[SPOILERS] Dazed and Whosit walk the line: Darius of Egypt

[Whosit]

Is that 10 default commerce counting that free beaker? I can only assume so.

Also, turn played.



Nothing much new to see here.

[dazedroyalty]

It may be a bit too early to bring it up, but are there any Wonders we may want to shoot for? The only one I could think of even considering early is the Hanging Gardens, since we're likely going to be expanding quite a bit, and we'll (hopefully) be grabbing a relatively early Math (because dazed and I are considering Beelining CoL for Confucianism and Courthouses once our core techs are researched). Of course, that'll be monumental pain if we don't have Stone.

I can't think of any other Wonders that are really worth going for. I do like me some Wonders, but I don't think our strategy would be well served by attempting to build too many. On the other hand, I imagine the Gardens are going to be one of the most desired Wonders. The fact that this is a Mirrorland map means that if we don't find Stone, it's unlikely anyone else has it, right? Or maybe we just didn't find it.

I think discussing wonder goals is a very good plan. Like our micro plan, we need to be flexible, of course. There is one industrious leader in the game so if we don't have stone or marble (which he would also have based on this map), we'd need to plan really carefully. I'd love to land MoM. To do so would require a lot of careful planning and saving chops so we could get it ASAP.

I still haven't gotten into my opponent analysis but (SPOILER ALERT!) I think MH is our biggest competition. Even without being Industrious, I think MH has the strongest chance of winning going into this game. Commodore could be very stiff competition too but his warmongering ways will slow down his wonder whoring.

I don't want to invest in the Mids early, either. I could see the benefit of stonehenge though we'd have to change our micro to make that a priority. Hanging gardens are of course great and I wouldn't argue with them if we can chop them out once we've sufficiently expanded.

New microplan, that is not really good. It should get the 2nd city settled earlier as in your microplan Dazed and cap will be size 4 instead of size 3. It still won't have a trade connection right away, but thats simply because the spot down at the pigs doesn't allow it. If we do find something better in the north it could be possible to get one (mainly via the river and not roads though). Also, 3 warriors in total, so scouting is possible

Sorry for not coming up with something better today guys, but I did bump my head pretty heavily against a doorpost today and I am still feeling sick and to be honest it isn't much fun to do this right now. I'll try the next days before the worker is finished to see if I can refine it.

Serdoa, I hope you feel better quick! Thanks for putting this together. I'm still amazed by your spreadsheet. I'm not clear what you mean but you seem to indicate you don't think this is a good micro plan. Could you clarify?

If you ever want to share the source Excel file, I'd be super curious to see it!

[dazedroyalty]

Is that 10 default commerce counting that free beaker? I can only assume so.

Also, turn played.

Nothing much new to see here.

Yes, that includes the freebie.

Bummer on no new resources. Next turn we should see more!

[Whosit]

Not every turn is a winner in terms of scouting.

But as for Wonders and competition, yeah, there's always at least that one Industrious Civ. I can see the appeal of Stonehenge, but to be honest for this game, I'd rather attempt to focus on expansion, and placing cities so that they have some 1st ring options over going for the Henge. Succeed or fail, it will slow us down, and I think with our Civ and Traits, our best option is to expand, expand, expand, while building cottages behind us. Hence my proposal for Hanging Gardens (with stone, ideally) because that ought to kick in when we have several cities already, providing a nice benefit.

MoM... to be fair, I am never sure about that wonder. Longer Golden ages are nice, yes. Wouldn't its effects be less valuable on Quick? And then we'd also have to have a plan for triggering Golden Ages. It seems like you'd want at least two to make it worth it, but that is a wild guess because I have no math on that. Either way, unless we got the Taj, we'd have to be burning some Great People on that. Which we could do, but....

I hope we can get at least one Priest for a shrine (if we get Confucianism). Basically, I want us to have the option of using Religious civics. We'd have to fill in some of those techs, of course, but still. Heck, Organized Religion would be great if we're gonna be builders, plus we'd get that civic on the cheap.

In summary: I think we should just skip any of the early, early wonders, and focus on getting more cities, look for Stone, and try to come up with a plan for the Hanging Gardens.

[Whosit]

Does anyone have advice or examples of how to format a C&D spreadsheet? I'm putting on together and kind of forgot that my format is very wide. That seems kind of cumbersome (I'm trying to include score, GNP, Prod, Food, etc., while including value, rival best, avg, worst, and rank). Is it even possible to format this in a way that you can record information turn after turn while keeping it all mostly on one screen?

[pindicator]

Does anyone have advice or examples of how to format a C&D spreadsheet? I'm putting on together and kind of forgot that my format is very wide. That seems kind of cumbersome (I'm trying to include score, GNP, Prod, Food, etc., while including value, rival best, avg, worst, and rank). Is it even possible to format this in a way that you can record information turn after turn while keeping it all mostly on one screen?

I break down components into different sheets. It does cause a little redundancy in inputting info but it keeps things organized.

[Whosit]

Hm, yeah, that's a good idea. I'll see how that works out.

