[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

If the warrior won't get completed for so long that hammers start to decay I like starting the barracks - we'll probably be producing most of our units from Alfie and Cornelius so a head start on extra XP in one of them is good. The border pop isn't urgent (getting the peak in our territory to give vision will be great, but hiding where we are from Azza is also good) so there's no pressure to get it finished until we need the units, but starting it is good.

In my sims those warrior hammers won't normally decay (it's a close case), so it's mostly the question whether 3-5 hammers will be more useful in barracks or warrior after Cornelius has built worker+granary I'm wondering if we should put 1 hammer into warrior just to accommodate an emergency whip.. Hmmm... Well it's not a big thing anyways, maybe I'll switch the build and we'll just put those hammers into barracks.

I'd be tempted to try getting some XP for a warrior using that bear... Can we spare one?

We have currently 3 warriors (finishing 4th this turn) and happiness-wise we could do it. However, I think I prefer fog-busting for the city no.4 to bear-hunting. Moreover, I'm not quite sure how these barb mechanics work, but I believe that if we kill that bear it will provide room for one more barb unit on our continent, which means that a barb warrior will be born somewhere (hopefully next to Azza, but could be an annoyance for us as well). Consequently, I would be happy to just keep as many animals alive as possible.

Is there a specific turn when animals simply disappear? I know about the no. of city limits, which impact barb behaviour, but I wonder if we can minimize the amount of actual barb units being born in the first place?

Continuing the poor-quality C&D on our neighbour:

...

TBH I don't think I've seen Azza rush anyone before he got horse archers. If we had Jowy, Seven or Krill as a neighbour I'd be more worried.

Yeah, this situation falls into the category: "We are playing 33 player Pitboss, some risks needs to be taken if we want to succeed, let's get more scared before reacting"



EDIT: Found this: When the era of barb animals is over, the existing creatures are not eradicated in 1 major extinction event. Instead, the game kills off 1 animal per turn until they are all gone and will insert regular barb units (Warriors, Archers, ...) as they are "needed" during the next IBT (can be > 1 unit/turn!, ALL required units are created immediately)

Hmm.. This time should have happened a while ago already so I'm wondering why we haven't seen a single barb warrior..?

[Fintourist]

Turn 44

Whales!

[Fintourist]

Just because sandboxing is fun... here is one scenario where we could be on Turn 63:




In this simulation I tested the macro idea that we settle towards Azza and try to block him from that northern fishy penisula. Meanwhile we settle a more safe city in the east, because I think we want those whales soon online so that we have 3 luxury resources online asap and can actually grow our cities onto several cottages and keep pushing.

- City 4 settled on T50 (this is pretty much set)
- City 5 settled on T61
- City 6 settled on T62
- We finish our 6th worker in Cornelius EOT63
- We have granaries in our first 4 cities
- Our western defenses (cornelius + F) consist of 1 archer, 1 metal unit, 3 warriors and enough cash for one emergency upgrade
- We just finished Sailing
- Capital is size 5
- Our dotmap looks absolutely ridiculous
- Next our workers build here quite a few cottages and chop crucial infra for cities E&F
- E & F are growing on dry wheat and farmed sugar and both want granary and barrack chop+whips as soon as possible
- I would imagine that cities 7 & 8 will be founded around T70 (basically as soon as we feel that we have enough worker/military support for it to make sense), probably one in the north and one in the east.

I guess this plan will be trashed in the near future as something unexpected happens, but I just wanted to illustrate what I'm currently thinking. I could post here couple of screenshots tomorrow of our surroundings so that you can throw your ideas regarding how to approach this expansion. There are thousand ways to dotmap it all with different kind of challenges/risks/trade-offs

[retep]

Or maybe you could rush azza because that always end well

Btw I don't know if you are still scouting towards CH but I'm pretty confident that there isn't a land connection between both of you.
Given that your capitals proximity you would have already made contact. I think that you are in an island, in one end is Ichabod? don't sure who you found over there, Azza is in the middle and you are in this end.

There my guess about the map.

