SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

Okay, things are heating up as we have discovered another Magical Fish along with Iron!
Spoiler :
Iron? Really? How...?

Okay, fine, not really Iron, but we'll need Iron Working in order Chop the Jungle so that we will be able to access this equal-to-Iron's-output Copper Resource... either that or we will have to waste 100% of the Copper's Hammers by settling on it.

 
Okay, by the powers vested in me, I am making a command decision to explore the Copper island. We'll need to pause in a few turns anyway, to confirm where we're going to send WB Explorer #2.

In the meantime, I would say that it is worthwhile to map out the area around our solely-revealed Militaristic Strategic Resource.
 
Alright, things seem to be on track. We have learned Pottery and have started work on Sailing. We grew to City Size 5 and shot back up onto the Top 5 Cities list, being at the #4 spot on Turn 55 and the #5 spot on Turn 56.

By the way, I have been taking screenshots of each of the:
F8 VICTORIES
F9 DEMOGRAPHICS
and
F9 TOP 5 CITIES
screens for every turn (I'm pretty sure that I got every turn).

The screenshots will be made available as a downloadable .zip file of images after my turnset is over. I plan to host them on my webspace, but if you want them earlier, they can be requested to be sent to your email address via asking me by PM.

Anyway, we're at our scheduled pausing point on Turn 56, 2600 BC, the turn where we completed Work Boat Explorer #2.

WB Explorer #1 didn't really reveal much around the Copper island, other than the absence of further connecting islands (at least so far).

So, I guess the question is: does anyone object to proceeding with WB #2 towards the Crab in the north? Also, if you have any concerns about how I'm exploring with WB #1, now would be a good time to voice them.

Spoiler :


 
I definitely want city #2 near the stone, although 1NW of fish kills the pig/fish site... Unfortunately, super GP farm plan requires a border pop which will take forever to get so I think that's out. Also, 1NW of fish conveniently provides a canal to the copper island if we want to grab it.

I think bbp is going to die once he sees that completed cottage :lol:

Agree about WB#2 going north.
 
I think bbp is going to die once he sees that completed cottage :lol:
It's not too late... I can still delete the Worker! :eek:


By the way, I'm going to take a break from playing and will pick it up again after a few hours (there's more to life than just playing games!).
 
Agree with scouting north crab. WB1 circles stone now.

I'd wait 'till we circle the stone before dotmapping. 1NW of fish sucks, since it kills a pig/fish city north of there. Hopefully there's more food to be had SW of stone. We don't really want a Monument-first city.

@shyuhe,
I'm at peace with the cottage.
:D

Edit: xpost w Mitch & Dhoom
 
Scouting is going along well. :goodjob: This is where it's important to have not cut the corners--very useful to know that the copper island is the End of the World (if it is all the way around the south too).

I can't contribute more tonight. One bit of food for thought, though, is whether it makes sense to send scout wb2 west and then loop around to the north so it can be thorough to the NE. My sense is that if we send it immediately N, then want to loop W, we migh have to skip some intriguing passageway to the E. Or does it simply make more sense to finish the NE scouting with a later wb, as you guys discussed above? Maybe so. But also consider where scout wb1 and wb2 are going to end up as we finish this initial scouting cycle.
 
My thinking was that WB#1 (that is scouting WB#1) would continue to loop around the inner ring counter clockwise. WB#2 would start north and loop around clockwise. When they meet in the west, we should have a good idea of where we're going to settle. One of them would become fish nets and the other would either explore the outer ring or head west. WB#3 would head east/north east.

I'm fine either way though.
 
My understanding was that we were going to follow "option 3" out of LC's 3 suggested pathings. Here's his original image again:
Spoiler :


Now, I admit that I could have easily misunderstood the graphic, but my understanding was that we'd be sending WB Explorer #1 out to the east following that green arrow and then would roughly follow the red path backwards.

Then, WB Explorer #2 would roughly follow the blue path out of Paris.


Now, to be honest, I am not too worried about exploring only the inner ring, since WB Explorer #3 was slated to go west in order to "clean up" any remaining inner-ring hidden squares that we'd missed.

