SGOTM 11 - Barley Demons

[Compromise]

Okay, roster:

Compromise (just played)
timmy827 (up)
SilentConfusion (on deck)
regoarrarr
MyOtherCar
sunrise089

For extra credit, figure out the sorting method I used to come up with the order. It is cyclical, and starting with Compromise was arbitrary.

Also lurking (and ordered according to the same algorithm):
pocketbeetle
T-hawk
Swiss Pauli
Adlain

Spending Civ time today working on my Adventure 44 report, but I do want to get back and discuss grand strategy here.

Biggest question is what to build next. Warrior then Settler? I'm worried about chopping too many trees on a health-limited semi-isolated continent, so another worker might not be so valuable. Also, how tightly do we want to try to trap Zara?

 

[Adlain]

Dispite the recent MP game i played showing my Noobness in CIV, i would go for a loose containment untill we get a better idea on the size of this island we dont want an early war, or any war atall that may force us to eleminate them as we will lose points per the variant.

speaking of which, are vassel states on in this game??

 

[Compromise]

speaking of which, are vassel states on in this game??

I just looked in-game. The only options checked are "No tribal villages" and "No events." So, I assume that vassals will be available after feudalism.

 

[SilentConfusion]

Dispite the recent MP game i played showing my Noobness in CIV, i would go for a loose containment untill we get a better idea on the size of this island we dont want an early war, or any war atall that may force us to eleminate them as we will lose points per the variant.

speaking of which, are vassel states on in this game??

In war you are never forced to eliminate your opponent. Even before Vassals States are enabled, you can always stop at one city. And if they declare war on us (say because of border tension and lack of land) then we can fight them without penalty, unless of course we eliminate them, which is easy to avoid. But the real question is whether we want them to be weakened. If we are the only two civs on the island will they trade with us? Are tech monopolies based on known civs? If so then Zara will only trade techs with us that he will trade with a monopoly. While that may not be a problem with Mansa, I'm not sure how willing Zara is to trade monopoly techs. If he will trade with us then we want him not so crippled that he can't tech. If he won't trade with us anyway, what are the reasons to want him to be not weak? I guess if we're going for diplo, the can't win through entirely your own votes could be a reason to give ZY some cities with pop. Other than that I would rather have a weak neighbor that we won't have to worry will attack us.

Vassal states are indeed on in this game. Vassaling may be necessary depending on where the fur is. Only a vassal will trade a unique resource (except for the case where it is obsolete for one but not the other, although this may have been fixed). We could vassal other civs without a "declared war on us" penalty if they do the declaring.

 

[Compromise]

I think we want to contain Zara pretty tightly. Can we seal him off with both a cow/wheat/oasis city up north and something that grabs some river to the east?

Also, what do we think about going for the half-spiritual Edit: half-creative trait: Stonehenge

 

[SilentConfusion]

I think we want to contain Zara pretty tightly. Can we seal him off with both a cow/wheat/oasis city up north and something that grabs some river to the east?

Also, what do we think about going for the half-spiritual trait: Stonehenge

Do you mean the half-creative trait?

I like the city spot 5E1N of capitol because it has a lot of riverside grassland for cottages. If we are going culture we'd even eventually steal a few floodplains and a cow from Zara. But we'd want to get this spot quickly. The city would also completely seal the southern continent.

In the north we could settle a cow/wheat/incense/oasis city 2E7N on the plains hill. This city would have two coast tiles that won't get the lighthouse's food boost, and it wouldn't complete a seal as the 1SE of cow path through the mountains would still be available after first border pops. Now if we chopped stonehenge in this third northern city it would complete the seal quickly, although we'd have to move pretty quick to get SH in our third city. If we move that city any south we lose the wheat.

An alternate eastern city site that would complete the seal, although would lose the cow and all hope to steal the floodplains, is 4E2N of capitol. This site also grabs two peaks and an extra desert hill, so its clearly inferior land. We don't want to leave an opening, but I'm looking for other alternatives to settling a worse city. Possibly a city 4E1N with chopped SH?

 

[Compromise]

Do you mean the half-creative trait?

I do.

Now I want to see where those proposed locations are, but I'm getting sleepy....

 

[timmy827]

Do you mean the half-creative trait?

