[PB22-SPOILERS] HAKFlakes...the cereal that will choke you until we win

[HitAnyKey]

So I had a quick PM with mackoti in which I asked him to actually doublemove me next turn so that I play after both him & Gavagai. And part of that was allowing me to retreat the units out of AppleJacks first if I wanted to. So that is the big question I'd like your input on, if you see this soon.
Do I pull out the Archer & Chariot which have movement available this turn (leaving just the one Sentry promoted Chariot that I can't move) so that they can go to the inner core for defenses, leaving the outer cities for easy conquering?
The game is paused by mackoti for the moment, so I have a bit of time until Dreylin can play. But as soon as he plays, it'll likely be too late for me to retreat the units (unless I can get logged in after Gavagai and before mackoti) as agreed.

[HitAnyKey]

I'm waiting for a response from mackoti to find out if he just forgot to end his turn or if he still has stuff to so I can log in to play....but from civstats I can see Gavagai took another two cities of mine. I'm almost positive which two he took. And the cities in my inner core have no more than 2 units in each city, so he'll likely still be able to just continue plowing through until I'm dead. Especially with mackoti continuing at me from the north.
I'm sure part of the reason he's attacking me is because of my razing his city awhile back, which I probably should not have done. But I have a feeling it wouldn't have changed much if I didn't do that. He just built up so fast and easily outpacing me that I would have been his only logical target anyway.
I just should have expanded faster, earlier. One of my first times playing on a map this big, and I kept thinking if I expanded too fast my maintenance would hurt me too much. But apparently since everyone else expanded faster, that actually got them the much better tech benefit for stronger military units.

[Bobchillingworth]

Looking at your screen caps, I don't think your tile improvements were doing you many favors; plains farms shouldn't be a priority when you have unimproved riverside grasslands.

[HitAnyKey]

If you mean the ones in the last couple screenshots, those are really recent. The one by Golden Grahams was to give the rice irrigation. The two by Cocoa Puffs were only just recently made because it was a brand new city and I wanted to try to get it to grow really fast, and the grassland around it was still jungle and would have taken too long to chop it down and I was going to need my workers elsewhere. Those are the only 3 plains farms I have. I probably didn't need the second one by Cocoa Puffs, so that one was the mistake, but the first one was necessary to start the city growing as I prepared to do other things. But right around that time is where I realized Gavagai was getting ready to invade, so spending time chopping those jungles would have been useless.
I'm sure I had other non-optimal improvements around certain cities, but that's not one of my strongpoints. I tend to improve around cities as I think I start to need things. I also know I didn't make nearly enough workers early enough on. So I had multiple cities that were working unimproved tiles and it was tough to keep up with getting things improved around the cities, especially when I kicked it into high gear for the expansion. Expansion which sadly was too late.

[HitAnyKey]

So I logged in this turn to having both Gavagai & mackoti offering me Peace Treaty's. I accepted both of them. Gavagai had taken 4 of my cities and mackoti had taken 1 city:




I just didn't really have any other choice at this moment. My military is far inferior to both of them. Either of them could have esaily rolled right through me. I'm guessing they offered peace so that they could regroup, regrow, and get their economies back in order after conquering cities. For me....it just gives me a bit more time to research the military techs I need and backfill a couple cities.

Bran Flakes will make the settler to go NW into the desert for the Rice and Copper. Crappy city, but all this desert to my NW makes everything pretty crappy.



Cheerios will make the settler for the spot directly west of it. I originally had the tile 1N of that marked, but I think the one on the coast is better at this point. It will be able to immediately work a couple of the cottage tiles around Fruit Loops. And once FL finishes it's Forge it will come out of Unhappy. It went unhappy because Gavagai eliminated my Furs source (my Fur there is being traded to GJ for Whales and 2GPT which has been going on since almost the beginning of the game). I keep being surprised that GJ is still sending me 2gpt along with the Whales, but as long as that's going on no reason to cancel it.



Then down in the south I noticed a barb city. I'll send a couple units down there to see what's in the city, and try to take it. With any luck, the barbs have a Worker down there that has already cleared the jungle on that Rice.



All in all, I'm still in a really bad state. I'm not really going to be able to recover from this, and I doubt either Gavagai or mackoti will keep the peace much longer than the required 10 turns.
plako also is now nearby. because of the war, he got that island I really wanted to settle. I have a crappy island to the north that I could possibly settle for my Moai site, but it's almost not worth it. My only other Moai option would be that desert crap area to my west, which would need Moai to make any city over there worthwhile. Maybe the Rice/Copper city in the desert could be the Moai city, and I just leave that desolate area to the far west unsettled. I really can't think of any good reason to put a city over there.
I'd also really like to settle that spot SE of Lucky Charms, but with it being so close to Cocoa Puffs which Gavagai captured, don't think it's a good idea right now. Really wishing I hadn't settled CP....that was one of the most recent cities I settled.

[HitAnyKey]

So here's an interesting update and turn of events....
First, the quick overview of my part of the world...and what's left of my pitiful civilization:


As you can see, I lost my entire eastern front. This is what I gave up spending time expanding into my western crap-land or southern jungleland to try to grab before Gavagai could, since it was much better land. Well...big FAIL on my part.