[Old Harry]

I'm glad you have time to put the effort in here... can I request a sandbox which settles the pig sheep hill? I like hills... also:
Not sure I like sailing so early, lighthouses are good but not for another 30 turns surely. I'd head for maths so we can choose currency or construction.
Metaing the map I think it'd be a bit unfair for Azza to be in between mardoc and us on an island, unless he got better land.

[Fintourist]

Turn 45

Pottery is about to come in..




We have 2x wet corn now farmed.. So look at these food demos!




5 food lead on T45 in a 33-player field is pretty crazy!

(yeah, sure, I know these things fluctuate a lot, and this early demos won't really tell anything.. but hey this is definitely a reason to celebrate after our PB13 start. I checked some of our older reports at this phase and I think one of them had us dead last in MFG & GNP and 3rd last in Food... and we definitely used more than double the amount of time for sandboxing as we struggled in that jungle-dry-rice-seafood-plains-cow-nightmare! This is so refreshing, let's not screw things up here!)

Or maybe you could rush azza because that always end well

Very tempted! AH will be started next turn..

I'm glad you have time to put the effort in here... can I request a sandbox which settles the pig sheep hill? I like hills... also:
Not sure I like sailing so early, lighthouses are good but not for another 30 turns surely. I'd head for maths so we can choose currency or construction.

Yeah, I think after AH we want Fishing+Archery and everything else is still totally undecided. Sailing will be a fairly important early-ish tech for us, because it enables whaling boats and that extra happy means pretty much an extra cottage for all our core cities.

And reg that plains hill plant, it's very tempting, I agree! I haven't simmed that but due to worker logistics/positioning it should be probably one turn slower (maybe even two) than the sugar plant, but of course it can be organized.
- I'm kind of expecting Azza to beat us to it though
- It's even a bit more aggressive than that sugar city, but it's stronger, and hill defense!
- Our micro should be pretty clear for the next 6-7 turns regardless of this so there is still some time before deciding, which is good because I'm not sure I have any sandboxing time during the next couple of days.
- Were you suggesting settling it instead of sugar or whales city?

[Old Harry]

We totally win the food war!

AH and Fishing next sound good and I like Sailing for when the borders pop on the whale city. Can't we afford to skip Archery though? We'll have copper and perhaps horses...

Sugar vs hill city - I don't think we can settle both safely - we're better to just have one front to defend against Azza, and we need to put enough units (2 spears and an axe initially?) in place to hold it.

Sugar gets us an extra happy at Calendar and the coastal city naturally follows. It's hard to defend though with those forests just begging to be camped in. Hill city is a far better city with so much food and a hill for defense.

Just imagining that we want to attack Azza at some point , the best thing to do is divide and conquer - so hitting his capital first is our priority, then we mop up the other cites while he struggles to put together a stack to take the city or any of ours back. Hill city gives us a five-tile route to Azza's capital (or, as a five-year-old would draw it):


Sugar city means its a six-tile journey.


I guess its a decision that could be made for us when Azza settles his next city, but unless we have calendar and are really hurting for happy I'd take Hill city.

[Ituralde]

Why are the squares fighting, why??

Just kidding, love the illustrations and the reporting as always. Also No.1 in Food sounds fantastic!

[Old Harry]

It looks like there is a chance the game is going to be called off due to being too big for the server to cope with. Just when we feel like we had a great capital and nice neighbours

I blame the aggressive squares

Edit: Or maybe there is a solution. Wonder how much a new HD is?

[Fintourist]

Why are the squares fighting, why??

Yeah, squares..

OH is pushing our squares into a mighty conflict with neighbouring squares. How would you OH feel if you were a capital square and an evil red square would land 5 tiles away from you? I feel that an open war is a very possible response from Azza, but hey, I feel a bit gambly myself as well so we definitely keep this option open and decide it in ~5-7 turns..

It looks like there is a chance the game is going to be called off due to being too big for the server to cope with.

My technical understanding is so limited that I probably do not understand the severity of the situation.. My quick google search revealed HDs with price range from 50$ to 70 000$, I've got no idea what kind of thing we are requiring here