[SPOILERS]PB34: Gawdzak and chumchu

[greenline]

all the opening [img] tags are misspelled like this: [/img]

[chumchu]

Lol. Edited.

[chumchu]

Were going over to screenshot mode for the pictures. Alphabet in last turn and the tech pace has increased significantly. We have only gotten OB with Pindicator yet despite offering it to all our neighbours. Correct if I'm wrong here, but do they not get better trade routes for free out of it unless they are trading with other players? Giving up that seems like hostile move.





Talking about hostile moves. Here is the latest korean city. They have so far settled two cities that are somewhat pink as they are closer to me than the great land next to them as well as orphaning resources between us. I would have expected Seoul to be settled 1 S of its current position if they wanted to block of the really good land to their south. The placement makes sense if they are going for the wooded peninsula with jungle pig as well. But should they not compete with Pindicator for the much better non jungle land? Maybe they have IW already? Their power have been stagnant for a long while so I do not think so. Since we did a peacy treaty they have been leaving the garrisons of these cities empty which makes me think that they are short on units for this front as well as their Elkad front.



Mr. Cairo's power graph is climbing inexorably. We have had tech visibility on him the entire time showing him teching writing, math and now starting on calendar so I'm not that worried. Most of it might be Ikhandas. They count for 2K power right?

Current tech plan is Math, Calendar, Iron working. If I get OB with another player I go for currency after math. City raider swords should be nasty against the Koreans unless they militarise.

Settling wise we have planted two new cities are on the coast and are moving towards the gold up northwest.. We need a galley there soon and I'm debating whether we want to start it now or build research.

[chumchu]

End of turn 92. After trading maps with Nicoale and Pindi we have determined that the form of the map is two circles where everyone starts and perpendicular spokes between the circles. We are settling our spoke now. I have math and open borders with Cairo and Nicolae. 2 scouts en route to meet everyone else in our circle for tech discounts. Getting to the other circle might be more difficult. We are building a galley now to enable settling on other spokes close by.

We are on 10 cities now. Gold city to be settled in 2 turns. Gems in our culture in roughly ~7 turns~. This will help with happy so I'm going to go for currency before Calendar and Iron Working. Plan is to stop building research after currency is in and go back to units/settlers/workers in core cites.

Amazingly no one has built the GLH yet. Maybe I should just tech masonry after currency and see If I can get it with 5 chops and some overflow. It might push my neighbors over the edge of not giving me open borders if I have that and currency on them.

[Dreylin]

Sounds decent. Which Wonders have fallen so far, and to whom?

[chumchu]

Disregard that. It has fallen a short while ago but I did not get a message. Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids (875!), GLH and Colossus have gone. All of them to players I have not met. Just met Elkad so that just leaves 5 other players.

Currency projected to arrive in 5-6 turns. There are 6 decent settles left in my land, all with decent food but none of them great.

After that it is either war with Nicolae to secure his spoke as well or settling on other spokes which might provoke people and will be hard to defend. All map is one continent so no IC trade routes either. I'm leaning towards attacking, maybe teching construction after calendar to chop/whip out an army of axe/cat/ele. Hwachas would not be as much of a threat against elephants as against swords.

[chumchu]

Our map trading gave us some nice benefits:

[chumchu]

Turn 100 report. I have cleared 2 more achievement for this first game. Survive till turn 100 and lead in a relevant demo:


This is ofc by working some wealth but it really lifts my spirit. We have catched up to our Zulu neighbors in number of cities and lead them alpha+currency(+archery?) against calendar+mysti+masonry. They have nicer land and better expansion possibilities but they also have a hostile neighbor to their south where they are stacking massive amounts of units.

Getting circumnavigation is also sweet as I might use that extra move to surprise my neighbors. I'm tempted to attack korea that way with superior mobility on the inner sea between us. An alpha strike on blergburg and calling elvis could also be warranted if he keeps garrisoning them with a single warrior.



Here are the maps. Our ring:



The other ring:


Notably OT4E Bismarck got Colossus, Pyramids, Stonehenge while also killing their closest neighbor. Score leads can be deceptive but this one is not. Frontrunner by far. The great lighthouse went to Stardoor and is in a border city to OT4E. He is also our competitor if we continue expanding straight away form the Zulus. Nyles Standish also took out their neighbor but according to our maps they have few cities

Tech wise I should get Calender turn 102 (for a nice 4 turn build). After that its probably Code of Laws for religion and courthouses. Halving that maintence looks very nice
.

