Team 2 Starting Position

Map creation is finished! Here is the picture of your starting position for discussion:



A few quick notes for the game host and teams involved:

- The game is saved in Worldbuilder format. This was (by far) the easiest way for me to do the editing, and I have been told that PitBoss has no problems accepting Worldbuilder saves.

- The game is currently set to Noble difficulty. This was due to the fact that the AIs get various bonuses on higher difficulty levels, which we don't want. Game host, please make sure to set all five teams to Monarch difficulty when we start, as agreed upon here in the forums.

- Rather than fooling with team names, I've left the default ones. To rename all the important details, simply type Alt-D and fill in your team's preferences.

- Remember to come up with your team's password and send it to the game host! We'll need that before we can start too.

That should be everything, at least in theory. I'm really hoping I did this correctly, as I put a lot of time into crafting the map. You're going to enjoy this one, trust me.

Thank you Sullla.

Starting positions looks decent. Not much food, but there seems to be plenty of flood plains in the south to build commece city/cities.

Scout could go to hill under the sheep. Unless nothing special comes out I would settle in place. Research could be Animal Husbandry - Fishing - Mining - Bronze working -Wheel - Pottery. Production could be Worker - Warrior - work boat - warrior - Settler(claim horses/bronze or build a city in the flood plains).

Why do we have two desert hills? Those can't be avoided so I would simply recommend settling in place and going from there.

I'm not sure if this city should be a production, commerce, or GP farm city. It seems to be able to fit all 3 city types, but doesn't perform outstanding in each regard.

Do we start with Agriculture and Hunting? I would start researching Fishing while building a warrior and then switching to a workboat following the completion of Fishing. From there, we can research Animal Husbandry followed by, say, Mining and Bronze Working?

Finally, the scout should go on the hill under the sheep.

So to sum up:

Fishing -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Wheel?

After rethought. Against humans it might be better to play it safe and use DMOC's suggestion i.e warrior - work boat - worker and start Fishing and then continue to animal husbandry.

In this particular game we might be safer than in other multiplayer games due to the wide spacing of starting locations (Standard map with 5 civs leaves a lot of room). I was actually thinking that the extra warrior could help us in exploring the more-than-usual land available to us. We do have a scout to help us in that regard. Unfortunately, huts are disabled in this game.

We do have more time than usual to research strategic techs than in a high level single player games since the barbarians won't be much of a threat.

Ouch i just hope that the desert is not going to be all over the place.

Judging by what I can barely see on the outer edge of the land before it turns black, there is a little more desert. I'm sure there won't be THAT much desert near our starting position other than what we see here.

Better not be a big desert, but that may mean more Flood Plains, which would be a good thing.

Seems like a reasonable start for us. Not the best that I've seen, but okay. (I'm assuming that the other teams' starts will be rather similar, so nobody should be too advantaged relative to us.) We should almost definitely settle in place.

With only 2 resources apparent in our immediate BFC, my immediate guess would have been that we'd have some metal on one of the hills. However, this is clearly not a randomly generated map (we have desert hills in our BFC for one thing), so perhaps those two resources might be all we have.

Animal Husbandry and Fishing are clearly the two techs we want first... not sure which order will be more beneficial, from a first glance it looks like it'll be very similar. (Fishing first will let us work a high commerce tile while building the Worker though.) For Animal Husbandry first we'll probably want to go Worker -> (Warrior if haven't got Fishing yet) -> Work Boat. For Fishing first we'll probably want to go Warrior -> Work Boat -> Worker.

Bronze Working and Pottery will be the next high priority paths. I'm very keen to leverage our Financial trait as much as possible, so we should make sure to get cottages up and running on those two flood plains in our BFC as soon as possible.

Sullla said:

- Remember to come up with your team's password and send it to the game host! We'll need that before we can start too.

Click to expand...

For a team password... my suggestion is ga1act1c_emp1re. Thoughts?

DMOC said:

Why do we have two desert hills?

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I guess it's "mapmaker's artistic license". Hopefully other teams have similar fat crosses, so it should all balance out.

DMOC said:

I'm not sure if this city should be a production, commerce, or GP farm city. It seems to be able to fit all 3 city types, but doesn't perform outstanding in each regard.

Click to expand...

Let's make it a hybrid. The capital is always good for that - decent hammers and decent commerce makes a great city for Bureaucracy.

DMOC said:

Do we start with Agriculture and Hunting?

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Yes.

DMOC said:

I would start researching Fishing while building a warrior and then switching to a workboat following the completion of Fishing.

