[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

Yeah, it's a bit disappointing to see that he didn't accept the map offer. However, I noticed that Donovan didn't end his turn, so it's very possible that he wanted to consult with Cheater Hater, or simply take more time to think the offer over. And beyond that, we shouldn't assume that everyone else wants to be as free with map exchanges as we've decided to be. For all we know, Donovan's team is thinking "oh crap, we're starting next to Aggressive Montezuma of Panzerdom, don't give them the map to our front door!" I wouldn't read too much into their team deciding they'd prefer to avoid a map exchange.

I'm hoping that the turn will roll sometime tonight so that we can see where the Holy City appears, and I can do some sandboxing based on that information. It seems more likely that it will roll over in the middle of the night our time though, and more planning will have to wait until tomorrow. Still a chance though.

[Sullla]

The turn did roll in the middle of the night, and I had to log in and see what happened when I woke up:



It looks like we will be Hindu this game. I went ahead and converted so that we can take advantage of Organized Religion.



We got the better option from the 50/50 coin flip: Telegraph is the Holy City. Unfortunately it seems as though Donovan has decided not to trade maps with our team. They appear to have been discussing the idea in their thread last night (I saw at least two posts in what had been a quiet forum thread), but no deal in-game. Ah well. One of Donovan's explorers is coming by to say hello.



Early turn Demos. Who is that team with the 77 GNP (?) They must have connected their gold/incense resources (or the equivalent) before doing anything else, or they're running Representation Scientists. Something along those lines.

Here is a sandbox updated with the Holy City and up to end of Turn 255. I'll come back and poke around with this tonight. Scooter, the units have all been left unmoved for you.

[scooter]

Great news on the holy city.

Unfortunately it seems as though Donovan has decided not to trade maps with our team. They appear to have been discussing the idea in their thread last night (I saw at least two posts in what had been a quiet forum thread), but no deal in-game. Ah well. One of Donovan's explorers is coming by to say hello.

Yeah that's disappointing. Maybe he'll change his mind. His explorer is at our borders right now. He hasn't asked for Open Borders, but I'm thinking I won't give them to him unless he also agrees to a map swap. If he's choosing to deny the map trade, it's because he's afraid we'll get more value out of it. If he's thinking that way (weighing who benefits more as opposed to just cooperating which still benefits us both), I'll do the same. He can benefit more from OB right now because he's at a dead-end unless I let him through. Or if he wants to risk declaring war to pass through. I think I'll wait a turn just to see if he proposes it himself though. He hasn't actually asked yet. Any thoughts on this policy? Maybe I should just go ahead and offer them together anyway, which will remind him that there's value in this for him.


I had a few minutes this morning, so I jumped in and played the rest of the turn. There was a new development, but that's going to have to wait an hour or two until I get the chance to write the turn up.

[Sullla]

A new development? Now I'm in suspense. Apparently Speaker and I weren't the only ones to tease the readers in these kind of games.

I would also not give Donovan Open Borders at this point. If he gets his scout trapped, that's his own fault. I would also stop offering map trades. By now, they know we're interested, and they will offer to us if they change their mind.

I kind of wish we had held off on entering turn until getting a chance to do some sandboxing. Probably won't matter though given the slow turn pace. My hunch is we want Cotton Gin on a library this turn; religion will expand the borders later, and we want to get the library done ASAP to start running Scientist specialists. If you're at a Civ-capable computer, can I suggest that change? Thanks!

[scooter]

I would also not give Donovan Open Borders at this point. If he gets his scout trapped, that's his own fault. I would also stop offering map trades. By now, they know we're interested, and they will offer to us if they change their mind.

Yeah, I'm in agreement on this. They know how to get in touch.

I kind of wish we had held off on entering turn until getting a chance to do some sandboxing. Probably won't matter though given the slow turn pace. My hunch is we want Cotton Gin on a library this turn; religion will expand the borders later, and we want to get the library done ASAP to start running Scientist specialists. If you're at a Civ-capable computer, can I suggest that change? Thanks!

Yeah that's a good point. We don't really care that much about popping Cotton Gin's borders. I'll plan on doing this when I get home. I doubt the turn will roll earlier than it normally does tonight, but if it does, well that's my fault for being over-eager to end turn. I do expect a slow turn though as the holy city location impacts everyone this turn.

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Turn 256

Alright, I won't tease any longer.



