[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

I heard the same thing, but it was his wallet...so I'm going to go with "urban legend", just like his SEAL tattoos.

Aw nuts. It's one of those stories you really want to be true, which is a sign of urban myth I guess.

Still, the guy was a ninja. If anyone hasn't seen this clip of him defending funding for PBS to the US Senate, it's absolutely astounding and impossible to be untouched by it. If it is even possible to fake that level of sincerity one could get very far.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 38:

And the RGB colour ratios in the xml file didn't lie:







We're looking at MYKI's second city, settled for copper and already grown to size 2 with the copper improved! He is DeGaulle of Korea, with Mining, Myst, CHA, IND. Like us, he lacks a direct early game economic advantage, though the buffed happy cap from CHA (still not as good as the version in Sevens mod) may be quite nice here for early growth if used well. I'd certainly love to blast our capital to size 7 and work a bunch of cottages!

He suffers from starting with Myst in a very slow teching game. Korea doesn't impress me and may be one of the worst civs in the game. The Hwacha is a cat that get a bonus vs melee, but not additional collateral vs melee. How often are melee units top defenders or main attackers vs cats? Not often, imo. There UB is a slighly buffed university with a 35% research bonus instead of 25%. Whoop-dee-doo? They're very good at Starcraft.

My best guess at his growth:

Turn 16: First tech is Bronze, I think? It's crazy that he'd go with no food tech, but this guy is seriously green, and what else takes this long? The power graph will eventually tell us more.

Turn 24: Second tech, presumably Agri or Hunting.

Turn 27: Growth to size 2.

Turn 29: Whip a settler.

Turn 32: Settle second city.

Turn 33: Teched something.

Turn 34: First city grows back to size 2.

Turn 35: Second city grows to size 2.

Maybe I'm missing something but to take my score analysis at face value he had no food tech until turn 24! And this opening seems terrible, with two cities but a horrible capital. His performance in AlaePB corroborates this: that he's a low level vs AI player. He's not the human goody hut we deserve, but perhaps the one we need.

His capital is probably further east, because it would be hard to hide a BFC culture in the black region. Also note his land is pretty sweet like ours, and he has ivory.

Interesting fact from sims:




Note that Turfan gets an automatic trade connection without a road! I think this is because trade always passes through coast (and rivers) inside of culture.

[Commodore]

Krill agreed. Korea is Agri/Mine now.

[WilliamLP]

Ah, thanks for the correction.

"Korea: Starts with Agriculture/Minging, instead of Mysticism/Mining."

(I wasn't sure what the word meant so I had to go to Urbandictionary for it.)

But unfortunately it doesn't mean this guy played the first 25 turns without a food tech. And maybe I missed a pop growth somewhere - it could be buried in the turn 20 land area points.

[MindyMcCready]

We're looking at MYKI's second city, settled for copper and already grown to size 2 with the copper improved!
+ buffed happy cap from CHA
+ he has ivory

So with agriculture + copper he's not exactly off to the slowest of starts that you were hoping. That ivory means that HA would have a bit of a tough time unless used in overwhelming numbers or unless we went in with HA before he gets Construction.

We also have room for 13 cities without being anytype of aggressive or ambitious. Those 2 rivers look like disputed territory and/or that dry wheat is about as far as we could expect to go unchallenged. All-in-all, it's looking more like a Knights invasion rather than via Keshiks, for gains anyway. We could certainly try to leverage the Keskiks as early deterrant and maybe a chopping at the knees.

Overall, I'm thinking that right now you're putting a few too many eggs in the MYKI invasion basket. I'm just reading his Aleb thread now. He's not the absolute worst (no unworked wet corn :LOL but he sure seems to overwhip his cities right down to size 1 alot (with no indication in his thread that he realized that that might not be optimal). That plus, getting caught unprepared militarily is what put him back so much,...is that a risk for him in this game? If not, then he's unlikely to be the backwards, absolute pushover that you're hoping for. I would definately not call him Bantams green, he wasn't that far behind in the demos until the attack came despite his overwhipping.

We'd have to hit him strictly to hurt him early on rather than for profit to make him a backwater. Is this in the cards when we have 13 unchallenged city spots?

Giving up prime 'fair' land to Darrabod still seems like a questionable play to me given that we're unlikely to drive into that negative sum game with MYKI.

Note that Turfan gets an automatic trade connection without a road!

That's good but I still don't like this city site. I guess I just don't see much advantage in 1st mover; more of a liability really.
-we're going to lose some significant start speed.
-We'll delay 1st ring wet wheat. 3 usable food resources in the (pseudo) first ring shouldn't be lightly walked away from.
-We're going to build an extra, unnecessary culture building. However you move Blue Dot, it's going to need culture anyway whereas my Green may never really need culture
-We're going to start building undefended workboats pillagable by barb galleys unless we invest in our own galleys. It's extremely early to be making that investment when we could be making settlers and workers on relatively safe (and/or more disputed) land.


Pros:
-Via a culture push have more chance at landing those whales. That's significant of course. Largely, I don't have a sense of when we need that happy or why the hard push into a high maintenance location when we have gems not far off.

