[PB60] Lazteuq and Civac

[Lazteuq]

Yeah you need a google account I think. It's not hard to create one, but if you have a moral objection to using Google, I understand.

Religion sounds great, and it would work nicely with the t82 prophet building a shrine. Going for Polytheism sounds a little too insane for me. I don't think having religion super early isn't very useful compared to the cost of Polytheism. It would be too early to benefit from the happiness very much, and we need Monotheism for OR anyway. I think OR will be great since we're Spiritual. I agree with Pottery for now. Agriculture can wait for a while. Although maybe we should do Agri as well as Wheel for the prerequisite bonus on Pottery? Eh, probably not worth it.
Even though we're on 0%, we had a lot of overflow t40 which I put into Wheel. Bulbing theology sounds fun, certified fresh.

We found horses near the southeastern cow. All the more reason to settle that city on the plains marked with an X.

We got graphs on Amica so I switched all EP spending to GKC. Amica's production has been very high for a while, I wonder why...Could it be Oracle?

In the absence of a better theme idea, I might continue from PB56 and go with Space Facts 2.

[civac2]

The horse location is fantastic. I'd probably delay Agriculture until after Monotheism.

The main advantage of the early religions is that there is time and lack of competition for them to auto-spread. In large games you can hope for neighbours adopting them and giving you a monster shrine. In a small game like this the early religions are less advantaged since almost everyone will have their own.

If Monotheism or Polytheism does not work out after Pottery we could also bulb Philosophy for Taoism and use the prophet for the shrine. But Theology has the upside of the Apostolic Palace and Theocracy which are both much more interesting then what Philosophy can offer.

[civac2]

Apparently, I do have a google account. Figures.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...sp=sharing

Translated from my unreadable personal format into a marginally less unreadable format.

[civac2]

Hinduism was founded in a distant land. Looks more and more like it's going to be the Theology bulb.

@Lazteuq:
We are going to reach the end of my initial micro soon. Did you do any sandboxing?
My favored approach is to try to chop/whip granaries into cities 3 and 4 and then continue expansion. We need to be very careful due to lack of happiness resources. We could avoid connecting the copper for a while to be able to build more warriors. Really doesn't look like we'll need copper. Lakamha could slow-build + whip a granary (7 turn whip cycles for settlers/workers but the first growth is slower) or slow-build stuff on size 3 (6 turn worker/7 turn settler). The later would require more mines. Either way the city is pretty weak.

[Lazteuq]

Sorry Civac, I haven't had much time at home lately and I've been focusing on PB59. I haven't sandboxed anything yet but I'll try tomorrow.

I assume we should start a workboat right away in the outer coast city. It will have plenty of food if it's using the deer+fish, so a 2pop granary whip should be easy. I'm not sure what to think about the southern city yet. My instinct is just to build a granary and focus on workers there, since it has decent food. Actually that city has quite a few hammers as well with cow and horse...
I agree about delaying copper for warriors. I did a similar thing in PB59 (not really a spoiler at this point) for cheap garrisons. Especially makes sense to do that if we're expecting to get Hereditary Rule unusually early.
Once we get Sailing, Lakhama will be pretty good working 3f lake tiles with the whale and clam. We should try to get a lighthouse there as soon as sailing is ready, maybe using overflow tricks. Do we want to try for GLH?

[Tarkeel]

We're getting closer to T50, could I ask for an overview shot and your thoughts on the map so far?

[civac2]

@Lazteuq: That's fine. I will do some more spreadsheeting tonight and over the weekend. The new city at the deer should probably work an inland sea on the first turn before taking the deer on subsequent turns but a hammer tile could be reasonable as well. Maybe delay ending the turn a bit.

Not sure about the GLH. Does anyone have Sailing?

[civac2]

@Lazteuq: I updated the spreadsheet for this turn. Still not sure how to handle the new city at the deer. Going for the copper first or chopping the forest gives similar results but there are slight differences. Also there is the issue of roads.

[Lazteuq]

Tarkeel, I'll do a T50 overview post soon.

I've played T49 but not T50 yet.
One person has saiiling. We've met only met 3/5: Amica, GKC, and just recently Jowy.

I decided to go for the copper mine first because I see no need to chop immediately. The work boat will be done in time either way. I think the worker movements are move efficient this way, since the deer forest makes movement so slow. After mining the copper, I think Worker2 should stay near City3 (Chichen Itza) and mine the gold, then go south.

After the capitol (Mutal) does the 4-turn worker, we should go straight into another settler, right?

[Lazteuq]

Turn 50!
Here's our known world so far:

With resource bubbles:

8 population in 4 cities and about to have 3 workers.
So far I don't have any huge map complaints. I think this will be easily the most fair and balanced pitboss I've played in.
I like how everyone has equal access to neighbors, and there is still enough expansion room for a peaceful early game.
I like how there are many deserts and plains, and the land looks good and natural, despite being mirrored. I think the number of forests is good, although more would have been fine too.
Putting the stone on an island is a pretty cool idea.
I think it's good that there aren't many easy luxuries. I do like everyone having easy access to wine.
I don't like how the fish are all 2 tiles offshore because it distorts the value of CRE and Stonehenge. I'm sure that wasn't an accident though, I understand that's part of the novelty of the map. I also just don't like map features which feel so artificial.
I'm not sure if the exceptionally thin landmasses are a good thing or not. I expect it will make naval invasions even more effective.
We've struggled to decide the best city locations and order of founding, which is a sign of a good map.


Our tech plan is: Finish Pottery -> Sailing -> Masonry -> Polytheism -> Monotheism -> ??? -> Profit (Monarchy probably)
Delaying Agriculture and Writing is probably fine. Side note: I really like how the tech tree is designed to make Agriculture optional.

Sailing is already decent for lighthouses, but it really makes sense because of the stone island. The island trade routes will be really good, because we might not get foreign trade routes for a while yet. Sailing may help get foreign routes earlier as well, whenever we do finally get Writing. That stone island is a high priority because we want stone to farm pyramids failgold. I don't think we're expecting to actually get the pyramids, but the stone boosted failgold should really help reach Monarchy or Currency. We might even try to get Great Wall failgold too, but that's risky: What if no-one builds it?
Masonry is a prerequisite for Monotheism also, so there is synergy. We hope to get Judaism, but even if we don't, Monotheism leads to Monarchy.


Foreign Relations:

Amicalola/Vanrober have settled their third city by the wheat/clams. I'm a little surprised.
We have a warrior in their floodplains area, but we don't really plan to do anything aggressive, just observation. From what I see of the map, I think everyone has reasonable access to all 5 other civs, so slowing down one neighbor probably isn't worth the trouble. On a donut map where each civ only has 2 neighbors, I'd be more willing to make threats.

Out of our three neighbors, I'm most worried about GKC sending a chariot or something toward us. Soon we'll have a lookout warrior stationed on the northwestern sheep tile.
GKC has only 2 cities, and we don't have any recent scouting intel on him.

Jowy has his eastern copper and gold mined already, we don't know how many cities he has. We'll have graphs on him in 8 turns or so.
It looks like we haven't fallen behind the demographics curve yet. Is Charriu going to do one of those tracking data overview posts in the lurker thread? Those are fun to read when it's all over.