[Spoilers] Harry Hydra Tours his Hit Charitable Thoughts

[Old Harry]

Turn 102

Superdeath sent us fish-fish so I echoed back. Doesn't he know that cow-corn is sacred?

Another new city? Kung-Fu!

Costs go up by 3gpt and this is another city that won't contribute for ten turns (missionary is highlighted), but at least it's working a cottage for Exit Music. Superdeath is going to be our friend for that long and hopefully Cairo will be too with all the land he's got to expand into. Jimmy Mack is a little exposed though - peace with Donovan expires in four turns. We have two 3-move galleys that can check on his intentions next turn.


Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 103

In international news Superjm captured a barb city and Krill burnt one. At home Atisha founds our shrine...


13 gpt! Hopefully this will speed the spread to Superdeath. Krill has one Hindu and one Jewish city so he'll probably try to spread Judaism, but if he gets a few free Hindu spreads then maybe he gives us that money... Should we try for the second shrine too? We can run five priests here if we want to do that. The great news is that currency is now easy to get in three turns, the bad news is that that's because we're so late to the party that we're getting five lots of KTB on it. Five KTB is good though!



Turn 104

In the far west we're hooking gold on t107, then we *could* chop these two forests. It's hard to know what reaction SD will have to that though...


In the far east there's a barb city for us to find out about next turn. More units are ready to pounce unless the city is stuffed with archers.


Demos and power. Krill stopped spending EPs on us so I've switched too (should probably have done that a few turns ago). Donovan is the easiest to get graphs on, so we'll go for him. Two turns until he can attack us, but no sign of danger from his direction as far as our galleys can discern.

[Old Harry]

Turn 105

Naval news - time to watch out for barb galleys! We had to declare on OT4E to escape from it.


International news - we met Gavagai's galley off the coast of OT4E's land. Presumably that means he's south west of OT4E? He has thirteen cities and three sources of happy, maybe he'll trade us something for the ivory?


Expansion news - that barb city is ripe for the taking. An axe and chariot will board the galley in a couple of turns to help out. Our chariot will probably do a bit of exploring, to see if we have competition, but it could try whittling the warriors away. The first fight is 70% (75% with combat 1)...


Demos. We'll get currency this turn, then suddenly all our dreams are possible again.

[Old Harry]

Turn 106

We have an economy! Break-even it is 40% (84bpt) without building wealth. We have 3-commerce routes everywhere except for three on our mainland (and we're about to settle another mainland city which will take that up to five) - we signed peace with Superdeath t84 though, so should get trade routes back to normal in 8 turns (I think) which will fill those nicely.

In BB a market is going to take precedence over the Moai. I still have dreams of getting stone for that Moai build...


I did some GNP detective work:

Tech	GNP	Who has it
Theo	158	no one
Aesthetics	158	no one
Construction	158	no one
Meditation	161	Donovan
HBR	161	?
Calendar	161	? (Krill will get it eot)
Alphabet	168	Krill, Cairo, Superdeath
IW	168	Krill, ?, ?
MC	171	Donovan, OT4E (I think), ?, ?
Archery	184	everyone!
Monarchy	194	2 pre-req, Donovan
CoL	194	2 pre-req, Superjm

Donovan's triremes are still our #1 threat, but Krill could be a threat too and who knows what Superdeath is up to... Our immediate tech plan is Archery this turn (cheap units to deter Krill), Metal Casting (triremes! Also forges for +2 happy), Iron Working (clear jungle, build swords to attack Donovan with) then Calendar (sugar and dye). MC is about five turns away.

After that I'm kinda keen to grab Aesthetics (483 beakers) to build Shwedagon Paya. Being able to flit between all the religious civics would be great, especially once we have Caste available. However Machinery for CKN's to deter Krill and attack Donovan would be important too.


Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 107

I wasn't paying attention and Krill's scouting chariot took the opportunity to get a shot at GGH, I'd debated whipping this axe last turn and decided it wasn't urgent. He's got a 68% chance of killing the city.


Apparently we agreed a rule about staying at war for 10 turns before the game. I'm not sure if we're sticking to the rule (I know I haven't been - see the peace treaty we just signed with OT4E for evidence) so I offered Krill peace for 8gpt. If he doesn't take it then we can burn one of his new cities in a couple of turns.


Demos and power. We're not far behind on the power charts, so I don't see this being a drawn-out affair.

[Old Harry]

Turn 108

Krill didn't accept our peace-treaty-for-cash, but did offer an unconditional cease-fire back. I guess he just wants that city site after all. Not demanding cash makes me think my original reading of his intentions is good - he's happy for us to have a reasonable border and point our soldiers in opposite directions because he thinks his land and other neighbours give him a better potential for overhauling Gavagai long-term. Gav has a huge, tall empire, but doesn't have Alphabet or Currency (so far as I can tell) so may be struggling right now, but is a very strong long-term prospect.