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I assume you mean that we'd complete the Warrior and then start on the Work Boat. No sense wasting those hammers by switching mid-production.

DMOC said:

Finally, the scout should go on the hill under the sheep.

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I disagree - I'd say 1 tile south. We can already see there's forest on the two tiles to the west of the capital, and those tiles will be revealed as soon as we settle anyway. Plus, we'll move faster if we continue on the flatland, so moving to the SW seems like a good idea to me.

DMOC said:

Fishing -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Wheel?

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Sounds good. I'd say after Wheel, then Pottery. So:

Fishing -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Wheel -> Pottery

DMOC said:

We do have more time than usual to research strategic techs than in a high level single player games since the barbarians won't be much of a threat.

Click to expand...

Still, good not to delay for too long, since there will still be rival teams around. But we're already planning on researching Animal Husbandry and Bronze Working fairly early anyway, so that's covered either way.

DMOC said:

Judging by what I can barely see on the outer edge of the land before it turns black, there is a little more desert. I'm sure there won't be THAT much desert near our starting position other than what we see here.

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Hopefully not.

Looking forward to this game getting started.

Lord Parkin said:

I assume you mean that we'd complete the Warrior and then start on the Work Boat. No sense wasting those hammers by switching mid-production.

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Well, this depends. Typically, I like to start a workboat the instant fishing comes in. I switch production from a warrior to a workboat using a forested plains hill (I don't know if we have one here since I can't tell from the screenshot) and then return back to the warrior after the workboat.

Thoughts?

I also agree on Lord Parkin's scouting path.

DMOC said:

Well, this depends. Typically, I like to start a workboat the instant fishing comes in. I switch production from a warrior to a workboat using a forested plains hill (I don't know if we have one here since I can't tell from the screenshot) and then return back to the warrior after the workboat.

Click to expand...

Hmm, okay. I guess that would take less than 10 turns, so the hammers wouldn't start decaying away on the Warrior. That was my main concern with the switch. (I'm a bit too used to Marathon speed, I think. )

Hi,
I agree to build warrior for start.
P.

If the game is on normal speed then a workboat costs 30. This means that if we have a forested plains hill, we can work that for exactly 10 turns. EDIT-Never mind, the center tile also has 1 so that's 4 total.


So if we have a forested plains hill, my recommended production path:

1. Warrior while working the 21 grassland forest and then switching production to a 31 floodplain once the capital's borders expand to allow for faster research.

2. Fishing boat IMMEDIATELY when the Fishing technology is completed and work a 3 forested plains hill.

3. Switch back to warrior while working the new 43 crab. This will allow the city to grow to size 2 quickly, and then the second population point can work the 3 plains hill to get the warrior out quickly. As an alternative, we could work 2 tiles that are each 12 (such as a forested grassland hill or a forested plains flatland). This stagnates growth but gets a total of 4 of produciton (5 including the city center). Unfortunately, it loses out on 3.


Feel free to revise the plan. But most importantly, can anyone tell if we have a forested plains hill?!?

DMOC's plan seems fine. Because we are probably going to settle in place no matter what scout finds Lord Parkin's scouting direction is ok. How about scout instead of Warrior as the first build, if we're not afraid of other humans and the main task of the unit is scouting?

Lord Parkin's password suggestion is ok to me.

Doesn't the city tile have 1 hammer? There's no need to hope for a 3 hammer plains hill to get the Work Boat done in 10 turns. We only need 2 additional hammers, not 3.

I'd be fine with a Scout as our first build instead of a Warrior, since we should be far away from any neighbours.

Heh, that was stupid. So we have an extra hammer from the city center.

We do have a forest-plains-hill anyway, it's 2 tiles to our east and easily visible. I hadn't looked before because I assumed we couldn't see it from what DMOC was saying, but it's clearly there.

So, the obvious plan seems to be to follow DMOC's suggestion above. I don't see any problems with it. Working the 3 hammer forest-plains-hill will give us 4 hammers per turn, so the Work Boat will take 8 turns to build. After the Work Boat, we should definitely work the Crabs to grow to size 2, then work Crabs + forest-plains-hill to finish the Warrior. Then begin on Worker, working Clams + flood plains for maximum production speed and maximum commerce.

Any objections?

I am a little color blind so that's probably why I didn't notice it. I'm more used to switching tile yields on.

Ah, okay. Can't blame you for that.

I'm so familiar with the game that I can pretty much tell at a glance what any tile's yield is, even without "show tile yields" on. My girlfriend would say that shows I play far too much civ.

Ok i have tried to make our Start location in WB i hope i was able to recognize all tiles if dont, please correct me.


Edit: fixed