Current Information

[DeepO]

I like the plan. If Hack moves 8-8-7, it will spot any intruders for a long time. It should mean leaving the capital undefended not risky at all. If he doesn't see someone in the next 3 turns, we should be safe for 8 turns, which is nearly enough for Gronk to return after exploration.

Another idea: what if Gronk, after returning to EotS, moves 8-9-9-9 and stays on the lookout on that mountain? with 2 lookouts (another one on a mountain to the West, close to where Grog is now) we see all incoming traffic... better than defending our capital with 2 warriors

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I'm starting to wonder more about the possibility that we're on an island by ourselves. I don't know about others, but when I play standard maps in SP, I essentially always have eight players. The odds of having a player alone with two luxuries may be significantly increased in 7-player games, especially on archipelago maps where one player in a 7-player game is likely to end up on a land mass that would have held two if there were eight players.

Nathan

[alva]

To me it looks like the island that allways seems to accompagnie(sp?) pangea maps

I don't care if it is an island, as long as we are not completely surrounded by ocean.

[zeit]

If we are alone on an island, than a temple is the way to go, otherwise, the 5 warriors plan seems the best- early scouting is SO important, and others tend to agree.

[DeepO]

It definately looks like a 2-civ landmass, but I'm not sure to the neighbours question yet. And there could be a whole lot of land to the North of us. So far, we seem blessed with our starting pos, let us hope we find a little bit more of land before we reach the Northern coast. But I'm optimistically: there seems to be 1, or a small patch of furs to the south, so I expect a patch, or some isolated incense to the North. 5 incense seems not enough for a standard map.

DeepO

[alexman]

Originally posted by nbarclay
With a temple replacing two warriors, we would only have two explorers instead of four unless we want to leave our capital undefended.

Just to be clear, the Temple replaces one warrior, not two, as long as we road to the 2nd city site instead of irrigating the flood plains first.

[Conqueror]

I would vote for 5th warrior.
The situation is very much similar than in my recent PBEM duel with FP.
I had 2 different luxuries, plenty of both, and it seemed that i was alone on an island, but one distant corner of the supposed island were very thin land bridge to another landmass and there was his starting position.
Besides, we are on so low difficulty level that we wont be needing the temple for quite a while.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Conqueror
Besides, we are on so low difficulty level that we wont be needing the temple for quite a while.

For the happiness effect, we won't ever need the temple, except as a prerequiste for a cathedral. It's the culture which makes it a good choice...

DeepO

[Dominae]

The original idea with the 5 Warriors plan was to get Settlers out sooner. We were chopping a lot of Forest and needed something to do with all those Shields, so the Barracks seemed like a good idea. Then it became apparent that Settlers weren't coming out as fast as they could. If alexman has found a way of fitting in a Temple and still build Settlers at almost the same rate, that's great. Even if we're not alone, 4 Warriors should be enough for now.


Dominae

[Arrian]

I still favor the 5 warriors.

Preliminary scouting indicates that we will most likely have at least 1 neighboring civ, but think we've all seen maps that start out looking like an island or small continent and end up being a huge continent with many civs. We just don't know.

I love temples, I really do. Those of you who check out the strategy forum will know that. But if 5 warriors will allow us to fully scout our landmass quicker, and if we ARE alone, fine, we can punch out a temple then and still have a powerful cultural effect (though if we are alone on a 2-luxury continent, it's probably decently sized, and I would then argue for pottery as tech #2 and for a granary to settler pump from EotS, but that's another matter). To sum up, I vote 5 warriors.

Nathan, however, as leader of the Economists, has final say.

-Arrian

[alexman]

Nooo! Not a Warrior for a temple! Think of all those wasted shields!

Seriously, I would build a Temple now, then a barracks, and then I would take some War Chariots to go exploring. Grog and company are nice guys and everything, but they are SLOW!

[DeepO]

I'm not convinced yet that we'll have immediate access to horses, but as the map was good to us so far, maybe we get lucky again. However, there is something else: would it be a crazy idea to have reg WC exploring, instead of vets? If we were to encounter another team, they wouldn't be scared to death to see a vet WC on their borders...

And we have a good chance of loosing against unforeseen reg warrior attacks, so they won't trigger our GA, or they are not guaranteed to trigger our GA. If we would have vet WCs on hills, we will likely win if they attack with a warrior, so have a badly timed GA, it could proof to be a serious incentive for them to start a war. with reg WCs, the chances are a lot lower.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I suspect that if we don't find a military threat, it may be a while before building more units in EotS makes sense once we get in settler production mode. With irrigated flood plains, we should be able to balance food and production to keep EotS churning out settlers back to back (maybe with workers mixed in) for as long as we want to. Work only FPs and we grow in pop faster than we can build settlers. Work only irrigated furs and we can get shields for settlers faster than we grow. In between, there has to be an equilibrium point.

Nathan

[Dominae]

Our Warriors are doing a fine job exploring as is. With five of them running around, we should finish exploring our continent by the time a War Chariot is built (assuming there's no "neck" directly North and then another big landmass). So when we finally decide to build Barracks and War Chariots, it will be for a military purpose. If there are no available targets, our WCs will be useless. Now that's wasted production.


Dominae

[Conqueror]

Originally posted by DeepO


For the happiness effect, we won't ever need the temple, except as a prerequiste for a cathedral. It's the culture which makes it a good choice...

DeepO

Was just wondering, where do we need the culture, it wont have any effect on trading, since we are playing against humans.
And we already have a culture building (palace) in our capital, so that our borders have expanded to the maximum that we can use of.
Just one more tought: wouldnt it be good to have low culture in capital city, so that our city would not show on f11 screen, because the ranking there is mostly based on cultural value. It would be benefical to see others capitals and not showing ours in the f11 screen.