After that it is more open. There is a lot of land to settle but the high quality land is more central so taking some from Korea might be valuable. I could cut them of from their spoke If I like having them as an enemy for the rest of the game.

I should get iron working some time, but I'm pretty certain that there will be iron for knights somewhere so it feels like low priority after Korea claimed most of the jungle.

I want military soon at least for defense, and modern units would be nice. There are two main paths. The cheap path with HBR and construction for elepult and the expensive path with need Civil Service, Metal casting and Machinery for Trebs and Maces(and xbow with ironworking). I'm tempted by this latter path as it gives better units and is not as much of a dead end.  More production/happy and on the path to super mercantilism and liberalism sounds nice. This is the main direction I'm pursuing at the moment but I'm very open to other suggestions.

Feel free to check in to the game Dreylin as by now there is too many cities and regions to describe them efficiently in a post.

[chumchu]

We are back.

This game has gone completely of the rails. The turn pace is slow with pauses and reloads. The leader is clear: OT4E has the most land, leadstech, most of the important wonders and no sort of opposition. In our relatively backwards ring Mr. Cairo is leading as he have been doing the same greedy beeline that I did without being punished for it. He still leaves his holy city that I can boat just guarded by a single warrior. Still I am enjoying trying to boot out the Koreans from my lands and make them pay for what they did to my greedy greedy tech plans. I am making a lot of mistakes and learning a lot. If I can take their cities I will be very satisfied with the game even if I have had no chance of winning after they attacked and razed 5 of my cities.

The koreans came for me just as I was going to go into the final phase of my beeline towards nationalism, representation [and after that edu and maybe lib] powered by bulbs from caste and pacifism. They had a significant power lead on my but I was leading them in cities and had full sights on their stack, ready to pour into Elkad the next turn. Our border had been peaceful all game and there was land left to settle for both them and me. I just assumed that they would go for Elkad as he had few cities and no strategic depth making his land easy to hold. I had the weaker army but I much better potential of fighting so I figured I was safe and was more concerned about my eastern neighbor with two empires and MoM doing the same beeline as me but even ignoring MC/Machinery. With Taj he would be uncatchable so I hoped to hit him with crossbows, trebs and drafted maces before he remedied his situation.

I had just completed machinery giving me crossbows, trebs and maces over their War Elephants and Hwachas. Figuring I was safe I switched to caste at the same time as bureaucracy [which I missed cost me an additional turn of anarchy] and to my horror their stack reversed direction and hit my hastily scrambled defense instead 5 turns later. I used all my old spearmen to hit their horse archer stack as I could not hold my front city and wanted to limit their mobility. This saved me from complete destruction as I managed to hold onto my four core cities which have been pumping units none stop since then. Elkad piling on form the other side helped me as well. What I did not figure was how good hwachas/elephants was against me. His elephants had shock and soon combat 2 thanks to charismatic so attacking with maces gave me bad odds while being more expensive. I could not attack with cheap spears either as hwachas shreds them. Trebs are too expensive for field use and I had too few. They are so much worse on the defense. I could never get enough of a stack together even if I retreated and left 1 or 2 units in every city (too few for cats while still giving the elephants < 50 % odds.). Crossbows vs elephants was painful but so was his hwachas collateralling my spearmen to death. He of course knew this and killed my elephant city as the war started. I should have just taken the safe path through construction but I was too enticed by the mod placing trebs at machinery.

Now finally I have to medium stacks that will threaten his border cities in a number of turns. On the offense my units will be better and his worse. I'm hitting nationalism in about 7 tuns which is like 25 turns to late but I will still enjoy my drafted maces and free specialists.

[Dreylin]

Ouch!

Sounds like you made yourself just a bit too tempting of a target at just the wrong time. But having fun and learning are pretty good outcomes of any game that'll make you stronger next time - will there be a next time...?

Sorry for flaking out after your last overview post; I hit a busy patch and had it tagged to come back and comment on but never could find the time!