[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Guys, we're perilously close to losing the thread count lead. Any thoughts at all on the Stonehenge start? Any alternatives to my proposed opening? Theme? A pulse?? That's what this thread needs most. A beating heart.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I think Stonehenge is a must for us, being CHA. We need a higher pop cap so we can whip harder in the early game. But I really would like to be able to get a second city out before building SH. I'm sorry, I haven't looked through your sim run in detail -- is that possible? Even if we do the stupid thing and have a shortage of worker labor early on, I don't want us to have to halt our expansion and be behind the growth curve while building our large pile of rocks.

Then again, how many turns did it take to build SH? Am I tilting at windmills here?

Sorry, I don't have a ton of time to think about this right now, I'm buried at work. These guys are relentless about causing me pain.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Azza didn't settle on T0. Good luck!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Reposting BGN's plan in case we want to talk about it.

Some general options for Henge. More details can be filled in as needed. Sandbox here.

hunting first:

T12 worker - Henge
T20 - AH
T31 - Henge, worker, improved deer/cow/some roads. Size 4. Mining, 13t to BW.


---

fishing/hunting
T12 worker/WB
T13 hunting (soonest needed, worker on deer ready to go)
T17 - camp done. worker nothing to do, roads.
T39 - henge

--
#2 fishing/hunting
T5 - warrior/borders pop. work deer. begin worker.
T7 - fishing complete, begin hunting. swap to WB. worker 10/60
T11 - grow to 2, work both GFH.
T15 - WB, clam hooked. 1 decay in worker build next turn.
T39 - Henge, Cap size 5 (grow to 6 EoT), WB, worker, cow/deer, 2 roads. Mining, 7t to BW.


#3
Henge EoT 39 (120/120) - growth to 5 EoT (16/16f), fishing, hunting, mining, BW finished, AH due in 5. 1 worker, 1 warrior. 2 WB/Clams, deer camped, 1 chop, 1 road. Best option presented here.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Whaddyaknow, now I can log into PB games.



I think pretty obviously moving to where the scout is makes a better city, with 5(!) food resources. This also prevents the possibility of us orphaning a seafood resource NW of our SIP option. Negatives, though: 5 less forests, no freshwater, no PH. But, we can make up the lack of forests with a massive food surplus (very early tall capital), lots of hammers (3 hills + 2 cows for hammers). Also, my early run on Stonehenge only used one chop anyway, so the chops would be left for other cities to get granaries up fast. I may run a sim with this location very fast, but I also have other stuff to do at home tonight.

Us and two others to play. Let's decide quickly.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Great to see you can log in now, I wonder what changed with your network.

Not sure I agree about moving. We don't need 5 food resources in the capital. Posting fron phone here so I'll look in more detail later, but I think SIP and build city #2 to share 2 foods and grab a third will be great for speeding expansion. SIP has 11 cottage tiles, moving has what, 6? Better long term capital SIP, we're going to hit the happy cap anyway, CHA or not. Split the food between multiple cities for a faster snowball.

At least until a sim proves otherwise (if you feel like simming).

As for the clock I'm normally all foor being a gentleman about it but we have a long timer for T0 for a reason. Let's get this right.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Bah, what sells me on SIP is the PH hammer speeds up henge, and thus everything after, by a lot. T38-9 henge. Unless we feel like sandbagging it and pushing out a settler first.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T0 (continued) - After some discussion we decided to settle in place.




Moving to grab even more food didn't seem worth it, we'd just end up stuck at the happy cap even sooner. We can share a lot of food between the capital and city number two, which seems like it will be settled 1W of the eastern cow. That city will have three food resources (two shared with the capital) for quick growth, and it looks like 4 hill tiles for good production. The capital looks like a good cottage spam city once we chop out the forests. City #2 can incubate a few of the cottages, but for the most part they'll have to be worked by the capital since sharing is impossible to the west and north (for the most part from what I can see so far).

Demographics with just one player left to play (Plunder) and one more to settle (Azza).



Starts are obviously not mirrored (rival best food we can't match), someone is landlocked (9 tiles in culture), someone has more health (is anyone EXP? I don't have the leaders down yet), and we'll know more after everyone has settled.

Boldly and Brick are probably going to fight me on it, but Brick named this thread an Exercise in Hate. The capital is named The Grudge, sounds hateful to me.

