[BTS] SGOTM 13 - One Short Straw

[Dhoomstriker]

Seeing no objections, I am starting.

[Dhoomstriker]

Here's a screenshot of the first new Resource spotted. I am not going to pause play as we are scheduled to pause next turn, but I figured that you'd want a "live feed"... although to be honest it takes a couple of minutes to move a screenshot around and upload it, etc, so "live" is a relative term.

Note that I have unfortified the Warrior and am manually skipping his turn (pressing the Spacebar) in order to end each turn... that way, I won't accidentally advance the turn when the game displays the "Press Enter to End the Turn" message.

Spoiler:

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I played one more turn and have paused play.

Of note, we have found another island to the east, which I think is worth pausing play long enough to discuss whether we'd like our Work Boat Explorer #1 to circle around (heading NE then N first before circling around with the intention of going to visit the Stone) or to ignore it for now and to continue on directly towards the Stone.

We also made it onto the "Top 5 Cities of the World" list.

Spoiler:

In deciding, realise that we have a good number of turns' worth of exploration remaining, so unless we have just found "the mainland," we will almost certainly be able to circle around this landmass and reveal the territory around the Stone before needing to settle our 2nd City.

On the other side of the debate, we will have to cover this eastward exploration at some point later anyway when we see how far we can make it to the east, so we'll end up later duplicating at least a tiny bit of this exploration.

Info now versus info later.

Another thought is that the planned path of Work Boat Explorer #1 has it exploring mostly Tundra and Ice squares (at least per the test game) after it explores the Stone, while the land to the east looks like it might be more favourable for settling than Tundra or Ice would.


I have uploaded the saved game and have paused the game. I will pause play for 1.5 hours from the timestamp on this message to allow for people to view the saved game and make fog-gazing comments.

If no one is commenting at all (regardless of whether they looked at the saved game), then I will likely extend this time to wait for feedback on where to send Work Boat Explorer #1 next.

Here's a spoilered Session Turn Log and the link to the real saved game, both courtesy of the upload page:

Spoiler:

Here is your Session Turn Log from 2900 BC to 2775 BC:

Turn 44, 2900 BC: The revolution has begun!!!
Turn 44, 2900 BC: Napoleon adopts Slavery!
Turn 44, 2900 BC: The anarchy is over! Your government is re-established.

Turn 48, 2800 BC: Paris can hurry Work Boat for 1? with 9? overflow and +1? for 27 turns.
Turn 48, 2800 BC: Paris will grow to size 4 on the next turn.

Turn 49, 2775 BC: Paris has grown to size 4.

The Real Saved Game

[babybluepants]

Pig/fish is great, though I wish it came with a hill. Since we likely don't wanna be teching AH soon, I hope we can find another two-food site nearby.

I think we're located north in the real game (crab visible north of us), so tundra/ice in the test is not anything to go by. My inclination is to stick with the planned path for now. There are likely to be forking paths all over the place, so we'll probably have to retrace our steps here and there regardless.

[ungy]

My gut feeling would be to try and scout what looks like the island to the east--if there's a few turns we can burn with the WB we might be able to do it slowly and clarify whether there's a route east to avoid having to rescout it
XPost with BBP

[shyuhe]

I'd rather look around the stone as that new island looks pretty desolate (i.e., not good for city #2). I think finding a good city #2 is a little more important than finding the other AI right now.

[Dhoomstriker]

Originally Posted by babybluepants

Pig/fish is great, though I wish it came with a hill. Since we likely don't wanna be teching AH soon, I hope we can find another two-food site nearby.

Do you think that it is reasonable to find 2 Food Resources near the Stone (let alone even 1)?

Since you don't consider Fish + Pig to be a good early City location, it almost sounds like we should push a bit east for now, just to see what other options we open up. For example, there is a visible Plains Hills square, a "real" Hills square, unlike the Desert Hills square that could be paired with Fish + Pig that you deemed as not counting as a Hills square... at least that's my interpretation of your "I wish it came with a hill" comment.

I am going to go out and buy a pizza and hope that by the time that I come back, we've gotten a bit more feedback.

By the way, this message was a cross-post with shyuhe's message.

[LowtherCastle]

I'm not sharing any thoughts if you're not sharing any pizza.

[LowtherCastle]

I'm seeing this:

!---!---!---!---!
!   !For! GH!   !
!---!---!---!---!
! C ! C ! P ! C !
!---!---!---!---!
!   ! C ! PH!GH?!
!---!---!---!---!
!   ! C ! D ! P?!
!---!---!---!---!
!   ! C ! C ! L?!
!---!---!---!---!

For = forest
GH = grasshill
P = Plains
PH = plains hill
C = coast
L = land tile
D = desert

Which means there's a forest tile and what appears to be at least three hills total. Decent production site if there's also food. But it's high maintenance, at a distance of 8.5-9.5 tiles.

I would consider mapping this site out a bit if we're certain we'll see all the western, inner ring in time, because that western area definitely has forest tiles and the stone to teh sw may be a lure for people who don't send out two scouts.

