[SPOILERS] naufragar and Rusten get nickel-and-dimed

[naufragar]

Hmm. I made a mistake somewhere.


Somewhere my sim diverged from reality, and I thought I had overflowed a few more hammers into that granary. In reality, I won't be able to do that unhappy pop trick, which is a bummer. (And means I've wasted some time planning...) I'm fine with a granary in the capital. It's got some stuff to two pop whip, I think, plus, it will eventually share both of its seafood resources with other cities. The plan right now is to get a galley and a settler from the capital and get an axe from New Viron. The stone city gets founded on turn 63. I'm super uneasy having a twelve turn gap between our fourth and fifth cities, but maybe on a Monarch small map where we're trying to race up the tech tree it's ok?

My plan is to use a barracks to pop borders in Pajarocu to get it the forests it needs to chop a barracks, but the thought occurs to me that if I can get a settler and escort together for the gems city, that city gets enough forests for Pajarocu. I'll see if I can do that.

[naufragar]

Turn 50 and we're still just plugging along. Note Superdeath's slight power climb.


Our southernmost city is a bit vulnerable because it'll be some time before it gets hooked up to our trade network. I mentioned getting gems city before Metal Casting, but that's not going to work. Oh well, we went sailing for the overseas routes, and those will help nicely.

[Rusten]

Maybe road the cottage tile with the worker? It will connect the city to our capital with sailing. Looks like you have time before size 2 hits.
edit: Once the desert hill city is settled even sailing won't be needed.

This turn pace is relentless. Benefit of a small game and an early elimination I guess. I'm already dreading the 2-day starting turns for PB46.

[naufragar]

This turn pace is relentless. Benefit of a small game and an early elimination I guess. I'm already dreading the 2-day starting turns for PB46.

This turn pace is nuts. I try to have a plan for the next couple turns, and I always boot up the game to find out we're at the end of my planned moves. And these turns have more moving pieces than the very first turns when you can usually just follow your plan.

Maybe road the cottage tile with the worker? It will connect the city to our capital with sailing. Looks like you have time before size 2 hits.
edit: Once the desert hill city is settled even sailing won't be needed.

The worker only has time for half a road before the cottage needs to be done, but yeah, I could totally do this. An inefficiency annoys me: because of my earlier forest chopping mistake, I had the worker turns to put half a road segment on each of the two marked tiles.


Because of this, I really want to use those tiles for roads, but I will feel foolish if Superdeath shows up and I'm trying to maximize efficiency. I might eat the turn of worker movement once the cottage is done to go straight to the roads. I'd been trying to avoid worker transit time, but big picture needs are calling. The defensive unit should probably be a spear. I know most approaches slow a chariot down enough that an axe could attack it, but we're open to a nasty fork on the tile 1E of the worker. (I note in passing the lurker thread has been abuzz. )

[Rusten]

We will want a road on the tile the worker is sitting on eventually anyway. It's a more efficient path across the empire and links the capital and other cities. But you have my sympathies, I know how annoying those inefficiencies can be.

If the cottage is only 1 turn delayed then road first should be best. Gains 1 commerce and the safety of copper (unless you want to add some more warriors to the empire first).

[naufragar]

Gains 1 commerce and the safety of copper (unless you want to add some more warriors to the empire first).

 Of course. The trade network commerce.   Road first is obviously better. I'm all done with warriors. Pajarocu is building one because the desert city needs to give its warrior back to New Viron for military police. I have trouble measuring demos screens sometimes, but I'm pretty sure one of Superdeath's bumps is 4k (chariot?). Ok. Time to put on a little paranoia and get some safety hammers into spears. Hopefully it's on time.

[naufragar]

Just mulling over the game more in my downtime and getting myself increasingly paranoid. The trouble is right now is our moment of vulnerability. Next turn we can move the scout for visiblity. Soon the desert hill will have workers who can chop defenders. Right now is the trouble. I shouldn't have let myself get in this position. Both desert city and Pajarocu need a spear on defense. I think I'll delay the worker build at Pajarocu until the road so it'll queue upgrade. I'll see if I can finagle the workers around the desert hill to get us a spear immediately after the granary. My natural skittishness is making me stew.

