enough to not go into unhappiness for being undefended.

We've got another warrior in the west checking out the area between the yellow and blue dots. Planning to move him to the blue dot area to fogbust for the settler.

[NylesStandish]

The most important thing is we found dcodea's warrior. He's been sitting in place for at least 5 turns to get that fortify bonus, so it's safe to assume that's a place he wants to settle a city. Realistically, we shouldn't be able to beat him to that spot if that's his next city location; if he's building his third somewhere else or he delays the settler an unreasonable amount of time then maybe.

Worker at the capital finished a road SW which will let us get our settler to either the yellow dot or the western blue dot in 2 turns.




More exploration on the outer rim.