[SPOILERS] Back to Basic - Mardoc plays Augustus of China

[Mardoc]

Thought of another reason for small sizes while whipping: typical player impatience! 'Justified' by increasing returns - and sometimes actually justified. Especially for the very basics, granary and culture, which pay off very quickly, it's worth whipping them in ASAP. On top, early game your happy caps are low. Then you've got a habit going...it takes real discipline to convince yourself that delaying that X for 10 turns is worth it because you get to work another 2/0/1 cottage tile for the interim.

That spot is massively better. You can position 1-movers 2SW to "fork" a defense for either Durkon or Belkar. Defensibility, man!

Hmm. That assumes I'm on the defense, and also assumes Twinkle's not attacking primarily with chariots (which can reach Durkon in 1 turn from Gergovia if he finishes a road. But I suppose the more efficiently I can defend, the more I can put toward further faster expansion. Which should still be my priority, only fight when I can do it with a significant advantage.

Interesting note: Gergovia now has a garrison of 2 archers, 2 warriors, and a chariot - but no metal units. Either Twinkletoes is running a massive bluff, or he's got no copper. He did settle a fifth city recently, and of course Iron Working could come in any minute now, so that could change at any time. For the moment, though, I'm feeling fairly safe.

Conquering Twinkle when I have to go through archers in cities on hills is probably not economical with current tech. Much as I would like it to be otherwise. It might be doable with chokonu's? Probably not, but I might be able to snipe Gergovia at least.

The real answer for when to invade Twinkle is simple: when I run out of good places to plant cities and have managed a decent lead in either production or tech - ideally both. I've still got at least three fishing cities to found, plus whatever my scouting chariot uncovers to the north. If there's lots of good land out that way, then I can delay fighting Twinkle for a while yet. If not, then I'll expand through him.

Also, I should spend a couple minutes with the save at some point and fog read for more coast. If there are islands accessible, I should build myself a galley and go settle some.

[Mardoc]

Had a couple turns yesterday, without time to report. Maybe we get more today?

Anyway, some fairly exciting things happened.

Gergovia popped its borders; I'm honestly not sure how it is that I have cultural control of the stone still. Hinduism helps, but it's only gotten me something like 3 culture so far.



Our Great Person was born, and he decided he'd rather be a holy man than a man of mechanisms. I forgot to put the engineer back to a tile, but I'll do that the next time the turn comes around. Even with engineer, next GPP eta is something like 40 turns, by which point I'll probably want something else.



Converted the Great Prophet into some great profit:


I'm debating with myself if/when to build a missionary for Belkar. On the one hand, Belkar really needs some culture, and bonus happiness/hammers would not go amiss. On the other hand, adjacent to a Holy City with shrine should be reasonably good odds for free spread. But it hasn't happened yet.

Scouted by TT, to discover a reason that Gergovia is a pretty strong city site:



And...built ourselves a shiny statue:



Next goals? Well, without a Great Engineer, there's not a lot of purpose is heading for Iron Working and conquest just yet. Instead, I think I'll pick up Horseback Riding and Archery, and use some HA's to safeguard further expansion. With the Colossus and Currency, there's no reason whatsoever to slow down; coastal cities will pay for themselves very quickly, and I've got a lot of potential coastal cities to claim.

That sorta contradicts my other immediate goal: grow my cities onto a lot of Colossus coast tiles. I've got a lot of happy cap, and Haley, Belkar, and Vaarsuvius all have a lot of coastal tiles possible to work (Vaar still needs its lighthouse, Belkar needs lighthouse and culture). Not much point in pushing this hard for Metal Casting/Colossus if I don't use it, after all. I guess mostly I'll try to lean on Roy and Elan for my settlers, while the periphery grows to rake in some serious moolah. Silver lining about growth phase: I should be able to get a fair bit of military produced out of the periphery while I restrain my whip hand.

I'll aim to stabilize my border with TT rather than push it back; not worth trying to conquer without more of a military advantage. Which definitely means I need culture in the border cities, and maybe even walls (after I'm satisfied on unit count).

I still want to try for the Mids and Great Wall, assuming I keep control of the stone. It'll still be a few turns before I get it roaded and quarried, but when I do manage that, I think neither should take very long to produce. Especially with the steadily increasing number of pre-chopped forests at Roy .

Longer term goals? Don't have any just yet. I need to spend some time staring at the tech tree. Maybe pick out a couple more wonders to try for, scout some more, and reevaluate with more info. Eventually I need to conquer Twinkletoes, I'm pretty sure, but that needs to wait for higher military tech. Which means my temporary goal is to get up to #1 GNP and keep it.

[Commodore]

TT used a monument, right? In that case you won't lose the stone; he's just put one culture on the tile, and will be putting 1/t from now until he hits the next ring.

[Mardoc]

TT used a monument, right? In that case you won't lose the stone; he's just put one culture on the tile, and will be putting 1/t from now until he hits the next ring.

Oh! BtS monuments are only worth 1? I thought they were 2 like FFH monuments

Well, that's one less thing to worry about, then.

Got the first turn of today just now.

One bit of news: I have a trade connection to TT now, via the stone road.



