24-10-2003 12:37									#31
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I notice that, although there was not much great land around the initial starting site, there were still a few much tighter city positions that could have been placed to allow for fast early growth, which would have both aided defence and sped the devlopment of that sought after early army and not resulted in much city overlap at this stage. Yet the decision was made to place cities more in an optimal placement way, and from the reports of Astro's so far it seems paramount in Grenouille's collective mind was quickly taking the luxuries that existed rather then anything else. Admittedly, by founding cities closely packed as we have that would mean far less likelihood of getting Horses and Iron.

Astro - could you comment on the early strategy thoughts running through your old team at this time as regarding city placement? Were you hoping to rapidly carve out an area to control for yourselves and develop an army later or did you think that placing cities as you did was the best way of getting to that army quickly?

Beyond the actual events (which are certainly rather spellbinding), I am now finding learning how other teams made their decisions is what interests me greatly.

	24-10-2003 20:47									#32
	Support Apolyton

I second MrWhereItsAt's sentiment (and his question).

Luxuries are very important, and it is definitely a race to get them against human opponents. This is one of the reasons why Religious is really good in PBEM games.

Nonetheless, I agree that Grenouille had better options than chasing down Luxuries. In particular: 1) the Hills tile directly North of the Cattle, which would have put a city with Hills defensive bonus on both chokepoints, and 2) somewhere East of Cervoise to benefit from the Bonus Grassland.

With such a placement, the option to Archer-rush CGN would have been a lot more workable. Also, since the idea was to REX without a Granary, the addition of a second and/or third Luxury would not have helped all that much early on, since most cities would be under size 4.

Other than this, I think the Grenouilles did very well with the bad hand they were dealt.


Dominae