Starting Position

[Trystero]

Uh... rushing a nearby rival with Immortals?

Hee. I should have been clearer. To me, Immortal rushes also count as REXing.

 

[Trystero]

Sounds like a plan to me. That just leaves discussing the movement of the Warrior for these initial turns.


I'm happy to act as "leader"/turn player for the initial turns, unless anyone else is also keen on the job?

Excellent! You get my vote of approval.

 

[azzaman333]

EDIT: oops

 

[DaveShack]

I'm available for playing turns as needed. I'm ok with LP as well.

 

[BLubmuz]

Forgive a newbie.

I'm OK too on actively play turns.

This won't mean anything else.

LP is the captain or the Team Leader, or el Generalissimo even if he doesn't play, right?

 

[AlphaShard]

Yeah he is I believe he did name the team afterall.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Heh... although just because I was the founder of the team doesn't mean I necessarily have to be "The Leader" for all eternity. But certainly, I'm happy to act as the general "team leader" where it's required, unless a lot of people are unhappy with that - in which case, majority rules.

Really, as I see it though, the "team leader" doesn't really have much more power than the average team member. Certainly my opinions count no more than each of the rest of yours, and neither do my votes. Personally, I see the "team leader" as more of an administrative position - e.g. posting in the main forum with our team votes on the game options, making sure threads are set up and maintained properly, and making sure we function well together as a team. That's pretty much it - I certainly have no delusions of grandeur or anything like that.

 

[Irgy]

You miss the fact that later on, we'll have more Workers that can work during a revolt. And while it's very likely that we'll want to use Slavery at some point, it's not guaranteed that we'll need it prior to another civic switch (e.g. Hereditary Rule, Organized Religion, or Representation). And a turn of anarchy is a turn of lost production and research. Thus we shouldn't be switching into Slavery, IMHO, until immediately prior to the turn we wish to use it.

You're quite right. The main reason though as I said was for a fair comparison point - although it's probably not optimal to revolt when I do in those cases, it seemed to me less of a distortion of the comparison than some options finishing in slavery and others not.

Heh... although just because I was the founder of the team doesn't mean I necessarily have to be "The Leader" for all eternity. But certainly, I'm happy to act as the general "team leader" where it's required, unless a lot of people are unhappy with that - in which case, majority rules.

Really, as I see it though, the "team leader" doesn't really have much more power than the average team member. Certainly my opinions count no more than each of the rest of yours, and neither do my votes. Personally, I see the "team leader" as more of an administrative position - e.g. posting in the main forum with our team votes on the game options, making sure threads are set up and maintained properly, and making sure we function well together as a team. That's pretty much it - I certainly have no delusions of grandeur or anything like that.

I think the main qualification needed for "team leader" is enthusiasm and time, and you appear to have more than enough of both of those. You're definately at least as qualified as anyone else for the position and probably more, so I don't see any reason to change things.

I'm happy to fill in as turn player also by the way, if you want a break or are away or whatever.

As for the early turns, it looks like we can at least play out the first 6 turns only having to vote on warrior movements, as it seems workboat first is a pretty clear winner. Afterwards, I still think:
Workboat -> [optional grow + warrior] -> worker
and
Workboat -> workboat -> 1 pop whip worker (with possibly an earlier warrior snuck in somewhere)
are the two main options, differing in more commerce for the first and more hammers for the second.

I also still think we need the hammers more than the commerce. The hammers will help us catch up in commerce eventually with probably earlier settlers, whereas I don't see us urgently needing the few extra commerce points for much early on. I think we'll be limited by hammers much more than commerce early on in this start. Case in point this early library we seem to want, I think we're more likely to need to delay it because we're too busy building workers/settlers/units than because we haven't researched writing yet.

 

[GoSkins]

I agree settle in place and WB as first build. I think we should research something before mining - again since we wont have a worker yet by the time mining is done. I like the idea of an early wonder as well, but not at the expense of REX. I havent tried any test games or anything...just some thoughts, but would like to try them out on a test game.

We need to come up with an overarching strategy and then execute short term, long term, builds, techs, wonders, etc. based off that.

Strategy 1 - No Wonders
Build order
WB
Worker
WB
Warrior
Warrior
Settler (would be nice to have BW so we can chop)
Library

Tech Order
The Wheel (prerequisite for Writing)
Mining (to hook up the gold...worker should be done +/- a couple turns)
BW (while the worker is hooking up the gold)
Writing (hopefully can time this to get writing on the same turn that the settler is done so that the next build can be the library)

Strategy 2 - Great Lighthouse
Build Order
WB
Worker
WB
Warrior
Warrior
Settler (would be nice to have BW so we can chop)
Worker (since we probably wont have Masonry needed for Great Lighthouse)
Great Lighthouse

Tech Order
Sailing (prerequisite for Great Lighthouse)
Mining
BW (chop some to help with Great Lighthouse)
The Wheel
Masonry


This might be too long of a path to allow us to get the great lighthouse.

 

[azzaman333]

It's way too early to think about building wonders.

 

[AlphaShard]

I disagree about not needing early commerce. Having extra commerce in the begining could help us with a tech lead. If we build a workboat first that will take care of food and getting a gold mine will give us hammers and commerce. We can gett both golds and fish hooked up by 2500 bc. We may have to pick some tiles for workshops if we don't have enough forest or hills in range.

 

[azzaman333]

I disagree about not needing early commerce. Having extra commerce in the begining could help us with a tech lead. If we build a workboat first that will take care of food and getting a gold mine will give us hammers and commerce. We can gett both golds and fish hooked up by 2500 bc. We may have to pick some tiles for workshops if we don't have enough forest or hills in range.

REX will help us more than a little bit of extra commerce.

 

[Lord Parkin]

At the moment I'm inclined more towards fast expansion with this start than claiming early wonders. But if some early wonders are still unclaimed after we've built our first 2-3 Settlers, we should definitely consider making a shot at one or two of them.

 

[pindicator]

REX will help us more than a little bit of extra commerce.

I'll throw my hat into this ring. A common axiom in the strategy boards is that in the early game, production is your main concern, even to the point that the first city you want to settle should have good production ability (even if it will turn into a commerce / hybrid city in the mid-game). I'd rather have an extra worker or several extra warriors than get bronze working a turn earlier.

 

[AlphaShard]

Don't we need commerce to even expand? How long is that science slider glint to stay at 100 with out commerce?

 

[azzaman333]

The slider doesn't need to stay at 100%. As long as we aren't losing money at 0% we can still research through specialists.

Working two fish two gold tiles at size four gives us a whopping 20 commerce per turn, plus the 8 from the palace, plus the 1 from the city tile. We'll be working these at ~turn 30. Our capital will, by itself, keep us running easily above 50% science for at least 4 more cities.

There's no need to worry about commerce too early, when we could be REXing.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Game has just gone up, so I logged in and completed all the moves that were agreed so far:

1. Settle in place
2. Start building Work Boat, working plains-hill forest to the south
3. Start researching Mining

No more resources discovered upon settling, sorry... although what we have is more than enough.

The only other thing left to decide before we end the turn is where to move the Warrior. Let's come to a consensus there so we can get going. Everyone, vote for either NW or NE.

Spoiler :

 

[azzaman333]

Whatever direction the numpad 7 is.

East and west inevitably confuses me.

 

[pindicator]

I vote for NE -- in other words, the 'Or Here?' sign

 

[azzaman333]

To justify my choice of 7 instead of 9, our borders expand in a couple of turns anyway which will show us the coast anyway. Going inland gives us greater potential to uncover a good site for our 2nd city.