I like the city spot 5E1N of capitol because it has a lot of riverside grassland for cottages. If we are going culture we'd even eventually steal a few floodplains and a cow from Zara. But we'd want to get this spot quickly. The city would also completely seal the southern continent.

In the north we could settle a cow/wheat/incense/oasis city 2E7N on the plains hill. This city would have two coast tiles that won't get the lighthouse's food boost, and it wouldn't complete a seal as the 1SE of cow path through the mountains would still be available after first border pops. Now if we chopped stonehenge in this third northern city it would complete the seal quickly, although we'd have to move pretty quick to get SH in our third city. If we move that city any south we lose the wheat.

1st city - let's see what else is in the fog. I like blocking Zara tight but it will take a LOOONG time to get those cows against a creative leader;this might actually be where I'd prefer SH if we go for it.

However, if we go for very early 2nd and 3rd cities to block Zara (and I think we should) we need to regard Stonehenge as a luxury that we might get rather than a centerpiece of the master plan.

 

[SilentConfusion]

Just some visuals for people to look at while considering city placement. Any other early city placements that people bring up will be added to this reference list. Hopefully this will make talking about and debating city placements a bit easier.

I used the save Adlain made, but I corrected a few tiles. Save is attached.

City A:

Spoiler :

City A.1

Spoiler :

City A.2

Spoiler :

City B

Spoiler :

City B.1

Spoiler :

 

[SilentConfusion]

Here's some sample micro numbers:

This is for warrior>worker, although we may want to hold off on second worker.

Worker movements:
t=19 SW>NW>farm (finished on t=26)
t=27 N>NE
t=28 farm (finished on t=35)
t=36 SW>chop
t=37 S>SE>S (to silver)
t=38 mine (finished on t=43, t=41 with 2 workers)

Tech path:
t=19 60/280 beakers into BW (finished on t=35)


Build order:
t=19 start warrior (finished on t=29)
t=29 start worker (finished on t=39)


t=19 60/280 beakers (13 bpt); 0/33 food (3 fpt); 0/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=20 73/280 beakers (13 bpt); 3/33 food (3 fpt); 2/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=21 86/280 beakers (13 bpt); 6/33 food (3 fpt); 4/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=22 99/280 beakers (13 bpt); 9/33 food (3 fpt); 6/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=23 112/280 beakers (13 bpt); 12/33 food (3 fpt); 8/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=24 125/280 beakers (13 bpt); 15/33 food (3 fpt); 10/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=25 138/280 beakers (13 bpt); 18/33 food (3 fpt); 12/22 hammers (2 hpt) [unimp'd corn]
t=26 151/280 beakers (13 bpt); 21/33 food (6 fpt); 14/22 hammers (2 hpt) [imp'd corn]
t=27 164/280 beakers (13 bpt); 27/33 food (6 fpt); 16/22 hammers (2 hpt) [imp'd corn]
Dehli grows to size 2

From this point if you worked the unimp'd corn tile, BW would be researched on t=36. You can shave a turn off this if you work the unimp'd silver tile for part of the time.

Here's the way to get BW on t=35:

t=28 177/280 beakers (15 bpt); 0/36 food (4 fpt); 18/22 hammers (4 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd silver]
Warrior is trained, start on Worker
t=29 192/280 beakers (15 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 0/90 hammers with 0 overflow (4 fpt + 4 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd silver]
t=30 207/280 beakers (15 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 8/90 hammers (4 fpt + 4 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd silver]
t=31 222/280 beakers (15 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 16/90 hammers (4 fpt + 4 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd silver]
t=32 237/280 beakers (15 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 24/90 hammers (4 fpt + 4 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd silver]
t=33 252/280 beakers (14 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 32/90 hammers (7 fpt + 2 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd corn] Switch to unimp'd corn
t=34 266/280 beakers (14 bpt); 4/36 food (0 fpt); 41/90 hammers (7 fpt + 2 hpt) [imp'd corn, unimp'd corn]
Bronze Working is researched

An alternative path in the two worker path would be to whip the worker on t=36.

Without the second worker the mine will be finished on the same turn as Dehli grows to size 3. This makes me think we might not need a second worker right away. Instead we could build more warriors, and 2-pop whip a settler at size 5. I'll try to put up some numbers for that tomorrow morning.

 

[Adlain]

I used the save Adlain made, but I corrected a few tiles.

out of curiosity, any Glaring errors??