Your decision to move that green dot is really hurting me. :LOL:

Lastly, I agree with the fair border but it seems to me that it'd be better to establish a decent border (where we get wines & pigs) and force Darrabod east into MYKI while we then move strongly to control the channel. Its a peaceful, for-profit move that lets us tech up and then hit MYKI with Knights.

[WilliamLP]

We also have room for 13 cities without being anytype of aggressive or ambitious. Those 2 rivers look like disputed territory and/or that dry wheat is about as far as we could expect to go unchallenged.

Yeah, 13 cities is pretty crazy for this amount of global land tiles and players. I think this is awesome, and if we can Rexp peacefully into a favorable land border to the east, why not do it? I don't mind having Keshiks as a security deterrent unit rather than an invasion unit. Knights + Ger is pretty strong too.

I'm just reading his Aleb thread now. He's not the absolute worst (no unworked wet corn :LOL but he sure seems to overwhip his cities right down to size 1 alot.

Thanks for doing that. I haven't looked at the thread much, just guessing from having followed the events of the game. I also have seen that he knows he has a lot of room to improve so could be studying the game.

First I'm really wondering if it's actually possible that he didn't get his first growth to size 2 until turn 27? It's possible, if he went for some kind of worker -> chop worker opening. The graphs will tell given enough turns. Whatever happens I'm very optimistic about being able to play a stronger turn 50-100 than his empire is pointed to.

We'd have to hit him strictly to hurt him early on rather than for profit to make him a backwater. Is this in the cards when we have 13 unchallenged city spots?

I don't know about that but I don't mind opportunism and playing with a little "newbie contempt" eventually. I.e. playing more like you want to play vs Darrell + Ichabod with audacious borders and implicit military challenges.

That's good but I still don't like this city site. I guess I just don't see much advantage in 1st mover; more of a liability really.
-we're going to lose some significant start speed.

Yes. Admittedly the city you want is simply better in growth speed.

-We'll delay 1st ring wet wheat. 3 usable food resources in the (pseudo) first ring shouldn't be lightly walked away from.

Yup. We settle for 2 usuable food resources without the border pop. But, our happy cap in a whip cycle is only 3! So this is why I don't see that third food as being so huge. And the city, after the border pop, is astoundingly good.

-We're going to build an extra, unnecessary culture building. However you move Blue Dot, it's going to need culture anyway whereas my Green may never really need culture

So here's the key point. When would you settle the blue dot then? And when would you find time to pop the borders? Would it be city #4 (I really doubt it). #5? #6? When would you actually have the whales online? This is the single thing that sells it to me, that it gets happiness in the empire perhaps 20 to 30 turns earlier than the alternative.

This way gets the whales somewhere around turn 65. And that equates to +1 tile being worked in every city in steady state, which is easily worth a free city for that number of turns.

The culture building is probably a barracks, something we want someday anyway. Though, it's worth worry about whether it's worth speeding up the curve 30 hammers by getting an otherwise dubious tech (Myst) and an otherwise dubious building (Monument).

-We're going to start building undefended workboats pillagable by barb galleys unless we invest in our own galleys. It's extremely early to be making that investment when we could be making settlers and workers on relatively safe (and/or more disputed) land.

Barb galleys are quite far in the future, we're talking turn 100 at least. They start when the barbs research sailing which can't happen until 30-ish turns after the average human player gets sailing.

We're going to need galleys + triremes in this game anyway, this much is absolute fact in my mind.

-Via a culture push have more chance at landing those whales. That's significant of course. Largely, I don't have a sense of when we need that happy or why the hard push into a high maintenance location when we have gems not far off.

I think the whale happy is worth more than a free city the moment we get it hooked, and then the gems are worth another one. They aren't mutually devaluing because every city will have fine tiles to grow onto and work and none will run out of space. The worst extra tile we could possibly get is a grass river cottage and those will be crucial.

These extra vertical growth tiles are worth more than the same number of new city tiles because an established city at size 3-4 is much easier to grow to 4-5 than a new city is to establish and get from 1 to 2. With a granary it might only be 2 turns.

I think I'm going to want to prioritize the gems soon too.

Your decision to move that green dot is really hurting me. :LOL:

I can tell!

Lastly, I agree with the fair border but it seems to me that it'd be better to establish a decent border (where we get wines & pigs) and force Darrabod east into MYKI while we then move strongly to control the channel. Its a peaceful, for-profit move that lets us tech up and then hit MYKI with Knights.

There are different valid openings in chess, where you can open on the wings or in the center, and I feel like playing for the center is the right move here. One thing I'd fear is playing first for the NW, and then at the same time Darrell cuts us off to his SE. This would be a play where we could get a little more land but lose the big picture in the geometry. Because once he gets a foothold east of us, he'd just cut us off from further eastern expansion by settling (peacefully) more south and southeast.

Some of these may just be moot points. They will get the initiative in deciding their third, and probably fourth city sites.

