[Spoiler] Team slowwalk of the Reservoir Cats (Suleiman/Korea, slowcheetah + Catwalk)

[Catwalk]

Planning on a far and mostly straight trip with the scout sounds good. Also makes sense to plan on circling with the warrior as we will need him to return eventually. I agree with your plan of S SE for the scout and then SW. The warrior can start out NE and go check the ivory site later on the way home.

[Catwalk]

And we're off!

We settled S as planned, as exploration revealed no better locations. Scout went to the hill, and warrior went NE.

I put down a purple circle for fun, letting us overlap a bunch of cottages for later use and using a light house on the lake tile. It's on a hill, it's coastal and it has a sheep. Will need more information before deciding on settlement plans, of course.

I suggest that our scout goes S-SE and then W after that. Will let us find out if we have a peninsula to the SE or if we're connected there. I suggest that our warrior continues NE, maybe N the turn after that and then start circling west.


Our glorious capital The Holy Grail has been found(ed), and the rest of our cities will be named after that movie as well. It's been set to produce a worker and we're researching Agriculture first so we can improve our wet corn. I'm thinking about suggesting a settler right after the worker, being Imperialistic on Prince that sounds tempting. Will need to find a good location for it, though.

[Catwalk]

I think we should consider using the Oracle/MC/GE/Pyramids gambit described in detail here

It's pretty straight forward, get a forge up fast to generate a great engineer that we'll use to build the pyramids. The catch is that we need to avoid generating a great prophet before the great engineer lands.

If Sian pursues the same strategy, it will be much less efficient since it'll take him twice as long to produce the GE. But it will be easier for him to pull off since the oracle is cheaper for him. If we get 3 workers ready to chop stuff for the oracle then we may be able to offset this disadvantage. Going first is also going to be a huge help here. If we do pull this off I think we're set for a really nice long-term advantage early on, super specialists with a Philosophical leader and +3 happiness is going to rock. We'll get another engineer later that we might be able to burn on GLH. Then we'll just need to avoid the dogpile

[slowcheetah]

Just for some info: I had a brief look at mids completion times in previous PBEM's:
Sian built them turn 52 in PBEM26- No IND with stone
Nospace built them turn 53 in PBEM 17- No IND, with stone
NS7 built them turn 52 in PBEM 23- No IND, not sure about stone i know it was present on the map but I can't remember whether they hooked it up.
Mackoti built them turn 54 in PBEM 24- No Ind, with stone

(Annoyingly, I searched through all the aforementioned threads before seeing Novice posted the exact same list in Sian's PBEM 26 thread )

So we are looking for around the turn 52 mark if we want to get the 'mids, admittedly mackoti and NS7 are scary good players.
Also note that all of them had leaders with better early expansion traits than us (at least one of exp,cre for each player)

I think the oracle strategy will probably generate us the engineer on time. However, I'm worried that our overall expansion will suffer badly. At some point in the next few days, I'll set up a sandbox and test both methods out. I doubt Sian will use that strategy himself without being philosophical. However, oracle to metal casting wouldn't be a bad play on a watery map anyway due to unlocking the colossus. I really want to meet him in game so we can find out his wonder plans.

Scouting plans sound good, although I would be tempted to go SESE with the scout and then on the following turn move him to the purple dotted hill. If we are thinking of that as a second site, it'd be useful to see whether seafood is present.

[Catwalk]

Explored a little bit more and found out a fair bit about our surroundings. I'm guessing we're in the SE corner of a square donut.

Our scout is currently 4S of the capital (on a forest) and our warrior is 3E4N of the capital (on a PH). I suggest the warrior continues far enough NE to determine that it's not a peninsula up there. I suggest that the scout continues west from here and that we explore the SE peninsula at a later time. There is a spot up north which can grab a cow and the elephant.

Nice research on pyramids slowcheetah
If we find two luxury metals in our immediate surroundings, I suggest that we put the pyramids plan in motion. +2 happiness from forges will make the plan far more profitable. I'm not overly concerned about slowing our expansion, I'm more concerned about the ensuing dogpile

If we attract any interested lurkers I'd like to provide very frequent updates for this game. If interest is lower, updates will probably be every few turns. First three lurkers who report enthusiastically will get their names on the opening picture

[slowcheetah]

Had a quick look at the Demo's screen, everybody has a production of 2 so
looks like it's plains hills all around (unsurprisingly). The expanisive civ may not have a two hammer tile in the little cross, because otherwise I'd expect production to be at 5 (4 prod +1 extra for the 25% bonus) to utilise the expansive bonus. To anyone lurking, does the exp bonus show up on the demo screen or is it only buildings related bonuses like forges and factories which show up? Alternatively they may have gone warrior first.

More interestingly someone has a life expectancy of 80 compared to our 87 (actually at least two people do). This value indicates they have a health cap of 5, so either they have four less forests than we do (which is helpful), or they settled the equivalent of our northern plains hill (assuming mirrored starts) so missed out on the riverside bonus.

There were some differences in GNP as well but I couldn't be bothered to figure out why

[Commodore]

To anyone lurking, does the exp bonus show up on the demo screen or is it only buildings related bonuses like forges and factories which show up?

Temporary bonuses, like Exp workers, Imp settlers, or Ind wonders, don't show up on the demos, only permanent bonuses do.

[slowcheetah]

Temporary bonuses, like Exp workers, Imp settlers, or Ind wonders, don't show up on the demos, only permanent bonuses do.

Ok cheers commodore

[Catwalk]

More exploration. The SW territory is curving south, counter to our expectations. The NE territory follows our expectations better. There is a FP bonanza up there, might be worth expanding towards. We see a clear outline of the northern coast, and given that we see tundra to the south it's probably safe to asssume that we're in the southern region. It looks like a forested island to the SW among all the ice floes. I suggest that our scout hugs the coast next turn as well. Should our warrior keep going for a while, or start circling around? There is another hill to the NE and a hill NW after that, giving us a good view of the inner coast and letting us see if there's more interesting stuff to the NE.

[slowcheetah]

Oooh floodplains. very nice. I'd rather loop the warrio back around actually, floodplains wont be settled for a few cities and i'm still thinking the second city will be around the ivory. For the scout although the land curves off to the southwest. it looks like crappy tundra from the tile bleed/ I'd make NWN his next moves so he can admire the view from the hill.

Additional, whats the bet that the flooplains lands are contested?