[SPOILERS] Oxy and suttree save the day, again!

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Nothing on my long posts about our starting position?

Parkin became kind of notorious in pb4 and 7 for holding the turn until he was last to play and then switching around production and research to obstruct what he was actually doing. He also did some timer manipulation to snatch the first half of the timer and clinch the victory in pb4.

[HBHR]

About the starting position...
- First, i only hope that the other team have not so many grassland river tiles in BFC, because probably i'll be several FIN leaders in play, if this is so, we fall behind in tech very soon
- Good start, but not great, even with irrigated wheat. ¿island? tiles will be useless for a while, and coastal tiles are good, but not great
- SP looks like good hammer city, perhaps with Moai Statues, but only if SIP, 1N is good settle place, but then we loose river buildings (levee, hydro plant, The Three Gorges Dam )
- More about settling in 1N: the three white dot tiles (refer to Oxy excelent picture) are forrest for sure, and hopefully grassland, so settling on 1N make sense, but then we can't to work 3+1 sheep tile on start, ¿slowing? the worker.
continue...

[HBHR]

Nothing on my long posts about our starting position?

I'm in this, but, i'm only learning english, so, i'm still a little slow

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Nah, don't worry about it, my Spanish is significantly worse

As for your points:

-All tiles in the fog can be changed by Plako. In my experience, the fogged tiles will end up looking more or less the same, but we shouldn't read too much into fog gazing.
-I really don't think we should consider the river buildings when deciding where to settle. Levee will add a measly 3 hammers and I would be very surprised if this game lasted until the hydro plant.
-If we do pick Pacal, we'll want to work the 0/3/0 forested plains hill for the EXP bonus, not the 3/0/1 sheep, so settling 1N doesn't change anything
-Settling 1N actually makes the micro a little smoother because the worker will come out before animal husbandry research so we want to improve the wheat first

[HBHR]

Nah, don't worry about it, my Spanish is significantly worse

As for your points:

-All tiles in the fog can be changed by Plako. In my experience, the fogged tiles will end up looking more or less the same, but we shouldn't read too much into fog gazing.
-I really don't think we should consider the river buildings when deciding where to settle. Levee will add a measly 3 hammers and I would be very surprised if this game lasted until the hydro plant.
-If we do pick Pacal, we'll want to work the 0/3/0 forested plains hill for the EXP bonus, not the 3/0/1 sheep, so settling 1N doesn't change anything
-Settling 1N actually makes the micro a little smoother because the worker will come out before animal husbandry research so we want to improve the wheat first

Oh, yes, you are right, the EXP bonus on workers only apply to hammers, no food
The scout move that you suggest sound good
Agriculture + Wheel still being the best option, but seeing that SP, Agriculture + fisihing is not bad
The map looks like "lakes map" or something like this
what tech route do you suggest?
Pacal still being a good choice

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I'm not sure how to play this start yet, optimizing a micro plan is challenging when you don't know what your BFC will look like. That being said, with high tech costs, commerce is the greatest limitation on this start. The sheep is an awesome 5/0/3 tile when improved, so I think putting research into AH first is a valid choice. Fishing is another key tech, with the fish also being 5/0/3. Agriculture/Mining are good techs for this start, with the grassland hills and forests, we could go AH->BW->Fishing->Wheel->Pottery. Delays pottery for a while, but with so few river tiles, it won't be a huge deal. We can get a fast settler out by only going for a single worker opening and then use the EXP bonus to whip one out a higher size. Only civ with those techs is China, who may fall to us, though they are lacking in an early UU.

Another option is Agriculture/Fishing, this has the advantage of being pretty commerce heavy. We start with mining go worker first and improve the wheat. Then we grow to size 3 on a work boat putting down a grassland mine to work a long with the wheat for +4 fpt and 5hpt. Then we research AH to improve the sheep and grow to size 4 working the wheat, fish, sheep and grassland mine. That's 5hpt and +10 fpt at size 4, or 15 food hammers per turn. That's a respectable 7 turn settler build with some overflow, and it gets a decent amount of commerce as well. A second city could easily be settled to split off one of the food resources, getting it up to a fast start. For civs with agriculture/fishing, I think Native America best fits our preferences. Dog Soldiers straight up beat axes in the open, though not by as much as you may think thanks to the low base strength. When on defensive terrain, it gets a lot more iffy so dogs are a very defensive early UU, which does work for us. The correct counter to them is Shock HA, because chariots can be easily countered with just one spear in the stack, but if all we want to do is deter an axe rush on turn 60, dogs can be useful. Totem poles are awful, but so are most UBs.

Agriculture+Wheel is decent here, but not as good as it usually is. The problem is, there are too many worker techs we need to pick up before pottery, so we don't even get pottery a lot sooner than other starting combinations would. With 2 food resources that produce 3 commerce and scant riverside tiles, the correct solution to early game(pre turn 50) research is not to lay down FIN cottages, it's to improve the food resources. If we had an Agri/Wheel civ the research path would probably look something like AH->Mining->BW->Fishing->Pottery.

Fishing+Mining isn't as good as I thought originally. With so few forests, BW isn't the best tech here and the wet wheat and riverside sheep are awesome tiles that we want to improve ASAP. In fact, I think for the Agri+Fishing civ we should probably go AH before mining anyway.

So I think the two civs that work with FIN/EXP+our start are Native America and China, what are your thoughts?

[Commodore]

A bit Dutch-shy?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

The only kind of game where I would willingly pick the Dutch is something like PBEM17, where the map has a lot of water, full diplo and very builder heavy with early warfare impractical. Anything else, and it's more or less a blank civ (has there ever been a pitboss where the winner wasn't decided before steam power?)

[Oxyphenbutazone]

HBHR, I think we should post in the rule thread to get this game rolling, do you mind if I go ahead and post there agreeing with all the um agreed upon rules?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, I'm sold on Agriculture/Fishing. The micro is totally perfect!

-the workboat comes out just as we grow to size 3, mining comes in just as we finish animal husbandry and bronze working comes in just as we finish a mine!

5 pop, 2 cities, 18 cpt, 21 food, 9 hammers on turn 34!




No warrior build, but full diplo and our settler would never leave our borders so it can't be eaten by an animal. Capital can 2-turn a warrior if need be, so we'll never be in any danger

2 other things I forgot to mention about dog soldiers

-They don't need early barracks to be useful because they utilize their large innate vs. melee bonus and not their base strength so C1 isn't as useful(Regular C1 Axe vs. Regular axe is 70% in favor of the C1 Axe)
-They are resourceless, shouldn't matter much considering the map will be balanced, but it means we don't have to settle for copper very early on