[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Gavagai]

I think that if we go for Oracle, we should take Monarchy. It will allow us to grow cities (especially capital) big early and, actually, will give us a solid tech edge over neighbors: we will start working cottages earlier, hence, they will grow faster. It would allow us to be first to key medieval military techs.

[Gavagai]

OK, I have pictures, at last.



This is the land to the west of Egyptian capital. I think I will go NW-NW next turn and after that will strongly consider returning the scout back. We will need him to scout Egyptian second city and possibly fogbust for our own settler.
Observe that Redemption has grown. I wonder, why would they do that: at size 2 they can work a cow and a corn, with plain hill capital they can build a settler in nine turns - and they have an excellent spot for him to the north. On the other hand, they don't have any other land tiles in their BFC which are worthy of working. And they even should have been able to finish a warrior before growth.
They have also researched a tech this turn but it took them eight turns to research it, so it can't be fishing (I assume, it was mining). So - what the hell are they doing with their capital? Bacchus, can you help me out?



Homeland. Observe the wolf to the north. I think, it killed Kurumi's scout. I'm not sure that it is good - may be I would prefer Kurumi and Nakor to meet each other.



Capital. At four hammers we were drawn with the first place in mfg before Jester has played and finished pasturing cows.



Top 5. Two of our rivals have size 3 capitals. One of them is Jester/Nakor and I missed, who is the second one.



Demos, taken after Jester has played. I think, Egypt is our best rival in both CY and MFG. Six hammers and thirteen food fit to working pastured cow, wet corn and grassland forested hill, allowing for one free hammer from city center.

[Gavagai]

It looks like that the second person with three pop is Serdoa. Also, he still has only one tech. I think, he researched mining and then went for BW.

[Bacchus]

I have no idea why Egypt would want three pops in their capital at this stage, they won't research mining-BW anywhere near in time to make it worthwhile to whip.

EDIT: I thought they might want a unit to scout our location before they build a settler, in this case we really need to be looking at the demos every turn for a rival average soldier increase in abscence of techs researched or growth. Would be fairly embarassing to lose the game to a stray warrior.

[Gavagai]

Lots of pictures:



The scout is heading back for now. Depending on copper location (revealed next turn) he will be either sent to explore Egypt neighborhood or brought back to the homeland to fogbust for our next settler.



Demos for T26. We are not dominant in CY and MFG anymore - people have started to work improved tiles. Observe that someone produces eight hammers/turn. It can very possibly be a sign of an improved hammer-heavy resource, aka copper in BFC.
Also, someone has more land than we do, despite the fact that our borders have expanded.



Egypt's GNP. Worse than ours, though they are creative. Observe that all commerce they produce comes from Palace.



MFG. It looks like that before growth they were producing six hammers per turn: cow, capital and forested hill, I assume.



Equal in CY.



Power is the most interesting one. If we subtract population and techs (I assume AH and Mining) from their graph, we will get two warriors built... and that is actually too many for peaceful needs, I think. We should be ready to see one of those near our borders, paying a visit. What annoys me most of all is that if the last one beelines to our capital, he will be there just at the moment when we want to have our next city up... May be, we will be forced to build a warrior of our own before a settler.



Top 5. We and Egypt are the only civs who have 5-size capitals.

[Gavagai]

Forgot to show you this one. Our capital with expanded borders. We'll be able to settle a decent city near the rice after growth.

[Bacchus]

T27 has come. We have copper, conveniently located. Tentative dotmap:



We start with red, of course.

[Gavagai]

Had a terrible experience with sandboxing this... Second city by T40 and the city itself is slow - that's what I call a terrible start.

[Gavagai]

I think we would have to gamble that Egypt won't send any chariots our way until T55 (when we will have copper connected) and found corn city first, moving copper city to a later time. Founding copper city first is just terrible from economic viewpoint.

[Bacchus]

It's pretty parity, actually, if we get our micro right with the copper city, but it's tricky. Also, I'd rather avoid gambling, even if it costs us some delay, we have been too cavalier already. This is really a farmer's gambit versus costly military insurance choice, and I would lean on the second one simply on the account that if we go with the first and fail, not only it will screw the game up for us, but will also make Egypt uber-strong and disbalance the game for everyone else.

EDIT: Provided, of course, that the second option is only marginally economically worse, and that's what we are trying to determine at the moment. Gav is optimizing the corn city settle, and I am optimizing the copper settle. So far we are drawn at 9 pop, GNP 41 - MFG 13 - CY 35 on T60, with the third settler departing in a couple of turns.