[Merovech]

Yeah, settling in place was definitely the right move.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T1 - I moved our scout:




More food, that's good down the line. It is dry rice, though. I hope there's water nearby and we can eventually irrigate it. Anyway, next turn where do we move the scout? I know we agreed to Go Deep, so that would imply sending the scout east, maybe SE, SE onto the forest? Moving onto the eastern hill (SE,E) means that next turn we'l only move one tile since all three tiles east of that hill are covered by jungle or forest. SE, SE at least has one open vector to travel (SW/ ??). Or we can go SW, W this turn onto the western hill and get good local visibility, but that isn't Going Deep and who knows, even that amount of backtracking may be enough to lose circumnavigation if it's possible on this map (water%) or by land from the terrain shape. We will have the warrior coming out of the capital in a few turns and we can safely scout this nearby area without being rudely walked in on, if we want to scout out the local area with the first warrior.

Boldly, you asked for some tech cost info for your sandbox, so here you go:



Highlighted are the techs we would even consider before T50. I played around a bit last night with your sandbox making a few runs through. I didn't take notes so it was mostly just to get a feel for how this game will open. Anyway, I landed SH on a variety of turns with a variety of capital sizes to go with it. Earliest was T35, size 2 cap (yuck), latest was T42, size 6 cap. In every case I had both of the clams netted by then, in the T35 version I didn't improve the deer, I just chopped a forest with the worker as soon as it was built (I think I went Fishing, Mining, BW on that run, which could be interesting and maybe worth playing through again. It gets chops into play quickly, that's for sure. I'd definitely want to see better growth than size 2, though).

I guess what it comes down to is we need to decide what finish date we're comfortable with. The farther into the future we push finishing SH, as long as we still finish it first, is a benefit to our development because it means we haven't traded as much food for hammers. I think finishing T40 or so should be fine, but if we can find a way to get a settler out before SH and not risk losing it I'd feel a lot better about our overall growth. I don't know that that is possible, though, given that there are other IND teams in the game. If we dally they can make up the Mysticism deficit in a hurry, if they're determined to give SH a run. And I think in a greens game SH is likely to be prioritized higher than we normally otherwise might, we can't assume that everyone knows it's to rush it so early. So that means we have to play to counter rival potential . That has to be the worst logic ever, but I don't want to lose 'henge since we're CHA. It's really nice for us.

Then again, henge is just a free monument in every city, not a giant I WIN button. Until we have 4 cities it's costing us more than it's giving us. We'll obviously build more than 4 cities but these early hammers ARE important. I think we always assumed we want to push SH to make sure we get it. But if we lost it somehow would that be the end of the world? No. So maybe we should plan to play it a little less safe on guaranteeing we land 'henge and play a bit of a more standard growth oriented opening. What do you guys think?

And if anyone knows how to dissect the F8 screen and the number of tiles count, here you go:



I haven't done the mouseover trick in game to count the number of tiles on the worldwrap. I don't remember if the community decided that kind of thing is gamey to do now or not, so let me know. I mean, I used the flying camera to verify the world wrap on T0 and I don't think that's frowned upon these days. This is not a big deal to me.

Demographics:



Everyone has settled their city now. Someone is pulling 4 hammers, I would assume it's someone EXP to get their free hammer going worker first. Otherwise you're slowing growth for a dubious reason. Someone has a more coastal capital than ours, getting only 6 tiles in the BFC, but 7 tiles in the BFC is the average. So multiple coastal teams. The Great Lighthouse is in play for someone, then. With there being three IND teams, odds aren't bad that another one of them is also coastal. It's probably too early to decide now, but do you guys have feelings about which early wonders we should target? Obviously if we find stone or marble in the local area that will play into the decision, even if only for fail gold. (Yes! This isn't RB mod, failgold away! And for all my whining in 29g about fail gold...well...that's how the game works, I suppose).

Oh, the rival worst life expectancy is significantly lower than the average. I'm going to guess that indicates a FP start, either that or someone got jobbed on the number of trees in the BFC. I'm betting it's more of the FP possibility and less the lack of trees. Or maybe both. I don't know off the top of my head what each unhealthy point does to the life expectancy number, but 13 points under the average does seem like a lot for one team.