[68] Miguelito's famous last words, and Amicalola's sighs

[Miguelito]

Slugging along. We're still without the city on the inner coast, which is my biggest regret, but I still whipped a trireme in the cap over a settler.
Nobody has been adding power for a while, and I was able to improve the ivory once more. I assume that Comm is building forges. He whipped one in the capital, but the recent whip in Green Earth was something else - a trireme probably? He also is about to finish HBR, and we are discussing if we should do the same, or do something to advance our civ for once, as yuri has been doing all the time. Ok, we're building another wonder.
Monarchy would be nice.
3 promo axes can probably take care of a dog/HA stack on defense the same way we did last time. The main problem is inefficient whips through the forges. We have been 1 pop whipping an annoying number of times already (part of the reason why we need Monarchy). The Machinery whip also solves that, but HBR is faster. Also we're polluting the pool in the capital by building Colossus - otoh we can wait for the engineer from Hastur, which is 18 turns to go as of t86 (capital should be something like 12 with Colossus).
Maybe also Commodore goes for yuri for once? But yuri is probably about to get Construction, so I wouldn't even blame Comm for continuing to bash his head into us.

Good news is that Thoth has a new settler in his capital. There is no legal tile for him to settle towards us, so he either has to raze Hastur and we ride the same rodeo again, or he has a spot towards yuri and will have to focus forces there. I hope the latter is more likely.

Big question now is what to research - Maths, Monarchy or HBR. I held off on comitting last turn playing at 1am, which was an error in itself. I feel like trying to play it safe and go for HBR.

Finallly a little domestic question:


I whipped the Tatara last turn. What to do with the OF now? Basically the granary could be rather useless if we don't get more happy, and/or a good target for 2pop whips. So Monarchy or HBR would justify the granary, but the research will take a while, so trireme for now?

[Miguelito]

Not quite sure what Comm is trying to achieve there. did he get the memo that his blockade doesn't keep us from working the tiles? Curiously it does prive us of the health resource, and in fact Hastur used to be unhealthy until we reconnected wheat and netted the crab, but now it's irrelevant.
I did not feel like risking our C2 trireme at 67%, although we have two triremes in backup. We could move those 2NE next, and hope that Comm doesn't notice, although of course he should.
2 more turns to Colossus, Comm finished HBR and we are lagging enough for him to have an opening. Going to start a few spears for sure. If he whips a bunch we may have to respond. A curious question is if drywhipping for 2pop is better than regular whips for 1. But really I want to whip HAs instead, or better yet see him turn towards yuri.

[Amicalola]

Sorry to have not been posting, this Christmas was pretty hectic. We have been talking on Discord though. I am not very impressed by Commodore's play here, but there's nothing we can do about it. There's a lot of precedent for him ruining a neighbour's game at the cost of his own, and I suspect we're in that territory, but I suppose I may be wrong. For us, personally I'm on team 'Maximise Economy' through tech, but Mig was persuasive in going for HBR first. I guess he's also the turnplayer.

[Miguelito]

Golden boy up!


Might be just what Commodore needs to decide whether to attack us or yuri
By leaning into Colossus coast we can squeeze out HBR in two more turns. Might be worth it? Although we'd leave some better tiles unworked. Can also just build spears/archers meanwhile.
If I read the power graph right and my source of 6k per unit is correct, Commodore has not produced more than 1 HA since he got the tech, so we may not be under immediate suffocating presusre.

Sad micro side note: The granary in Brute will finish just as the foodbox gets filled. Still better than leaving the food unworked, and with avoid growth and 11 food surplus it can still work out decently.



yuri! What is the issue? Why would he want to take graphs away from us? First off, we can just read off the rival best column. Second, what's the point of this? Is it really in his best interest to distract us from keeping research visibility on Comm? Well not going to take the bait, I liked the graphs but they're not important.

[Miguelito]

Commodore, lead us not into temptation:




He has been advancing to very close to, although not quite yet, top power. Is this meant to signal a truce? He could easily have covered it with spears/dogs. It is very hard to resist, but the continuation of the game hinges on him sending his units after yuri, or at least keeping them at home.
We could unload the galley next turn, and bring a chariot on top of the hill as well, and some spears from Brute onto the desert tile in case he responds with horchers.
A new worker, provided we can keep him (rather unlikely), would be quite useful still, although not quite as much as 10 turns ago. You see that Commodore has not lacked workers, and has not had his tiles pillaged - he even has dry cottages. Meanwhile we still have only the one on the flood plains. Fixing that fast now however. I suspect that he is close to finished with useful things for his workers to do and wouldn't mind losing them too much, hence why he's doing this as well.
So Amicalola, do we try and catch the worker on the hill? The one on the plains as well (well just to delete him)? Or do we show the chariot, as a sign that we could, but don't?