[Dhoomstriker]

Originally Posted by LowtherCastle

I'm not sharing any thoughts if you're not sharing any pizza.

Send me your fax number via Private Message and I'll "send" you a slice!

It might come out looking rather flat, though... and I can't promise that it won't taste similar to cardboard (i.e. like a piece of paper).


By the way, that's some pretty good fog-gazing, particularly in regards to that Forest!

if we're certain we'll see all the western, inner ring in time

That will be more than doable thanks to Work Boat Explorer #3 plus the combination of planning on using one of WB Explorer #1 or #2 as our "Seafood netter."

Originally Posted by shyuhe

I think finding a good city #2 is a little more important than finding the other AI right now.

I agree with you and the option of exploring the island to the east is solely for scouting out another possible City location within a reasonable amount of time, not to find any AIs.


So, that sounds like 2 votes for heading east, 2 for heading to the Stone... and I'm also leaning towards going to the east, particularly if people think that Fish + Pig is not a good early site.

I guess I'll keep waiting for others to chime in... which might mean that that will be it for the turnset for tonight if no one else replies in the next few hours.

[Dhoomstriker]

Note that a third compromise option exists... if I head NE and then N and spend X number of turns with no end in sight to the landmass, then I can always double-back. It's not ideal, but it means having a 100% chance of giving us enough time to scout the Stone. X = a number like 5 sounds reasonable (10 moves).

Is that compromise acceptable to those who want to head directly to the Stone?

[Mitchum]

We can't afford to go down every rat hole and explore every second ring island we see right away. We have spare turns for exploring the inner ring, but not a ton. We have to be picky. The island to the east does not look that exciting to me based on what we see right now. I'd pick another rat hole personally. It will only take three turns to get another workboat to where we are now, so we can very quickly explore this with WB #5.

[babybluepants]

Originally Posted by Mitchum

We can't afford to go down every rat hole and explore every second ring island we see right away. We have spare turns for exploring the inner ring, but not a ton. We have to be picky. The island to the east does not look that exciting to me based on what we see right now. I'd pick another rat hole personally. It will only take three turns to get another workboat to where we are now, so we can very quickly explore this with WB #5.

My thinking exactly.
Hardly certain, though, since there's too much unknown. I'll go with majority vote on this.

@Dhoom,
I didn't mean to say it's a bad second city necessarily. Just think there's good potential for something better suited to our needs.

[ungy]

If you guys think it's not worth the turns to scout to the east I'm fine with that.
While it seems important to scout there, plenty of other stuff seems important as well.

[Dhoomstriker]

I'm still not convinced that we have consensus, so let me propose another option.

At the start of the game, we were considering using up an entire game turn just to explore to help us decide where to settle City 1. Moving a Work Boat, fortunately, does not use up an entire turn worth of Food, Hammers, and Commerce, so the impact of using 1 turn to explore with a Work Boat is smaller than what we were considering doing at the start.

On those grounds and if you guys don't like the "explore for 5 turns then turn around if we get stuck" diversion, then perhaps we can simply move the Work Boat 1NE and then decide from there based on what is revealed... at most that would mean 1 turn of diversion if we decided to go towards the Stone from there.


Anyway, I have played around in World Builder in our test saved game to try and match the real game... I have come close but am off by a minor amount, as I can't get the visible terrain to match up perfectly precisely.

Here is a screenshot with text on the squares that I am almost certain about:

Spoiler:

I also have a screenshot of what we might reveal if we send the Work Boat 1NE. I've also listed possible paths from there, so you can see that it really isn't much of a detour if we then decide to go towards the Stone next (it equals 1 turn of Work Boat exploration "spent"):

Spoiler:

Moving 1NE would do a few things for us:
a) Lets us know if LC's Forest is there or not (if it's not, then he'll probably be less interested in that island)
AND
b) Lets us see if the island is small enough to be able to "scoot around the northern edge of it quickly" (you can see that it's possible in the test game by simply moving 1NE... if it appears to not be possible, then the decision more heavily favours going towards the Stone)
AND
c) Checks for a possible Seafood on the western side of the island (which could also influence where we head next)


EDIT: Well, that's it for me tonight. See you tomorrow with hopefully some sort of agreement, perhaps using one of the two proposed compromise options.

[mdy]

I'm OK with sending the workboat 1 NE, but I would be reluctant to spend any more turns scouting in that direction in the immediate future unless that move turns up something very interesting. We will probably have several more islands which look more promising than this one to explore with our limited number of "spare" exploration turns.

[shyuhe]

Agree with mdy - I'm ok with going 1 turn NE but turning back if we don't see any immediate food. This island is a bit far from Paris for my taste for a second city, unless it comes with gems/gold/silver.

[babybluepants]

Agree with mdy and shyhe.

[Rusten]

Agree with the above. Makes more sense to scout towards the green pastures (south) to me.

[LowtherCastle]

Agree with mdy, shyuhe, bbp, and rusten.