Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

Turned research on meditation since it still hasn't fallen. I think at this stage of the game, there's nothing else really pressing in tech, so this shot is too cheap to turn down. We won't really use it immediately but I'd probably be willing to pay a lot more in 40t.

The Searchers founded next turn and we also grow 3 pop EOT. MoM will get a chop next turn to finish that WB, not sure whether I should switch it for a chariot. The only problem really would be if Oxy had a chariot of his own just out of our vision.

Lonely Trail is going to whip a settler for the copper spot after hitting size 5. Any name suggestions?



Dtay and Lewwyn made peace, not sure what I'm going to do with that scout.

Some sweet barb revenge:


I also tried to dotmap the west a bit. We need to get scouts out to figure out how close Gaspar is in the west and pindicator/thoth is in the south. Green Dot could be our HE city btw, 6 grass hills, 1 ph in the bfc. We might need to settle 1W to ensure control over the corn though.

[Becko]

Oh! I thought Commodore had taken the Meditation path already, but now I notice he's Hindu. Yeah, definitely give it a shot!

Do you think Lewwyn's DoW is just a scout passing through, or something more sinister? Haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary on Civstats.

Any name suggestions?

That spot is technically closer to the gold than to the copper, isn't it?


(That's two words, BTW).

The west looks nice (and it's much better for movie names!). It would be nice to get an idea of Thoth's empire, especially, before we start settling that way. What do we do if an Impi or two show up around T70, BTW?

[The Black Sword]

Gaspwyn's power is pretty low, so I doubt they were seriously threatening a city. They've seemed pretty aggressive so far though, both in their continual turn splits with dtay that's been clear from civstats and from the way they treated our scout. Less OB opportunities for our rivals at least.

I think they've already taken the name El Dorado btw, I'd have to check.



We met Thoth this turn and the more relevant question is, what do we do if an impi shows up right now! I'm not sure whether to switch to the first ring copper site. In theory, just teching archery sounds like it should be enough to me, but we're only giving up a ~8t delay on the gold and losing a lighthouseable lake to connect the copper 10t sooner. It's not much to give up for a bit of extra safety. Thoth has 7 cities to our 5, I assume he is top in rival food and prod and most importantly soldiers. Our power is 45k, his is 81k, impi's are 5k each right?



Our demos really picked up with that growth spurt.

Thoth probably has a big land area to defend and settle so I'm not too worried about him attacking us, once we've got some reasonable counter in the archers. We will need to slow down expansion a bit and get some troops out though. I've been looking at how much of an escort I can get for the fish/pig/FP spot and it looks like 3 warriors, 2 chariots and 2 archers(or axes) following, which I'm reasonably happy with. The most annoying thing is how hard it is to scout safely with those impis hanging around. Also, I thought the land that impi was on would be an IC island, I guess not now, looks like we'll only have the two(unless we want to try rob Oxy's.)

Two other points on Thoth; we want to deny a trade connection as long as possible so he doesn't know our copper situation and we don't want to give him OBs in any case. Hopefully we can form a trade embargo on the leader.

In MoM, I ended up putting the hammers into a chariot in case of an emergency but the chop will likely go into a WB anyway assuming nothing threatening shows up. I'm delaying the chop with cottage turns atm. Also got a bit more revenge on these barbs:

[Becko]

Nice demos!

I guess El Dorado is a bit generic as a name, so let's do two other suggestions:



Haunted Gold is a 1932 Western about -- and I hope I'm not spoiling anyone -- haunted gold. As a name, its main selling point is the gold reference, which makes it easier to remember which city we're talking about. Until we find another Gold, at least.



McLintock! is a 1963 Western about, uh, beating up women humorously. Different times, man. Anyway, it's a great name because it's a proper name, but with an exclamation mark! Still, doesn't really have anything to do with the site, and could be saved for, say, a Cows site (since Wayne plays the eponymous McLintock!, a "cattle baron").

