RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

*cough* someone's trying to win the post counter unofficial competition *cough* :neenernee

LoL. I don't know what's wrong, if it's the forum, or my internet connection. But I am getting a database connection error when I try to send a PM. I tried messaging Griselda and asking her to remove my multiple posts! The bug that caused me to make the same post 5 times in a row was really weird. It kept saying that the forum wouldn't allow a new post within 120 seconds, but the first post wasn't actually showing up as posted. And it kept doing that for 10 minutes. So I guess there was some problem on my end or with the database, which caused the submit query to be sent, but wasn't fully processing it...but eventually it sorted itself out, and displayed my post 5 times. Anyways, this post is clearly just a +1 for my post count, so go me!

[Cyneheard]

The same thing happened to me in the MOO forum, but I only double-posted. I wonder what happened.

[Sullla]

Easy enough to delete all those posts. Done and done.

Speaker, I renamed our warrior to Chamberlain, sticking with the theme of our capital. Do we plan on going N or NE next turn? I think we might as well go NE, since there's a hill tile NE-NE which will reveal most of the tiles up there. But we can alternately go N-NE as well, since that's also a hill tile.

The land up there looks great! I just worry that all of the land is this insanely fertile, because it's unlikely we're the only ones getting these food resources. Still, food bonuses + grassland tiles probably benefits us more than anyone as a Phi and Fin civ! If we can get one more food bonus at the deer/cows location, we'd have the potential for a dynamite Great Person/drafting farm.

Only change in the Demographics was the first team popping their capital's borders, so we now know that the athlete's team (Willem, Fin/Cre) has 15 land and 6 water tiles in the starting radius. Definitely a coastal start. In about 3 more turns teams will start to finish research (lots of teams on Fishing is my guess) and their first builds, and then things will get more interesting.

[Speaker]

The same thing happened to me in the MOO forum, but I only double-posted. I wonder what happened.

You probably didn't get as frustrated as me and keep trying to make your post.

I'd say NE-NE with the warrior, and then we really need to swing him back around down south. We won't be using the land much further north for quite a while, and I'd rather explore the land closer to our capital.

[Speaker]

Finished our turn and moved the warrior NE. Nothing interesting exposed. Latest demographics image in the folder.

[Speaker]

Warrior moved NE again, and revealed a fish on the coast and some beautiful fertile land to the southeast.



I ended our turn. The warrior should start moving back toward the SE now. The borders of our capital pop next turn, so we'll get to see some more land. Cross your fingers for corn/pigs, happiness, and more rivers!

I will be out of town until tomorrow night, so can you hold down the fort until then Sullla?

[Sullla]

No problem, Speaker. I'll be around and will keep an eye on the game. We'll move the warrior SE next turn and start circling the capital.

Some very minor info to pass on from the Demographics screen. There's still been no score changes as yet, but one of the teams has built a warrior, which means that they had to be working a 0/3/0 forested plains hill tile for the first five turns. This is about as bad of an opening as you can do, sitting around not growing at the start merely to produce a warrior... I guess they really wanted that warrior! While it's impossible to peg exactly which team did this, the logical guess would be one of the teams that started with a scout (Jowy/Yaz, DMOC, or Mortius). If we see an early warrior from any of these teams, that would clear it up.

I was thinking about which map script this could be, and my best guess at the moment is the Donut script. There's some very good evidence to suggest this:

- All civs always start on the coast on Donut.
- The circular curve of the coastline that we've explored thus far.
- Easy to balance map script, spacing everyone out equally around the edge.

However, there are three problems with this assumption:

- Deer resources don't spawn naturally on Donut, so the ones we've seen would have to have been edited in. Still possible, of course.
- The Donut script has no offshore islands, and it looks like there's one up to our northwest.
- The overall size of the map. By doing the reverse math from the F8 screen, we can see that our 8 tiles are 0.48% of the total land area, which gets us 1667 total land tiles. But a Standard-size Donut map has only 1500 land tiles, so there would need to have been some extra land edited into this game.

Nevertheless, points #2 and #3 above could go together and resolve the situation, if the map team decided to stick some offshore islands around the Donut and get extra land area that way. For the moment, until we get some better information, I think we should cautiously proceed with the assumption that this is a Donut map, likely with the "Standard" center (no peaks, no ocean, etc.) Assuming that's the case, the other teams will be roughly 12-15 tiles away from us around the edge of the map.

My best guess is that we'll see a whole bunch of teams get a score increase next turn from finishing research on Fishing tech. Let's see how good my prediction skills are!

[Speaker]

A few random thoughts from the road. I am working this weekend.

I did notice that someone's soldier number had increased. They could have planted on a two-hammer tile (Ivory?) and worked a 1f 2h tile, to get the warrior in 5 turns. I agree with you that it is a ridiculous opening though, either way!

It's probably a bit too early to figure out what sort of map it is. They may have used something like the Full of Resources mod to customize some script (like you did in PB1), which could make the script barely resemble its default setting. We'll figure it out as we get more scouting done. If it is Donut, however, we could send a workboat in each direction to make contact with everyone, to cheapen our tech cost.

[Sullla]

Alright, we finally ticked over to a new turn. (LiPing really needs to play two turns in a row when she's the last one to log in; we waited an extra 11 hours last night because of this.) I moved the warrior SE and we didn't see much there, but our capital's borders expanded:



Revealed another spices resource just out of view. Too bad we didn't found the capital one tile south! Ah well. I have sketched in two possible early city locations, the red one looking particularly nice with its triple food resources. Could be a good Great Person farm/draft camp for us. We still need more information on the east and south before we can start evaluating potential city locations.

I think it's pretty obvious that the warrior moves SE again next turn, onto the forested hill.

As far as the Demographics go, four different teams finished researching a tech this turn, just as I predicted. (OK, maybe it's not all that impressive, but I did say it would happen!) athlete, Mortius, and Kodii/Zeviz all finished one of the game's cheapest techs, and it seems fairly obvious from their coastal starts that they all just finished Fishing.

I would think the same thing for the last team with the score increase (Dantski), however we can tell from the Soldier Count number that Dantski also received a power boost from 8k to 10k points. (This is clear because Dantski is the "Rival Best.") Since Dantski also got a score boost this turn, we have two different options: either their team researched Hunting, or the team researched Fishing and built a warrior. Because Dantski started with a warrior already, and 6 turns of production don't work out evenly across 15 shields, I believe that Dantski chose to research Hunting tech first, likely going en route to Animal Husbandry. Still no population increases by anyone yet (we should see the first ones in about 2 more turns, if anyone is working a 3 food tile and not building a worker).

Excel file has been uploaded again if anyone wants to take a look.

[Speaker]

If anyone is interested in reading some thoughts on CIV from a multiplayer perspective, this blog by Jobe of the PPP clan is excellent. This guide by Gogf, formerly of the RaY clan, is old, but still really good as well.