[dazedroyalty]

Played another turn. Some interesting map developments. Looks like a large and unusually straight body of water:

[Whosit]

Well, that's not Stone, but it's something. Lots of pigs, though. We obviously can't continue south, so what do you think about swinging up NE, or would you rather follow this coast to see where it goes?

To those not yet in the know, I did just put together a google spreadsheet for C&D purposes. It's a little goofy because I can only collect our score and demos at the beginning of any given turn, not at the end, and two players go after us, but I think we can still work with that. I think everyone settled in place, and that everyone who didn't have Hunting teched that first. Two of our opponents began researching something they have 2 prereqs for (like us, I'd guess AH) while two are researching something they have one for. That is, GNP shot up from 16 to 20 for 3 players (including us) and to 18 for another two. So I don't think anyone is researching Mining? I suppose someone could be going for Pottery already, but I'll have to look at stuff more closely to make a guess at who's doing what.

Anyway, I'd like to swing up around for scouting because I personally put more value on figuring out what we have to work with over making fast contact, but then again, getting a better idea about how this map works might be good.

Edit: AT started with Hunting but got 2000 soldiers like everyone else while teching 1st tier. Only option is Mining. Though that's more expensive, yet he appears to have teched it same turn everyone else finished Hunting. (It's possible some others went Mining First, but that seems silly?) I am by no means an expert at analyzing this data. Your Spymaster is kinda clueless.

[Serdoa]

Thanks guys for your understanding.

Microplan:

I just don't like it. It feels wrong, without me being able to put my finger on it. It probably is more because I play Joao in PBEM48, and with EXP and IMP you are expanding crazily quick. Now without either of them, it feels sooo slow when you just have 3 workers and 2 settlers by T30.

Spoiler for PBEM48:

I had at that point 3 settler and 6 workers

Also missing BW by 1 beaker is kinda pissing me off, but there is no way to get it faster and it doesn't even matter, settler will be in transit when we revolt either way.

C&D

Whosit, is AT going before or after you? If it is before you, than he (and whoever else is before you) had played T4 already when you got the data, while the others had only played T3. Means the two players after you could only have finished Hunting, while the two in front could finish Mining.

As for the shown GNP-values: You should be able to work out who are the guys with 20 by looking at the tie-breaker. If it shows Rank 1 for us in GNP, than those that have 20 as well are both in front of us. If it shows Rank 2, one is in front, one behind. And for Rank 3 it means both are in front.

From the comments I would expect:

AT: Mining -> going now BW (18 GNP)
Comm: Mining -> going now BW (18 GNP)
Nic: Hunting -> going now AH (20 GNP)
MH: Hunting -> going now AH (20 GNP)

At least that would match that everyone got a score increase on the same turn.

Scouting:

This is Mirrorland right? In that case you can either scout in a circle around you or just go on diagonal. Your 4 opponents should be NE, SE, SW, NW from you. Same land, so if you keep going SE you should find one of them + get a view of the NW of your lands (due to the mirroring). I think doing either (circling, diagonal) is fine. Depends a little bit on what you want of course. If you feel the Oracle -> CoL (Monarchy) plan would be worthwhile then getting down there and look around for a good marble-settling spot could make sense. Though I'm not sure if it is not too far away, so that we won't be able to settle it early enough. Settling on it would of course make the timing easier and you'd probably be able to chop the Oracle and nearly 1-turn it (settle, work 2 turns forested GH, 1 turn PH - chop all 3 forests in those 3 turns -> T1: 8h, T2: 16h, T3: 102h). But that still would not be before T40+ I'd expect, so if Bismarck is pushing for it, you'll not stand a chance.

Opponents:

AT: Played once against him and that was on a super-small map with me screwing around. So not much to take away from that game. In general though I feel he is solid. He knows Civ and understands trade-offs within it. He does have some war-experience and certainly learned some tactics, especially about how to surprise someone, how to make split attacks work (or fail with them) etc. Should be taken with caution imo.

Commodore: Good player that simply plays like I did earlier. Means he loves war and doesn't mind setting himself back if he can get a good war in return. Don't give him a reason to be pissed off at us and we should be fine. I'd guess he will find already someone in the BCs with whom he can go to war. That might take with some luck already 2 opponents out of the field.

Nicolae: Also a good player. Probably the best player of all those in the game. Nicolae did play in a game with mackoti, Seven, novice and me and didn't do badly. He didn't keep up, but that was NOT because he was not good enough, but because novice settled up on him and Nicolae responded with an attack. In the early BCs that has to set both parties back. I think he also won one of the Greens-games decisively and has played some FFH-games and be pretty good at it too. He is good at building but doesn't shy away from war. He WILL take opportunistic strikes against us if we let him. If we can cripple him early, we most definitely should. Better would be if he would butt heads with Commodore.

MH: I never played against him and I think he hasn't played for some time, so might be a bit rusty. Not much more I can say here, depsite that he is a kind guy from what I remember and I think he should be the one we could get along with best. Not that he can't war, I think he can, but I don't think he wants to. More a builder at heart.