So now is time to backfill. Too little, too late, I'm sure...but it's my only option now. I'll likely get attacked by plako or even Commodore (who grabbed one of the island spots to my direct west that I originally wanted), as they can easily see that I'm quite wounded without much military to defend myself. And plako even has a Horse Archer roaming my lands (I have a WC roaming his). I'm kinda hopeful that plako is just heading it eastward to view the damage done in the war and to see what else is going on.


So next turn, as you can see above I'll be settling two new cities in my NW. Both are somewhat decent, once they get improved...which I'm still lacking on appropriate number of Workers for, but getting more cities right now is most important. I'm building another Worker in Lucky Charms now.
The big question on that SW desert area, is which spot to put a future city. No matter where I put it, there will be 5 unusable tiles. The spot I have marked is the best tile, IMHO, but it would need to wait for a culture expansion to get me access to the Fish. The other option is to settle it 1S which gets me instant Fish, but the tiles for the city aren't as good. These are what the two city options would get:
Option 1: 3 Grassland (1 w/ Forest), 5 Plains Forest, 1 Plains, 6 Coasts (1 Fish after border pop), 5 Desert
Option 2: 3 Grassland (1 w/ Forest), 3 Plains Forest, 6 Coasts (1 Fish immediately), 3 Ocean, 4 Desert/1 Peak
Additionally, if I go with Option 2 then there are 2 Plains Forest tiles that would never be usable because they would be out of reach from any city...other than for future chopping output. So I think Option 1 is the best.....but would just be a very slow starter waiting for the border pop since I'd have to build a barracks and then still wait another 10 turns after that is done.
Thoughts on the two options?



Next up is the southern jungles. Next turn I get to see what the barbs have in their city. Hopefully only a unit or two that I can easily kill with the Axe & Mace I'm sending that direction. And if it hasn't grown yet, I'll need to wait until it does before I capture it so that it doesn't auto-raze.
I'll also plan to settle a city in that coastal hill between it and Lucky Charms. And if I can get to it before I get attacked again, will likely settle that city SE of LC. I originally had the spot 1N of that marked as one of my next cities, but with Gavagai now owning my cities north of that spot, settling further away from him (and on a hill) is the better option. Plus that's the only way I'd be able to improve and work that other Sugar, which otherwise would be unusable because of the barb city placement.

Now for the crazy fun news.....the turn after Gavagai & mackoti both offered me peace, Gavagai declared war on mackoti...


And he captured two of mackoti's cities already on that eastern area north of Gavagai's core. So hopefully they keep fighting over on that side of the continent, leaving me alone for awhile. I need to get to Engineering and spam out a bunch of Pikes.
And to that effect, I got a Great Scientist in Fruit Loops this turn, which I used to build an Academy there (as it's my best research city, even moreso than my capital in Bureaucracy. That's because of all the cottages and water tiles and the fur income. Cheerios is basically my production powerhouse. I really wish I had time to spend on researching Literature for the Heroic Epic in that city, but it at least has to wait until after Engineering.

Gawdzak kicked off another Golden Age, and last turn he asked for my Marble for 15gpt. I accepted, since I have no used for my Marble right now. I'm sure it's going to get him some super great wonder, but he's far enough away from me and butts up closely to Gavagai & mackoti that me helping him, helps me. Hopefully he'll attack Gavagai at some point.

That's about it for now...time to do some actual work.

[Cornflakes]

Do you have ability to build missionaries? If so it would be much better to build missionary and put religion culture in that city at Option 1. Then you can connect the fish after 10 turns without having to wait for a barracks. And the WB for the fish should be coming from Fruit Loops.

[HitAnyKey]

Do you have ability to build missionaries? If so it would be much better to build missionary and put religion culture in that city at Option 1. Then you can connect the fish after 10 turns without having to wait for a barracks. And the WB for the fish should be coming from Fruit Loops.

Yeah, I thought about the Missionary option as well while thinking on things further. That what I would likely do. And there is already a work boat in that area, which just returned from it's nearly full-game exploring mission.

[HitAnyKey]

Been awhile since I updated, but don't really feel up to doing much of an update right now either. Maybe I will later. Just posting to state that the war between mackoti & Gavagai didn't last very long, and since then has just been a big buildup of both of them getting military (and Gavagai already having Gunpowder), mackoti (now Krill) just attacked me from the north while I have most of my defenses on the eastern border with Gavagai. So I'm toast. I just have not been able to build up anything even close to how they have.
I still can't believe I'm going to end up being eliminated from this game before I get eliminated from PB18, where I'm clearly way behind everyone else even more so.

[HitAnyKey]

Good for you Commodore....you stole some of the glory from Donovan and Gavagai by razing my second to last city before either of them (it would have been Donovan) could take it and keep it. So now it's just a matter of stacking up troops in Cheerios until one of them is able to take it. They've both got a rather large amount of troops on the way, with Donovan coming from the north and Gavagai coming from the south. I'll probably throw any Catapults I build at Gavagai, since his stack is probably superior and I think I'd rather Donovan be the one to take me out. Or at least to make it more of a "fair fight" for them to battle out who gets it.
Hopefully I'll be out of my misery soon though, so I can stop having to log into the game.