 

[MyOtherCar]

I think we want to contain Zara pretty tightly. Can we seal him off with both a cow/wheat/oasis city up north and something that grabs some river to the east?

Also, what do we think about going for the half-spiritual trait: Stonehenge

I think we should forget about the site to the east: it will take to long to get enough culture to effectively close of the rest of the continent, if at all. Probably Zara will get a settler past us before that. I'd rather go for the northern city-site B and concentrate on getting Stone Henge there. The south and east leaves Zara probably only our proposed site A and maybe one mediocre coastal site to the south.

As for builds, let's build a third warrior and see what's to the west, then get a settler out and send that with our current scouting warrior to one of the B-sites.

Do you mean the half-creative trait?

That's the other half.

Oh, and I must say I really appreciate the number crunching SilentConfusion (and the worldbuildering Adlain).

 

[pocketbeetle]

First off, just a great big to SC and Adlain for keeping the Testsave accurate. It's a huge help.

Okay, roster:
For extra credit, figure out the sorting method I used to come up with the order.

No idea

Biggest question is what to build next. Warrior then Settler? I'm worried about chopping too many trees on a health-limited semi-isolated continent, so another worker might not be so valuable.

You'll see in a sec, but I've now done quite a few run throughs of this.
Best results have always been obtained going Warrior to size 2, then queueing the warrior(2 turns left) to build a worker, finishing the Warrior (overflow from worker completes it 1 turn), then building Settler. After that, alternating settlers and workers with the occasional warrior to allow growing back to size 3 (optimal size for working Silver and 2 corns) after whipping.
(SC - don't worry about getting BW on t35. As you note in your worker movements, the worker finishes farming the second corn on t35, and BW on t36 means he moves SW and starts chopping straight away, it's perfect.)

I really really can't stress enough that we should be chopping the crap out of this area.
Health problems are not an issue. We have settled adjacent to a river (+2) and have a strong +2 health resource (corn) in our starting area, with cows and deer nearby. There is also a wheat (another+2) not too far away, plus always options to trade with the AI/build aqueducts/Hanging Gdn.

With regards to blocking in Zara, I agree with timmy's comments yet again.

1st city - let's see what else is in the fog. I like blocking Zara tight but it will take a LOOONG time to get those cows against a creative leader;this might actually be where I'd prefer SH if we go for it.

However, if we go for very early 2nd and 3rd cities to block Zara (and I think we should) we need to regard Stonehenge as a luxury that we might get rather than a centerpiece of the master plan.

In order to make a decision about this, we need to know where Zara is going to settle.
Hence I've just gone and done a few run-throughs, I've stuck the results below.
(incidentally, can we try to put picture heavy posts in spoiler tags please? ([spo*iler][/spo*iler]) Speeds up loading plus makes it more manageable. I'm in no way trying to discourage anyone from posting )

Taking my own advice:
1) No settling
No cities settled, I just sat and watched AI.
Result: ZY settled aggressively at 5E2N on T60

Spoiler :

2)Passive settling.
Two cities settled, the 1st 4N of the capital and the 2nd in a passive spot next to the deer.
(the 4N one is on a plains hill, picks up the cows, can share the corn for fast growth, and could work an adjacent grassland cottage for Delhi.)
The result was that ZY settled aggressively at 5E2N on T80

Spoiler :

For note: I ran all these a couple of times to check the variation. T60 in (1) was the earliest I saw ZY settle, T80 was the slowest.
Here's another screenshot of (2) being repeated, ZY settled T74 on this one. ZY is definitely slowed for some reason by the city settled 4N, not sure why (Grows capital to size 5, extra archer?).

Spoiler :

3)Passive Seal
Again two cities settled, this time both going North. Bombay was the first settled ie furthest North.
The result was that ZY settled aggressively at 5E2N on T69

Spoiler :

Note that I've effectively sealed the AI without the use of SH or monuments. I believe I chopped a monument into the central Vijay city, but it's borders have yet to expand.

4)Aggressive settling
Three cities settled, but this time the first one went and blocked ZY off from his preferred site.
FYI: The aggressive city, Bombay, is instantly connected by river to Delhi.
The result was that ZY settled passively at 7E1S on T74

Spoiler :

Quick comments: The Deer city SW of Delhi isn't a bad site, it can use the corn for fast growth, can work 2 possible cottages for Delhi, and ofc picks up the deer, however as T-Hawk noted, researching hunting to camp the deer makes it troublesome to produce cheap warrior for military police. The 2 silver + whale site is pretty awful early on, possible Moai later?