Monarchy is dearly needed. All cities but the little town on the horse were unhappy at the start of this turn. I am happy to have improved the pig finally, but it isn't too useful (and I'd feel bad for leaving it unworked). Both Hastur in the south and Brute would have awesome lighthouses, but more food is useless atm. We will found blue dot S of the jungle to share away corn, which will ease the situation a bit. Initially I was going to get the settler from the cap, but Brute is better as it has more (unshareable) food and no barracks. 7->4 in 3 more turns. Hopefully the combination of Monarchy and the new city won't leave us hungry in turn, but with the lighthouses it should work out fine.

[Miguelito]

I think we should show the chariot, but not whack the worker. Send the message, as you say

I was rather surprised, as Amica had been much more anti-Comm than me in previous exchanges, but I followed the advice:



The turn after we showed a horse archer in the same place, to demonstrate our unpalatability, and also retreated the ships a tile to cement our friendship .

Our meagre hopes for this game now rest on detente with Commodore, while either taking over the Roman core region, or jumping in when yuri does. It isn't overly likely, but it seems like a coherent plan. My main worry is what Commodore's plan to win can be, i.e., can it be anything but attacking us again in a couple turns. Maybe if we open a front against yuri in the south he does the same up north; at least that seems to be the only way that yuri doesn't win outright, and hopefully Comm sees it the same way.

For the immediate future we focus on development, starting with 3pop whipping a library in the capital this turn (into a 1turn stable, into finishing an HA). We will revolt into HR to solve happiness (and eat anarchy), which will make lighthouses worthwhile in Hastur and Brute, maybe also More Light. We will also found a fifth city:



We've decided for the green dot over the blue one that we planned for initially. We really want to deescalate vs. Commodore for the while being, and anyways it seems unlikely that we would be able to control and defend the fish anytime soon, with the city coming so late. With that the city is a pure filler, but it can help with cottages, provides an additional queue, low food whip cycles and so on.

We also found out what Thoth did with the settler that we saw coming out of his capital a while ago. I was puzzled by rival worst land area not increasing in the demos, here's the reason:


That's a sad city, but it serves the purpose of increasing Thoth's praetorian churnout rate I suppose. Curious that the horse is unpillaged, yuri doesn't have free reign apparently. Also hurts to see how far yuri has advanced - he has the equivalent resources that we claimed at Brute plus a clam, the whole lake, and the sugar and fish on the inner sea shore. At least Thoth so far is holding the gold. And yuri drew the short straw on his Commodore border, losing both fish and the fur. Meanwhile, we came out excellent vs Rome with a fish and fur and a whole lake (the other fish was never possible without taking the cap), and ceded only a fish and sugar to Comm while claiming pig/ivory/clam and  blocking him from settling towards us in that area, thanks to Oracle culture.
So all in all yuri has the best territory at the moment, but his advantage is not oppressive. Now Cre/Phi is probably stronger long term than Agg/Ind, so we still need one or several upsets to come out ahead of him. Although Agg's unit cost reduction is really nothing to sneeze at in this game.

[Miguelito]

This is more about yuri drastically reducing his CY while not adding significant power (whipping infra? reached HC?). But of course I'm still going to brag about it.



new anxiety inducer: Somebody besides yuris has Maths. Is it Commodore? Our research visibility is pretty useless considering he can just change the tech after each turn roll. If he does in fact research Masonry he might be pretty close to Construction. Mass horchers (and soon some crossbows) is the best we can do about it.

New city next turn, revolt the turn after.

[Miguelito]

That dent on Commodore's power graph (I'm sure the details are getting reported) had me wondering if we should settle more aggressively, but Amica and I both agreed that it was best to give Commodore as many reasons as possible to keep his focus on yuri.

Hence we finally completed settling our corner of the map:



> join AW game
> why is everybody attacking me? This is mean! And stressful! RNG is rigged!
> attacks cease
> build lots of lighthouses!

But yeah we should be able to afford this, and the Monarchy anarchy, being ahead of both our neighbours in power now. Offensive action sounds like a pipe dream without catapults, both against Commodore or Thoth, even with crossbows. Unless we jump into an attack by yuris on either - so I guess getting more horchers online makes sense?

[Mjmd]

Future tech / wonder plans?

[Miguelito]

I forgot:

"To the strongest." ("τῷ κρατίστῳ")
— Alexander the Great, conqueror and king of Macedonia (c. 11 June 323 BCE), when asked to whom his vast empire should belong after his death

Future tech / wonder plans?

All the way to, you name it, Future Tech, and All of Them. We're playing the long game here.

Immediately I think it's something like Maths->CoL->CS->Calendar->Literature, with construction somewhere in between. Machinery will be bulbed, although not rushing mids if yuri hasn't finished them by then might exceed my strength of will. There are low odds of bulbing CS as well with a GM from the capital. I want MoM and TGL. We're debating if we should compete for ToA, also considering the denial to yuris (and failgold).

In our chat I'm also trying to convince Amicalola that this is the ideal game to go for permanent Pacifism after the first GA, so far unsuccessfully.