A long time ago on a planet far far away....

[Ellimist]

Nakor: Elizabeth of India
Pegasus: Willem of Ottomans
Serdoa: ______ of Egypt
Ellimist: Pacal of _______

Holy cow do I really get to be Pacal of Inca? Hmmm. Let's see what Serdoa chooses for a leader first. He asked about wonders, so maybe Huayna or Bismark. I doubt Sury will be chosen with FIN on the table.

No bans is silly.

[Krill]

Lolwut.

[Catwalk]

Inca does indeed seem a perfect match, much better capable of holding out against barbarian assaults early on than the other options. This looks promising!

[Ellimist]

Ellimist
Pacal of Inca (EXP/FIN)
2300 - 0330 GMT
Nakor
Elizabeth of India (PHI/FIN)
0600 - 0800 GMT
Serdoa
Peter of Egypt (EXP/PHI)
1500 - 2100 GMT
Pegasus
Willem of Ottomans (CRE/FIN)
1900 - 2300 GMT
Ruff
Barbaric

So this leaves us with
3 financial
2 expansive
2 philosophical
1 creative

It's ironic that this puts Serdoa at a major disadvantage as the only non-financial leader, while at the same time he has the scariest unique unit. Meanwhile, Nakor plays the Killer Angels combination that won pitboss 2. He will probably try to leverage fast workers and an early academy into a late game advantage.

[Ellimist]

And it begins!

My start:

Definitely not bad. Plenty of river to make financial even stronger, and some forests for early chopping.

Given the expectations, I think I'd definitely prefer to settle on a hill for defensive purposes, and a plains hill would be ideal. The expansive bonus should make up for losing a turn settling, so it comes down to which of the three plains hills is best to settle on. The north one isn't really an option. It isn't riverside and gives up the two food bonuses. Of the other two, the southern one is a bit of a wildcard with so many fogged tiles so I ruled that one out as well in favor of the one nearly surrounded by river.

Fog reading reveals coast to the northeast and southwest.


What Ruff has been up to:

[Catwalk]

Great start indeed, and I agree with your sentiments about starting location. You practically have a moat there, very nice defensive bonuses. What research path are you thinking about? You have Agriculture to work the Wheat with right away, so I'm guessing Mining + Bronze Working first. Want to found a religion after that?

Opponent techs
Ottomans: Agriculture + Wheel
Egypt: Agriculture + Wheel
India: Mysticism + Mining

Could be risky trying to land an early religion with one other player having Mysticism. Then again, he might also reason that it's risky and hence refrain from founding one early on. So waiting for him to move first could delay you both.

[Ellimist]

I am leaning toward mining-BW. After that maybe pottery, but a religion is possible. I don't see anybody else really prioritizing a religion unless they're trying for the Oracle.

[Lewwyn]

Wow.

Pacal of Inca.

Game over...

[Ellimist]

Yeah I could hardly believe it myself, Lewwyn.

So here we go:

There's plenty of the usual stuff, but also some interesting things.

I decided to go worker first, hopefully the barbarian situation won't punish me for that. Mining-Bronze also seemed like the right choice. Wheel-Pottery or AH were considered, but Bronze will do so much to accelerate my snowball that I don't want to delay it. My overall game plan for now is a standard but cautious snowball.

So far this seems like an odd map, possibly a small donut with extensive editing? It's very lush, but seems cramped by the coastline. I might be in the far north of it, as indicated by the tundra marble. While it's nice to see marble(unlike in pbem21), I can't really think of a good reason for it to be on tundra. It's not like the tile yield is overpowered or something. The fact that it is so close to my starting location does seem to indicate that everyone has stone and/or marble.

The forest distribution is rather odd. It looks like Ruff made a large rectangle of forest running diagonally. The shape of the rectangle suggests that I'm in the southwest or northeast position among the players on the map. Due to the tundra marble being north of my starting position, I'm going to tentatively assume I'm in the northeast, with access to a player south of me and west of me.

[Ellimist]

Something else to note is that only Nakor settled on the first turn. This suggests that the starts are similar or identical and three of us moved to a hill. If Nakor is nearby, he's probably the only real possible target for a quechua rush.