[SPOILERS] Cheerful Cat Crew Have No Clue (Sury of France)

[Catwalk]

In-game it looks certain that the north is a dead end. I agree that being on an island makes CRE weak, but I think the early farmer's gambit makes it a good start. Having only a single early happiness resource is a problem, I'm guessing we'll want Monarchy fairly early. Or go for Calendar?

And yeah, hut gave 5 XP. I'd say keep the XP for now if we're basically done exploring this land. Scouts can get the medic promotion, we could use him for that if we decide we don't need double move on hills or forests.

[Catwalk]

Sorry for being afk, my internet at home has been down the last 4 days. My internet provider accidentally terminated my connection because they thought I'd switched to another company. Should be back up today, got internet at school but can't access PB from here.

[Catwalk]

I played a turn! Deleted a bunch of signs and made new ones I made a tentative first draft of a full dotmap for our island, lots of crappy fillers have been dotted. Think the sheep to the west leads to more land?

[slowcheetah]

Sorry for being slightly incommunicado, I've been busy myself. Nice to see you've played a turn . It's looking more and more like an island. Therefore I queued up a worker before a settler, we can shop two forests into the first settler, maybe whip as well and that'll get it out at a similar time and allow us to improve the corn faster. Ill be sure to look at the signs later .

[slowcheetah]

So, it's been a while. I got busy and then I got lazy (and a wee bit discouraged at how 44's going). But enough with excuses, lets see how the empire is looking.





She's honestly a bit of a tiddler at the moment, with only three cities, four workers, three warriors and a scout. We're definitely on an island, and currently only have two visible happiness resources and only one connectable pre calendar. Consequently, horizontal expansion is the name of the game and due to our current isolation (we have yet to meet anyone) a farmer's gambit is definitely encouraged. Because 'our' land appears reasonably uncontested, and an early currency is key to maintaining a horizontal approach I have tried to concentrate more on research. Although it is more likely my sloppy micro (and a barb win in the wilderness at <2%) that has led to such few cities at this point.

With all that said I think we have a pretty solid base to work from, currently we need more of everything cities, workers, warriors, exploration. But I think the snowball will start to take off in the next few turns. Lets have a look in a bit more detail.



The capital is a bit weirdly set up at the moment, the city itself is clearly all about hammers rather than commerce, and is relatively food poor so will eventually need its floodplains farmed. However, as I said previously I wanted commerce in the early game, which, coupled to the large amount of worker turns requried to farm a floodie meant cottages were placed down. The villages will eventually be farmed over, but there isn't free worker labour at the minute. As you can see a settler (aided by a chop) will be produced here in 6 turns. This guy will found a city at the C3 site in the top picture. I think the cap' will then produce a warrior to allow it to grow to size 5 followed by a worker. It's not getting a library because the site has no future as a commerce centre.



Big Cheese is probably going to be the future capital when I have some production to spare. However, it is currently severely limited by +2 whip anger. I had to whip a warrior here earlier when one of my fogbusting guys died at extremely low odds leaving a C2 barb warrior wandering around the copper region. A settler will come out of here in 5 turns for city c4b which will support Big Cheese in its cottage growth. I'll then probably grow on a library, slotting in a worker when I reach happy cap.



Grosse wurst, was a mistake of a city three (should have been the pig site), however, it can still help the empire. I'm going for a build order of granary->Galley and am going to send my scout island hopping, hopefully picking up some hut gold. After that she'll probably just build warriors and the occasional workboat.

Overall, the plan is to tech to currency, expand out onto the other islands and then tech monarchy for a bit more happiness. Hopefully, at some point we'll actually meet somebody else as well, although I do quite like the idea of an invasion from the silence of the fog. I plan to actually make the effort to update a bit more regularly, so you have that to look forward to. I've heard if you smear vaseline on your eyes my screenshots look pretty high resolution compared to the rest of the world.

[slowcheetah]

Stone has been found.



I need to ascertain whether it's on another island or the actual mainland. I want that stone but if it's on the mainland it'll be difficult to hold. If it isn't attached to the mainland then a site on the hut will probably be city 7 or 8. It'd be a dynamite Moai site, although it'll be a pain to build with RB mod's whip nerfs, I have other candidates for Moai in any case.

[slowcheetah]

I founded two new cities this turn:

Euston



Pentonville




Both are nice locations for commerce centres, I need to decide how many chops should be saved in Pentonville. Could be a very good place to chop out a wonder later on. I need more workers.

[Ceiliazul]

Update? Met anyone?

[slowcheetah]

Ok, update it is.

As of turn 87 I have seven cities. The seventh, Whitehall, was founded to claim copper, which I'll have connected by turn 92. Is six cities the record for the most cities without claiming a strategic resource?

Here's Whitehall:




Despite the resources, it's a pretty terrible tunra choked site, which isn't worth very much to me. I'm considering going Gran->Library and running a couple of scientists for a great person. However, at Whitehall's likely rate of growth, I doubt that's feasible.

I also have one other youngling city. She's been a bit slow to develop a)because I only had one worker available for the pasture and b) I've had Pall mall working the gold tile so that the whipped Whitechapel can regrow faster without Currency being delayed.

Pall Mall




I've met Plako and know where some of his borders are due to a hut. However, I initially met him when his galley met mine next to Northern cow island. This nearly gave me a heart attack because my military was 5 warriors at the time (it's now a huge nine :P). Happily he was just continuing scouting rather than trying anything dangerous. I'll actually have some defenses the next time he appears.






Looking at the top cities screen, Plako doesn't seem to have built any wonders thus far, however, in recent turns we have been one and two in crop yield. He's been doing that with a good power level as well, so is clearly playing a better game than myself.










I'll have currency next turn, which leads me to a big tech path choice. How best to deal with my current happiness crunch. Currently I have a happy cap of six in my capital. With the only visible non-connected happiness resource being silks, worth exactly one happiness with a very expensive Calender technology. I dont have a religion and COL is a fair chunk of research away (and a gambit). Forges are no better, metal casting is approximately 20 turns away, and forges cost 120 hammers to build on top of thatfor a measly +1 happiness. I basically need HR the sooner the better, I can keep going wiht horizontal expansion for the time being, however eventually I'm going to need some bigger cities so I can actually put multiplier buildings (Libs, Markets) somewhere worthwhile. So far I have no Libs and am only building them as placeholders.

Monarchy is also about 20 turns away Myst->Med->PH->Monarchy. My only option for shortening the wait would be to build the pyramids. Unfortunately, I'm a while from settling stone city, as it's too far from my empire to settle with no defense. Particularly when I know a powered up Plako is wandering around with Galleys. I'm also facing a wdie variety of IND civs, who haven't all built wonders yet. So that's out. That was a lot of waffle, for a really obvious technology choice. Sorry about that.

I've got a galley, scout explorer pair out looking at my eastern islands. They look like good sites, although there is still no happiness resources .




If anybody has any questions, ask away.

[flugauto]

Could you show your tech tree and unit screen.