[SPOILERS] Smackdown Game Thread

[SevenSpirits]

TODO: we mainly need to figure out where to settle next. I am loosely assuming that the next Ginger Ale settler is for a Roman city by the cow along the river, and the next Orange Juice settler will be shipped off to the island, to an uncertain spot. (And oh man, I forgot to take a pic of the island land we've revealed so far.) So:

1) Does that sound good?
2) Where on the island should we go?
3) Where else should we prioritize settling?

Keep in mind we will have Currency ~t51, let's say Archery and Priesthood t52 and 53 is some order, and Iron Working / Calendar to follow. Also for discussion: a second island city will obviously be good for routes; horses would sure be nice, and 2x horses would be better; resources and rivers are cool; and claiming land towards other teams is great.

If someone wants to log in and take pics of our expansion projects and/or present some options, that would be grand.

[Ichabod]

Only pictures for now, since I don't have much time.

North of the Island:

Island near OJ:

Disputed land between Sumeria and LAM:

Cow city soon to be settled:

Disputed lands between Rome and LAM:

Northern part of the disputed lands between Rome and RMoG (I think we are positioned to settle the most of this and severely threaten RMoG's Capital through the whole game):

Southern part of the disputed lands between Rome and RMoG (I'll quote a past post I made about it):

Sumeria's northern land, good but uncontested:

[Ichabod]

The other reason to post this screenshot is asking the team about a possible city in the red circle. It seems to me that all the good possible city sites that we have near us are expanding away from our adversaries, not near them. That isn't very nice, since we want our fair share (a bigger fair share ) of the contested lands.

This one city that I present is a possible way to settle towards RMoG. I think the city would be pretty good. It has good tiles on the horse and irrigated rice. It's on a hill, so naturally defensible. It also can't be reached through the north sea, which RMoG will probably have easier access to, and only one tile open to the South sea. Besides, if we keep our second ring border, they can't reach our city with slow movers directly through defensible terrain. They'd have to stand one turn into a flat tile (unless if they move they stack through boats), where we could have the initiative. That's the main advantage compared to a 1W settle, which is closer to us, so more defensible early, but less defensible later, in my opinion.

I think that, since we are aiming at a powerful economy early, we could use it to fund some cities far from our core, backfilling later. We probably want to get to currency first, though.

[SevenSpirits]

t48: LAM got Confucianism.

t49:

Here is some more info on the island. I am still planning to whip a settler from OJ next turn, though we could delay it 1t if that seems positive, since the whip counter still has another turn to go. This settler could board the galley t51 two columns west of OJ (the forest SW of OJ will be cleared at that point) along with a worker if desired, and unload two galley moves away on t52, for example on the desert hill NE of the island's cows.


We will also found the river cow city for Rome t52.

Currency looks to be due on t51 without needing Sumeria's commerce, so Sumeria will immediately get the benefits of extra trade route money. t52 we can start funding Rome, having only run half a turn of gold slider with the academy in place.

[Ichabod]

Founding a city on the "island" is a good way of knowing if it is, indeed, an island. I hope it is, since getting a fast foothold on it would be very nice. We could colonize most of it, especially with a powerful first city, that'll soon be able to make its own settlers.

What does the power graph of LAM looks like? If we move one of the spear + vulture combos near Willow, maybe we can make them nervous. They seem to be mostly relying on chariots for defense.

[SevenSpirits]

t51, Currency is in. Which tech next? Archery or Priesthood (1t each, or less)? Or IW (3 turns)?

Mackoti really wanted GLH after all, having seen the land in the sea to our west which is probably an island. I agree it would be pretty nice (and, I think we can afford it better now than we could when it was last proposed) but felt dubious that we would be able to win it. But sure, we are going for it anyway. t51 we dumped in about 50h in OJ from the settler whip and a chop, and with some minor contortions it will finish t55 if no one else builds it first. (I'm expecting disappointment.)

For the record, Mackoti bet me that it would not get built by another team in the next 10 turns, on I think t47. I'm willing to eat into my odds of winning the bet by scheduling the build to complete before then. We will see who is right!

[SevenSpirits]

4H Got the prophet from stonehenge. I think they spent the following turn moving it to their holy city to build a shrine next turn.

RMOG just got their engineer (oracle metal casting, gandhi, yadda yadda) and have apparently rushed mids after our t51, as expected.

[Ichabod]

Well, I think our team has the best naval presence in the game, so I wouldn't be surprised if we got the wonder. Would it be to greedy to go straight for Calendar and IW, skipping everything else?

[SevenSpirits]

Well, I just founded one of the worst cities ever. It required a galley to set up, and it claims a cow and loses us 3gpt net. I don't know if there was a way for us to determine that we weren't dealing with an island or not. I am curious if plako expected us to discover it without wasting resources, or meant to troll us, or just didn't care.

Anyway, I didn't end turn yet because we need to decide if we want to continue to try for GLH.

Cons: It's not as lucrative without islands. Our best guess now is that there is only the one island on the map, so the GLH routes will only be worth $1 until we start having really big cities.

Pros:
* Currently, we have 6 coastal cities, so it is worth an immediate $12/turn, that will increase over time as we found more cities. It's still just very nice in a team game.
* We already have 58h invested IIRC, so remaining cost is effectively 76h and 58- gold (opportunity cost of not getting failgold).
* Workers are already in position to chop the remaining two forests necessary for it.
* We have higher chance of landing it, since potential competitors may already have found out it's not as valuable before now.
* We are suddenly in a gold crunch due to not getting a boost from island trade routes. So extra gold now would be welcome, and the other main competing activity (building another settler) became less appealing.
* No more hammers need to be invested in GLH for this turn and next; only on the turn after that, when we finish it!

So I am in favor of continuing to try for GLH. Abort further settlement of the "island" for now. Sound good?

Btw, on the bright side, any team which went for a faster expansion strategy got more screwed by there not being (so many) island city spots available than we did.

Also btw @ Ichabod: I don't think we have the best naval presence. We were third to sailing.

[novice]

That's funny.