5)Aggressive settling, then waiting
Curious what the AI would do for it's third city, I decided to sit and watch.
ZY went and settled his 3rd city up at the wheat on T96

Spoiler :

6)Aggressive REXing
No messing about this time, plus I was getting the hang of what to do.
Three cities settled, 4-5 workers built, settling order went Bombay-Vijay-Pataliputra, all cities already connected, cows pastured, multiple monuments plus Delhi granary nearly built etc.
Result: ZY settled passively on T74 again.

Spoiler :

Regarding city sites that you brought up SC.
Bombay will never get that cows from a creative capital, shouldn't try. Current position is a nice cottaging area however.
Vijay is okay, but I prefer the plains hill 1E for early access to the corn. Note in (2) it's already size 3.
Patal is probably the best site at the top. Plains hill, wheat incense oasis, and on the sea, which is important since there's a lot of desert and plains around it making it food poor.

Conclusions from above
So long as ZY does not have any more resources than we've seen (possible), he'll settle his second city around the T60-80 mark.
If we settle aggressively as above, there is a very good chance ZY will settle the extremely poor location 7E1S. This is likely because the AI is desperate for it's second city to be a) close to the capital, b) to include that second cows which is not workable by the capital.
We can easily have 4 cities and 4-5 workers by T75 if we REX by chopping and (restrained) whipping, but it ofc hurts our tech rate immensely. Forget getting Jud if we do this.


Important points:

• We need to know what's West
  There is absolutely no point deciding on city sites, nor settling sub-par blocking cities, only to have another AI appear East and take the choice locations.
• Stonehenge with stone = possible luxury. SH without stone is not an option (imo). Note the attempt to build SH in the aggressive city in (4). I chopped all those damn forests and it's still not done by T74. High risk of it being built elsewhere.
  Monument (45 hammers)= 1.5 forest chops, SH (180 hammers)= 6 forest chops. We'd need to settle 6 cities to make SH worth it without stone.
• Need to take advantage of our UU, the Fast Worker. It's not physically possible to have 'too many' at this early stage, there's so many tiles to improve or chop. Aggressive REXing needs equally aggressive worker building, to keep new cities from working unimproved tiles.
• Need to decide Culture vs Diplomacy sooner or later.
  Was thinking about this a little more yesterday. I'm really coming around to diplomatic win.
  Culture vics rely on Great Artists to bring the 3rd city up to legendary (1 always lags behind). The extra scenario requirement of 4 GP on the fur might make this a bit more strained.
  Additionally, being spiritual helps diplomacy - can easily agree to civic/religious demands as no turns of anarchy
• TGLib - if beelining Mass Media for diplomatic win, then TGL will go obsolete quickly. Possibly MoM wonder will be more important. Epic speed means Golden Ages are more worthwhile, and GA helps boost GP output.

As for builds, let's build a third warrior and see what's to the west, then get a settler out and send that with our current scouting warrior to one of the B-sites.

Amen to your sentiment of exploring West MOC.
Exploring has helped us make an excellent Testsave, which in turn allows us to do stuff like the above to predict what the AI will do.

Quick note is that while we only have 1 warrior atm, it takes the same amount of turns to build a new one as it takes for the current to turn around from his end of island position and return to the capital.
Barb warriors won't be turning up for another 40 turns or so, so no risk in just turning the existing warrior around and sending him West.


Question for T-Hawk and anyone else who might know:

I remember reading an AI attitude guide once that said ZY was more likely to have a positive relation to the human player. Experience also bears this out. Any idea?
Also, is ZY one of the AIs that will never declare if he's at friendly status or higher?
If so, he should be pretty easily manageable if we share the same religion with him.

 

[Compromise]

Quick reply here...

Awesome work on the testsave, the listing of our priorities, and the use of the testsave to figure out what Zara is likely to do! I'm glad we're thinking rather than rushing the next turnset.

Exploration:
Yes, we need to find what's west.

