[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Well we all agree on moving the scout 1SE. How about doing that before the game gets taken down and see if that changes anything? (I'm going to be busy all afternoon and evening again, so probably can't make the move.)

BTW - I looked at tech path and if we go Mining-BW-AH-HBR-Archery I think we could start whipping Horse Archers around T70! Of course Agriculture, The Wheel and Pottery would probably be handy to have too, so maybe we're better waiting until T90?

Another option is to go Meditation-Mining-BW for a late game Bureau/Shrine/Oxford/Wall St monster capital, but we don't know who else would be dumb enough to go for early religion, and delaying our chops and whips for our settlers is a pretty poor trade off, so lets pretend I didn't just write this

[Fintourist]

Well we all agree on moving the scout 1SE. How about doing that before the game gets taken down and see if that changes anything? (I'm going to be busy all afternoon and evening again, so probably can't make the move.)

Step-wise progress! I'll do it soon!

BTW - I looked at tech path...

Ha! But we agree here! 142 tiles per player (or what was the correct number when we chatted) is actually not much at all. So the game plan pretty much needs to be: "grab as much land as peacefully possibly and then eat someone ASAP (probably with HAs)". This makes me more happy that we have IMP as an early trait, because getting 10+ turns ahead in development compared to your neighbor will be crucial for the success of any ~T100 aggression. But yeah, I plan to write more about my thoughts reg how I see this game later..

[Fintourist]

Here we go..



- No new resources
- Settling the plains tile would invalidate potentially an interesting plains hill city spot, but seems grassland-cottage-wise stronger

So SW or SE? SW puts us on a better track regarding scouting, but if there is a deer E-E or E-SE of the scout it would make us move. I'm not sure Commodore would leave something like that possible though.

Sullla/Commodore totally ruins any C&D attempt :P

[Old Harry]

SW reveals three needed tiles, SE reveals four - so I'm happy to go SE.

Have I got these figures right:

Tiles for SIP:
8 forests
grass and grass hill pig, grass spices
10 grass
3 plains
3 grass hills
one plains hill.

Tiles for SE:
9 forests
grass and grass hill pig, grass spices
12/13 grass (I can't tell if both fogged eastern forests are flatland)
1 plains
3/4 grass hill

In a vaccum SE is strictly better, but loses a worker turn in setup and means 2nd city can't be on that plains hill and needs to be north or west (SIP allows 2nd city to go N, E or S and still share a pig). Looking at the way the food box fills I don't think the lost worker turn delays growth to size 2, so it's not that bad.

[Fintourist]

Have I got these figures right:

In a vaccum SE is strictly better

Yep but only if our beloved map maker has not hidden grass gems onto those fogged tiles N or W of our SIP capital

2nd city can't be on that plains hill and needs to be north or west (SIP allows 2nd city to go N, E or S and still share a pig).

This is a very good point that I did not analyze further than that plains hill plant

Looking at the way the food box fills I don't think the lost worker turn delays growth to size 2, so it's not that bad.

Yep, size 2 will be reached eot20 anyways, but if we go with max growth:
- with SIP we reach 26/26 eot23 while with SE-start we are still at 21/26 and have 1 hammer less. If we build a 2nd worker at size 2 we will be 6 hammers behind (I did not bother calculating whether it affects its ETA.. EDIT: In the end I did.. And it finishes 1-turn later).

That one worker turn accumulates of course too and we will always be one move short.

.......

I go and move our scout SE... Hey lurkers, do not consider us crazy. When you only have 2 moves and 60h turn timer you need to make most of those little actions!

[TheHumanHydra]

I'd rather move SW since E-E and E-SE are almost certainly just grassland forests, but I defer to the two of you since you're agreed.

Gameplan is HA-attack?

[Fintourist]

I'd rather move SW since E-E and E-SE are almost certainly just grassland forests, but I defer to the two of you since you're agreed.

Too late!

Scout did not reveal anything exciting:

I won't regret that too much, because that revealed the max amount of tiles that influence our settling decision. Although if there is something awesome on that 1 single tile W-SW of scout..

I'm liking SIP more and more because of that little worker tempo. E.g. something like this should be doable if there are decent city sites nearby:

EOT14 1st Worker ready
EOT20 Size 2
EOT26 2nd Worker ready
EOT29 Size 3 and 1st Warrior
EOT32 1st Settler (chopped)
T33 Slavery revolt
EOT35 2nd Warrior
EOT38 Size 4
EOT39 2nd Settler (double-whipped)

Whether this makes sense depends of course pretty much on our ability to provide the necessary worker support to 2 new cities.

Gameplan is HA-attack?

If we somehow manage to get us 200+ tiles peacefully, then not necessarily. Although in a 33-player game you probably need to go for a big risk anyways, because others will and someone probably succeeds (while the most just cripple themselves). But yes, we should be ready for that well before we run out of land.

[Old Harry]

SIP it is then. let's find out where those gems are...

I did some planning that came out very similar but I think we can hit size 5 before whipping...

[Fintourist]

SIP it is then. let's find out where those gems are...

I did some planning that came out very similar but I think we can hit size 5 before whipping...

Yeah, that plains spot will be better after we hit ~size 15 and need to cottage plains instead of grass, but that extra plains hill is not useless for IMP and early speed is always important.

Growing to size 5 can very well be superior especially if our workers are not ready to help an earlier settler.

By the way, going by the settings from first post, and also my mention of the different starts for the "we want tight!" set, this is a 60x124 cylinder. It'd considerably more roomy than, say, PB15 for you "normal" people and every single land tile is going to be eligible for being in city borders. I know the tile amounts look scary, but don't worry folks.

Oh crap. So the game is cylindrical and not a toroid if I understand correctly (sucks for AGG/ORGs, but those traits are strong anyways + there seems to be so many rivers that FIN is really nerfed as well and early traits rock). So there is maybe a 50 % chance that we are again squeezed into middle (i.e. f***ed) and players on the edges have a safe backline, can push towards middle and fill in later..

And it sounds like players are really organized into "cramped" and "spacious" tiers and we really should have wished something, because now I have no idea whether we have above average room or not.

Buuut still, I'm looking too much forward to this to start crying and it's stupid to criticize map when we have only seen 20 tiles of it. There is still quite a bit of water so maybe Commodore has developed some kind of structure that is fun, interesting, playable and balanced enough.. Come on Commodore, I'm scared of what this madness will turn into, but I still trust you! (please place a quick grass gems W-W of our settler)

[Old Harry]

Oh crap. So the game is cylindrical and not a toroid if I understand correctly[i] (sucks for AGG/ORGs

I thought RBmod set maintenance on a toroid to work the same as a cylinder?

And it sounds like players are really organized into "cramped" and "spacious" tiers and we really should have wished something, because now I have no idea whether we have above average room or not.

I'd hope we're in the spacious tier as we didn't clamor for cramped, and spacious isn't what this game sounds like with 142 tiles per player...

And did you settle yet? I wanna know what's in the fog!