[SPOILER] Joao of Inca: Time for WAR - scooter's thread

[scooter]

The Plan: Chariot Rush

[scooter]

Alright, this thread may not be heavily reported due to the fact that I've just signed up for way too many games. For now though, I'll get us started here. Here's the start, which you've probably already seen 3 times:



Um, that's kinda barren. Not that it really matters that much for Joao. I'm mostly disappointed that the capital doesn't have tons of forests. I could sort of maybe see someone moving south for Floodplains + forests, but in this case, it seems imperative to not lose 1-2 turns moving AND lose turns by not settling on a plains hill... Plus I can just settle the south with city #2. So I settled in place:



I didn't feel like thinking up a brand new naming convention, so I'm just going to go with the AA/BB/CC/etc deal. Animal Attack was fairly random, but I think I may try to actually go with an animal theme now that I did that. I don't know, we'll see. Note that Lewwyn did not settle in place. I really don't see a really compelling reason to move (other than the reason I mentioned which isn't that compelling to me) so that seems like a mistake to me. I'm last in the turn order by the way.



Worker first, working the plains forest for the Expansive bonus (another reason not to move, plains hill + forest plains!). This pleases me and makes up for the fact that this capital will suck long-term. I'll probably have to move the capital. Demos:



Whoa, 5 food??? Someone settled 1SW apparently. Either Cyneheard or Nakor. That seems like a mistake to me, but maybe I'm wrong. So to recap:

scooter: settle in place, work plains forest, worker
Lewwyn: moving to who-knows-where
Cyneheard/Nakor: settled 1S, working floodplains
Cyneheard/Nakor: same as me

[scooter]

Well, we re-played the turn and Lewwyn settled in place. Apparently that's what he did the first time, then he changed it, and then realized it's not acceptable to change it so he replayed again to get back to his original movements. Fair enough I suppose, though I certainly would have been ok with him not settling in place.

[scooter]

Alright we're up to T11. The worker finished and immediately started farming the Wheat. What next? I struggled with this a bit. So the options:

1) Worker - This seems silly, as there's not much a worker can do. The only worker tech I really have is Agriculture, so a second worker would just sit around and twiddle thumbs. Growing to size 2 has to be better than that.

2) Settler - I thought long and hard about this. I mean it's Always Peace, why not rush out a settler at size 1? The one major drawback is that with Imperialistic, it's more efficient to be chopping or whipping settlers because the hammer bonus doesn't apply to food. So the other real option is...

3) Quecha - Grow to size 2:



So that's the plan right now. I'll grow quicker than 7T though, because the farm will finish and I'll swap to work the Wheat. I'll probably then combine that with a hammer tile and build a settler (possibly a worker).

[scooter]

Oh, and here's the land I've scouted:



Some nice spots in here... Demos:



Whoever founded 1SE is doing some different stuff it looks like, but everyone seems to be mostly following the same path (I think). Haven't paid close attention to demos though admittedly.

[scooter]

We had some technical difficulties in the "where's the save?" department, but now that the tracker is up and running we should be back to the 2T/day pace we had going for awhile. T14 was played, and the farm was completed on the Wheat:



Demos seem to indicate that I'm definitely not the only one following this fairly obvious path:



Except for Nakor who's making some different decisions. I checked to make sure the score increase was not population:



I really don't have the desire to figure out what tech he researched, but it definitely was not Bronze Working... It seems that the rest of us are all working on BW. I wonder if Nakor is the one who settled 1SE then? I really don't feel like thinking it through and figuring it out as I don't see that as being especially useful information.

[scooter]

T15 came around within an hour which was cool. What to do with the worker? Well I can't build roads, I can't chop, I can't cottage... I guess I could mine, but I decided to farm the floodplains for the quickest benefit:



It seemed an easy choice at first but now I'm not so sure given that I want hammers to take advantage of Exp/Imp rather than food... but in the end it seems more worthwhile to use that extra food to whip which WOULD benefit from Exp/Imp. Any of the tile micro experts care to weigh in and tell me if that was ? Seemed logical enough to me. Here's the capital at EoT:



I will swap away from the Quecha next turn I think. I'm leaning towards going straight onto a settler actually as a second worker doesn't seem all that useful yet.

[NobleHelium]

I seem to be unable to load your recent Dropbox images.

[scooter]

Anyone else having that problem? I used the public link and it loads for me even when I'm logged out of Dropbox, so... maybe it was a temporary glitch?

[bato]

I can see them just fine.