[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Qgqqqqq]

Wow I had no idea we were that close!
Have you tried simming for a different build in city 2? (Like warrior /1 turn into warrior->granary? I think worker is probably faster, but important to check.
General thoughts: under the assumption that no edits were made, I think its likely that sareln went with the "lusher" settings I proposed, as opposed to just changing the water values.
This can (IMO) can be seen by the relatively non-jungle jungle belt, and the general appearance of lush land.
This means that in general rexing is going to be stronger and we need to focus on that.
On another note: we should start looking at peoples expenditure in hammers vs expansion as we go into the Stonehenge race (for example, look for someone stagnant on one city for a while, as they might be going for it the pb4 parkin way.).
Now that we've (almost!) got circumnav, our scouting goals need to shift to finding other players - not just for contact, but also so that we can start looking at forming natural borders and knowing where we can comfortably backfill
What are the current tech directions? I get the feeling that after pottery we're going mining->BW->Myst (?), but after that we need to consider either an early religion for happy/shrine or up the writing line.
While the expansion should be maintained, we should (strongly) consider going for the Oracle if no religions have fallen after henge. I think we should hold off on that until after ~5 cities though.

[Qgqqqqq]

Civ name is ALT D BTW.

[Cornflakes]

Since I'm planning to 1-turn the Stonehenge we don't loose anything except the henge itself (no turns wasted putting hammers into it) if someone lands it before us. If that is the case then we simply divert the chops into another settler ... following up with a couple impi to keep our neighbors honest

Finding out neighbors was always part of the exlporation plan ... unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, I don't really know which yet) nobody happened to be in the direction that we chose to strike out. We ended up taking the longest path to our closest neighbor 2metra At least he'll be a bit confused about our location for a while.

I tried worker/granary first but it's less efficient because we either grow the new city onto unimproved tiles or run out worker east without roading along the way (wastes 2-3 worker turns) in order to improve the corn. But then if we use the new worker to connect the cities we grow Grand Slam onto unimproved tiles, or if we put down cottages before connecting the cities we lose out on 8 turns or so of the trade routes. I couldn't find a build order that was more efficient.

[Cornflakes]

Found a ton of signs waiting in game! The results of our scouting mean out maps have proven the world to be round (won't register "officially" until next turn though). Also we found another hut with the warrior. With the warrior we can pop barbs, but that body of water in the way means it will be quite some time before we could get the scout in to pop it. BTW, that body of water looks like a perfect natural border with 2metra! (although it's closer to him than us )



Founded Doughnut this turn! (Doughnut: A spare tire for a car ... or a small fried cake of sweetened dough). Beat our IMP friend Comm/BRick to the first city, although they'll probably whip out a settler as soon as BW comes in. Worker #2 in 5T from Grand Slam, and #3 in 9T from Doughnut.

Demos T30 ... and top 5 unchanged

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah sorry.
Feel free to delete them - I took pics which I intended to post, but my computer crashed

I've got to say, its really impressive how fast we picked up circumnavigation - and at virtually no cost!
'Course we got lucky by missing the barbs for so long, but still

We should start considering where we want city #3 now.
I'm actually leaning towards near the fish (the one in the pic above) as it can share the corn and doesn't push the boundaries of the civ too much, and it can work the corn (->whip aWB ) while the sites to our NE would have bad tiles early on..

My comments about scouting et al were just general musings, not directed at you

[Qgqqqqq]

Dotmapping: After placing all these signs I realised how bad they are as a way to communicate, so heres a short post on the whole thing.

Basically this is a general idea at a city in this region to work cottages at the capital. Obviously it depends on what food is available in the fog.



More general composite of the region. The South-East city fulfills the same roll as the south-west one, and once again depends on what is in the fog.
NEWCITY is doughnut, planted last turn.



The fish city can go either way, and the one to the west is my current proposal for city 3.



This area is much harder to dotmap, because there are no food resources within two tiles of our borders, making it practically impossible for us to plant a city working one of the tiles pre-improved, while also haveing food of its own.
To the east is a city either on the hill (shares corn/cow, doesn't use up a riverside tile) or on the riverside plains (can work the corn, but shares no tiles and has no food pre-border pop). I think this should wait until we've settled the row to its west.
I've laid out two configurations for the row to the west, the second primarily based around the presence of water food at the top. As I type this I realise there is a third option, a uber-city 1SE of the pigs, which could very well be our NE city (12 food surplus pre-biology). Thats a very strong city (though again not very good for our third as three tiles from our culture), but prevents the area being split up more.
The row to the very west is a city chokepoint (the north one shares the pig, the other claims more tiles in the fog).

Theres another pair to the very west which is just idle doodling of a canal set-up.

What do you think?


Random thought: we have so far met our opponents in order of my previewing them.
Might not do Azza next eh?
(+conveniant excuse not to writeup analysis)

[Viqsi]

Random thought: we have so far met our opponents in order of my previewing them.
Might not do Azza next eh?
(+conveniant excuse not to writeup analysis)

PREVIEW EVERYBODY.

I tend to spiral my scouts around my capital before sending them off to die far away from home, so this "let's dotmap the fog" stuff is new and unusual for me. I don't like it.

I have naive guesses as to the viability of the south, but even though I never saw the early maps at that level of detail I think that's still verboten for me.
Unless someone wants to suggest otherwise? All I really got from that was one rival location, and I'm not even sure if I remember that correctly.

[Cornflakes]

Best to remain quiet wrt map Viqsi.

The lakes make it hard to spiral explore, but we have enough map knowledge to make informed decisions about our first close settlements. We can already see the the south is jungle-ish.

If we go for the fish plant east we'll need to go fishing after Mysticism. I'm planning to get another warrior out 7-turns before our next settler completes, and that will walk north and check out the seafood situation along the coast up there so we know what we have to work with and can send out settler accordingly.

[Qgqqqqq]

I think its normally best to "go deep" with the initial explorer, and after that explore for second city (in other words exactly what we ended up doing ).
I agree that having to go fishing would be a bit of a pain, but I'm not sure we have any better options..
Yeah best to be silent viqsi (on that note, any objection to naming the scout ambassador viqsi?).
What do you think about the general focus of the dotmap ?
Were the cities to close together/far apart, didn't have enough good first ring etc?

[Cornflakes]

Things didn't go quite as planned with the hut pop It's just about as bad as you can get ... 0% chance of survival I didn't end turn yet, but I think we'll have to switch to a warrior at Doughnut (can get on in 5 turns, and it will be 7 before he's needed for defense). I'll pop into the sandbox and see what effect this will have