Luddite/Pindicator

[luddite]

Hmm. I'll need to play around with it a little, but you might have a good idea here. What about just roading directly to the gold mine instead? Then the worker could start mining the road as soon as the borders pop.

I've never even heard of "Hercules in New York" lol. Sounds hilarious though.

[pindicator]

You only need one road SW of the capital to speed along the settler. Eventually you would want to road to the gold mine and the 3rd city -- in fact, after building the first mine to get the work boat out faster, I think that would be an excellent job for the worker to perform.

I am going to be away this weekend again; I didn't plan on leaving tonight but it's been asked that I take off earlier so I won't be able to play any turns until Sunday night.

[luddite]

That's fine, i can handle the turns till then.

I messed around in the sandbox for a while, and I think you're right about sending the worker down to the gold city. It does delay the corn farm a bit, but since we're expansive and that city can get 4 hammers/turn, the corn farm is only worth an extra 2 production per turn.

Here's the math on what to do with the worker (after building the road SW of the capital):

road first, gold mine: WB finishes turn 35 after 2 turns working the gold mine. Grows on turn 37, and we settle the northwest jungle city on turn 40.

vs:

grass hill mine: WB finishes turn 33, grows on turn 35, then the city can work the gold mine for two turns. So the city gets a little extra food and gold from the fish. This does take up extra worker turns, but I think this is the better option.

[luddite]

I founded the new city (Hercules in NYC) and it gives us good demos, close to top in every category:


However... I then moved the warrior down and discovered this:


panic?
we can finish BW in 8 or 9 turns, but that might not be fast enough if he sends that axe/spear combo right at us. They could hit our capital in 10 turns. We might have to switch to archery, which only takes 5 turns.

On the other hand, his spear has a 10% fortify, which suggests that maybe he just got paranoid about defense. And if he wanted to rush like this, why not pick and AGG leader? In that case we could continue with our plan. On the other hand, his axemen has no fortify bonus, and building two melee units like that, plus the plains hill mine, is really suspicious.

Well, i'm going to run 100% gold this turn anyway (to avoid rounding error) so we can decide next turn whether to switch to archery.

[pindicator]

Hmmm.... well, funny enough this makes me worry that we need to get eyes on mackoti above everything else.

First thing is that warrior needs to stay within feeling distance of Fierce's units to make sure they aren't coming at us. If he doesn't see them coming at us then we don't need to rush anything.

Since the spear has been fortified two turns I think we can assume fierce won't be sending the spear with it. Honestly, I'll be surprised if he plays this aggressively but we need to be prepared in case he does send in the axe.

So... our worker is back in the capital, right? Damn, we may have to eat two worker turns, so maybe this isn't the right way, but how about we have the worker go back 'Hercules in NYC' and hook up the horses right away. 1 turn to get to Hercules, 3 to pasture, 2 to road. Then the capital takes 4 turns at 5hpt to build a chariot. Cuts it close, i know... So I'm willing to go with alternatives.

We may need to rethink planting fish/gold as the next city, depending on what Fierce does. If the axe advances and we still pump out the city, then an alternative location could be the fish/deer city 3E of the capital.

Funny, I was getting worried we wouldn't have enough units for defending barbs... I guess I forgot there were other players in this game

[luddite]

I don't understand why you're worried about mackoti now? Judging by the demos, only one person has a really high power, which must be fierce. And chariots won't help much against mackoti's phalanxes.

I agree, I'll just scout his movements and adjust accordingly. If he advances then I think I'll have to switch to archery, and settle the deer/fish city east.

For the worker, one possibility is to camp the fur, to avoid wasting a worker turn. Or just build a road to the east.

[pindicator]

eh, probably just irrational general fear concerning mackoti Heh, let's hope Fierce is playing just as scared as us as I was talking about mack.

Anyway, I like the scout and see approach. it'd be nice to not have to switch to archery but that may be just pushing our luck a bit much

[luddite]

Yeah, switching to archery would really hurt our growth. But if Fierce is determined to attack, I think we have no choice.

At least we've seen him though, and he'll know that we've seen him. Even if he was planning to rush us, he might call it off now. I certainly wouldn't want to rush someone who saw it coming 10 turns in advance.

[pindicator]

Back home and took turn 24 since i saw it in my inbox.

For any lurkers out there, here's a picture of our two-city empire



Our sole worker finished a road SW of the capital. Next up for him is to move SE-SE and mine that grassland hill. When our next settler comes out on T27 it will be able to move SW-S-S, and then found the fish/gold city on T28. Hmmm, I'm going to look down that Schwarzenegger list for what to call the next city.

In the south, Fierce has not moved either the spear or the axe from when luddite snapped the photo. The axe now has a 5% fortify bonus and the spear has a 25% bonus. Very happy to see that; I don't think he's sending those units north! In 7 turns we'll have Bronze Working (we need to throw a turn of 100% in at some point) and then will have the safety net of the whip.

Upcoming builds are another worker in Hercules and a third straight settler out of Raw Deal. Any reason to change those? I have a suspicion that our bronze is going to show up near the fur/deer site; if it does would that be our 4th city over the jungle?

[luddite]

I would think we'd want to build a warrior in Hercules next, just to let it grow so it can work the horse and corn.

Yeah, wherever copper shows up I think that's where we'll need to settle. It must be pretty close to the capital for fierce to have made those two copper units so fast. Maybe it's on the hill we started on?

I wonder what fierce did with his axe last turn? He didn't move it, but he didn't get a fortification bonus either. strange.