[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Zed-F]

I put together a sandbox where I was able to get from this position to completing GLH on EOT47 with 5 cities, 4 workers, and about to whip a settler out of the capital. Admittedly this was pure farmer gambit with very little thought to defense. However, it's perhaps possible to optimize a bit more for different needs.

Tech order after pottery was fishing->masonry->animal husbandry->mysticism->polytheism->Monotheism
Capital built (after settler for green) a work boat & granary -> start trading post -> switch to settler & whip at 5 -> finish trading post -> GLH (-> settler)
Kendall grew on granary, whipped a worker at size 4, regrew on granary, whipped another worker at size 4 and finished granary
Green did the same, whipping a worker on size 4. City suffered a bit from lack of good tiles to grow on but I was stuck on 2 workers for quite some time and just finished the second two near T48.
Yellow and then a city on the southern silk were founded. I might have tried to settle red instead of the silk city but I didn't really have the workers to do it, so silk got founded first. I did chop one forest on the plains hill next to Kendall into GLH and mined there, but arguably it might have been better to chop the stone instead and quarry it.

I don't think we'll use exactly this plan as it almost certainly needs some adjustment, but it should give a general idea of what's possible.

[scooter]

Not only am I first to 3 cities, but I've gotten there before Yuris or Cairo built their second cities.





Borrow the Deer for a couple turns, then we'll do some more tile shuffling.





Kendall and Roman are building what I'm hoping is one of the best wonders in the game - circumnavigation. B&S is often circumnavigable pre-Astro, and I'm hopeful it's more likely here given that I assume the map was chosen around pre-Astro access given that we're on multiple land masses. Given that every time I look across the water in any direction I see land, and I know the total land tile count is much higher than this continent would suggest, it seems like there's a lot of islands out there. So I'm going to invest 60h into locking it down - sending one in each direction. The worst case scenario is I scout out a bunch of islands for IC routes and have WBs ready for future seafood. The best case is 4-move Galleys.





Bureaucracy is good.

[scooter]

I put together a sandbox where I was able to get from this position to completing GLH on EOT47 with 5 cities, 4 workers, and about to whip a settler out of the capital. Admittedly this was pure farmer gambit with very little thought to defense. However, it's perhaps possible to optimize a bit more for different needs.

Tech order after pottery was fishing->masonry->animal husbandry->mysticism->polytheism->Monotheism
Capital built (after settler for green) a work boat & granary -> start trading post -> switch to settler & whip at 5 -> finish trading post -> GLH (-> settler)
Kendall grew on granary, whipped a worker at size 4, regrew on granary, whipped another worker at size 4 and finished granary
Green did the same, whipping a worker on size 4. City suffered a bit from lack of good tiles to grow on but I was stuck on 2 workers for quite some time and just finished the second two near T48.
Yellow and then a city on the southern silk were founded. I might have tried to settle red instead of the silk city but I didn't really have the workers to do it, so silk got founded first. I did chop one forest on the plains hill next to Kendall into GLH and mined there, but arguably it might have been better to chop the stone instead and quarry it.

I don't think we'll use exactly this plan as it almost certainly needs some adjustment, but it should give a general idea of what's possible.

I haven't simmed it in huge detail, but I was looking at something vaguely resembling this. I figured 5 cities and somewhere in the mid-to-late-40s would be really good. Oxy is really the only competition, but it's going to be difficult for him to do it much quicker as GLH has no resource doubler, and he has no IND or ORG to speed it up, all the while he has to not die.

[Zed-F]

Why is Cairo having such a slow start I wonder — did he really go Musketeer before settler?

[Cyneheard]

Why is Cairo having such a slow start I wonder — did he really go Musketeer before settler?

As he's on the 3-player landmass, this seems like it was a terrible decision. An all-in rush if he was in our position (especially with 6H being available from T0 with our start, although he gets 6H once borders pop) might work - hitting Yuris with a Musketeer on T23 could've easily gotten a kill and a clean "my continent is my own to do as I will".

