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

[Ellimist]

So there's more tundra to the north, indicating again that I'm near the top of the map. The shape of the map does seem a bit odd, though. I'll send the Quechua SW next then SE toward the capital.

[Ellimist]

As you can see, an elaborate series of Quechua maneuvers is queued. Also, I think Ruff has probably been focusing all his EPs on me for some reason.
Just in case, I also queued BW after Mining.

A big reason I'm going Mining-BW first(other than the usual) is so that I have access to spearmen relatively quickly. If I'm close to Serdoa, I'll need access to spearmen if I want a chance at stopping his chariots.

I'm going to do my best this game to just focus on rapid expansion and not get distracted like I usually tend to do. We'll see how well I manage that. I do love going Oracle-Colossus on watery maps.

[Ellimist]

I'm getting a better handle on the map...

I think it's more likely that I'm in the southwest part of the map, as the only land routes are to the north and east. I'm going to send the Quechua northeast next and then circle back toward Verne.

You can see that Barbarian has founded Hinduism. I think this makes the other religions more valuable than they would be, so I'm considering trying to grab Buddhism after BW. If there are no religions available, I think the others are less likely to tech Meditation/Polytheism, and I might be able to grab the Oracle with a relatively low opportunity cost. The denial value is also pretty good, if the other three players don't get either of the two earliest religions.

Other high priority techs are wheel/pottery(cottages!), hunting(to counter war chariots), and animal husbandry(for horses and the pigs). I'll either go for meditation or one of these next.

[Ellimist]

Played turn 11. The worker started on the wheat farm and Verne started building a second worker. Mr. Quechua stepped onto the SE hill and found tundra stone in the SE. The current plan in Verne is to build a couple Quechua while quickly growing and chopping out an early settler.
It looks like the map is separated into distinct areas, and I've pretty much seen the extent of mine. It's too early to speculate on where the settler will go, I'll wait until I have copper visibility.

[Ellimist]

Progress, progress. Let's go for the super-fast expansive start. After the farm finishes, the worker will start mining the grass river hill E-S-S of Verne.

I think I'm going to try to get Buddhism founded in an early second city. I'll take a risk and go worker-worker-quechua and then chop a settler at size 2 or 3.

[Catwalk]

Taking a risk sounds sensible, I can't imagine Ruff would try to eliminate any players really early. With the shape of the surroundings, two quechas should be plenty for exploration. Got a dotmap plan worked out yet? The PH spot to the west looks tempting.

[haphazard1]

I like that desert tile 3N1W of the capital. Reclaim a useless tile, rice and a flood plain inner ring, crabs and dye in the outer ring, coastal, and can work cottages for the capital to speed development. Plus a good number of hills for production. Mmmm, tasty. Need to scout the coast more fully for possible seafood first, though.

The plains hill to the west is also very nice, but is not coastal and thus may create problems for getting the crab there later. Still a very nice site, and maybe coastal is not as big an issue on this map? Not sure what to make of the line of peaks off the southern coast.

[Ellimist]

Taking a risk sounds sensible, I can't imagine Ruff would try to eliminate any players really early. With the shape of the surroundings, two quechas should be plenty for exploration. Got a dotmap plan worked out yet? The PH spot to the west looks tempting.

The primary risk is actually from Serdoa's war chariots. Unfortunately, the demogs are harder to make out due to the AI barbarian nation.

With BW almost in, I'm waiting to speculate on dotmaps until I can see copper.

My biggest next tech priority is going to be pottery, but if I think I can put Buddhism in the second city, I'll probably do that.

[Ellimist]

I like that desert tile 3N1W of the capital. Reclaim a useless tile, rice and a flood plain inner ring, crabs and dye in the outer ring, coastal, and can work cottages for the capital to speed development. Plus a good number of hills for production. Mmmm, tasty. Need to scout the coast more fully for possible seafood first, though.

The plains hill to the west is also very nice, but is not coastal and thus may create problems for getting the crab there later. Still a very nice site, and maybe coastal is not as big an issue on this map? Not sure what to make of the line of peaks off the southern coast.

That desert spot is a possibility, especially because only 3 sites can use those crabs. I'll probably settle the next city for copper, though, or possibly stone/marble. I'll still try to get coastal sites when I can, though, for EXP harbors and FIN coast if nothing else. There's also a chance I go for the Colossus again, and 4 commerce coast would be crazy.

The only thing I can think of for the offshore mountains is to allow galley movement. I'll try to get one out soonish.

[Ellimist]

The wheat farm is finished, so let's compare my progress so far to everyone else's...

At least I'm not the only one with a size one capital, and apparently somebody has water in their BFC. It's hard to see very much of relevance with the gigantic impact of the AI, though.

I can't even figure out what the crop yield number means. Rival average is 34, right? And there are 4 rivals? So that means the total between them is 136. But then I subtract the rival best(barbs) of 127 and that leaves me with 9 split between the 3 human players. Except, the rival worst is 4, so that doesn't work. Life expectancy numbers don't work either.

The game has to be counting only 5 players because I'm lower than the rival worst for soldiers and ranked 5th. Rival average has to be dividing by 4 because the land area average ends in 250. So, I'm not sure wtf I'm missing here. I'm sure a Sullla-level player could still figure out everything down to how everybody else is moving their warrior.

So... how am I moving my warrior/quechua?

My worker will move SE to the grass hill next and begin mining it. Completing the farm had a 1 turn impact on the next worker's completion date:

What does this part of the world look like?

It seems pretty artificial. It looks like we're on relatively small islands connected by tundra, presumably long strips of tundra with the barbarians in the middle to threaten everybody.

I'm considering building a settler directly after the worker. It seems crazy, sure, but the only barb I've seen so far is a single wolf. After the worker, I can (A) spend 5 turns building a settler(and chopping 2 forests), then grow to size 2 and beyond or (B) spend the next 5 turns growing to size 2 then 4 more turns after that building the settler. I haven't thought too much about the site yet but the tile 4N of the corn seems promising with food, forests and hammer tiles.