So much for metalless! Although it appears I guessed right up until recently. Also, I probably can expect to see some of these any turn now:


Need some more axes to be safe against these. And perhaps catapults would help?

Debating if I should make a friendly gesture or not. Something like trading my excess fur for Open Borders would make my intentions pretty clear, I think. But maybe also be a sign of weakness? Didn't do anything yet, maybe next turn.

[Mardoc]

Just growing cities and building stuff.

Haven't shown my TT scout in a while, here's what we've got to show off so far:



At end of turn we got a Hinduism spread...not quite where I was hoping for!


On reflection, though, this is still very good for us. Let me count the ways:

1. 1 gpt immediately
   
2. Gergovia is now easier to administer after hypothetical conquest
   
3. Gergovia is now harder to put Buddhism into, to win a culture war vs the Chinese
   
4. We have now a great target for spies - if TT gets techs worth stealing, anyway
   

Plus it's a sign of the power of trade and Holy Cities. Maybe we'll get a few more of his people. Maybe we can even spread Hindu as far as Ruff!

Not too much longer before we're going to want to build Market and Grocer in Haley, I think. As the shrine keeps improving, +gold% will be worth more and more.

I'm building a missionary for Belkar, though. I'm tired of waiting for the natural spread, especially now that I can get a lot of benefits from religion in Belkar. Worst case, I save the missionary for the next city I establish, which shouldn't really be that long from now.

And, in other news , fogreading up by the Hinjo sign looks like ocean, not isthmus. Should know for sure when the turn comes back around (which may be in a couple hours!), at which point I'll revise the dotmap for the area. That would definitely mean a need for expansion through TT - I see no signs of islands, so it's through TT or stagnate in the section of land he left me.

[Mardoc]

Man, we're practically blitzing today

Proved to myself that we are in fact cut off. Not good news for Mr. Toes...in the mid-term. Not good news for me, today. Means I can see an end to peaceful expansion, and it's not far off.




I'm thinking something like this for a dotmap. Hinjo gets most of everything, and a Moai Statues build. Lien is the alternate Moai candidate, but I think it'll instead simply be a lot of cash. This leaves me room for a filler city to have a lighthousable lake and a couple coasts/grass cottages - obviously low priority to establish, but still profitable eventually.

I'm toying with the idea of instead putting Hinjo at the very tip, 1NE from the sign; even ocean tiles are worth working with Colossus. Then I'd have to move the filler north to grab the clams - and switch priorities up a bit, since Hinjo would no longer have food and the filler would. I think on balance it's not a good idea, though. I don't want to have a Moai city without a good food source, and I should accept a bit of long term weakness in exchange for short term power. Better short term cities ought to make it possible to get more land, instead of relying on best efficiency from my cities in the long term.

Edit: Besides, I don't have the happiness for a Moai city to work more than the coasts anyway - not even with Forged gold/silver and furs and religion. Late game I might manage that much happy, but realistically I'd have to conquer more resources to do so. If I can do that, then I don't have to push my Moai city to the absolute limit anyway.

Off to the west, I don't see any better way to dotmap than I already had:



Still only room for two cities, with Elan wedged in the middle like that.

Assuming no revision to my dotmap, this means three settlers due out urgently, for Hinjo, Lien, and the western fish city (O-Chul?), and then two more to be trickled out when I have time. Then...then we're stuck until we get far enough down the tech tree to push outward.

Speaking of which, demographics are starting to look a bit better in the GNP category. I'm producing 39 culture/turn, so this is probably not yet a beaker lead, but it's moving in the right direction. Adding in my planned Colossus coast cities ought to help out a lot.

[HidingKneel]

So where's Twinkle on the production spectrum? Is he the 29, the 12, or the one in between?

[Commodore]

Those two cities to the west are worse than useless; I hope you plan on killing TT...Ruff...Sian before settling them.

[Mardoc]

So where's Twinkle on the production spectrum? Is he the 29, the 12, or the one in between?

In between, I think.

Those two cities to the west are worse than useless; I hope you plan on killing TT...Ruff...Sian before settling them.

The southern one is pretty bad, granted. I'm toying with the idea of settling it mainly because it'd eventually pay a fair bit of cash. But without hammers or food, that's a pretty long eventually. The northern one seems worth settling - looks like my screenshot cut off the reason, though:


At least I'm pretty sure a Fish is enough to make a city worth founding in the Colossus era.

In other news, Ruff is at my border and wants them opened. I waffled, and eventually decided to accept. Need to scout a path to him, but that'll be worth a lot of cash once I do.

[Mardoc]

This pace has to end soon, surely one of the Europeans is getting to his bedtime...

Still, lotsa turns today!

Only really news thing from this turn is Twinkletoes spreading Buddhism to Gergovia, thus ensuring that he owns the stone for a turn. I should take it back and keep it as soon as Durkon pops to 2nd ring borders - and apparently I need to find the hammers for Durkon to put up a Library here

Or else find the hammers to remove Gergovia's culture. That would work too. Its garrison is pretty significant at the moment, though - 2 warriors, 2 archers, an axe and a chariot.



Next research: Archery. But after that, I'm uncertain, so I'll probably pause, and use the opportunity to switch to binary research.