[spoilers] Commodore: Worse than Toku, it's Giggles of Siam!

[Thoth]

So doing some fog-reading...

That pretty much matches my fog gazing, but why the preference for Sheep rather than Pigs? (Wet corn would also be awesome even if it means teching to Ag first).

If we don't have another seafood, we may want to consider skipping Fishing for the time being and grab BW and Wheel. Chop/whip an early settler (2 workers and a warrior first though....) and stake our claim to some land early.

4f/2c is a nice tile, but if we only have the one seafood then it's pretty expensive to develop beakerwise.

Notes:
-Baby, it's cold outside. Probably Antarctic Ocean south, but we could be in the north on a weird landform.
-Definitely not an elephant biome. Ballista-mammoths?

Yeah, looks like we've got tundra close by.

I really hope we have some Ivory. BEs are damned solid units if we can get our hands on them. (WB testing shows the +50% vs mounted and the +25% vs knights stack. And with a cat or two we can get half decent odds on Cavalry)

-Looks like a +5 landfood is either in that clear patch eastward, or a forest deer.
[quote]

Hopefully the clear patch. I'd rather not have to spend beakers on AH out of the gate so that we can improve Deer.


[quote]
-Seafood comes in twos and threes, typically, so actually both fogged tiles might be seafood.

Multiple seafood would be nice. I don't like being reliant on Seafood for early growth due to the hammer cost involved but they make for very nice support tiles.

-Holy rivers, Batman! This is going to be a hardcore cottage capital.

Oh YES!

With HR we should be able to have an uber cap in the late bcs/early ads depending on food supply.

-Furs would be lovely. Think we have a shot at 'em?

Furs and Ivory would make a decent combo (enabled by the same tech (AH) and both boosted by the same building). But given my druthers, I'druther have a pair of metals.

-Given the script normally assigns 3-4 resources to a start, and we see 2/3 of a resource...there's going to be forested something available, I think, unless both clearings have something.

I'm guessing resources on the clears, and forest due to lack of any other resources (IIRC, the start generator spams forests if there aren't many resources)

[Commodore]

Well, if we're being optimistic, maybe that western clearing is silver! We shall have to see. I said sheep because I believe pigs don't spawn at the extreme latitudes, and the snow-dusted firs say we're in the cool lands of sheep, deer, marmosets, and SILVAR. Caution, occasional Bumbles too:


I just want to get in-game. It's annoying being unable to plan anything, but right now we're coding:
IF sheep THEN rejoice
ELSE
IF corn THEN tech Agriculture, rejoice
ELSE
IF deer THEN tech AH, AND grumble IF horses=!present

IF fish THEN tech BW and Fishing
ELSE grumble.

[Thoth]

I'm still working some rough notes on our opponents leaders/civs/starting techs up. But at a quick first pass a couple of things jump out at me: No Philo leaders. Not a one. And only one Org leader. I really like org leaders for water heavy maps as they can turn even the crappiest of coastal sites into a commerce positive site with a 1 pop whip of a lighthouse.

Only two Fin leaders and IIUC, KrillMod only gives the commerce boost to non river land tiles. So no boost to rivers or coast. Still ok if they have a lot of land to work with, but complete junk if they're trying to eek out an economy on coast tiles and whatever crappy land they can find.


We've got some decent early advantages that we'll need to make the best of as we have no mid/late game advantages.

1/2 price grans: 1 post math chop or 1 pop whip or 1 pre math chop + 10h.
Creative border pops: No 1 pop Monument whips or chasing after Stonehenge. If we can bag one, then an early Religion is still nice but we don't *need* one.

Free CG on Archers and LBs. Hilltop cities are going to be expensive to take from us. Not much use in offensive warfare, but it may help to convince an aggressor that there are easier targets elsewhere. And it should let us get away with some aggressive settling (assuming ofc that our little tundra outpost isn't semi-isoloated)

So we have fast early city growth, flexibility in our ICS grid, and we're a pita to dislodge. Forest powered REXing seems to be the order of the day pending things like scouting and actual visibility on our full fat cross.


Random thought:

If we have a 3 food tile in the second ring....Scout first? + BW? Whip the worker at size 2 after finishing the scout at max hammers. I think we get the worker out 1 maybe 2t later but with huts on it might just be worthwhile.

[Thoth]

Well, if we're being optimistic, maybe that western clearing is silver! We shall have to see. I said sheep because I believe pigs don't spawn at the extreme latitudes, and the snow-dusted firs say we're in the cool lands of sheep, deer, marmosets, and SILVAR. Caution, occasional Bumbles too:

lol

Clear grassland silver requires a map makers hand. If we're really, really lucky we might have some tundra silver.

Good point re the sheep and latitude. Much rather have sheep than deer if we can't have bacon. Mutton's tastier than venison.

I just want to get in-game. It's annoying being unable to plan anything, but right now we're coding:
IF sheep THEN rejoice
ELSE
IF corn THEN tech Agriculture, rejoice
ELSE
IF deer THEN tech AH, AND grumble IF horses=!present

IF fish THEN tech BW and Fishing
ELSE grumble.

AMEN.

On the plus side: The folks who are running sanboxes are doing so because they can see most of their fat crosses. So not much lumber.

Hmmm.... we have a *lot* of lumber. Early beeline towards Math? I'm not much of a fan of HG without stone, but with oodles of forests to chop Math is worthwhile in it's own right and it opens up the REXers best friend: Currency.

[Qgqqqqq]

Dont gtnpowder units also get CG1?

[Thoth]

Dont gtnpowder units also get CG1?

Yes they do. But I don't think we can gain much advantage from free CG1 on GP unit.

[Commodore]

I'll just say, in the absence of anything else extremely compelling, Math is going to be our default beeline. Currency is huge, Construction is huge, and if we do have stone, the Hanging Gardens are nice (slightly nicer for us, actually, given the aqueduct is slightly less useless).

Stone makes me think, by the way...one thing that was key in my maintaining relevance in PB5 despite the grinding Hundred Turn's War was the Great Wall->Great Spy play. I'd like to repeat that if at all possible. Given we're not very likely to chase an early religious path, there ought to be a neighbor with a nice 3k EP worth of techs for us to steal very early.

[Brian Shanahan]

Oh! The most important thing! Theme! I've been wanting to do this one for a long time: Generic Suburb Neighborhood Names. It might just be an American thing, but I'm endlessly amused by the bland and inaccurate names in the suburbs. I have a list, but if you, dear lurker, live in one or drive by one I'll add it to the list:
Chase Acres
Hawk's Ridge
Pine Grove
Sandhurst
Willow Brook
The Hills
Oakmont
etc...

Oh, we have them in Ireland too, I especially like Woodview Lawns.

OTOH we sometimes do come up with appropriate but obscure names, like Bengal Terrace in Limerick, which was so named because most of the houses were for former servicemen in the British Raj.

[Mardoc]

Oh! The most important thing! Theme! I've been wanting to do this one for a long time: Generic Suburb Neighborhood Names. It might just be an American thing, but I'm endlessly amused by the bland and inaccurate names in the suburbs. I have a list, but if you, dear lurker, live in one or drive by one I'll add it to the list:

Golden Meadows

[Commodore]

Two good ones, guys, I've added them to the list. I think I'm also going with the whole "makes no sense" aspect of those neighborhood names. Thus, Golden Meadows will be a tundra site, Woodview will be clear-cut...for the capital, I favor "Lakeside Trace"

Does anyone have the relevant code for the hut results here? Popping, say, Bronze Working would be best in life, but I am given to understand that border-popped huts give no techs, and neither do huts popped pre-settling. So, gotcha there. But a scout would be awesome.