We've met Dreylin (Gandhi of Khmer). This is also pretty good news. Given where his Explorer is at, I wouldn't be surprised if he's a little further away than Donovan is, but all in all he's a pretty decent neighbor to have. In terms of pure skill, I'd rate Dreylin above Donovan, but I'd (less confidently) rate most of the other plays in this game a half-notch or so above Dreylin. So in that sense, he's a good neighbor. I wouldn't sleep on him though because he's very experienced, and I believe OT4E (a pretty good player with some MP experience IIRC) is helping him. He's also got no war traits or war-enhancing UU/UB, so that's also nice. That said, he's got what I think is one of the best combos in the game, so he's someone to watch out for. Gandhi has by far the most choices of how to play the opening, so his choices matter a great deal.

I offered Dreylin a map swap. We'll see if he's more receptive to the idea.



Dreylin's running US-Bureau-Slavery-Merc-OR. He's also Spiritual, so he can swap civics pretty freely like us.



We do have a scouting decision here.

1) We could head northeast. Upside: we'll meet a new neighbor far more quickly, and get more map info. If Donovan happens to change his mind on map trading, we'll cover ground far more efficiently this way. We also run the risk of hitting a dead end of our own and having a lot of scouting turns burned.

2) We could head southwest/west. Upside: since Donovan currently isn't accepting a map swap, it would be very beneficial to have a full view of the contested land between us. If there's a particular spot in the fog that we need to target, the sooner we know that the better.

My opinion in spoilers so you can figure out yours without the influence of mine.

I lean slightly towards #2. We'll soon have 3 explorers, so I'm not too worried about a delay in getting north. But I definitely do not feel strongly about this, as I see a lot of benefit in heading north and maybe using a spare military unit 10T from now to scout the nearby fog.

Quick overview shot of our homeland. Not much worth noting here.



Here's a current thing worth thinking about now that we've met two neighbors in this direction. It seems that the general design of this map is that we've got a "homeland" with room for about 5 cities, a contestable subcontinent or two, and narrow strips of land connecting them. This area right here is one of the contestable subcontinents. I'm guessing the way these are setup, there are always 2-3 players with access to them depending on what direction people settle. The presence of another non-natural incense tile suggests this area is "supposed" to be ours (if my theory about giving each player a few copies of a luxury to trade holds true), but it's still steal-able by someone else. We don't need to decide where our first couple settlers goes yet (nor do we have enough map info to make a good decision), but it's worth at least considering what our options are here. Some random options just to get the brain flowing.

Aggressive: we try to settle in a way that snags and lighthouses that lake fish. Something like 2S of that fish is an okay city, but with all those lighthoused lakes, we could turn the city into a draft/specialist camp of sorts. The likelihood of this being a good idea AND it still being available by the time we get to it is pretty low, but it's an option.

Flexible: we try to settle in a way that serves as both a choke and naval port. Something like 1S of incense (while forting one of the hills) or settling directly on one of the grass hills next to the incense for the defense bonus. It chokes off access to our land from the south, and it serves as an easily defensible port from Donovan. Further, it would allow us to do stuff like boat Donovan's city out of the fog (more than one city if he settles for fish) should things ever come to that down the road. This seems like our most likely option.

Defensive: we cede the lower portion of the choke and settle more like 1E of the incense or something along those lines. Not ideal for a host of reasons, but it's an option if we're forced. Seems unlikely to be worthwhile, but if we find other stuff in the fog that's more attractive to settle, well it's worth keeping this in the back of our minds if need be.

Anyway, we hardly need to commit to anything (and there will very likely be higher priority targets than this), especially without knowing what's north of that lake. But I thought it would be fun to think about potential options.

That about does it for this turn. I took a shot of the demos, but literally nothing has changed except our numbers due to shuffling tiles between cities, so it's pretty much irrelevant. I'll include and spoiler it in case someone cares.

I'm hoping to have a little time to mess with the sandbox tonight, but that won't be until fairly late in the evening if it happens. Next couple days are a little more promising on that front. I'll login after work and make the Library change in Cotton Gin.

[scooter]

One more small thing - I have not set EPs. I'm leaning towards just keeping them all on Donovan until we get his charts and then moving on to Dreylin. I'll do that unless you care.

[Sullla]

Great post! Definitely all EPs on Donovan until we get graphs. He's clearly our closest neighbor, we want to know what he's doing. More thoughts tonight after work.

[scooter]

So I was in-game to swap the Library real quick, when I decided to take a look at something that caught my eye earlier. I was trying to envision today how the map is laid out, and I developed an idea in my head that sounds far too difficult to mock up in paint. However, do these two things look similar? (Look at the fog too.)





Rivermouth, plains hill, jungle consecutively on a choke. There's obviously some differences here too so it's not exact copy/paste, but very, very similar. I'm guessing if we take our Explorer due south, we'll find Dreylin down there with similar-ish land as us. His explorer being about 2 turns ahead of our northern explorer is perfectly explained by the fact that ours took a brief detour to the coast. It just lines up a little too perfectly.