Land for Zara
I really like the idea of taking the best sites from Zara but leaving him with crap land to settle. I like the location of Bombay in pb's last few screenshots. We may want to keep blocking maintenance costs low by blocking the north with a single city on the plains hill that grabs wheat, cows, oasis. Leave the double-silver for Zara (on a boat). Leave the desert and tundra for Zara.

More semi-isolation evidence
I didn't note this in my turnset report, but mousing over Zara's civ name in the GUI gives his espionage ratio with us. It's been (x+4)/x the whole time, with x increasing by 4 points/turn. I think this means that he hasn't met any other civs yet. This is something we'll want to keep an eye on especially during the first few turnsets. If he meets someone, then we aren't really semi-isolated as it appears now.

Blocking cities
I also take this to mean that it will be of value to use at least two cities to block Zara regardless of if/where we find any AIs to the west. Zara will declare at Pleased, so we'll always have to be watching him.

Victory condition
Although it will require a lot more thought, I do think that a diplo win is going to win this event. We can bulb some great people on the way off our godforsaken rock, but culture would have us prefer Artist generation.

Other
Note that it is of course possible that the scout I saw on turn 12 was the northern scout turned southward. But there's no way to know for sure.

I would like to use the WB test save to determine when barb non-animals a) start showing up, and b) start moving on cities.

 

[pocketbeetle]

Land for Zara
I really like the idea of taking the best sites from Zara but leaving him with crap land to settle. I like the location of Bombay in pb's last few screenshots. We may want to keep blocking maintenance costs low by blocking the north with a single city on the plains hill that grabs wheat, cows, oasis. Leave the double-silver for Zara (on a boat). Leave the desert and tundra for Zara.

It's A1 from SC's suggestion earlier up. Went for A1 over A2 as it has a chance of picking up a fp later on.
Also made sense after the fact, as it comes under less cultural pressure from ZY's creative trait in his 2nd city.

Regarding the single blocking city in the North, can completely understand. Makes no sense to expand to 6 cities, then be sitting on our hands waiting for courthouses so we can afford the maintenance, only to have ZY jump on an easily built galley and sail around our blockade.

I didn't note this in my turnset report, but mousing over Zara's civ name in the GUI gives his espionage ratio with us. It's been (x+4)/x the whole time, with x increasing by 4 points/turn. I think this means that he hasn't met any other civs yet.

Good thinking, didn't consider that!
Agree it suggests two of us on an island together.

Zara will declare at Pleased, so we'll always have to be watching him.

Damn. Good to know.

I would like to use the WB test save to determine when barb non-animals a) start showing up, and b) start moving on cities.

For what it's worth, (4) in the previous post has a barb warrior in the West, at T74.
The SW deer city in that screenshot was undefended, and I'm 100% certain they hadn't turned aggressive yet. That dreaded beelining for cities is always recognisable.

Enough chatter from me. Time to hear what others think


Will try and play a couple of run throughs tonight using the latest testsave, settling only 2 blocker cities. Will be interesting to see where ZY settles his 3rd city in that case (will he try and walk through the central gap I wonder?)
Will pay more attention to the barbs also.

 

[SilentConfusion]

out of curiosity, any Glaring errors??

Just a few wrong tiles, most notably some deserts in ZY's capitol that should have been floodplains. The rest were plains forests when it should have been grassland forests. Not much at all. You did great work with that save.

You'll see in a sec, but I've now done quite a few run throughs of this.
Best results have always been obtained going Warrior to size 2, then queueing the warrior(2 turns left) to build a worker, finishing the Warrior (overflow from worker completes it 1 turn), then building Settler. After that, alternating settlers and workers with the occasional warrior to allow growing back to size 3 (optimal size for working Silver and 2 corns) after whipping.
(SC - don't worry about getting BW on t35. As you note in your worker movements, the worker finishes farming the second corn on t35, and BW on t36 means he moves SW and starts chopping straight away, it's perfect.)

Good point about BW. What about the whipping strategy. I'm not sure of the way to optimize whipping.

In order to make a decision about this, we need to know where Zara is going to settle.
Hence I've just gone and done a few run-throughs, I've stuck the results below.
(incidentally, can we try to put picture heavy posts in spoiler tags please? ([spo*iler][/spo*iler]) Speeds up loading plus makes it more manageable. I'm in no way trying to discourage anyone from posting )

I will go back and spoiler my pictured posts. Great work with this. This is a big help. Knowing when and where ZY wants to settle gives us an advantage.

