Just another SG

[mystyfly]

Hi kos!

By the looks of it, Justinian is out. That leaves

Pericles (Thrar, ras)
Washington (bbp)

What about you lymond?

I don't have a strong opinion though I'd also slightly favour pericles as I really just dislike coastal starts

 

[lymond]

I'm fine with either one, but...yeah...Pericles would probably be my preference

 

[babybluepants]

Ok, let's go with Pericles then. That start looks ugly to me. We need more food. Plus, Greece has some crappy starting techs - never crazy about AH-food with it, esp when it's the crappy AH-food.

Looks like coast to the NE - hopefully that circles a bit and we get some free border-fogbusting.

Not even sure where to move the scout... If we wanted to keep both sheep and gold, our best bet would be some seafood that we can reach from 2N. It's unlikely, though. There could be some food down river, if we were to give up gold. Actually looks possible that there'd be another gold in the south, but we can't check right now. Thoughts?

@mysty, what kind of file format is .7z? Can't open it.

 

[lymond]

.7z is another file extractor program but winrar should extract these files.

 

[babybluepants]

WinRAR won't open it. Maybe I have an old version or something. Doesn't really matter, I guess - there's not much to see in the save anyways.

 

[mystyfly]

@bbp: try this. I like it a lot better than winrar.

RE start:

I don't see much point in moving the settler as the only way to go imo would be S/SE, towards that river. And that would lose our best tile. I think SIP gets 3 FPs, two from the fog down south which isn't that bad imo. Scout would reveal one of these two tiles by going S/SW but there's not much point in doing that. I'd rather go SE/SE and then follow that river.

RE early teching, I think agri > ah > mining > bw is the way to go..?

 

[Thrar]

I agree with SIP and scouting SE. It's grassland, hopefully there will be some nice food-rich locations.
I don't think we need Agri at the moment. If we can get both Agri and AH before the worker is finished we can do it to save beakers, otherwise I'd prefer to go straight to AH followed by mining. It's important to get the sheep and gold online quickly without wasted worker turns.

For the flood plains, I suggest cottaging them. Pericles is PHI, but a cottaged capital with bureaucracy later doesn't hurt. We could even go for Pottery before BW to do that.

 

[babybluepants]

I don't like the lack of food, but I'll agree with SIP and with scouting SE. There's not much else we can do from what's visible, other than wander for many turns. If we spot a food resource with the scout move, please pause to consult.

Not at all sure I want BW here. We have crappy food and a gold, so whipping the capital shouldn't really happen. Ideally, we get horses right next door, and we can go Wheel-Pottery asap. Otherwise, we'll need Archery, IMO.

Agri gives a discount on both AH and Pottery. I also think that we'll need to farm 1-2 FP's here. Otherwise we won't get going very fast. This is always tricky... If we tech it, our worker will be unemployed. Still, my inclination is to tech it and work around the tech schedule.

 

[mystyfly]

Looks like we're agreed on SIP and scouting SE. So I did just that.

As you can see (when you open the save, my photobucket acc has some promlems ) there is some decent land but desert begins pretty soon to the east. With the coast to the north that's pretty good for us .

Now regarding build/tech. Worker takes 12 turns to build, while teching Agri takes 10, AH 13 and mining 8. I'm not fond of skipping Agri 1) for the discount and 2) to irrigate some of our many FPs. We need their food and can't cottage them up (just yet anyway).

A rather unconventional way would be to start with a warrior. Since we're on a PH and have a 3F tile we can both get him done and grow in 8 turns. That way our worker will be built later but he surely doesn't get bored, we work more tiles and we get a proper scouting unit (I don't expect the scout to survive that long).

Thoughts?

View attachment us BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave (unzipped for bbp )

 

[Thrar]

Nice land. To the south it appears to be decent all the way from east to west. The nearby coast and desert mean that there probably won't be an AI in that direction, even better.

