[no players] 47, betting on 7; the lurker thread.

[Krill]

I voted before I saw the granary. I'd change my vote to novice. That granary is frigging huge. It's basically doubled their output. Serdoa should be able to keep up in cities and pop but isn't FIN, and this is with the OP FIN. Serdoa is going to crash his economy so hard the Arabian treasury couldn't balance the books.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Well, Novice's weakness has always been reading the metagame, I could see someone exploiting an advantage and punishing him. Somehow. Though not for a long time, considering map sizes.

[Krill]

Did anyone posted on the point of the sheep mine, as opposed to the orthodox choice of the pasture?

[Commodore]

Did anyone posted on the point of the sheep mine, as opposed to the orthodox choice of the pasture?

Well, Serdoa did, and for his Exp/Imp self it makes the most sense, being 5/6 hammers.

[Krill]

Dunno, you still get more hammers through slavery and the cheap granary with EXP. I'm more interested in someone going through and figuring out the benefit to not researching AH early when rushing to BW, or getting earlier pottery (or on a different map a GLH rush). That tech variable to me seems like the largest variable in the decision.

[pling]

I'm a little amused how quickly people seem to've forgotten that they asked for a map that was "balanced but not mirrored"

[Commodore]

I'm a little amused how quickly people seem to've forgotten that they asked for a map that was "balanced but not mirrored"

Right. It's a bit of a unicorn hunt, but the way I did it was to mirror starts and then gradually change things to less and less similarity as you go north and south.

[Commodore]

The diagonal pathway to the southwest almost certainly leads to the neighbour two positions to our west, and we'll have a similar northeastern pathway leading to the neighbour two positions to our east. So we'll actually share a border with all our opponents eventually. Neat map layout.

Half-assed illustration of the five spheres of influence:


The map is 32 tiles tall, so those resources we see in the southwest are still closer to us (14 tiles distance to the marble) than to our rival (18 tiles distance).

We need a *golfclap* smiley.

[Ichabod]

...and the 'downfall' its starting.

Mackoti's writing is too stylish...

[pindicator]

With the Lay of Lewwyn reporting at RB has a new bar to meet.