[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Awesome Harry, thanks for the sandbox! I agree with your plans, Fishing, Mining & BW should very likely be our first three techs. No room for religion beeline unfortunately. Worker first seems like a must and then it will be a combination of work boats, warriors, workers, settlers and a granary. I'm currently still travelling so sandboxing must wait a bit (I still need to install the mod as well), but here are some thoughts that I have regarding our first couple of turns.

Scouting priorities:
1. Find a spot for the second city & get as many huts as possible
2. Find neighbors & fog-bust for barbs
3. Start working towards the theoretical circumnav bonus

Other:
1. Let's not select a tech during the first couple of turns (we might get lucky with a hut)
2. Assuming SIP, I see us choosing a spot for the second city so that it can share the western fish tile for a quick start

Other vol.2:
1. Our worker can spend its spare time by mining the bare grassland hill 2E of capital (and roading towards the 2nd city)
2. We might want to briefly consider the following scout movements (SW & S-SW)
3. We could also considering settling first and then moving our scout in the hope of revealing a hut with our cultural borders
4. Regarding 2&3, probably not..

Sandboxing thoughts:
1. Damn those techs seem expensive, we are really hurting for commerce.
2. Whipping will be still powerful in the beginning. I would love to get our first whip in ASAP as the happy counter will be a main factor limiting our push from the capital.
3. This start has pretty limited options for places to settle and tech/build orders, but I'm sure that with careful examination of production & tile switches there are still things to be found

Btw, I spend a good while searching for information on barb behaviour and got answers to some of my questions (e.g. barb entering cultural borders), but do you no when animals and barb warriors start appearing in the first place?

[Old Harry]

I was going to ask you that...

[Fintourist]

I have now finished the civ+leader+opponent commentary (Post 55). Feel free to take a look and challenge my "ranking".

[Fintourist]

I took the first glance of sandbox a while ago and here is my first try. There are lot of options still to be explored and so on, but I thought that it would be nice to have at least one 40 turn plan as a baseline to compare against next suggestions.

My relevant tech path was:
Mining -> Fishing -> BW
Unless we do some kind of "grow to size 2 and then WB" - approach I think we should always go Mining first. That opens the chance for getting BW from the hut, which would be exactly such an early jackpot that we need

BW comes in EOT29, when we work 2 times unimproved fish 2/0/2 (instead of grassland forest) and once improved fish (T29)

Build order that I used was:
Worker -> WB -> WB (Whipped) -> Worker -> Warrior -> Settler (Whipped) -> Warrior
Second worker comes in EOT33 IIRC and Settler EOT40. Btw, if you want to try this opening you need to do quite a bit of tile shuffling in order to get things done in timely matter as many of our builds and growth targets finish with exact amount of hammers or food in the box.

Here are couple of pics to highlight what I did:





Second city on T40/41 sounds disappointingly slow, but building those work boats and not having anything to speed up the start (PH or resource to settle on, EXP/IMP bonus, river for extra commerce etc.) has its cost. At least we should be well positioned to keep working improved tiles from there on.

Note also that in T40 instead of roading all the way to the second city our workers can be in position to e.g. chop granary for our capital or ready to improve next food resource etc.

I'm no way claiming that this opening is yet optimal. I think we should consider options where we
a) get settler before our second worker
b) build our second worker earlier (e.g. before the 2nd WB so that it can chop stuff earlier)
c) tech BW before fishing (as you mentioned)
d) finish a WB before our first worker (sucks probably though)
e) try everything that comes to mind

Btw, I'm really undecided whether we should scout SE-SE or SE-E during our first turn. Both options reveal couple of tiles that would be in our BFC if we settle on the plains hill and I'm dreaming of finding something magical that justifies skipping a coastal start and 2 fish resources

Ok, let's keep working! I hope that you make my first try look exactly as it should, namely a first try

[Old Harry]

Well your first try beats mine - I've sent you a link to three possible mining-BW-fishing openings, the third one should finish a settler around t40, but with four forests chopped. This is unsatisfying because the chops are only worth 20 hammers each, it feels wrong... I haven't tested the second and third in-game, and there are probably mistakes in the semi-automatic spreadsheet as it's after midnight here.

I feel like we have so little for a worker to do with this start that option a) might even be a good idea. I've sort of done option b) in the second and third tries on the spreadsheet but I couldn't get food box and production to sync very well so I don't like it. d) might speed up our tech rate, which feels horrible... e) is an excellent idea. Shall we divvy openings up to test by tech path?

I could also add f) don't revolt to slavery until the settler is finished. I feel as though I'm not getting big enough quick enough and Slavery doesn't help that. So fishing->pottery could be an approach, but it probably depends on what is revealed in the darkness. We should perhaps put our sims on hold until we see the rest of the BFC... We'll work the corn for the first few turns whatever we choose won't we?