If it so happens that there aren't other islands to explore to the north and south, then we'll be done with just the first two explorers, but I would imagine that there would likely be at least one further island to the north, similar to the Copper island to the south, and I think that it's worth having WB Explorer #2 scout any such island... within reason... if there are like 5 islands up there, then forget it... but one or two are already planned-for as per the up-to-Turn-74 scouting that I displayed in the test game.

Similarly, if there is another "second ring" island to the west of the Copper, I think that we will have more than enough time to check it out before visiting the Stone.

All of these possibilities have been planned for, as has the possibility of no further island to the west of the Copper and us having to spend turns moving back into our Cultural borders after visiting the Stone, as is suggested in LC's image with the southern red path.


So, that's kind of where I stand, but things are also about to get micro-intensive a bit (I don't want to forget to whip the Granary next turn by being too caught-up in exploration, for example), so I'll try not to worry too much about how the exploration goes.


Indeed, I think that we can easily explore the entire first ring even with several second-ring island detours, courtesy of Work Boat Explorer #3... that's the boat that gives us this flexibility to explore our surroundings now so that after exploring, we can directly send 2 Work Boats in opposite directions and see how far we can get before hitting walls of Oceans.


That's the overall rough plan, but plans tend to change the minute that they are implemented, so we'll keep taking screenshots and involving the team as we go.
 
Okay, I remembered to whip the Granary and to re-assign the 3rd citizen, the one that the governor had allocated to the GH Mine, onto a Netted Clam, as per the Spreadsheet PPP.

We also revealed a new Resource type to the north... unfortunately, it's lacking in Forests, so it's time to start praying for random Forest Growth to go our way! ;)

In the south, the Copper island does look like the end of the world, so we might get to see the area around the Stone in relatively short order (unless I get distracted by another island when we're almost there, hehe).

Spoiler :


 
Guess what? We are NOT isolated! We met our first AI! Actually, it was more like she came and met us. Ahh, a sight for sore eyes, good ol' Boudica...

Spoiler :
Errrm... I need to get my eyesight checked! That's Vicky! ;)

Of course, she does not want our Clam or our Corn.



She met us in-between turns and we have 4 Espionage Points on her while she has zero on us. That means that she has met at least one other AI. Or, since it's unlikely that she sent out two exploring Work Boats this early (are the AIs really that smart?), another AI likely went and met her. Either that or she starts on the same landmass as at least one other AI.

I assigned a Weight of 1 for our Espionage Points to her, so that if we meet another AI in-between turns, we won't have our Espionage Points getting split. Until we generate more than 4 Espionage Points per turn, I have found that it is best to concentrate all EPs on a single target. I can go into detail why, if requested.

Lacking any trading options and having already set the Espionage Weight, I don't see any reason to pause play here.



She came from the east... and since we know that the Copper island doesn't continue to the east, she must have come from east of the Pig Resource. You can see her Work Boat on the Magical Fish that is located directly east of our capital.



London, her only City, is Size 5. Here are some more stats:



Clearly, she does not have a land-locked capital (otherwise, where would the Work Boat come from... I don't think that DS would hand out Work Boats... and no, that's not an idea for you, BBP, for future XOTMs! ;) ... it would be too confusing for the players!). However, it does look like she has a lot of land area for having only her big fat cross (less than 150 Culture).
 
Unfortunately, it looks like Vicky decided to switch Espionage targets... to us. So, she is assigning 100% of her Espionage Points to us.

We also saw the "Shared Turns of Peace" +1 Diplo Modifier kick in, but she is still Cautious towards us (which is still better than her being Annoyed).

Spoiler :
Other interesting items of note... a Deer in the north which looks like it will be hard to harvest... I plan to explore around the outside of that Deer island, by the way.



In the south, you Stone-lovers got your wish and we've had no choice but to reveal the area around the Stone Resource. However, your hopes of additional Seafood have been dashed. Can you "make do" with a 2-Grassland-Hills plus Magical-Fish City location? Actually, we'd get the Des Hills square, too, and would probably settle so that we could optionally share the capital's GH Mine.

That would still leave us room to put a City 1S of the Grassland Pig Resource without conflicting with the "2 square radius no-settling of another City" rule.



