[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[NobleHelium]

This is kind of sucky...looks a bit like FFH forest syndrome. We have a long way to go until we get BW and we can't do much with our land without it (can't really build work boats without chopping or slaving). We could tech Fishing first and grow onto unimproved clams before starting a settler, I guess?

I think the old start was a bit better actually, the wheat gave us 1h and we made up the lost food with the fish over the clam (the fish was ocean, but I'd take 1h over 2c in this case). This one has two riverside cottages and more land overall, so that's better.

[scooter]

Agree with Noble that the old one was a little better. Wet wheat > pigs, and we don't have a fish here. Also, the riverside tiles aren't actually useful because the FIN bonus doesn't exist on river tiles, so for a FIN civ there's literally no difference between riverside/nonriver tiles. I do think that's a stronger nerf than people give it credit for btw.

There are two upsides here though. Lots more forests, and chopping is nice in Krillmod due to the slavery nerf. Also, lots of grassland tiles - last one was kind of junk other than the foods. This also looks slightly less likely to be an island, so there's that. Overall though this is still pretty similar to the last start. I'm guessing this is pretty average which is fine.

Our tech path will be weird here. It's going to be quite awhile before we get to chopping if we go Fishing-Mining-BW, but I don't know that we want to go Mining-BW-Fishing and ignore the seafood + ability to build WB for that long either. I think probably not. We're going to want to make a sandbox here and test it out. On normal + huge map tech costs, it'll be quite awhile to tech all 3 of those.

For scout move, Pin is probably right that E-S or E-SE is the best bet. We definitely prefer the pig here, so it's a question of if moving inland is worthwhile. It might be - we're supposed to have luxuries nearby so I would definitely move inland if we see a metal + food east/southeast of that pig, for instance. That would let us delay Fishing and open Mining-BW. We have that plains hill too, so if there's more food, might be worth moving. A cow or something would be wonderful.

[pindicator]

RE: FIN and riverside tiles-

I was thinking that we may want to consider a "backwards" approach to improving riverside tilds. Usually you want to put your cottages riverside and farm or workshop non-riverside tiles. But since FIN in RBMod in a sense makes all tiles riverside, we may get more benefit from going an opposite approach.

But maybe is just pie-in-the-sky, optimal-for-sake-of-optimal-and-not-considering-growth kind of thinking. Riverside tiles are still getting you 1c more for the first 10 turns of the cottage's life so they are still better. But i don't think we need to be quite so averse to saving riverside tiles for cottage improvements since that extra commerce eventually gets ”wasted" on the cottage.

As for the start-

I guess I'm looking at the quality of the overall land and not just the BFC- i can sport 3-4 hills in the fog, and we can share those clam tiles with a city farther west to make use of the clams. Plus the amount of green we're seeing makes me think the quality of land around us is going to be better. Basically i think downgraded the BFC slightly to make up for having a far better surrounding land for future cities.

It also looks like we have at least some islands nearby, so Great Lighthouse could be a good play for us, even if we are on the main continent.

[Cyneheard]

RE: FIN and riverside tiles-

I was thinking that we may want to consider a "backwards" approach to improving riverside tilds. Usually you want to put your cottages riverside and farm or workshop non-riverside tiles. But since FIN in RBMod in a sense makes all tiles riverside, we may get more benefit from going an opposite approach.

But maybe is just pie-in-the-sky, optimal-for-sake-of-optimal-and-not-considering-growth kind of thinking. Riverside tiles are still getting you 1c more for the first 10 turns of the cottage's life so they are still better. But i don't think we need to be quite so averse to saving riverside tiles for cottage improvements since that extra commerce eventually gets ”wasted" on the cottage.

It's pretty simple:
If you're going to build any farms, make them riverside. You want to work farms first and cottages 2nd if you're building both anyway. So decide how many farms we want to make, make them riverside, and then put cottages on the rest (and a riverside cottage is still strictly superior to a dry one, but much less so).

[NobleHelium]

I highly doubt we'll want to farm much of anything that isn't a resource (besides at the NE city), so I don't think that will matter much. But yeah, it's something to keep in mind.

[Cyneheard]

I highly doubt we'll want to farm much of anything that isn't a resource (besides at the NE city), so I don't think that will matter much. But yeah, it's something to keep in mind.

You want more farms early: more food = more growth = more cottages. With infinite worker labor, you want several farms in most cities. The capital is slightly different given its insane food surplus.

[NobleHelium]

There's never infinite worker labor...if anything later in the game is when you farm more to get newer cities up to speed. However later in the game is also generally when you abandon cottages in favor of workshops.

[pindicator]

Capital definitely won't need farms. But Cyneheard's reasoning was what i was thinking- i just didn't trust myself entirely through with the thought process (sick today, bleh). If we end up having a ton of rivers the combining serfdom and watermills actually looks like a good strategy. 2f3h1c tiles at the time of Feudalism? I think that's reason enough not to worry about having too many rivers. And even without the +1h from Serfdom it may make sense to use plenty of watermills, especially if we are hammer handicapped.

Anyway, that's hypothetical. We'll have to see what we actually have before getting into what civics and the like. With this start we can probably expect 1 more resource in the fog or a strategic resource to be revealed. I can't recall the exact formula, but when Rego was looking at our PB5 start he was telling me that there was likely a metal to be popped because seafood counts less in the algorithm for making start locations than land resources. And we had 1 pig + 3 seafood, then an eventual iron. So there's likely another resource to our east, or on that grassland tile 2S of our start.

[pindicator]

There's never infinite worker labor...

Obviously you're not building enough workers

[scooter]

If one of you guys are able to make a basic sandbox in the next 4-5 hours that would be awesome. If not, I can try to make one late tonight, but I'm headed out and won't be back til late.