[Zed-F]

Anyway, Cairo grew to size 2 first, 1 turn ahead of me. We're the only two size 2 players in the game. This is somewhat weird.




Why? Well, because France does not start with Fishing so no WB first, and he could not possibly have gone worker-first and then grown in this time. Uhhhh, please tell me that's not Musketeer first opening . If so, I guess it's good I haven't met him (yet).

The only other thing I can think of is he grew while teching Fishing, then switched to a hammer config. I'm not tracking demos SUPER closely, but I did notice rival best/worst in hammers changed a few turns ago. So maybe he partial-grew, paused to hammer out WB, then resumed growth on netted Fish. That would get him to size 2 super fast. But it means he's just starting on his worker. With no Expansive to power it, that means he's working Fish/Banana right now which gets him a 6T Worker. I guess that makes sense because that forested banana is such a good tile that this start benefits a ton from getting to size 2 quickly, and the worker has overall less to do than our start.

I checked out this start and it didn't seem like it gives a great result. Maybe if this is accurate, we should be expecting Cairo to be getting a settler out around now. Possibly it's too soon to be jumping on the musketeer-first bandwagon and we should wait a few more turns.

As far as there being a three-player landmass... that's our assumption, and we think it's the most likely case, but we should bear in mind it's not yet confirmed. Perhaps the exploratory workboats we're building will find out in due course.

[scooter]

Anyway, Cairo grew to size 2 first, 1 turn ahead of me. We're the only two size 2 players in the game. This is somewhat weird.




Why? Well, because France does not start with Fishing so no WB first, and he could not possibly have gone worker-first and then grown in this time. Uhhhh, please tell me that's not Musketeer first opening . If so, I guess it's good I haven't met him (yet).

The only other thing I can think of is he grew while teching Fishing, then switched to a hammer config. I'm not tracking demos SUPER closely, but I did notice rival best/worst in hammers changed a few turns ago. So maybe he partial-grew, paused to hammer out WB, then resumed growth on netted Fish. That would get him to size 2 super fast. But it means he's just starting on his worker. With no Expansive to power it, that means he's working Fish/Banana right now which gets him a 6T Worker. I guess that makes sense because that forested banana is such a good tile that this start benefits a ton from getting to size 2 quickly, and the worker has overall less to do than our start.

I checked out this start and it didn't seem like it gives a great result. Maybe if this is accurate, we should be expecting Cairo to be getting a settler out around now. Possibly it's too soon to be jumping on the musketeer-first bandwagon and we should wait a few more turns.

As far as there being a three-player landmass... that's our assumption, and we think it's the most likely case, but we should bear in mind it's not yet confirmed. Perhaps the exploratory workboats we're building will find out in due course.

Yeah, I thought at the time the opening it seemed like he was playing was really odd. I can't imagine it's best, though I get his situation is a little different from mine. Just in general it is an awkward start for France, so maybe the alternatives are worse. Or it's like you said and he really is already building a Musketeer.

I know the total land tile count is much higher than this continent would suggest, it seems like there's a lot of islands out there.

I wanted to expand a little bit on this. I've made this passing comment once or twice because I was eye balling it, but I went and counted this continent to be precise. There are 818 land tiles on this map. That works out to 163.6 per player. That means if the continent Yuris and I are on contains only land tiles that are "ours," I would expect it to contain 327 land tiles. Obviously it would never contain that many as you do expect quite a few islands on B&S, but it's a frame of reference.


I counted all tiles visible, whether by fog-gazing or by looking at Yuris' starting screenshot, and I came up with 164 tiles visible. I can't see the entire land mass yet, but based on the shape in the fog, I'm quite close. Let's be conservative and call it 180 total, though I'm pretty sure it's closer to 170. In other words, if Yuris and I were to split this continent in half peacefully, we could reasonably expect to find a similar amount of land for each of us out there in the fog. This continent contains 40% of the players in the game and 20% of the land. Obviously in practice it's not going to work out so neatly, nevermind the fact that Yuris won't be that interested in a peaceful split for obvious reasons, but it's noteworthy nonetheless and informs why I'm putting a premium on circumnavigation.