[naufragar]

Phew. Realms Beyond is back. Was starting to forget what happened in the turn.

Mr. Cairo decided it was hammer time. Wonder in the works?



And his food has correspondingly suffered.



And the power graph. Just for completeness.




So, I already came to the turn twitching in paranoia, so I basically just played the turn the way I had in my head, but boy. Power graphs, am I right?

Here is an overview. I'll talk about it.



There are two angles of attack for Superdeath's chariots. The eastern one gets observed next turn by our scout. He can stay on that hill until we have a spear garrison in our two exposed cities.

The western angle is more surprising. It technically gives us more warning time, but not really because our scout will lock down the east. Gaon's (desert city) warrior was earmarked to go back to New Viron. (I believe that growing into unhappy doesn't matter, so long as the unhappy face goes away before the turn rolls. I think.) I've hedged with that warrior. By going to the plains hill, he can still use the road to get back to New Viron in time, but if next turn there's a chariot in the jungle, he can go to Pajarocu and throw himself in the way of a chariot. He'd die, but would buy enough time to whip a spear. To have the info necessary to make that decision, I'll need to play after Superdeath (otherwise my warrior moves before his presumptive chariot). I've been pretty quick to the turn, but I'll see if I can be a little slow next turn.

I think (but I really need to triple check) that once Pajarocu is size two, we're decently safe. I'll see if we can get enough barracks progress that we can whip the barracks and complete the spear with overflow. I think this would add three turns. The spear is currently a 14/15h warrior. An upside of whipping earlier than planned is that the roading worker can go off and do other things.

In my nervousness, I put Gaon on a spear. It's pretty exposed, and there's a decent chance I just complete it before a granary as much as that feels terrible. With enough chops, we might not lose any stored granary food.

The rest of the empire is staying on track. The cap two pop whips its granary next turn and starts on a galley. Once our sheep pasture is finished, the workers chop that forest which, conveniently enough, can also divert its hammers to Gaon. New Viron starts on the axe that will escort our overseas settler. P.S. Note that the cap's borders expanded and showed us more land tiles (with forests!) to our east.

Edit: I didn't mention, but I imagine it's obvious: if SD already has a chariot in position on that eastern forest I marked, there's nothing I can do. Nerve wracking, but nothing for it now.

[naufragar]

It's my bedtime, so I can't wait for Superdeath to finish his turn. Interestingly enough, he did play but didn't end turn. Waiting for me to play to make his aggressive moves? Just forgot? No idea.


My paranoia caused me to do two things that slow us down. I moved the warrior to reinforce Pajarocu. For all I know, we're getting a chariot to the face next turn, so that's necessary. I'm not expecting two. Two chariots would be bad. The warrior move means that New Viron will be unhappy for two turns. The second delay is that I've changed Gaon (desert city) from working the floodplains to working the unimproved riverside sheep. This makes its spear whip-able faster. Maybe unnecessary. Maybe too little, too late. Who knows?

I'm too tired to make a pretty collage of the foreign advisor. I've been splitting our EP between MSCC and Superdeath. MSCC has been matching us. Superdeath hasn't. He has divided his EP between Mr. Cairo and MSCC.

At current tech rate, Metal Casting is 15 turns out at a -6gpt deficit. Let's see if we can speed that up.

I should add that I'm expecting to be able to play a turn in the morning. If I see that we're not at war, that wandering warrior goes back to New Viron and Pajarocu keeps working on its barracks. I believe all the angles of attack give us two turns of warning which is enough for us to whip a spear even if we're first half of the turn timer.

[naufragar]

Went to check if a new turn was up yet... and apparently i forgot to end turn.

Hmm. A likely story.  

Anyway, still wary.


Pajarocu is working the plains hill forest so it can whip the barracks in two turns and complete the spear with the overflow. Then the scout can finally do scout things. (Although a barb axe or MSCC invasion from the east would still blindside us...) I miscounted how bad my warrior dance would be. New Viron will be unhappy for at least three turns. Oh well. I assume this was all a clever stratagem of Superdeath's.




Cairo and SD are neighbors, right?