Kim Jong Carpathia smashes the foolish capitalists of the realms

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Once again, no moves by Elkad. But he's added a vulture to Eridu, and his power has spiked a little.







Chumchu asked for a world map trade. I got alot more out of it than he. Also revealed alot of Pindicator, who's expanded like breakneck to 10 cities, and has probably crashed his economy.



Unfortunately, I'm competing with Pindicator for this land, and he is better positioned to grab it.



A picture of my core. I'm really falling behind, I need more workers. To get access to the westlands, I'm going to have to pop KJC's borders and get ocean access via culture.



Chumchu is quite badly squeezed by Cairo. Best not back Chumchu into a corner.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

An update! I had taken a ceasefire with Elkad earlier, I think he's learnt his lesson. The borders should regain the deer in 2 turns or so. I should be able to hit 100 culture and get 3rd ring before Elkad hits 500 culture and gets 4th ring.



Also, there's an interesting decision to be made in this city: how best to build the Moai? One option is to hard-build the damn thing off the grass hills, the other option is to do some whip overflow tricks. Unfortunately, whipping off grass hill mines isn't the best thing to do (though it would get me a quicker lighthouse).

From some sloppy simming, whipping would get me Moai in ~13-15 turns, not whipping would get me it in ~15 turns. Hmm, there's not much I can overflow from or into, so I think now is the best time to whip the lighthouse.

Besides, from 2-pop whips, I can only overflow a maximum of 19 hammers into a build in RtR.



City settled in 2 turns. Priority is to chop the gems forest into a workboat. How best to do that? This is a tricky micro challenge. I have 3 workers in the theatre, 2 available next turn, another the turn after. I think the best way is to move 2 workers onto the forest the settler is on right now, then split them: one roads place, the other puts a turn into a road to 7, then moves onto forest and fully roads, and the other 2 workers join up later and complete the chop and mine.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

It has been some time since an update. I've finished teching HBR, stables are going up. Working on Masonry-Construction next, might tech archery after, then currency. Will have a sentry chariot available to scout out Elkad the turn before the war, though I think I can roll him easily even with 1-movers thanks to the border positions. A small guard stack (maybe with some horse archers) moves onto the forest hill to protect a pair of workers, and my primary stack hiding on the staging tile follows a turn behind. Declare war on that turn: I'd have tipped my hand, and I don't want my units being expelled from border pop shenanigans (though this is unlikely, I'd estimate his capital is a long way from 4th-ring borders). Then my main stack dives for his capital. This splits his empire in two, a small stack pins down Eridu, my initial stack moves down south, and a follow-up stack finishes off Eridu. If DTG makes a move on it, I kill it because I'm going to be ahead on military technology for a while (DTG is not going for the construction line, and elephants eat horse archers alive).

Committing to a war is probably a mistake... but considering how badly I've fallen behind on expansion (thanks to bad management, and an irrational aversion to hard-building settlers in favour of infrastructure), I think this is my last shot at remaining relevant in this game. I'll need to both quickly capture Elkad's empire, and use that as a springboard to get a double-land empire. This concedes quite alot of territory to Pindicator, unfortunately.

Elkad's food and production is anaemic, while I've been focusing way too much on hammers (in fact, this is a reason why I'm falling behind), so I should be able to alpha strike him down even if he gets wind. Unfortunately, his GNP is uncomfortably high, which speaks badly on my tech edge. And he also has has tech vision on me.



My pathetic, underdeveloped north. A new city will be following up in a bit. I should be safe from Chumchu for a while as he goes into expansion mode. He'll probably be discouraged from attacking my production base and tech edge, so he'll likely be expanding across the seas.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

An update! Still moving the pieces, setting up a war with Elkad.
 


Moved a sentry chariot onto the hill. Almost nothing there, is Elkad hiding his forces? Or did I overcommit into this war?
 




A pretty sizeable army.
 


This is what we call a power spike. I'm only #2, though.
 


This is what we call stagnation and irrelevance.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Elkad does have cats. Oh dear.



But it doesn't really matter, not much being built, a few spears that will get crushed by collateral,

[Nicolae Carpathia]

http://imgur.com/a/Te1HF

a few pics of elkad's forces

[Kurumi]

yo u ded friend?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yes. ~wooooooo~. I'm a spooky ghost