[SPOILER] Willem II of England

[Gaspar]

Love your paint skills, Gaspar!

I agree with you, the second option is very good. Green dot has 2 food resources and Ivory for extra happy. Let's aim for that and reshuffle the rest around it.

Are there other unforested hills around for Iron?

Agri is next, right? Let's stick to the 2 workers first plan and chop like crazy!

PS: Want to partner up for PB4?

If those are paint skills, I'd hate to see a lack of them.

The copper hill only looks unforested, its actually forested as well, the UI does some odd things when normally unforested resources come up unforested. As far as I can tell, there are no unforested tiles outside of the Gems, Gold and Corn from Bergkamp and Oasis/Ice tiles. I would be shocked if iron/horses weren't in the area to the west of Bergkamp between the capital and the pigs/cows area. Regardless, I agree on the reshuffle and think Green Dot should get the first settler.

As for tech, barring something weird coming up I'd say Agriculture -> Wheel -> Hunting -> AH should be the next 4 techs, in that order, and whomever gets the save next should set research to Agriculture, which will take 4 turns. The worker completes in 2 turns, at which time we go to complete a 2nd worker, 1st worker set to chop the 2 grassland forests NW and WNW of the city center tile. After worker, probably a pair of warrior builds while the city grows and the workers improve the corn, gold and gems, followed by a settler for green dot. The warrior will obviously have to be moved up in priority if we see another teams unit anytime soon. Less noteworthy is that Feyenoord 1 will uncover new ground next turn. I'm inclined to continue moving him NE until we see a reason to move him in a different direction, but I don't suppose it matters all that much. Scouting of any sort will definitely be a challenge until we can get a woody II unit. The settings page doesn't indicate barbs being off, so I don't see any reason we shouldn't soon start stumbling upon animals, though I confess I've only played a few games on quick, so I'm less certain of when they start to appear. Regardless, any offensive action we can take against one to improve our XP gain rate would be stellar.

As far as PB4, I'm enjoying our partnership here, so why not?

[Nakor]

I think horsies will be there as well, but it will take some time to see them.
Scouting is indeed very slow with all those forests... I wonder if everyone has the same starts.

Agree with chop-chop-mine-mine-farm for our workers.
We might chop out that first settler instead of slaving, that requires some micro, but it will help in the long run. We then can chop a third worker.

Research looks good as well, but we want to go pottery next to get our trait working quicker...

Love to partner you in PB4, there's a deal then!

[Nakor]

Got there first!
I was in the middle of placing some signs when I hit "enter", so the work isn't done yet.

Feyenoord 1 discovered more forest!
BW in, onto Agri (4t).
Didn't swap to slavery since we'd get the worker 1t later. I suggest we swap civics AFTER the first settler is done. We won't whip before and the settler will be there 1t earlier.

Looking at the scores, 4 teams went BW first.

Screenshots next turn, when I don't hit enter prematurely...

[Selrahc]

Screenshots next turn, when I don't hit enter prematurely...

You can take screenshots after the turn is over.

[Nakor]

Thanks, Selrahc, I'll take a look at that next time I'll be playing the turn.

[Gaspar]

Got there first!
I was in the middle of placing some signs when I hit "enter", so the work isn't done yet.

Feyenoord 1 discovered more forest!
BW in, onto Agri (4t).
Didn't swap to slavery since we'd get the worker 1t later. I suggest we swap civics AFTER the first settler is done. We won't whip before and the settler will be there 1t earlier.

Looking at the scores, 4 teams went BW first.

Screenshots next turn, when I don't hit enter prematurely...

Took a quick look at the save, didn't play anything just in case I did something different than you and learned something you didn't. What I do want to point out is that we're the only Civ that went BW first. A quick look at the demographics shows we're number 1 in soldier points with 12000, while the rival best is 6000. I'm not much of one for C&D, but I know a tech like BW awards soldier points, and we were on 4000 before. The 6000 is for a Civ that starts with The Wheel I believe. So it looks to me that everyone who got the score increase researched Agriculture first, which jibes, since a few teams got the score increase before us. Also, we went from first in GNP at 23 to 21 in a 3-way tie. Which would make sense as we were the only Civ whose first tech was one with a pre-req.

Given that everyone else went Agriculture first, it remains to be seen if our play was right. I like the idea of chopping the 2nd worker with the 1st worker and then going on an improving spree. I don't know that 4F2H is so much stronger than 3F3C that we're losing anything by being able to chop right away. Time will tell, but I feel pretty decent about our choice.

I wonder what the warrior saw... I've been thinking about Ruff's other map and his comments about it and I wonder if this exposed area might be the centre of an island, and each Civ is on a similar island which can be traversed by galley. If that's the case, might be worth holding off on a final dotmap until we see where the coast is exactly - we'll want to get galley's out quickly for contact and research bonuses, not to mention trade routes.

Last but not least, did we ever make a rule for contact? I much prefer the "only diplo with Civ's you've actually met" rule, but I don't think we explicitly stated it. I suppose I should throw this question in the player thread.

Anyway, food for thought!

