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

[naufragar]

You know, for someone who didn't want to make any promises on the reporting you're doing a real service so far!
But don't let me wear you out.

It's all for you, man. No way I'd be updating the global lurker cabal with a half road here and a cottage turn there. I like to think you've been keeping me careful and engaged, so thanks!

Next city gets founded on turn 63. I think it's then a 4 turn boat ride to the barb city. If there's any seafood resource in that city's first ring,  it grows to pop 2 on turn 68: unimproved seafood (+2f) for 11 turns. (And I have reason to hope it does have a close food resource. Otherwise, why wouldn't the barbs found next to the deer? Worst case, it's got some resource two tiles out.) If it's safe to send the axe away after we found our city, we can have the best of both worlds. If the barbs grow, we can capture the city. If they don't, they were never going to expand in a reasonable timeframe, and we just take the gold.

Edit: The thought occurs to me that barbs can see all resources, right? So they might have founded for offshore oil or something stupid...

[Rusten]

I'm also more involved than I thought I would be, but I just really want to see Alex of Japan succeed. Both the leader and civ went unpicked in PB46, can you believe it?! 

Trusting barbarian city settling is a fool's errand. I used to have a better grasp on this when I played SP, but I have vague memories of them ignoring seafood completely. And they probably consider the deer food even if it's in the 2nd ring. It wouldn't shock me to see them have settled next to an ice furs tile for instance and never get anywhere. So I'm all for just going there and razing it if we have to. Then we'll finally know if there is something good at the edge of that cape too.

[naufragar]

Somehow, I was wrong with the logistics again. I was correct originally, and I didn't have to move the worker off the floodplains early. As is, we chop too soon.  


This is looking like an island. Perhaps a peninsula but likely a thin island. No resources but all that brown land will give the needed hammers to a 3x seafood city. Because of the rough terrain, I can send the axe to check the north tip to make sure we don't strand anything. Stone still looks like the best spot even then.

Superdeath, whatcha up to, buddy? (Superdeath and Mr. Cairo signed a peace treaty turn 58.)


I'll admit I don't know what's going on here. The warrior was in a defensive posture 1SE of its current location last turn. I assumed this was to watch for invasion. There's a scout similarly positioned in the east to watch for MSCC. This warrior could be moving for two reasons: he wants to give space to a settler he's sending for the gems or he wants to poke at us. The first makes some sense, I guess, although I don't know if the warrior was better pushing out versus staying as a settler escort. The second is odd.

Superdeath could be settling any of the tiles above the gems. He could also be settling the tile I marked with "?" if he's going for an early Iron Working. We should consider what we do if he settles any of those. They aren't immediately productive cities, so we may hit samurai before they're relevant. On the other hand, creative culture on those tiles pushes us and gives him good defensive vision. [Edit: Looks like I didn't cancel all my worker actions. Sloppy! ]

Here's the power graph.


Superdeath's power continues to climb. Not shown on this chart yet is his 8k increase EoT 58. Horseback Riding and Iron Working are both 10k, so that's not a worry yet. (I'm assuming Superdeath was top power. Top power grew 8k. Hard to imagine someone else is top power.) If I'm reading civstats correctly, SD hasn't gained a tech, so that 8k are units. I don't know man, it's hard to feel worried about ancient era attacks when we have aggressive promos, barracks on the border, and copper. But SD's power continues to climb and he has a peace treaty with his other neighbor.

I rolled the turn. I resisted my impulse to double move the warrior. I don't want to spend two turns killing it. If it's helpful and moves into our borders, a Combat II spear gets better than 90% odds and then a warrior cleans up. I don't want to move out two turns just in case this is a clever ruse and there's a sneaky chariot force reading to come in from our southwestern diagonal. Borders pop in 8 turns (although, again, creative culture in a city across from us might make that tricky). If it's still lurking by the time our axe is out, I'll see if I can chase it down.

[naufragar]

Superdeath's warrior moved east. I brought a warrior up to Gaon to watch over our worker.


Magic Science was last to play, played a long turn, but didn't take a follow up turn. His power's still flatlined, so I'm not concerned yet, but something to consider. He's still got his EP eye on us.

Island scouting:


No resources but it looks like we can island hop. Can't tell if that land to the northwest is plains or tundra.

Mostly, I'm seeing pixels.

We have a trade connection with Superdeath, meaning he settled on the coast or on our long river. (And it's an incredibly long river.) Here's his resources.



Island settler gets born next turn. The turn after I plan on packing up our axe to get some free barb gold. Gaon (eastern city) really wants a barracks so it can use a peak for vision into the desert between MSCC and us.

[Rusten]

Leaving that island with the axe seems dangerous. We're at that point when barbarians will invade, and if this is an isolated area and the landmass expands there should be barbarians around. I'd have liked to make sure there's nothing in the fog personally before we send away the unit and especially the galley (can't reinforce from capital in emergency even).

[naufragar]

I'm happy to keep the axe around. When we settle, we should get tons of vision, given the narrow pass. That plus the rough terrain should give us eons of warning.

[naufragar]

Ick. I'm not at all convinced I played this turn correctly.