I agree we shouldn't select a tech to begin with and I like your logic for holding off BW.

On scouting: SE-E reveals more SIP-tiles too. I'd love to settle the PFH but I doubt there will be food to match those fish.

Edit - just added a fourth attempt that goes worker->worker->1/2 a warrior->chop a work boat->settler->revolt and has the settler ready eot36. Haven't tested if it'll really work yet though. Need some sleep...

[Fintourist]

Nice work Harry! I will definitely play through and study your variations and then try to come up with new stuff! I'm kind of happy with my previous suggestion in the sense that it leaves both of our cities in good shape working improved tiles, which helps us forwards after the turn 40, but I guess everything goes still too comfortably (room for squeezing) and we should probably aim at getting settler out ~EOT35 and accept trade-offs in some other aspects.

I could also add f) don't revolt to slavery until the settler is finished. I feel as though I'm not getting big enough quick enough and Slavery doesn't help that.

I'm sure you remember that we are SPI. But yeah, I kind of agree with you. I definitely want to sim some openings that use less whip than my first suggestion. Of course, having our capital at larger size is in practise only beneficial if we can work improved tiles.

So fishing->pottery could be an approach

Yeah, let's try that. Although as awesome improvement as granary is I feel that those 60 hammers are so early probably more usefully spent for warriors/work boats/workers. And 2/0/1 cottages feel just too weak to work so early when every hammer counts.

We should perhaps put our sims on hold until we see the rest of the BFC...

Yep, I'm just trying to familiarize myself with different approaches and things that we must take into consideration when this game really starts. Along with immediate scouting, the placement of our 2nd city will have a huge impact on our approach. Early settler is not too helpful, if we can't provide solid worker support, military protection or get enought tiles improved in our capital.

What we should do now is to at least consider all kind of variations that don't start with SIP + Mining + 15t worker (which seems almost like a no-brainer based on current information) and just make sure that we are not missing anything interesting. We should still have plenty of time, before we need to make more difficult decisions

[Old Harry]

I'm sure you remember that we are SPI.

Of course! How dare you even suggest such a thing! Probably best not to look at the first two sims too closely in the next five minutes or so...

Of course, having our capital at larger size is in practise only beneficial if we can work improved tiles . . . And 2/0/1 cottages feel just too weak to work so early when every hammer

So we 2-pop whip it 5->3 or 6->4 every ten turns working the food and mines (unless we find some happy) - does that sound reasonable? 3-pop whip is just that bit more inefficient here. Given that I think our second or third city is going to have to be our commerce center. There will be gold just over those hills

What we should do now is to at least consider all kind of variations that don't start with SIP + Mining + 15t worker (which seems almost like a no-brainer based on current information) and just make sure that we are not missing anything interesting. We should still have plenty of time, before we need to make more difficult decisions

Scout first for a hut-popping strategy?

[Fintourist]

Re whipping: Sure, I can't see us using 3-pop whips, but 2-pop whips and also 1-pop whips (early when happy is not a issue) will most likely be useful.

Btw, I just spent an hour doing various openings with Fishing first + WB out as quickly as possible. They are not soooo terrible, e.g. "partially building worker -> WB (ASAP we can) -> finish worker" leaves you with netted fish to boost the growth and worker finishing EOT20. In the end, I managed with my best tactics to also get same improvements and units built by T40, but fell several worker turns behind (those worker turns can be turned into further chops, helpful roads, extra mine or something).

My conclusion is still that we should go with regular 15t worker and start teching mining. I believe that this path opens more opportunities for finding some kind of solution that lets us get an earlier settler than EOT39 while still getting enough tiles improved and necessary support for city 2. However, it would be great if you could make a quick try yourself - maybe you find some kind of great variation that I'm totally blind of.

Btw, you can definitely convince me to try a scout start! I don't think we have the best leader and the odds are low that this is the best start so we need to make up some ground somehow

[Fintourist]

Btw Harry, I checked a bit of your spreadsheet. Unfortunately your production speed after farming the corn is slightly optimistic at least in the last version which ends with settler ready eot36. Well, we have still a lot of time for planning!

[Old Harry]

Did the extra commerce from working the fish speed up BW at all? And did workboat->worker get the fish netted earlier or around the same time as corn? I like getting the food capacity up nice and early, and until we have BW I don't know that those lost worker turns are as useful. I'll have a go at it and see what I can do.

I've corrected the 9/6 typo in v4

Also spent a while trying to make a more easy to follow version on other tabs, do you want to use these or is there a better option?