[Gaspar]

So a couple interesting things this turn. First, we have water:



Its a fresh water lake, which means either my island speculation is totally wrong, or its a bigger island than what we've seen so far. It can't be a large inland sea though, as that would be saltwater, unless Fantasy Realm maps mean that even those rudimentary Civ rules are not followed. If a lurker knows whether the (10?) tile of water for saltwater rule can be broken on FR scripts, please let us know, otherwise I'll WB it at a future date when I have more time.

Secondly, it appears one of the non-Financial civ's also went BW first, could be either Kyan or Whosit, or even both, since they both start Mining and were both waiting for a tech two turns ago but have one now. I base this off the fact that a rival has tied us on soldier points:



I'll run up new thoughts when I've formulated them. In the meantime, worker completes next turn, I suspect exploration should continue towards giving us a better view of that lake. On that note, if its a border area, we should prioritize getting a settler there above some of the local sites, since the coastal area leverages our trait nicely, especially with freshwater clams.

[Nakor]

If there are more nice resources around that clam site, we might go there rather sooner then later, but one clams just isn't going to work now since maintenance will be a bit high...

So, chopping another worker next turn? We could try to chop a settler at size 2 before growing bigger. It's what Spullla did in PB2 and worked pretty good. Then again, they had fast workers...

[Gaspar]

If there are more nice resources around that clam site, we might go there rather sooner then later, but one clams just isn't going to work now since maintenance will be a bit high...

Well, each lake tile is 2F3C for us, so even if the maintenance is a little high, its not going to have to grow very big to pay for itself and then some. Obviously, I'd like to see more of what's in the fog before I make any commitment, but given that its going to take us much longer to get cottages going here than on a normal map (have to always chop the forest first, all cottages start at 1C since there are no rivers) a city site that's generating 3C per tile right after settling holds a lot of appeal. Clearly green dot still needs to be the first city site, but that lake holds a lot of value for us if its sufficiently large.

So, chopping another worker next turn? We could try to chop a settler at size 2 before growing bigger. It's what Spullla did in PB2 and worked pretty good. Then again, they had fast workers...

I like the idea of a quick first settler. We should leverage these forests as early as possible, since there are so many of them. I think 2nd worker, warrior, warrior, Settler, 3rd worker makes a lot of sense. Additionally, if we're building a settler, we could work the gold tile instead of the oasis to go alongside the corn and pick up a significant bonus to research. That might be worth delaying growth, especially since it will take much longer to improve our lands...

...and since you mentioned it, allow me one last whinge about the map. While I'm enjoying the strategic possibilities of this map, the enormous advantage of fast workers on this map is ridiculous. I'm all for caveat emptor with Civ/Leader choice - if you take a chance on say, Portugal or the Netherlands and you don't get Coast or Rivers, well, you gambled and lost. But that's a different animal. For one, India is no gamble at all. On every map, they present the best UU - good all game, and saving turns on the unit you'll build the most of. On this map, the fast worker saves a turn of productivity on every single flatland tile. That is a tremendous advantage for one Civ that one player just completely lucked into, that no other team can match. By the time we reach turn 100, India will have saved, what, 40-50 worker turns compared to the rest of us? That's either 2-3 workers they don't have to build that the rest of us have to, or more likely, an entire city worth of improved tiles more than the rest of us. It just seems like a decision on the map to give one Civ that kind of advantage. Its exasperated by the fact that Kyan is probably already the strongest player in this PBEM.

I'd say my instinct would be to rush Kyan as soon as we see him, unfortunately 1. Our traits/Civ favor a long game and 2. That entire paragraph above translates to a significant production advantage which greatly disfavors early war against them. Anyway, I still intend to play to win, but if Kyan doesn't win this game, only a catastrophic diplo failure combined with very strong play by one of the other players can explain losing with that kind of advantage. (Notice I'm not going to complain about the fact that he has Expansive Fast workers, since that was a choice he knowingly made - fair play to him.)

Anyway, whinge over, just needed to get it off my chest. But yeah, unless something greatly changes our knowledge of the situation over the next dozen turns or so, I think chopping a settler at size 2 sounds like an excellent plan. Gotta leverage the map as best we can!

[Gaspar]

On that last point, since I'm up late, it might be fun to plan to try to turn the tables on Lady Luck. Since luck smiled upon Peter of India in this game in giving them a map full of forested tiles, would it be so bad if luck sneered at Peter of India by making him the victim of a dogpile? Yes, I'm suggesting we start working diplomacy right from minute one to get all the other Civ's in the game against them.

Why be so cruel? Well, first off, its no guarantee of success, as most of the dogpiles in RB MP history have failed. Second off, while I dislike the "This guy's a better player" rationale for a dogpile, I've never really seen the "This guy has a horseshoe up his butt, let's extract it for him" dogpile. Additionally, given our traits, we're best served by letting others do the fighting for us while we tech peacefully away, which a dogpile is great for. And last but not least, I like the idea of giving an objective to our diplomacy. Should be great fun for the lurkers at least.

Anyway, I have nothing against Kyan or Refsteel personally, just think it might be fun, and they had the misfortune of being extremely fortunate with the map. Well, its just talk right now anyway, but I'd be interested to hear your opinion, Nakor, since you've been a part of this sort of thing before.