North: <screenshot snipped>
Since when did you start playing wargames in French?
Hey it's the magical fish tile!
It is... never trust a Map Maker!
I'm fine with settling on PH.
Me, too. Even a single Magical Fish won't be worth re-running all of those tests for. LC's latest PH run was pretty good, let's stick with it.
On that note, do we know for sure how to reproduce it? I tried but couldn't quite get it last night before I gave up and went to bed.
I mean, it's great to pick a test run based on the good results that we got, but if we can't mimic those results, then we didn't really "pick" that particular test run... we picked something else that may or may not be as good.
Okay... maybe my concern comes too late... there are like 10 million messages since I went to bed and it seems that the turnset has been played... let's just hope that it matches LC's test run. Let's just make sure that we have it correct for the next turnset.
Maybe you should push me down the list a position or two... I'm still recovering from being sick and am in a heavy coughing stage. I'm fine to play test games because I can always reload if I goof up, but I don't want to be responsible for coughing my way into a mis-click.
If you would rather keep the order but don't mind waiting a few days for me to play, that approach can work, too, but if you want to keep the game moving, then we should swap my place in the playing order.
With stone I don't think we will have any trouble getting either the Oracle or the Pyramids-they tend to go fairly late. I was thinking that it might be worth going for Stonehenge as well.
We're talking about Stonehenge again, huh? Well, quarrying a Stone square and Roading it takes a very long time. I think that we'd probably have to settle on it in order for it to "be in time" to help with Stonehenge (and even then, it probably won't be fast enough). The plus side is that the base Stone square gives 2 Hammers, so settling on it gives our City Centre 2 Hammers. The downsides are that we'd mess up one production square on a production-poor map and we might also not have any Food Resources to partner with it. The other downside is that, at least in our test game, Stonehenge was gone about 2000 BC, so if it is built early, we'd still miss building it... I'm not sure that any failure Gold that we got would make up for the loss of the early-game Hammers invested.
Certainly, the Hammer cost of building it in either the capital or City 2 early on is going to have a big effect on our game, too. The advantages of Monuments are that although you may pay more total Hammers overall, you will:
a) Pay the Hammers later. Early Hammers are more valuable than later Hammers
AND
b) You can 1-pop-whip a Monument but you probably won't use any people in whipping Stonehenge... there's the possibility of whip overflow but since you are already racing to get that Wonder, you probably don't have the luxury to do so. On a Food-heavy map, where the whipping Unhappiness would get spread out across our Cities, Monuments are definitely favoured over Stonehenge
If we went Myst-Masonry after Sailing (before Pottery-Wtg)
If getting Stonehenge would require us to delay Pottery, which was kind of the main theme of our chosen test run, then I'd be against building Stonehenge. I'd say that the Stone is a trap for the unwary and I'd prefer to stick to our chosen tech path, at least until after Pottery and Sailing... whether we will delay Writing is certainly a valid option, but let's not throw our solid test run to the wind over a possible Stonehenge.
Don't forget that early Stone gives us early access to MOAI STATUES. I think that this Wonder will be of far more value to chase after than Stonehenge will be.