Land for Zara
I really like the idea of taking the best sites from Zara but leaving him with crap land to settle. I like the location of Bombay in pb's last few screenshots. We may want to keep blocking maintenance costs low by blocking the north with a single city on the plains hill that grabs wheat, cows, oasis. Leave the double-silver for Zara (on a boat). Leave the desert and tundra for Zara.

I think I might prefer two blocking cities to three, due to the city maintenance.

Victory condition
Although it will require a lot more thought, I do think that a diplo win is going to win this event. We can bulb some great people on the way off our godforsaken rock, but culture would have us prefer Artist generation.

I am also coming around to a diplo victory. Regarding early maintenance, how important is it for an early diplo win to maintain early tech-rate? Or do GP-bulbs make it not as necessary? I would think that to get the earliest diplo victory we want to maximize our tech-rate. I like the eastern city because of it's potential as a cottage city. For each city we have to decide if the reward of having it outweighs the drain of the maintenance cost on our tech-rate. In the games I've played with super-fast tech-rates while racing to the AP or something else I didn't go city heavy. I built just a few cities and maximized tech-rate, while meeting people. We will be the one who gets the UN so we don't have to have max pop. If we can get everyone to vote for us, we don't need more than 1 city. Unless the city will increase our tech-rate it should have a very good reason for existing. We will need a city on the coast, if we have to cross water. A deer city should fix that.

I would like to use the WB test save to determine when barb non-animals a) start showing up, and b) start moving on cities.

For all information about barbarians read this thread. oyzar made a compilation of DanF's insights into the inner workings of barbarians.

It says that barb animals start spawning after turn 5 (for any speed) and they stop spawning when both of the following are true:
-the average number of non-barb cities per player is equal to or greater than 1.5. With 7 players in this game it should be until 11 cities are founded.
-enough turns have elapsed. For Epic Emperor this should be 30 turns.

The threshold for barbs entering your borders are:
=number of cities > 2*number of players alive
-barbs will enter if they can pillage an improvement or a route on the next turn (so in border tiles)

=number of cities > 3*number of players alive
-barbs will enter if they can pillage an improvement or a route on the third turn, or if they can attack a city on the second turn

Tests can still be done to tell when these thresholds will be reached on average.

 

[Compromise]

Again, great discussion and work.

Next turnset
I don't think we're ready to run the next turnset yet, but we're getting there. I suggest the following based on the above posts:

Points not requiring much more discussion (I think):
1) Run it until Bronzeworking research completes or something unexpected comes up.
2) Farm the middle corn, then the north corn.
3) Keep an eye on our espionage ratio with Zara. I think right now it's 64/60. If it changes from (x+4)/4, then I think it'll mean he's met someone. (We should verify this.)
4) Let's start naming our troops. Turnplayer's choice. Makes it easier to specify micromanagement items.
5) That eastern warrior can head back home and reveal southern tiles as he returns. I noted a hill in Zara's BFC which busts a bit of fog. He's wounded (1.6/2.0), but has Woodsman I.
6) Barb troops--not animals--start appearing on T30.

Points requiring a bit more discussion:
7) Build a warrior next. Discussion: Should this warrior be finished so it can explore? I know the absolute fastest REX path is to put him on hold once Delhi reaches size 2, but information is valuable to us here. Once we reach size 2, we could work a forested plain and double his production time. Would that make it just 1 extra turn after getting to size 2?
8) If we complete a second warrior, what's his marching order? Does he go to the western fog or does he head north to see if we'll miss any seafood by settling site "B"?
9) What do we do with our starting warrior once he's exposed all the fog? Post him near the river between us and Zara? Have him head north? Should he expose the silver ice region?
10) I think we're going to want to have the capital be at least size 3 or better once we get both corns and the silver online. That may affect our whipping decisions.

Longer-term discussion points
I'm assuming we're semi-isolated here and that we're going to try for a UN diplo victory.

