[54 Spoilers] Nothing to see here! Miguelito and Rusten's max score game

[Miguelito]

turn 3:


All in all not too exciting .

So, either Dire Surroundings is a theme in this map, or there is something nice waiting for us in the north, or we just got the short straw and everybody else gets wet corn for their second cities.
My thoughts on blue dot: Short term similar to the capital, a few mines, some food, some forests. Doesn't really synergise with the cap besides splitting the sheep, as the other shared tiles are low priority. Two flatland roads needed, that's good, and the first one can be built while our worker waits for AH to finish.
Mid-term it can work six green riverside cottages and has some hammers when needed, which is ok I guess (or would you argue for farms, or watermills?). Long term it doesn't get a lot further than that.
Somewhat underwhelming 2nd city, but workable.

I locked in Hunting, because we will not uncover a grains resource next turn, and it's probable that blue dot will be the second city.
So, good news for our scout, who will likely live a couple dozen turns more

If anything I think you're pursuing the guilds beeline *too* decidedly. It's more important to get there with a big and healthy war machine than to get there a few turns earlier. IMO anyway. There's no preparing for cataphracts if we have a nice empire. Someone will be food.

after considering your post before, I agree. We have to make sure that we're robust while going for guilds (and when finishing the beeline, as you say here), because if we're light on military or foodhammers it's likely someone calls that. And of course it's also true that we will need the capacity to actually get out those cataphracts. I was in any case going to expand as much as possible, but try for earlier cottages. That runs the risk of turning into a farmer's gambit, and I will try to keep foodhammers in mind).

I'm not saying skip the cottages, but I'd rather make an extra 10 cottages some turns later from having more cities than to lay them down early at the cost of expansion. You were talking in terms of hunting (tech) slowing down our cottage turns, and I don't really see that as a thing. It might slow down our granary timing, but the cottages come after that. We also need happiness to run cottages, and the best way to get that is expansion and religion. Confucianism will provide 2 happy for 2 more cottages per city.

We will now have granaries delayed by the turns it costs to research Agri, but if these turns can get us another worker to chop them out that can make up for it maybe.

I think we'd absolutely want CoL anyway. Caste is a godsend for spiritual leaders, we need it for GPP and it can also helps pop borders at times. Naufragar is a threat, but he's also notoriously indecisive and cautious, so I wouldn't be surprised if he plays a more "normal" opening and then eventually builds The Great Lighthouse. He first-picked Spain so he's likely coastal.

I also think naufragar is coastal, but that might also mean that the pick is meant to secure Oracle/Colossus. But we can try and see how far we can get. So, we would go
Hunting > AH > Mining > BW > Agri > Pottery > Meditation/Polytheism* > Priesthood > Writing > CoL if we lose out on Oracle
--- might have to fit in Fishing somewhere, or change Agri for it, if there are no grains at all

*any strong opinion which one? Meditation is cheaper, and we are in a race, but we will also want OR rather soon if we get the religion.

On the new turn: That's a lot of forests for our Oracle.

your thoughts on the dots, or would you prefer to wait for more scouting?

[Rusten]

Commodore must hate greenery!  
Hopefully the northern river area is more lush than this. This better not be another PB45 where naufragar got completed fucked over on early expansion spots compared to his neighbours (especially compared to MS). I was just lurking that one and I'm still annoyed on his behalf. MS had multiple 6F resources and Nauf didn't even have a 5F one in his vicinity. Huge oversight by Commodore. But of course that game was largely uninteresting from the start for other reasons.

*any strong opinion which one? Meditation is cheaper, and we are in a race, but we will also want OR rather soon if we get the religion.

Definitely Poly as we need Monotheism for OR later. If we miss Oracle then I'm not saying we go CoL immediately -- more likely we go mono for OR+religion and pick up CoL later, and in that case Poly has already gotten us close to it. Having teched both priesthood+Mono will cheapen monarchy a great deal too. We'll be able to recover from missing the wonder without issues. It's still a good tech path for us, we even have wine.

your thoughts on the dots, or would you prefer to wait for more scouting?

I'll wait on more scouting, our 2nd city could easily be to the north without food overlap the way this map looks. Blue is OK as a 2nd city, but if we settle the area later we need to know more about the fog. Especially food around the furs, because we can't have that in the 3rd ring (need the happy), and settling with just deer as food is also not good enough.

We will now have granaries delayed by the turns it costs to research Agri, but if these turns can get us another worker to chop them out that can make up for it maybe.

Can be made up for by getting settlers and workers instead, yes. And we'll need a few extra workers to chop the Oracle 

[Miguelito]

ugh.
N-NE next.

[Rusten]

Isn't NW-NE better?

And yuck!

[Miguelito]

Isn't NW-NE better?

And yuck!

right, I forgot the border pop (but wouldn't have missed it, since it's due next turn).
I won't complain about the map before uncovering the entire second ring, but this does make me wonder how we're supposed to fit a city into the west of our capital.

[Miguelito]

t5

Food!


Wet rice is decent I suppose? From fog gazing I *think* that NE of the rice is not a floodplains, so that would be the natural spot. I've got to say, I don't like founding for the flood plains valley for 2nd city at all, because improvements are so damn costly, but well, we could focus on the rice farm and then chops/mines erstwhile - BUT we will not have Agriculture for the first two* turns of that city's life, even if we don't speed up with roads, but we should. I'm increasingly expecting to found blue dot first.
But we still have to continue that circle.
Also seen is a fish in the ocean, and there's another shore - probably an island - close by. No other resources were uncovered by the border pop. I hope a city for the fish - either on our coast or on the island - can get some food first ring, else it feels terirbly slow, particularly if the WB has to come from that very city.

*no that's not correct. Apparently and if the spreadsheet doesn't lie, we finish Agri 4 turns after BW with 2 beakers in excess. So just 1 turn unable to improve the rice - but 2 if we build the roads

Demos show that apparently we are the only ones with a completely landlocked start, and average is >6 water tiles in the BFC:


I'm not sure if I'd want an 8 land tile cap over my current headaches.
In a few turns we'll see food of the fishing starters go up.

Scout NE-NW?

[Rusten]

Much better!

I logged in to test if I could, but also noticed that the plains hill 4N-1W of our capital is fresh water, so there's a lake or oasis in the fog there.
NE-NW isn't bad, but personally I'd like to get a look from the plains hill N-NW.

I agree that blue dot looks increasingly likely as 2nd city. Also, if we settle fish on mainland then that's another reason to farm the FP over cottaging it.

[Miguelito]

new rivers, no food yet:



W-NW next, then likely circle back to discover some rows of fog north of the cap, including the presumptive city tile for the rice plant.

[Miguelito]

t7, a neighbour!


That's MrCairo with Ragnar of England

no  time for details right now, will discuss in the evening

[Miguelito]

Rusten, of you have the chance during the day to log in and move the scout before Cairo sees where we're coming from, that would be nice. I might actually be available as well, but that's unsure.
Probably don't have to tell you, but check his espionage to see if he's met someone (So far, I've only been taking demo shots every turn, but not posted when they're boring). we should also set our EPs on him so when we meet someone they don't get split, forgot that this turn.