[54 Spoilers] Nothing to see here! Miguelito and Rusten's max score game

[Rusten]

I'm a little sad that I can't help you sim as this start looks like a fun puzzle, especially working around our starting techs, but I'm sure you'll come up with something good.

My main general advice would be to overlap if possible, but we need scouting first. As you mentioned the sheep is also worth sharing if the pig is impossible. Would like to have a 5 or 6 food tile in the first ring for that though.

East Rome -- best Rome 

Edit: I'm having some ideas, but they're all very dependant on food location so we can leave it for now. Teching hunting-ah and scouting pig followed by sheep will provide us with the information we need to better the start.

[Miguelito]

So we're on a hiatus waiting for giraflorens, who is fifth in pick order, to return from Inner Mongolia or whereever he managed to go to be completely off grid.

So... I spent playtime fixing the spreadsheet, including correct overflow mechanics and making it fancy , because that's what we're here for, making a job out of our hobby, right?

Copied the link into the second post. It still is occasionally off by 1 beaker, but the rest is confirmed in game. 

That's my current approach, with size 4, 2 workers, 2 warriors (or 1 of them a second scout), and settler eot 33 (or 2pop-whipped eot 32, making the chop available for other stuff). Second worker gets born eot 29 and so far hasn't been committed to anything, so he may road towards 2nd city, get a 2nd mine down, chop for the cap or prechop for 2nd.

Would you propose a different opening plan to compare against this (general idea, I'll work out the micro)

What else... here are the picks thus far:

Naufragar- ? of Spain
Ruff-Hi - Hannibal of ?
Miguelito - ? of the Byzantine
MrCairo - ? of England
giraflorens - ? of ?

• naufragar probably wants to milk PRO with the neverobsoleting Citadel, which also gives +2 naval XP. The trouble is to get there, with the last leader pick. Conquistadores are irrelevant, in particular for us. If he beelines to Engineering we might have trouble attacking him.
  
• Hannibal seems very nice, but this is Ruff we're talking about, so I expect something quirky to go by him (this is the man who picked Montezuma of NA in PB49, and RtR(!) Churchill of India in 47). I mean, he demonstrated in 49 that he's still a solid player and knows his stuff, but I suspect he just stays true to RB's original love for variant plays?
  
• Byzantine unbeatable
  
• England's bonuses are very nice, and very late. Cairo isn't precisely known for explosive openings, so he needs something to boost him early. I suspect competition for Vicky (currently my 3rd 4th choice). Might also go full MrCairo and pick Darius. Why he would take England first though I have no idea.
  

That's 2 Fishing starters, and a FIN who likely is also looking at some coast (but again, Ruff is hard to decypher)

[Rusten]

If Vicky is your 4th, who's your 3rd? I might even have her 2nd, but it sounds like you're keen to play spiritual and for me it's very close with Justinian and depends a bit on starting micro (see below).

Something I'd want to test it against is a size 3 settler with a non-spiritual civ. If we're spiritual I think we'll aim to whip the Settler, but if not then getting it earlier might be good.

I chose size 3 because I see that we have time for 1 mine, so we would work that and the 2 pastures. The idea here being to get a 2nd mine instead of a chop and change tile from pig to 2nd mine when we settle our 2nd city.

This would be a 1worker opening. I haven't been able to see it for myself, but imagining it I feel it's an improvement on the size 2 settler. But it depends on whether we have a worthwhile overlap city or not.

[Rusten]

It does pain my soul to put that many food-hammers into an IMP settler though. Maybe we should just stick to whipping it after all. If so Justinian gains value.

It's a very awkward start. But I like awkward starts. The way forward is much less obvious and your choice really matters.

[Miguelito]

Current leader ranking is Cyrus > Justinian > Charlemagne > Vicky, and Justin actually is #2 because I still like the idea of SPI, not because I necessarily consider him stronger.

The case for PRO:
- early commerce boost, right from founding the second city, that should remain useful  for the guilds push
- keeps us safer while we go for guilds, when we'd rather not have to invest as much in unit cost
- I feel like with the NoScore mod,  there's additional motivation to keep borders closed with your neighbours (particularly if you don't want them to know when you get those Cataphracts ready) and with PRO you don't depend on OB for economic reasons

Otoh, I'm not sure FIN is really great for our start. Of course we care happy about additional commerce for the guilds beeline, but we have no idea how soon we're going to get coastal cities,  and how many.  The river will of course be awesome with it,  but that might well be just or 3rd or 4th city, and we don't know how long it stretches, and to the south there might be no river at all.

It is possible that I'm overstating PRO's trade route bonus after the nerf, and that after writing (CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like) it's just better to go for external trade,  and have the economic boost from another trait.

I had not considered what you said about foodhammers into the IMP settler,  but that makes a lot of sense. If we build him at size 3, he will not even get much from the mine,  and no chop. Otoh the 2nd worker can be built with food with a clean conscience. Maybe something to consider if all good IMP leaders are taken though.

Do you think it's better to whip the first settler, put overflow in the next one or a worker,  grow,  then finish the worker/ settler,  or rather build the settler at size 4, then immediately after whip a settler or worker? ofc also depends on with or without SPI.

[Charriu]

It is possible that I'm overstating PRO's trade route bonus after the nerf, and that after writing (CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like) it's just better to go for external trade,  and have the economic boost from another trait.

Just wanted to know what exactly you mean here, specifically the stuff in parenthesis "(CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like)". What RtR change?

[Rusten]

With IMP I think we should whip the settler and then immediately chop out a second one with the 2 workers. I had a similar start to this in PB38 because I went religion first with Cyrus of Arabia. I didn't get my second city until turn 33 or so I think, but I got the 3rd, 4th and 5th etc very fast.

In theory we could even give away both the pig and sheep and have our capital make a 3rd settler working the 2 mines. That's still 12hpt with IMP bonus and no food "wasted". But this option depends a lot on scouting. The other two cities would need independent food, although it could easily be in the 2nd ring.

That (pb38) start had more forests, but we still have a few.

[Cornflakes]

It is possible that I'm overstating PRO's trade route bonus after the nerf, and that after writing (CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like) it's just better to go for external trade,  and have the economic boost from another trait.

Just wanted to know what exactly you mean here, specifically the stuff in parenthesis "(CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like)". What RtR change?

RtR moved OB to Alphabet, which I like as well.

[Charriu]

It is possible that I'm overstating PRO's trade route bonus after the nerf, and that after writing (CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like) it's just better to go for external trade,  and have the economic boost from another trait.

Just wanted to know what exactly you mean here, specifically the stuff in parenthesis "(CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like)". What RtR change?

After reading it again, I got it. You were talking about the tech Writing.

EDIT: Crossposted with Cornflakes. Thanks.

[Miguelito]

It is possible that I'm overstating PRO's trade route bonus after the nerf, and that after writing (CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like) it's just better to go for external trade,  and have the economic boost from another trait.

Just wanted to know what exactly you mean here, specifically the stuff in parenthesis "(CtH has OBs back there,  this is one RtR change that I really like)". What RtR change?

I mean moving OBs over to Alpha. Makes that a real choice vs Maths, and takes it away from Writing,  which everybody has to go through anyways.
Also encourages messing around in the lower part of the tree early instead of the inevitable Currency beeline.

I'll have a look at pb38 and see what I can take away from that. 
But yeah, before the scout starts uncovering tiles all the 2nd and 3rd city discussions are a bit of freewheeling... still almost a week for the game to even start,  what do we do in all that time ?