Kadazzle
Emperor
In order to get a trade route, you need to see a tile which is adjacent to a city of the civ you are trying to get a trade route with, or obviously a road.
IIRC, we don't need to have a Russian city mapped out to get the trade benefits of OB. We'll just need to tech Writing. Though I am curious how close Cathy is since she doesn't start with Fishing.
Heh, I agree knights are lame. Curs and cavalry are where it's at. Again, perhaps we should be planning to beeline nukes and then just wipe everyone out. Will depend on further exploration. Game is going well so far.
1. How far away do we think the Russians are?? We got out three workboats. Could they be 8-10 tiles away?? If so how obvious will it be which direction?.
2. What are the trade routes with Russia worth over our internal ones over islands?2/3 as base commerce?.
3. What would we use to explore the islands. Galley has 23 turns to do a loop trip. It needs to get back in time. We need to look at the stone site for food..
4. Finding land for a third city. We need an early war but we also need a resource to do this. Where will we find horse, copper and iron? Everyone is planning a horse war and we have no horse yet!!!.
Testing with galley.
I was able to circle back of stone island assuming it is not linked to a huge continent. (i doubt it) I then circled back to crabs island and was able to head north for 3-4 turns. My return route was about 7 turns. If Stone island is smaller we may be able to do 1 turn more north. On return route i explored back of 3 tile island to west too.
That being said if our capital builds a workboat it can quickly head back north and find the Russians. A few turns won't kill us. We may well find other Ai by heading towards the Stone. Let's not assume the map is not too obvious.
If we go directly north there is a small chance we may not find the Russians pending how the islands are laid out. I think we do need to scout out the stone. Doing a circle of the islands will allow us to know if we need a WB near stone city or if it can explore map after worker.
If we plan to settle marble city anyway theres no reason why kadazzle couldn't play out all the scouting stopping if he finds anything.
Overall i vote for a circle route and then a brief trip up north before heading back. Remember each tile we have to back track over is 1 less tile explored of map. Seems wasteful.
I vote for building a Workboat - I completely forgot about Overseas trade routes. I don't think the Russians are more than 14 tiles away, which is 7t. The early commerce will make a difference, it's at least +4C right off that bat.
I wouldn't be hellbent on exploring towards Cathy right now. We still need writing for any foreign TRs. So I don't support building an extra WB right now, unless someone can find a way to fit it into Bobby's plan.
Gumbolt's idea for galley scouting sounds fine to me.
Binary research and the research where you switch it only works if you're gaining commerce or getting multipliers. As far as I know from the plan, we're not going to be gaining any commerce until we either get trade routes or settle the second city, so it doesn't matter.