[Zed-F]

I think France’s relatively slow start is mostly that they don’t have anything at all that helps expansion in the first 30 turns. They have a lot of good tiles around but struggle to use them. Worker before fishing boat feels a bit more natural but you still aren’t working an improved tile until turn 15 or so. Doing the boat first gets you working an improved tile sooner but delays your second and subsequent ones. The boat first might be marginally better but it’s not by much. Then you have to build a hundred food-hammers with no discounts, which just takes time. Even whips require growing to 6 first for triple or building partially by hand at size 4-5 for double. Everyone else with 2+ cities has Bureau or Imp to give a big discount on settlers.

It mostly comes down to expectations. I expected France to be faster than Byzantium due to better techs and the better start… but the difference isn’t so large as to show up yet. They might pull ahead of Byzantium eventually, but not yet.

[scooter]

I think France’s relatively slow start is mostly that they don’t have anything at all that helps expansion in the first 30 turns. They have a lot of good tiles around but struggle to use them. Worker before fishing boat feels a bit more natural but you still aren’t working an improved tile until turn 15 or so. Doing the boat first gets you working an improved tile sooner but delays your second and subsequent ones. The boat first might be marginally better but it’s not by much. Then you have to build a hundred food-hammers with no discounts, which just takes time. Even whips require growing to 6 first for triple or building partially by hand at size 4-5 for double. Everyone else with 2+ cities has Bureau or Imp to give a big discount on settlers.

It mostly comes down to expectations. I expected France to be faster than Byzantium due to better techs and the better start… but the difference isn’t so large as to show up yet. They might pull ahead of Byzantium eventually, but not yet.

Well, Cairo did settle his city since this post, so no, he didn't go Musketeer first, though it's certainly possible he dumped some hammers into one. Yuris still hasn't, but there is a clear sign that it's about to happen.





I would guess he would settle SE for the Wheat(s)/Fur.





Some more exploration shots. The jungle belt is no joke. I talked earlier about the relatively small amount of land on this continent, but what I didn't mention was how much of it is buried under jungle that will be great eventually, but will be slow moving. Also, placing a city for Pig/Silk is tremendously awkward. Getting Pig first ring puts the city quite far away, and it also takes up one of the few semi-useful land tiles in the whole area in the plains tile in exchange for more desert. Long-term the best spot is 2N of the pigs. It has the most amount of clearly-good tiles and redeems a desert, and it opens up the easiest canal path to the northeast, but boy would that be a slow-starting city that cannot really be settled without immediate culture. It's a puzzle for sure. For now, the eastern cities are more appealing to me.





I don't play Imperialistic often, so I'm rarely worrying about a 50% hammer boost under any circumstances early on. So tile shares like this surprise me sometimes. In this case, I initially had Logan on the Fish which generated 22fh/turn. However, the plains forest hill was in reality worth 5h (just 1 yield less than the Fish on a worker) because the city was on an odd number of base hammers. So I could swap from a 6/0 tile to an 0/3 tile and lose just 1 yield thanks to Bureau and the fact that I'm slow-building a unit that stops growth. Meanwhile,





Losing that 1 yield got me +4 in Kendall or +3 relative to the plains forest hill. This is really all super obvious, but in practice it was a bigger difference than I expected. Of course, the food in Logan can convert just fine via whip, but for sequences of waiting out the whip unhappy, this is a really convenient way to squeak out a quick 3T worker while growing the other two cities.

[Cyneheard]

Sounds like the Pigs/Silk really wants to be a post-Math city where we instachop the Monument and settle 2N.