[SPOILERS] LogicalTautology is Pindicator's DD

[pindicator]

Turn 017

Nailed it



That's a global 8k increase in soldier points, and Commodore just finished his second tech.

[pindicator]

Off topic, but this is probably my favorite post-game analysis article of the Super Bowl:

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/2/2/...left-shark

[pindicator]

Turn 018

Everybody grew a population point this turn, and everybody grew onto a 2f1h tile. Even I did, when my turn ended.

Commodore's scout has thankfully disappeared and not returned over the last 2 turns.

So that's left me to think about how my worker turns are going to look (at least until Bronze Working finishes and the copper that pops in my BFC changes all my plans).



Resulting in:

Some dates to keep in mind:
* Bronze Working finishes end of turn 23
* Settler finishes end of turn 30 with a chop, end of turn 31 without one

The above is just one variation of what we could do, and I'm trying to see if there are any other tiles I'd want roaded/chopped. But the plan that I put in the image is to:
* Plains hill mine finishes end of t21
* Move to the forest SE of the capital and road it, finishes end of t24
* Move S to the forest E of the plains hill and chop it, finishes end of t28
* Move SE-NE to the forest W of the gold mine and road it, finishes end of t31
* Swap civics to slavery on t31 when the settler moves towards city #2
* Settler founds city #2 on turn 32; worker starts farming corn

I'm trying to see if there are any combination of roads and chops that look better than that. Or maybe not chopping at all, and instead road tiles so that the settler can move and found all in 1 turn on t32, saving a forest chop. But we would also commit to not using Slavery in the early game as well. And there's enough of a production shortage that I'm not sure I'd want to give up Slavery.

[pindicator]

Turn 019

flugauto looks like he finished Bronze Working this turn.

Scouting out the lands south of the bay:



And we made a debatable micro decision:



This only works if you want to build a warrior before the first settler, and since I'm looking at roading towards the gold mine before the city is planted I definitely want to have something to protect that worker.

Land points were given out when I ended turn:

• wetbandit: 5
  
• flugauto: 6
  
• yuris125: 6
  
• commodore: 7
  

[pindicator]

yuris125 is...



Zara Yaqob (Creative, Organized)
of Japan (Fishing, The Wheel, Samurai, Pagoda)

Leader Rating:
Civ Rating: hammer
Synergy Rating:


Another boringly solid combination with a slight upside in synergy, the kind of pairing that RtR excels at. That probably sounds worse than I mean it - clearly the best part about RtR is how it makes nearly every combination playable through the trait & civ rebalancing. What I mean is I can't find anything really special at play in this combination, but at the same time I can't really find much fault with it either. Creative is slightly weaker, but is always beneficial for adding flexibility and saving hammers in the early game. (A trait I've chronically undervalued for some time too.) But Zara was seen as a solid leader in BtS and with how little his traits have changed it's hard to penalize him here, although I'm not sure if I were to rank every leader pairing if I would end up with Zara in the top half.

With Japan, the civ has only been slightly improved from base BtS by moving its unique building up from the Industrial era to an Observatory replacement that gives +10% hammers. But most of the improvement for Japan comes in the reworking of the early game techs and worker actions. Japan in BtS was always seen as having a strong unique unit in the samurai; the issue has been the notoriously slow start. I don't know if Japan has been used effectively in RtR yet, so I would say the jury is still out if the changes have made it more competitive.

There is a bit of strategy of rushing for an early Astronomy and building pagodas to leverage the +10% hammers. You could even take the counter-intuitive step of going for a workshop/caste economy and racing down the bottom half of the tree, combined with bulbs to get a fast Astronomy and building pagodas in all your production cities. I'm unclear how much that +10% will actually help over just the normal workshop/caste game and if it's worth bulbing to get. Still, a building that gives +25% beakers and +10% hammers yet only costs 75 hammers shouldn't be underestimated.

Perhaps that's the way to play this combination: play it like a normal game and let the little advantages you accumulate along the way help push you to victory.


Starting Rating:

I wonder if either of our Fishing civs looked at going work-boat-first and working a 2 hammer tile, then using the fish to go for a worker? Now I am curious, so looking at it you'd finish the work boat eot7 with 10 food earned. The worker would then finish eot16, grow to size 2 eot19, farm finishes on t20. First warrior would finish eot21, which is actually faster than my plan, and growth to size 3 happens eot22, which is the same as what I'm doing. And since the warrior is already finished you can start the settler on t23 instead of my t24 since I'm going to finish off the warrior. You gain 9 additional commerce this way (more if you're FIN like flugauto) over worker-first, but you lose out on 5 worker-turns because of the later worker completion. And 9 commerce doesn't quite make up the difference between the cost of Agriculture & Fishing.

Stepping back into reality, yuris probably has the second-worst tech pairing behind only wetbandit. He has to tech Agriculture, Mining & Bronze Working, and he likely will be one of the last people to get those techs.

Recommended Beer Pairing:



Survival Stout from Hopworks Urban Brewing

[pindicator]

Turn 021

Work boat has finished, the mine is completed, and we're getting closer to starting our first settler.



And in the southwest, do you see what I see?



More land points at end of turn: wetbandit gained 9 tiles worth and yuris gained 5.

[pindicator]

Turn 022

Nobody grew this turn, which means I'm the only person who is growing to size 3 before starting their settler. I grew at end of turn.

And if you didn't spot it before, that's Commodore's purple borders I've spotted:



Mental note: Don't forget Sailing just because we're all on the same continent. We have evidence of islands for ICTRs:



If I had to guess I'd say we're on a single landmass in the shape of a 5-pointed star, each of us starting on one of the points.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Like this?

[pindicator]

Ah, to be 12 again...

[pindicator]

Turn 023

I mixed up the land tiles in my update a few turns back: yuris is the one with the most tiles and got 9 tiles worth of points a while back and wetbandit had only 5. Some of us clearly are a little less coastal than others but I'm FIN so I'm quite happy being one of the "more coastal" ones. Also means that outside of the wheat and fish, I doubt we're all that mirrored on our starting BFCs.

Flugauto grew to size 3 last turn, which means I wasn't the only person to grow to size 3. I just managed to do it a turn faster than him.

The big news of the turn came after I hit enter and we got to see where the copper was. It's not in the best spot but it's not all that awkward either. If we think a neighbor is going to get hostile with us in the next 30 turns then it's not in a great spot, but after that we should be okay.



Another reason to like being CRE: that trendy 3rd ring copper gets in your borders 25 turns faster than everyone else.

Here's Commodore's:



End of turn land points:

• flugauto: +7 land tiles worth of points
  
• Commodore: +8 tiles
  
• Me: +5

So if you look at everybody's BFCs you will see:

• wetbandit: 11 land tiles
  
• flugauto: 13 land tiles
  
• yuris: 14 land tiles
  
• commodore: 15 land tiles
  
• me: 11 land tiles