- They decide to min-max economy and settle their first ring from the capital: Awesome!
- They decide to go for a "fair" seal to our NW which grabs them the pig: We grab a "fair" seal in the east that cuts them off from land eventually contested from MYKI.
- They go for something way more than fair: time for horses and mutual sadness.
- They go for the center too: well, at least we get more of a piece of it.

I want to be sure to control the incense, because this is a Calendar start over Monarchy anyway, for several reasons.

And, this is the point of principles we probably will argue about as long as we have patience for it: I want to give the game a chance where _they_ think they have a fair border, rather than a situation where they accept it and don't declare war but are grumbling and resentful.

[WilliamLP]

Ok, I read most of MYKI's AlaePB thread. I really like the guy! He's extremely smart, and a literature and history buff. He's friends with the Oxy, Gavagai, Bacchus crowd and you won't find a microcosm in the universe more ruthless and calculating than those guys.

I have no doubt he could get to be a great Civ player if he put in the effort and maybe had some serious coaching.

But... 3rd city at turn 50 with a size 1 capital. Only one cottage in his empire on turn 85. And he's freaking _Pacal_. Everything's relative and 99% of people who have played the game can't beat Emperor which he says he can do. But unless he has improved his understanding by leaps and bounds, if he tries to play remotely like he did in that game, there's no way he even gets to Construction at this tech pace. And his score history seems to suggest he's basically repeating.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 39.

Settler moved, and will plant next turn. Revolted to Slavery.




MYKI is spending all 4 EP on us. Note his city name simply means "Copper mine" in French. If he's going to name all his cities literally like this it will make C&D a lot easier!

I'm opting to try and scout the area between us though I'm also really interested in the larger scale geography. And there's also the real possibility that Darrell and Ichabod have one or more additional neighbor! How awesome would that be?

Ichabod played last and then didn't play another turn. This means they either need to discuss and plan something, are at war (lol), or are being the worst kind of human being, the C&D turn timer micromanager.

Here's a dotmap intended to make Mindy's blood pressure rise. I'm not married to any of this, but I do like my "3" site more the more I think about it.




This plan has us being absolute pussycats in the NW! What I like about it though, is that I feel like if we do something like this we can play almost a pure farmer's gambit, and Darrellbod may just leave us completely alone while they do their own similar Joao thing.

This is already getting close to the 136 land tiles we should have under simple division by number of players. (I didn't count this iteration exactly.) The idea is to eventually grab more to the east.

3) Gets 2 food available before border pop, 4 food after. A great site for commerce and whipping sea units. Immediate trade connection. Will provide whales. Eliminates the need for a coastal city farther east for a very very long time. It will chop a border popping building, maybe barracks, or maybe skipping myst for a long time is too hare-brained and it just gets a monument. On the other hand, I can absolutely see this city whipping out axes, chariots and keshiks in its lifetime.

4) This is the suboptimal economic play designed to be a land grab and border seal. It grabs incense and may grab stone if Darrell doesn't aggressively challenge for this region.

5) I see the next order of business as getting the gems. High commerce tiles are critical, as is the happiness. (I.e. grow every city by 1 and immediately work an extra 4-5 cottages in the empire.)

6) A site to actually get the gems. I really want it to have first ring food, and it also claims the wheat for 5). But the ripple effects aren't great, the alternative of 6b) and 11b) doesn't orphan a clam. This could also go 1 further south next to the sheep.

Red 7) The "conservative" northwest plant. Waiting this long, it may be unlikely that there is a realistic stake at the pig which brings us to the fallback:

Floral 7) Bane of Mindy, the pansy site. The draw is that we shouldn't need to rush at all to get a site like this. I just can't get excited about the wines. It's not a game-changing tile at 2/1/3, and Monarchy is a very long ways away, and we'll have (hopefully) at least 3 calendar happiness and 1 more to trade away before then. It eliminates the desire to settle 12) anytime soon.

I'd happily take the red one here and go for the pig if it's still available this late.

8) A fine city, just not as high priority as some others. A lot of decisions are amenable to discussion and specific play style and strategy, but in this case moving it 1E is just objectively far worse. Settling with only a 3f tile to grow on before a border pop is almost never acceptable. Moving it 1S is an option though.

9) The whopper Moai site.

10) I think settling on the stone is better (for IC trade routes and 2 hammer city tile) than trying to pop borders and get a worker over there to build a quarry and road. Whoever else sees it may think of building Moai there.

11) Either a filler city for fish, which is good as filler cities go. Or 11b) a fish + clams site.

12) If wines is still open at this point, sure, grab it.

[Ceiliazul]

so... whens your third city going down?

[WilliamLP]

so... whens your third city going down?

My current plan is T51, looking like:




This sim isn't nearly synced with tech vs the real game. It's possible to settle earlier but this prioritizes developing city 2 strongly with a granary that filled up at size 1, 3 workers, 2 cottages working.

I'd probably get worker number 4 before the 4th city settler which is shown. I'm not sure whether to go crazy and triple-chop a barracks right from this screenshot with all three workers (with the mindset that every turn saved on the whale is pretty precious), or maybe "waste" beakers on Myst and get the cheaper monument instead.