Turn 109

So we settle Love is the Drug instead.

This is really just a filler to claim marble. It's mostly useless except that it gives us some early warning of DZ aggression (note the trireme signs - his fleet is at least 4 strong now) and it takes the corn from GGH, so that GGH can build things other than food-hammer units occasionally.


There's a barb city up here that I'd like to prevent Krill getting a free swing at, if we leave an axe/spear pair in Love the chariot could head this way and our warrior can help out...


Demos. Metal Casting in two turns, forges or triremes first?

[Old Harry]

Turn 111

Not much going on except that we're going to make sure Krill doesn't get another free city while trying not to give Donovan a shot at our Galley.


Here's our spread-out, far-flung, basically indefensible empire. It could be worse - Donovan's is more compact, but with a mere four cities it would be hard for it not to be. It could be far better - Krill and Cairo look to have compact empires with safe backlines and lots more land tiles than we do. Superdeath also has what looks like a large continent to work with. I guess we just need to make our navy unbeatable.


Demos and power. We'll get graphs on Donovan in five turns.

[Old Harry]

Turn 112

Krill has enough power to kill the barb city. We're going to avoid tempting Donovan with an easy kill and just hold the galley where it is for a turn.


We start whittling our own barb city down.


- Axe vs warrior - 99%... WIN! (1 hit.)
- F1 Chariot vs warrior - 70% (6% withdraw)... WIN!!!! (1 hit)
Both have enough XP to promote next turn. I think we'll have a sentry chariot and we could wait to decide how to promote the axe...

The other big news is that we found Gavagai. One of my guesses was correct. Here's a slightly updated world map - I think it works better to load it from this link because you can zoom it properly - https://www.dropbox.com/s/3htud6fjjarh9u...p.jpg?dl=0

Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 113

New city?
- C1 Axe vs warrior - 99%... WIN


We'll call it My Sweet Lord.

I missed Gavagai building the hanging gardens a couple of turns ago. With 16 cities that's a great build for him. We'll need to keep an eye on this chariot - we can have an archer here t117, but that may be after some shenanigans.


Nearby is Cairo going to contest our clams or settle the fish or cows? (I'll guess no, not yet - he needs to nail down the rest of his continent before Gav can get a foothold.)


In the far west there's some bad news - with a library and Hinduism Superdeath has 3 culture per turn now - we need to get our temple up and then build a library of our own if we're going to keep the gold. We will chop this forest before he reclaims the tile though.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 114

We've got lots of iron. Some of it hooked already. Annoyingly we had to whip off Jimmy's iron because the granary is that important.


Suddenly Kung Fu looks like a good city - we should aim to get the crab city planted some time soon too.


And My Sweet Lord is now an excellent city. If Gavagai lets us keep it. Cairo has a settler just south of his iron - I hope he'll settle for it next turn meaning we can claim a fish, but I'm not too confident.


Internationally we swapped stone/marble with Superjm which will speed up the Moai somewhat and let us build cheap walls on the border with Krill.

We're up to 13 cities with about four productive sites left to settle, so how do we keep expanding after that?

!!!!!

Donovan continues to be our main target and we have a couple of options:
1. We can hit him with galleys, triremes, swords and CKNs just after t125.
2. We hit him with galleons, swords and CKNs just after t135.

Option 1 is a straightforward one, just a matter of how many galleys and triremes we can prepare without Donovan realising. It has a problem with mobility - we can't hit him from the fog because of coast and only 3 moves. With galleons we can ignore or kill his triremes, split our forces if needed and carry more units per hammer (because galleys need triremes for defence). We also need to hit the north and south of Arabia separately or in quick succession, which is hard with 3-mover boats.

Option 2 has a lot more variables to it
- we tech Aesthetics (5 turns) and build Shwedagon Paya (450 hammers, but with gold, forge and OR only 225 really)
- we tech CoL so that when
- we use the great person that BB has been working on to launch a golden age in about ten turns
- in the GA we run caste scientists to get 3 great scientists from AG (which has 50 GS points already from back when we were limping to Currency) DttR (66 points, a little polluted), EM (90 points) and FaL (54 points)
- during the GA we tech Calendar, Compass, Machinery, after that we research or bulb Optics and double-bulb Astronomy

We attack a lot later with the same troops, but logistics are much stronger, we'll have more CKNs and we're not far from Knights...

It's a tough call. The Astro option could mean that Donovan gets to the next defensive tech (Longbows?) before we can hit him or that Lewwyn eats Donovan before we can hit him. We'll have graphs on Donovan next turn so we can try to figure out what he's been building since our initial skirmish.

Demos.