[Sullla]

So as expected, there was no worry about the other teams rushing to play their turns. It looks like we're at a steady 1 turn per day pace, which is probably a good thing. Scooter, I see that Dreylin has played his turn, but I was bouncing off Gaspar so you'll have to log in yourself to discover whether Dreylin accepted our map trade.

Other stuff from this fairly busy turn:

* Landing the religious Holy City in Telegraph makes the upcoming city planning so much easier. That was a very nice 50/50 roll of the dice for us. See, the issue is that we need to do two things in the upcoming few turns: build some missionaries to spread Hinduism, and build a library in Cotton Gin. We need the library there because we won't be going to Caste System anytime soon (Serfdom way too good right now), and there's no other way to run Scientist specialists at the moment. However, Cotton Gin is a low-production city at the moment, and if we had to spread religion from there while also building the library... well, it would have been a lot harder, that's for sure. That spot also doesn't have a lot of forests available for chopping either. Having the Holy City pop up in high-production Telegraph is oh so much nicer for us. Now we can crank out two missionaries from the iron city and then set it to barracks -> units while Cotton Gin works on its library for some specialist fun.

* On the scouting decision: definitely go investigate Donovan's lands in more detail. I didn't need to read the spoiler message on that one. Meeting more teams is nice, but it's more important to have information on our closest neighbor, especially since Donovan turned down the map trade. I want to know what those guys eat for breakfast. Well, at the very least, let's pinpoint the rest of the Indian cities and see what the terrain looks like between us.

* On future settling: I think it's a bit premature to try determining city spots on that isthmus of land to the west. We need more map information, plus we won't be settling any cities for about 20 more turns, given their incredible cost. (Each individual settler is more expensive than the Taj Mahal if a team has marble available. Seriously, each one is like a wonder in its own right!) I also think settling 7 tiles away from our closest city would likely be sticking our necks out a bit too far. The whales/cows spot probably has to come first. But again, a little early to have to make any kind of decisions here.

* I'm a little surprised by Dreylin's civics. What's he doing in Universal Suffrage? Did they also cash-rush a worker? Not a bad play - I mean, we did the same thing, heh - but the optimal time for that would be on the second turn of the game, then back into Representation ASAP. Turn 256 is just a weird turn to be in UniSuff. Slavery is also a bit of an odd choice for a Spiritual civ. Why not 5 turns of Slavery, and then back into Serfdom? Well, maybe they're cooking up something down there, who knows.

A related question for scooter: do you remember if Donovan spent all 4 EP against us last turn? That might tell us if he's met anyone else. Ditto for Dreylin at the start of the next turn. I agree that we want all our EP on Donovan for the moment.

* I also think that the most likely map setup is homeland subcontinents with snaky land bridges connecting between them, and lots of water all over the place. If we can get a map trade, we'll likely have a better idea. Oh, and we also have the third explorer completing this turn, so the southeast should start providing us with more info as well.

* I spent most of the evening fiddling with different micro options in our sandbox now that we have the Holy City question settled. I'm reasonably happy with what I have written down, subject of course to change based on what we see in the actual game. There's a good window to swap to 5 turns of Nationhood starting on Turn 262, right after we've used Organized Religion to spread the faith around and timed to coincide with the big food push in the capital. We get 3 rifles out for free (1 from Telegraph and 2 from poor Cotton Gin) while the capital keeps growing at +10 food/turn. However, this does come at a serious hit to our GNP, as we lose the Bureaucracy bonus to commerce and we also stop working the gold tile to avoid its -2 food/turn hit. We can be size 10 end of Turn 267 in the capital, and size 12 end of Turn 270. I don't know if that's too long to be delaying settler production, but once we hit size 12, we can start getting them out roughly every 6 turns. Fortunately, we don't have to make the decisions on this right now.

Here's the link to the plan that I was tinkering with today. Note that it's in the second spreadsheet tab, under the heading "Second Plan": https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...1023496961

Gaspar/Dreylin just ended the turn, so I'll let you go check out what's happening on the new turn. Maybe some maps for us, pretty please Dreylin?

[scooter]

No maps again. He did post in his thread, so maybe he's discussing it. I'm surprised people are being so tightly wound about this maps thing.

On Dreylin - he's got 148g banked and is making 31gpt. He must be planning on doing more rush-buying. He is Gandhi, so perhaps he's planning to just pop out GP to do the heavy lifting via bulbs while rush buying several workers as opposed to the 1 that we did. I guess that makes sense.