11) Wonders. I'm thinking Stonehenge is likely out. Even if there's stone, the location isn't going to be high priority for settling unless we attempt a Pyramids gambit.
12) Conjectures about the other AIs. I've seen Saladin and Boudica go for Hinduism first, and one of the AIs did here. Does anyone else? Or is this random?
13) Astronomy. I suspect we'll need it. How are we gonna get it?
14) Great People. What do we want? What can we reasonably expect to get?
15) Tech path. Assume diplo. What's our direct path? What are likely detours?
16) Expansion rate. Having silver is nice. I think it's basically a ticket to an extra city up front. But what is the optimal balance between expansion (to claim land and to suppress barb spawning) and consolidation.
17) Pocketbeetle is starting to convince me that we'll want to chop all those nice forests at the start, but I'm not totally there yet. Early use is for workers and settlers. Later uses are wonder-aid or health. Thoughts?

 

[T-hawk]

11)Wonders. I'm thinking Stonehenge is likely out. Even if there's stone, the location isn't going to be high priority for settling unless we attempt a Pyramids gambit.

Stone really isn't a factor for Stonehenge. 120 hammers is cheap anyway and the wonder usually goes before you even get Masonry for the quarry. If you want it, just build it.

 

[SilentConfusion]

6) Barb troops--not animals--start appearing on T30.

Barb animals will still spawn after T30 until 11 cities have been founded. I have a feeling that the 11 cities will take longer than t=30. So we probably have more time than that to face animals. Non-animal barbs will always enter your borders if they can attack a unit. Once 14 cities have been settled in the world they will enter borders if there is a pillageable tile on the border. After 21 cities have been founded the rules relax even further and they're more likely to enter.

Points requiring a bit more discussion:
7) Build a warrior next. Discussion: Should this warrior be finished so it can explore? I know the absolute fastest REX path is to put him on hold once Delhi reaches size 2, but information is valuable to us here. Once we reach size 2, we could work a forested plain and double his production time. Would that make it just 1 extra turn after getting to size 2?

We should reach size 2 on t=28. On that turn we'll have 18/22 hammers into the warrior with 2 hpt from our city center. We could work a tile with 2 hammers instead of the unimproved corn and finish the warrior the next turn on t=29. We wouldn't even have to work a 3h plains forest hill tile; we could work a grass forest hill and gain an extra food.

EDIT: I noticed you suggested a forested plains not a forested plains hill, which is exactly right. Same as grass forest hill.

8) If we complete a second warrior, what's his marching order? Does he go to the western fog or does he head north to see if we'll miss any seafood by settling site "B"?

I think that heading west is more important. The only city sites that could possibly have unexplored seafood tiles are 1E and 1SE of the wheat. How much would that change where we'd want to settle?

9) What do we do with our starting warrior once he's exposed all the fog? Post him near the river between us and Zara? Have him head north? Should he expose the silver ice region?

I don't think we want to station him between us and Zara. If we want that spot ZY is unlikely to get there before us. The only thing it really accomplishes is to spawnbust, and those barbs would be just as bad for ZY as for us. If our northern city site really does depend on the presence of seafood in the fog, send him up that way and move him along the top of the continent. If the presence of seafood in the fog wouldn't change our settling spots, then I suggest he goes along the southern coast of the island watching for seafood near the silver and heading west of the deer.

10) I think we're going to want to have the capital be at least size 3 or better once we get both corns and the silver online. That may affect our whipping decisions.

This is something I am not very good at: managing whipping. If we have three good tiles do we whip right after it grows to four pop or do or do we whip it down to the two irrigated corns which will grow it quickly back onto the silver. How much will the missing turns of silver take away from our tech-rate?

 

[SilentConfusion]

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Just something to be aware of. This is a game of honor and sportsmanship so it shouldn't be an issue, but not everyone follows these rules. AlanH says they know when someone clicks on another team's thread, and this could be grounds for disqualifying an entire team. This all seems pretty serious and has me being very careful when clicking on our team thread. I actually leave it open in a tab so I don't have to worry about mis-clicking. However, if someone was so inclined they could see some of what we are typing by going to our profile pages and clicking the show recent posts button. It shows the first 195 characters or so of the post. People could read this without visiting the thread, so it might not be detected. I'm a naturally paranoid person, so I think like this. I tested it out by going to my profile and measuring how many characters it showed. Probably no one would try to gain information by doing this, but it's possible because this isn't a private forum. So if you have great insights that might help other teams you could put it outside of the first 200 characters of the post. It could even be used to plant misinformation in our opponents minds, but that'd be too much effort. This is why I put a banner at the top of this post and will continue to do so.