Warrior first sounds like a good idea. We'll get the worker in 10 rather than 12 and gain a little commerce as well. When the worker is done we can let him start farming the first FP and move him to the sheep in time for AH coming in, then finish the FP farm after the pasture.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I agree with Thrar on the early worker management. my vote for early tech path is: agri (farm, discount) -> AH _> archery -> mining -> BW. We can prolly skip archery if we find horses or if we appear to live in a fogbustable peninsula. THough I would not take any chance if we don't. (prolly TW pottery writing after that)

The scout should move north since south looks coast and east desert. THe warrior can then proceed to unfog (together with the border pop) our immediate surroundings

edit: here is a screenshot for lurkers.

 

[vranasm]

poor lurker

this is the era of games which I find most interesting and inspiring.

I see you can go with 2 options

1) cottages
2) farms+writing.

I guess ag->ah->archery (depends on horse)->writing->bw is viable option, mostly due to the need for food to run gold (so you will probably farm the flood plains), possibility of settling along the river and poor food for running slavery and only 4 trees.

For cottages would talk the position 3S1W near rice to run early cottages for capital.

Anyway I would delay BW after commerce techs (be it cottages or writing).

Except if you want to be dead sure on copper.

edit:
hmm now I see you're not on the river...oops ;-)
maybe changes things a bit.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

axes help a lot to protect improvements and deity rex is not a joke, BW helps to contend (chops). But early writing (maybe before pottery with AH) is an option considering Pericles is insane at getting early GS.

Imo our settling priorities should be defined by AI positions (ie to block them) and ressources. Cottage considerations aren't that high in the list (well at least after those two, but I am a bit biased against cottages )

 

[babybluepants]

Why can't we just build a worker and farm an FP while AH finishes? I think it's better, given our food situation.

Agri-AH is my vote, as well. After that, it depends on horses.

 

[lymond]

Why can't we just build a worker and farm an FP while AH finishes? I think it's better, given our food situation.

Agri-AH is my vote, as well. After that, it depends on horses.

Yep, I tend to agree with bbp here. It appears we will need to farm most of these flood plains anyway.

Ag>AH is the definite start and then we can decide from there based on if we see horses or not.

I like early writing with Philosophicles.

 

[mystyfly]

Ok so we're agreed on teching. Does worker first also get the majority? I could play until AH tmr.

Glad to see this getting underway Wasn't at all sure this would generate any interest.

 

[shyuhe]

So this is where you guys are hiding! I'd like to join if you guys are still looking for players

 

[Thrar]

The scout should move north since south looks coast and east desert.

Really? There is coast already visible in the north if you zoom in, I don't think there's much land worth exploring for now. What makes you think there's coast in the south? It looks to me like there's plenty of good land, I didn't notice any indicators of coast that way.

 

[kossin]

Really? There is coast already visible in the north if you zoom in, I don't think there's much land worth exploring for now. What makes you think there's coast in the south? It looks to me like there's plenty of good land, I didn't notice any indicators of coast that way.

Look around the rice, it's clearly coast even on a 2x3 " screen... also the 2-tile river has a delta. There's a good chance of there being a peninsula on one of the ends (I'm guessing W because of desert to the E) so send the scout SE and circle around? Could possibly be an islandish location and knowing early overseas access could be vital.

Worker first no question.

With gold handy, forget early cottages. You'll want to race to Writing and use food to get some GS going, perhaps even settle the first while keeping the slider low and then an Academy with the second while maybe transitioning in some cottages... Or stick to GPP for some bulb action to get early Unis.

Well in any case that's too far ahead, let's figure the next steps first

 

[Thrar]

Right, I missed that coastline. So scouting our SSE seems to be the way to go for me.

I like warrior first because it gives us an opportunity to scout and fogbust the NW before barbs become a serious issue. Economically, both are roughly equal I think; warrior first saves two turns on the first two builds, but will be behind in food total due to getting the farms later.
My vote's on the warrior still, but it's not a very strong preference.