[PB70] The Cartographic Correction Committee convenes

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for a look at your scouting so far.

As for mirroring, the map was described to the players earlier as "Custom toroid with shattered mirroring".

[scooter]

Thanks for a look at your scouting so far.

As for mirroring, the map was described to the players earlier as "Custom toroid with shattered mirroring".

Makes sense, thanks!


Ginger, worker plan pretty straight forward (sent it to you), but I just need you to let me know how hardcore you want to be about tech path here.











You mentioned you were considering moving quickly towards Priesthood for maybe Oracle. I see 3 routes.

1) Myst -> Meditation: The hardcore path. Upside - probably scores a religion and unlocks discounted Monasteries. Religious happy might be nice on food-high map that is light on pre-Calendar happy. Leaves us pretty devoid of the other important early techs.

2) Wheel -> Pottery: Granaries ASAP on food-heavy map seems good! And opens up cottages at floodplains site. Plus roads.

3) Sailing: Will provide an instant trade connection between first two cities for both gold + 2 commerce. Also opens up Galleys for getting a Stone city (and the IC routes)


You have roughly 4-5T (maybe 2-3 days) to decide and lock something in.

[Tarkeel]

3) Sailing: Will provide an instant trade connection between first two cities for both gold + 2 commerce. Also opens up Galleys for getting a Stone city (and the IC routes)

You'll need a road for any trade connection, as the capital is not on the river. If you settle the gold city on the river as indicated, you don't need sailing for a route there at all, just the road to link the capital to the river.

[Ginger*]

I’m not super miffed about missing religion, let’s go Pottery first and we can land Oracle turn after priesthood with overflow and IND

[scooter]

3) Sailing: Will provide an instant trade connection between first two cities for both gold + 2 commerce. Also opens up Galleys for getting a Stone city (and the IC routes)

You'll need a road for any trade connection, as the capital is not on the river. If you settle the gold city on the river as indicated, you don't need sailing for a route there at all, just the road to link the capital to the river.

Ah yeah good catch.

I’m not super miffed about missing religion, let’s go Pottery first and we can land Oracle turn after priesthood with overflow and IND

Sounds good. Granaries are too good here to delay long. Played another turn, and most of the south is now unfogged, so let's take a quick look.





Next couple city sites are not quite as dead obvious, but the Copper placement could potentially still change that. Directly east is too underwhelming. Dry Wheat, Clams, and overall much weaker land than the lush paradise elsewhere. Speaking of.





Here's the land between Bing. The "8" signs are number of tiles from each capital. So, if you can imagine a horizontal line between those signs extended, that's *roughly* the natural borders. Obviously in practice it's not quite that simple because we're at an angle here. I think if both the Deer and Corn could be claimed, that would be a big win. Of course, he does have Protective Skirmishers, so if he's the type to be predisposed towards aggression, he could put together a nasty choke.

More realistically it means any city that he plants and gets a Skirmisher in is his until at least CKNs. Pushing settlers down into the core down here will be important. One other thing I see here - forests. Better known as Wonders.

I'm looping the Scout back up north as it's important to know which player is up that way in order to start making settling direction priorities. Generally in these setups if you can settle aggressively in one direction and "fairly" in the other, you're in good shape. This is where I'm reminded that diplo exists in this game.

[scooter]

FYI I asked Bing, and his southern neighbor is Charriu. So the northern neighbor is either Mjmd or superdeath. Assuming this map is indeed some sort of long wrapping diagonal strip.

[scooter]

Copper location is interesting.




1N of the copper gets a pretty good first ring and continues the lack of need for border pops. That said, it may make other city locations a tad awkward. 1N of the cows is also interesting. It punts the clams to needing a border pop, but in return it can share the Deer and make the other city sites a little easier to figure out. One potentially underrated perk - it makes it more navally defensible. To me, this game will get decided by sea - likely won by Galleons. City locations that can be navally protected by just one coastal square can be pretty nice when you’re dealing with the nightmare that is Galleon forking. Just something to consider.

Oh wait, did I say copper location? I meant locations.




Revolted to Slavery. City settles next turn. Still planning to 4T a second worker. Let me know if you prefer to stick to the northern fish/copper location next or want to shift towards the southern copper.

[Commodore]

Love the reporting, Scooter. Glad to see you back, sorry I was part of the bad taste earlier but rooting for you here.

[scooter]

Love the reporting, Scooter. Glad to see you back, sorry I was part of the bad taste earlier but rooting for you here.

Thanks! No worries at all, I regret a thing or two as well. These games get intense sometimes.





Charriu settled a city last turn, so I think this is the second city settled, but I haven’t exactly been watching PBSpy like a hawk, so I could be wrong. Scout is headed to meet the northern neighbor, Warrior is going to defog that last tile south and then will likely circle back home to serve as a zone defender for the first few cities.





I believe completing the worker will require one more turn of working the deer, then I’ll take the banana back here so the new city can grow faster.





Chop goes into the WB next turn, then just a few more turns of natural building to net the Fish.





Nobody has any military whatsoever thanks to the barb settings and universal scout starts. I did get Bing’s graphs a few turns ago, but they weren’t really noteworthy other than his start seems kinda slow.


Ginger - any feedback on next city preference? If you stick with the northern Fish site, I'm pretty sure I can get a WB for it out of Shanghai in a fairly timely manner to get it online quickly. Copper would be quicker at the southeast spot. Your call.

[scooter]

Turns continue to fly. Ginger, I know you’re super busy, so I’m just going to keep posting my plans and following through on them if I don’t hear from you, but consider all planning open to feedback.




I’ve sketched out a plan for the next city settling. I think it should be northwest for Fish/Floodplains with second ring Copper. The reason is mostly how fast it is to get up and running. Shanghai will complete a WB EoT33, then net Fish T34 and grow EoT with an Elephant Camp completing just in time. It has the ability to go immediately onto a second WB and then whip it at some point to line up with settling the northern location. So, how soon can we settle that?

It would take 3T for Beijing to grow to size 4, but prioritizing speed it may be best to go directly to the settler at size 3. Slow building that’s 8T (or more accurately, 7.1). That works out to settling Fish on T43 if sped with just one roaded tile or T44 without. A chop speeds this up by 2T, so T41 with a road and T44 without.

The absolute fastest a Shanghai second WB could net those northern Fish is T39. That would be whipping it immediately at size 2 after one turn of production and heading straight up there. So there’s some buffer. That allows either waiting a couple turns to whip, or whipping early and taking the scenic route around the stone island to see if there’s more seafood out there or not.


I’m leaning currently towards doing everything as fast as possible. So chop settler and road 1 tile to settle on T41, get the WB out early, and go from there. The only downside is whipping off the camp that was already lined up to complete just in time feels a bit wrong, so I’m not certain yet. I’ll take a closer look tonight and consider a size 4 capital option as well which may be slower initially but setup better past 3 cities. But if you have an opinion or really prefer I settle cow/copper next, let me know and I can definitely still make that happen. In general I think there’s not a huge rush for copper. Nobody is building real military now or anytime soon, and hooking copper kills our ability to build Warrior military police, so we don’t actually want to hook it yet anyway.