Impis are 4k, so same as a regular Spear. Difficult to tell without checking more thoroughly, but let's say he has the same pop and techs we do. That's 9k in pop and 20k in power, which leaves ~50k for units. Say one warrior per city, that's 14k. So 36k for Impis, that's nine Impis.

...

...we're going to need a bigger boat.



(No, I don't think it's that bad. Couple of Ikhandas, a little more pop, a scouting warrior or two. Still, we can't discount that he'd send a few Impis our way just to see what's cooking, so early Copper would feel safer. I do think we'd do fine with Archers, so it depends how much better you think the eastern spot is.)

[The Black Sword]

Nice, Haunted gold sounds good for this spot. I'm leaning toward settling for the copper too, so the gold will remain desolate for a while.



Also of note; we founded Buddhism in Maker of Men! I guess that likely solves our GP problems, if we still want a golden age we can generate another GP ourselves. I'm thinking we continue straight on to Monarchy now. It's about 540b, almost half the price of currency and maths(~960b). Mono would be a further 450b, which is too much for the gold saved in pre-req I think. We should probably head there afterwards though to double revolt to HR/OR. I'm not sure about writing, which gives 1 library of dubious value, but it should wait until after Priesthood at least.

I finally have these sentries set up:



Doesn't seem to be an awful lot of food on the eastern shore there. Maybe we should aim for the ph E of the crab and the hill 2N of the fish? I'm not sure I want to scout any further with this warrior.



Hope this warrior doesn't run into some nasty zulu. Another settler whip coming up.

[The Black Sword]

The long prophesied Holkan cometh ...


He's rather slow though. I settled Haunted Gold for the copper in the end. I'm planning on getting out a few military units in the next few turns and I'd rather they not be all archers. Saving 90b on archery isn't bad either. Anyway, the copper is connected next turn. Maker of Men is slated to 2-whip a copper unit on T68 and overflow the chariot. Originally, I was thinking spear to scout the south but an axe probably makes more sense to shadow Oxy's Holkan. I don't want to threaten him though, let him get vision on The Searchers so we keep the trade routes, just keep him honest with the axe.



I risked some more exploring in the south, since we won't have the spear to do it anytime soon. I think future whips from MoM and TS should settle this area, so we need to get it mapped out. Another food resource is nice.



We were first to six cities in the group that's not Thoth and the 7th is coming soon. Note the northern chariot killed another warrior for another 2xp. If I'd had him up earlier we might have had the HE unlocked by now. The capital will have enough overflow to 1t an axe next and I think I'll whip another from 3 Texas Steers to shore up our impi defenses over here. We have enough non-axe units to cover vs chariots.

We seem to have caught up and overtaken Oxy and Lewpar in the graphs, commodore is still trailing quite a bit in output, and he's only on 4 cities too. I suppose the oracle hasn't started paying back yet. We're up to no.2 in soldiers as well, before the military push even happens. Still 35k to Thoth though.

[Krill]

Why aren't you bankrupt yet?

[Becko]

And a Shrine in 30-ish turns is nice, too. Then we revolt right after Mono (so no waiting for a GA)?

Scouting in Thoth's direction, even with vulnerable units, is probably prudent, if nothing else so we know how many sentries we need. We'll probably have HE unlocked before we get to Literature, too. Agree there's no need to act hostile towards Oxy, just flashing the Axe should be enough.

I think we're in a good position for now (knock on wood). Our closest (?) neighbor is eliminated, our strength is expansion, we have no urgent first-to bonuses we need to chase, we have unlocked the units we need. If we were doing a SWOT analysis, it'd come out OK, I think.

[pindicator]

Why aren't you bankrupt yet?

Because Joao is magic!

[The Black Sword]

The expenses are ratcheting up, but we're really emphasizing gold too.


I'm feeling pretty good that we'll be able to fund a couple more cities, we still have two golds to work! Just have to make sure we hit Monarchy before the wall. I'm not sure whether we want to immediately revolt to HR or limp to OR for a double-revolt. I guess we'll see what our tech rate is like when we get there.

Becko, you have a picture for everything.