The question is "What should the capital be building?" To answer this question, it's important to remember that Superdeath has a warrior on the sign marked and that warrior is fortifying in place. This suggests Superdeath wants our gems. The capital will eventually build the settler that goes to the gems. That settler will need an escort, which might well need to turn aggressive against a rival city plant down there. I'd like a spear and an axe, better if they're both barracks promoted. I had thought of producing a spear from the capital, but the capital needs tons of infrastructure. At size 4 (or possibly 5), it builds the settler. Then it builds a forge. Then it builds a library to run two scientists. (Might interrupt forge with library.) Around this time, it switches to samurai production, so we want a barracks already in place. This makes me think I need to build that barracks now, so its samurai can have barracks promotions. I had considered a work boat, but a work boat isn't needed for like another fifteen turns. The question remains. What does the capital build?

I plan to double up on whip unhappy and immediately whip Gaon's barracks next turn. After that, we build a spear. I was getting tired of only have first ring borders, plus a copper hill mine, even if on desert, isn't a terrible tile. Next turn, Pajarocu switches to a worker. We whip it in two turns, I believe. We resume the axe. It should finish in time for Metal Casting and then it's full steam ahead on the forge. New Viron whips a granary after its worker. New Viron can build overseas city's work boat.

The rub in all this is where to get the units to escort our settler, keeping in mind this escort might in fact have to declare war on Superdeath and push him back or kill his gems city. Here's power.


Graphs are delayed. We are 4th (out of 5) in power currently.

Spotted Superdeath's city. (Creative borders.)


We can't surprise it with galleys, but we can include a galley attack in our battle plan later.

We have a trade connection with Cairo, suggesting that he is due south of Superdeath, and has now settled on the coast. He has three cities. Magic Science founded their fourth this turn. They're the first to four, as far as I can tell. (Unless I missed something with boak/GKC.) Edit: We have four cities. I'll check city counts next time I'm in game. Perhaps MSCC is first to five? Further minutia: Do non combat units count for unit supply costs? If so, assuming I move the galley out of borders, we get dinged 1 gold.

[Rusten]

I look at it differently. For me a wb is needed now while a barracks is not needed for another 20+ turns. It's never too early to get more information. Scouting the west is pretty important. I'm not entirely convinced we want a forge in our capital at all TBH (before war anyway).

For stone city I presume the plan is chop barracks immediately --> mine hill --> chop forest (yes, outside of culture) and then to whip the granary on size 2. Generally you always want to start with a granary, but we can't make the size 1 window in any case, so barracks first to enable the 2nd ring seafood should be best.

I'd assume non-combat units count as they count for regular upkeep.

Whipping Gaon immediately sounds bad. Generally speaking it's very inefficient to whip after growing compared to just before, and it would even whip away a tile that gives +1 food. I'd imagine it's better to wait until it's 1T away from growth.

edit: You can use the island axe as escort for gems city if you wish, it doesn't have to stay there. I was only worried about immediately sending both the axe away and the galley as well. In the near future it will be in reach and by the time it's far away we can 1-pop a defender there if we need to.

[naufragar]

Whipping Gaon immediately sounds bad. Generally speaking it's very inefficient to whip after growing compared to just before, and it would even whip away a tile that gives +1 food. I'd imagine it's better to wait until it's 1T away from growth.

You're right. It's my paranoia talking. I hate that Gaon has neither a metal unit nor vision. I can hold off a bit longer, especially since MSCC's power hasn't started to climb. The worker by the city completes its cottage in time for Gaon's second pop to work it, so whipping too early would be doubly bad.

Yeah. That's my plan for stone city. (For the record, this will be the second city in which we've built a barracks before a granary.    )

I look at it differently. For me a wb is needed now while a barracks is not needed for another 20+ turns. It's never too early to get more information. Scouting the west is pretty important. I'm not entirely convinced we want a forge in our capital at all TBH (before war anyway).

I'm not convinced we get much scouting out of the work boat. Just counting on my fingers, so treat these numbers as estimates: cap would complete a work boat EoT 65. Barracks overseas gets produced EoT 66, borders pop on turn 77. It's not until 3 turns of travel (turn 68) that the work boat unfogs any tiles that aren't uncovered by the city's culture. This gives us five more turns of scouting before the boat needs to turn around (assuming we take the southern route, which improves the weaker clam. Scouting north improves the fish, but scouts less.) I don't know how much we should value these turns, especially when we already have a galley in the area.

I'm surprised that you don't want an early forge in the capital. The cap has tons of food for forge boosted whips, and if we can get the gems city (big "if"), an extra two happy is huge. (I think we can get writing and Iron Working before Machinery?) Plus, we don't have as pressing a need for those hammers while we're building the forge. We should be ok on worker labor by then. (Hold me to this...) Maybe we want another city to the west, but the deer settler is earlier (and probably made by New Viron), so the cap can be off settler duty for a while. We don't want to build too many units before samurai. And the only other infrastructure available is a lighthouse, which is fine, but surely a forge is better.

I'll have forum access, but I'm not going to be able to get back to civ before the end of the day, so if we decide to go for a work boat, I might have to ask you to make the switch. Although turns have been taking the full timer so who knows?  

Pseudo-edit: Saw your edit. Understood. Depending on what settling shows us, I'll probably drop the axe back on the mainland soon.

[Rusten]

But I've never talked about a scouting work boat that will return to improve a tile. What I want is a work boat whose sole purpose is to scout the map. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

If we have time and hammers to fit in a forge before we start on unit production it sounds like the right idea.