[SPOILERS] Kurumi & wetbandit serve you Hannibal's Breakfast Cocktail (of Persia)

[Kurumi]

As for our second city we can call it Clammy 80% - who said we can't create our own vodka from clams?
Nobody!
In retrospect we can leave Azza alone. For a while. If he does not settle soon I think we should be worried (why two warriors my dear friend?)
Priority is correctly getting third food near capital so we can give one of them to our second city.
I shall follow the plan during the weekend religiously
Also, molach is not exactly trying to secure land I think with such a weak power graph.

[wetbandit]

Civ t36

Story time! Or venting, call it what you will.

I'm traveling today so no time for pictures. Unfortunate timing too, serious events taking place in the game. The turn rolled overnight (it seems that way often), and I awoke to play before my flight. I'm writing this from memory so the details may end up wrong.

Azza settled 5s 1w of our cap. What's worse is that there are horses 1n of his city. It's clear that his warriors were in place to clear a settlement for him, but this is definitely a worst case scenario for us.

I've agonized over our tech path recently, second guessing the micro and the plan. I have two points; one to evaluate the process and the other results-oriented.

1. Ah vs mining-bw

This is not intended as a defense of my choices, but rather an open question if my thinking was actually sound. And for people to outright yell weedy at me.

Ah first would have taken about 12 turns, the worker would have come out on t15, start farm on t16finish the farm on t20, move to pasture on t22, finish pasture eot 26. The worker would then have nothing to do until be came in.

We would probably be able to grow to 3 and push out at least one warrior by t26. We would slow build the settler at 10fh/turn, getting settler out around t35 or so with all of our forests intact. I can't sandbox this here but I suspect that performance time could be improved.

Tech wise, we wouldn't finish bw until about t35. The worker would have a lot of time sitting around.

So the pros here are that we would be able to see both horses and metal by the time our first settler was out. We would save forests. We would have a size 2 or 3 capital, depending if we whipped the settler.

I think I laid out the case for mining first: it gets our food resources in play faster. I may have undervalued the plains cow in this respect, but mining first didn't overrule settling south in the near future. Which leads into...

2. Settler Racing an IMP leader

It's not clear under any scenario that we could have beat azza to that spot. Even if we had, we probably would not have had enough military to defend it or the important tiles around it. No wheel to hook up the horse anyway.

As it turned out, we have a 2nd city which is relatively secure, shares a food resource, and can grow onto three other special tiles. We will also have a military tech soon to build defensive units. I suppose there is a limited window of offensive utility for archers too, at least to push a forward city.

All of this is a throwing up of my hands to ask what could have been better. A simple "you shoulda went ah" is all I hear now.

Back to planning, In the near future, we can whip and chop out some archers to try and Zerg rush azza, provided he also doesn't have metal we can't see. We can push his second city and camp the horses. He is probably researching wheel now, which gives us some window, quickly closing, to do something. I just can't see how we could maintain a peaceful border with azza boxed in by cre-agg Rome and us.

[Kurumi]

Things dont look too well - that is true, but:
It is not our fault we went for this tech path, it was superior to the ah plan anyway.
We could have not foreseen not having copper and having our neighbour settle in our faces because there are horses.
We can archer harass OR we could rush to the east copper. I am just wondering if any of this is good... Maybe we should just be defensive?
Input from more experienced players would be nice

[Kurumi]

Played two turns. Moved aggressively on Azza's warrior:

Next turn he built another warrior. I am moving scout around for some shenanigans.


Also, I am not happy with how the game looks right now. The only way we can come out of this alive is if Azza has no metal - when I see first axe I am probably going to fly away with wetbandit somewhere nice and probably hot.

[wetbandit]

Protect pathway to that corn, can't get choked now.

It would be nice to see the connection with Azza's capital with the scout. We also need to figure out how to get mp in clammy so someone just can't walk in. I guess we probably can't do that and push azza.

So are we going to try this crazy archer push? I haven't seen demos but I would guess that azza can't have much more than those warriors. Obviously if he has metal we will be fleeing to that desert island. Alternatively, we play it defensive, get sailing soon and go for that bronze. That seems like it would take forever.

If we do, We can whip worker next turn for overflow. Also put one turn into an archer next turn on clammy so we can whip that.

[Kurumi]

Protect pathway to that corn, can't get choked now.

It would be nice to see the connection with Azza's capital with the scout. We also need to figure out how to get mp in clammy so someone just can't walk in. I guess we probably can't do that and push azza.

So are we going to try this crazy archer push? I haven't seen demos but I would guess that azza can't have much more than those warriors. Obviously if he has metal we will be fleeing to that desert island. Alternatively, we play it defensive, get sailing soon and go for that bronze. That seems like it would take forever.

If we do, We can whip worker next turn for overflow. Also put one turn into an archer next turn on clammy so we can whip that.

We are going batshit insane my friend. Archer rush it is indeed.

[wetbandit]

We can build 2 archers eot 39. It takes 5 turns for archer from clammy to get adjacent to azza's city. We will only have 2 archers and 1 warrior. Forced will be ready to attack t45. We can choke the horse tile and make azza start whipping. He isn't in slavery yet, or wasn't when I last played. I think the timing will also work such that his city will grow to size 2 and we will have the chance to keep it, if we are so lucky.

Even though we can't confirm it, several factors indicate that azzas expansion path is through us. He has lots of water in his capital. He is in the southern part of the map and that water may block him. We spotted ocean to our west which may mean that the continent ends. He also expanded towards us and Rome. Write this passage on my RB tombstone if/when I'm wrong.

By the time we get there, we should expect 3 warriors in the vicinity, if not in the city. Archer vs warrior in city with even a slight fortification bonus will give odds to archer. Full fort bonus should be a flip.

Keep praying he doesn't have metal. Our two workers chop trees to make bows and arrows. Just like we planned!

It's mandatory that we put one turn into the archer in clammy next turn.

[wetbandit]

Forgot to take pics, whipped worker, started archer. Bonus is we'll have enough overflow from a chop and whip to push 2 archers out of the cap. So we'll have 3 archers + 1 warrior. Kept tech on the wheel, figured that you switched it to that. It may be more helpful to start roading towards that way. We need it for immortals anyway.

We were at 21000 power, top power was 22000. Graphs showed that Azza's power increased, he got an increase from a tech I believe and probably built another warrior. Hopefully it wasn't an axeman. He grew to pop 4 in his cap, which is another 1000 power. He's going to see our power spike and probably have time to respond.

[wetbandit]

I also forgot to mention, we should try to play ahead of Azza to keep the turn-split, double-move gods happy. He ends up playing his turns at the end, so he may take two turns at once, it shouldn't be an issue for a few turns.

[Kurumi]

You know if we get good rolls we are not stopping at that frontier city, right?
He will pay.
I am not planning more military, oh no, not that. Just destruction with those three archers.