I feel like I'm writing a Mad Scientist's Role Playing Challenge game here... hopefully, it's fun to follow along! :cool:


Info on Pausing the Game using the Pause / Break key on your keyboard
Oh, a tidbit of info: be VERY CAREFUL with the Pause button. I still suggest that you keep a unit, like our Warrior, active, so that you have to skip his turn before ending the turn. What I found was that a command issued while the Pause button is pressed will still execute!

So, if your Warrior needs his turn skipped and the game is Paused, if you press the Spacebar, the Warrior's turn will be immediately skipped upon unpausing.

What's more worrisome is that if you do not have any units active and you Pause the game, then happen to press the Enter key, as soon as you unpause the game, the game will immediately advance to the next turn (since you only needed to press the Enter key in order for the turn to advance).

I have NOT tested this scenario (which is worth testing in a test game but not on the real game): Pause the game when no units are active, press the Enter key, exit the game, load the game, unpause, and see what happens. That approach will need to be tested to see just how useful or nearly-useless the Pause functionality really is... if the Pause key cannot "trap" Enter keypresses, then it's value goes down... I still think that you can't accidentally move a unit with your mouse, which is helpful, but you also will probably have to be smart enough to leave a unit unfortified whenever you upload the saved game.
 
Work Boat Exploration Class 251
Oh, another thought: I should be able to save half a turn of Work Boat Exploration with WB Explorer #1... instead of fully exploring the SE corner of the next island to be explored (the what looks to be a 1-square Grassland island), I can "cut the corner" and move directly from 1E to 1S, since going to 1SE of the island wouldn't reveal new info, thanks to our prior exploration around the Stone.


All of this info from me, where it almost looks like I am spamming the thread with so many messages, makes want to quote a quotation that I wrote down on my wall at some point: "Find your own truth. We aren't really listening." ;)
 
Okay, in exploring "around" the Deer island, I found another couple of islands. It seemed to be the same to move from 1NE of the Deer island to 2N of the Deer island and then back to 1NW of the Deer island as compared to moving from 1NE to 1N to 1NW, except that we got a bit of free exploration by moving to 2N.

Since the other islands are Ice-bearing, it's very unlikely that we will need to scout them for early exploration purposes (even if they do contain nice Resources that are often buried in Ice, such as Silver or Iron).

So, I plan to head 1SW (to 1NW of the Deer island) next, probably followed by heading further SW, to see if this second Fur island "loops around" or "connects" back towards our inner ring... but failing seeing a connection before long, I'll head back to the Deer island in order to work on completing our inner ring exploration.

Spoiler :
 
I'm assuming Vicky is not the GLH owner? We should try to figure out how far she is so that we can consider an assault on her island with axes. It's a bit of a stretch but worth considering.

Also, I'd like to pause here if possible so that we can consider any strategy changes due to the discovery of a galley accessible civ.
 
Okay, I can pause here. Would you like me to upload a copy of the saved game?

I feel like I am potentially being led down the garden path in our northern exploration path, anyway. In particular, it looks like we might be able to get back to the islands within our inner ring from here, but at worst, we'll have to double-back a bit towards the Fish.

My planned approach from here would be to move 1SW (to 1W of the 1-square Desert Hills island) then 1S (to 1SW of the Des Hills island). Lacking any connection to the south, I would then head 1E (1S of the Des Hills island) and 1E again (1SW of the Des Hills island). If there still isn't a connection towards the south-east, then I would head back to the Fish + Deer, then towards the first Fur island, which looks like it has a 100% chance to allow us to island-hop to the next inner-ring island.


The alternative is just to "forget the Des Hills island for now" and head back immediately, by moving 1E (1NE of the Des Hills island) and then onto the Magical Fish.

Spoiler :



The southern exploration is on-track since there really has only been one way to go.

Next, though, I am thinking of 1SW (1NE of the GFor island), then 1S (1E of that island) and 1S again (1SE of that island), in order to explore the corners of the island down there. Presumably, we would explore up to a max of two more small islands (or one medium-sized one) down there before circling back to explore around the Clam that is currently NW + N of Work Boat Explorer #1.




shyuhe said:
I'm assuming Vicky is not the GLH owner?
Correct, she is not. I'll give you a screenshot from Turn 61, 2475 BC to prove it. Note that London is currently no longer on the Top 5 Cities screen, as of Turn 63, 2425 BC.
Spoiler :
 
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