Okay, now it's your turn to allow me to explore! We fought so hard as a team early on just to get out an early explorer. This team seems to place a high value on map intelligence. Therefore, I do not think that I should be denied the chance to explore a bit with our units (as safely as possible), too!
Exploring Zara's capitol area
Mitchum said:
Well, we could also use open borders to our advantage. Not only will we get a +2 gold per turn trade route right away in Riverdale and an additional foreign trade route in Delhi (+1 gold per turn) once its border expand in 29 turns, but if we open borders on the turn we learn writing, we could also scout out Zara's land. I'm dying to find out what he has in his capital and what lies to the east. Knowing this will give us more insight into what he is doing and why. It was harder to do this earlier because it would have cost us 1 gold per turn to do so.
But now that we only have 4 fog busters, we can afford to scout Zara's land.
I could offer to give you guys 2 turns of exploration with the Confucian Missionary in Zara's lands. We would get the Confucian Missionary on the same turn that we can Open Borders with Zara (unless I click on Fishing with The Oracle or unless an AI gets The Oracle or Confucianism on the next turn--they can't beat us to either one of them 2 turns from now, due to us building a Wonder or learning a tech "at the end of our turn before each of them gets their turn"). After 2 turns' worth of exploration, I'll have to turn back with the Confucian Missionary, so that we can get the Confucian Organized Religion bonus in the capitol within a reasonable amount of time.
As Mitchum said, this exploration is with our 5th unit outside of our borders, so doing so is free, whereas before doing so would have cost us 1 Gold per Turn.
Exploring the Wheat
Well, we've come so far, why not push on?
There's a strong chance that the Barb Warrior near the Wheat will come after us and suicide on us. Right now, he's helping to fog-bust the east from any peninsulas that might be out there in the Desert. He's also helping to discourage Zara to settle towards the Wheat as Zara's City 3.
I do not fear the Wheat going as City 2, but once Zara's City 2 is down, the Wheat location is at risk--the longer that we keep a Barb unit there, the better.
Thus, I would like to explore some of the Coast near the Wheat. I believe that I can safely do so, without having to fight the Barb Warrior.
That would leave the Barb Warrior alive to fog-bust for us and to block Zara, in exchange for us finding out if there are any Seafood Resouces by that Wheat. If there are, then we can still consider alternate settling locations, as we'll probably not want to build a City just for 1 Seafood, some Coast, and the rest being Desert.
You guys took your risks with exploration, while this area is relatively risk-free--there almost certainly can't be another Barb Warrior to the NE with this other Barb unit in the area having been spawn-busting, so I only need to watch out for where the known Barb Warrior goes (by using the visibility of "Enemy Movements," which we should have enabled as per our team's chosen game options, if I am not mistaken, but which I'll have turned on regardless of what our team's chosen game options say). So, it's about as safe as any exploration can be. I also have TWO PHFor squares to "retreat to" should the need arise.
Exploring the western Coast
I'm also curious to see if there is a second Seafood Resource off to the west, to go with our Crab Resource.
Now that we have our 3 western fog-busters in place, I'd like to implement my earlier suggested plan of sending them west two squares for a bit, to cover each others' fog-busting gaps and them back to their fog-busting positions.
I drew screenshots to this effect a while ago and the idea seemed to be generally accepted, so I'd like to execute it now, so that we can 100% plan out our western settling locations.
Basically I'm looking for feedback from anyone who vehemently objects to any of this exploration or else from people who like the ideas or don't really care and want to say "go for it, give us the PPP so that you can play already, buddy," or something to that effect.
EDIT: I was running a test game and the barbs started causing problems N of Delhi for me. Maybe it's better to explore the wheat first so that the warrior can be back in place to handle the barbs better.
D), but no need to upload the save. Just post screen shots and let me know the hammer/food/beaker counts. Thx.
