Dare you enter the Whizzard's Realm? Magic and Mysteries abide.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I'm leaning towards settling 6669 as well, extending culture all the way up to and including the silver islands can shield us from WK's circumnav east indiamen.

Also, another note, for the filler city between SM and double-rice/cows, we should put it at 2, which frees up a river grass, and gets coastal bonuses.

Agree with both those points.

Difficult turn to play.

Demos

Map

I can't decide if we will break the 9t to constitution or not. I think we will, but I am not 100% sure. Basically if we do then we probably should hold off on the ability to swap in 4t, as we will be waiting a turn to be able to change. Otherwise we can swap and swap again. I think whipping hard now then not swapping and being slightly more tentative on the whip should give us enough leeway.

Settler out, will board the galley next turn. Put where he is to try and confuse the explorers in our base. Needs to board nt, offload the t after before he can then settle the t after again.
Tower getting a settler build this turn, growing next turn then 6-3 whip for another settler the turn after. UU galley this turn, grow next on GNP build then can get 1t settler hammer dump, then whip 8-4. Baradur grows this turn, can whip a settler next turn. I liked this plan as it alternated the food tiles always going to the growing cities. It felt strong.

Tower settler can go for the Southeastern settles (workers prepping roads) Baradur settler and UU settler undecided. I think the baradur settler could do well on that unexplored island. I know it is quick and we have limited map info, but it is a safe settle (with no mistoin presence on that water body yet) will boost our tech massively with a second ICTR for all cities and I am sure we will want to grab it for ourselves. The UU/Isengard settlers less certain about, we could stretch for silver island now, or settle a couple more of the southern sites. The possible HE city mark is good to plop now, or the locking hill between us and RMOG.

Worker labour is actually in good shape. All cities that are built have enough tiles to work, nothing nasty looking like in the GA. The workers from the cow/corn city could help HE mark out. Can also spare a worker to travel to the unexplored island straight away.

Note the wealth in SM is actually a 1t longbow now.

Thoughts? I would hope after that splurge we will be 1 in city count, and crop yield.

Nat news, scooter hit nationalism. RMOG are growing tall. Nil much else useful to say.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I do like the idea of getting the unexplored island.

I also like the idea of grabbing the western silver island, as it shields double-rice/cows from naval invasion, and it's "our" island, and so is less likely to trigger Mistoin's "he fucked with me and must die" instincts. The hill between us and RMOG can be deprioritised, it's a "safe" settle, and will take a ton of worker labour to fort the tile and open up passage for the workboat.

Now that I think about it in game, settling further 1 tile against RMOG might be a bad idea. It would trigger RMOG's "he fucked with me and must die" instincts, and can also be forked by 5-move EIs. Settling back 1 tile would be slightly safer, but would concede the entire silver island to RMOG. Unless we can settle 6669, and pump out 100 culture to grab the entire silver island (and get vision on the RMOG's cities), we're going to be vulnerable there.

We should probably send the workboat to scout RMOG's culture before making a solid decision, get an idea of where exactly RMOG's city is (unless REM has already sussed it out).

[El Grillo]

Huh, I was wondering if culture also received the later era discount, but I checked and it doesn't. Getting 100 culture quickly enough from a size 2 city does seem tough, since I'm sure they would settle the silver island as soon as they saw. Would it be too cute to track their settling via the diplo screen and then settle the aggressive spot if they had just settled elsewhere?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Actually, scratch that, the "potential fork tile" can fork both 669 and 6669, because RMOG is most likely going to settle on that plains hill. This is a difficult question: how much do we want to antagonise RMOG? Because in the long run, our victory lies in conquering Mistoin. Put it this way, Mistoin's food graph has been stagnant for the last 10 turns, no matter how good a slingshot you pull off, you can't win unless you have a strong basic economy. Their tech rate will be pretty fast in the short term thanks to cheap universities and oxford, but it's going to fall off unless they can catch up in pop.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

The way the culture works, he is either 3E or 4E of the tile you marked potential fork tile. 3E because he isn't likely to have 3rd ring in what would have been at least a 4th city, possibly a 5th given where there 2nd city was.

However I wouldn't imagine them not wanting to settle where we did assuming the same rice cows setup. Although I suppose the dikes do increase settling choices.

They could have got culture anywhere they built the Notre dame as it can be rush built anywhere, and not a bad idea to use it to get free borders somewhere too. Actually their cap and 2nd city we can see into if it is there or not I just realised. I haven't checked for that.

Regardless he is currently at least 1 city, and a galley away from even thinking about going for that spot. I think we should push for it. We will get use of the clams for a good while, and he should be able to claim the island at some point unless he falls far behind.


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[Nicolae Carpathia]

Logged in to take a quick look: yeah, WK most likely settled 2E of equivalent of Yasod. Which means his most viable city on that body of water will be that grass hill. Which means we had better hurry and settle both the silver city, and the lake clams city.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Logged in to take a quick look: yeah, WK most likely settled 2E of equivalent of Yasod. Which means his most viable city on that body of water will be that grass hill. Which means we had better hurry and settle both the silver city, and the lake clams city.

The settler out of isengard could easily go straight there. Probably before he could place another city. If we went for the plains hill we could get 2nd ring and prevent him settling that. But that would be REALLY antagonistic.

Any clue where misltoin settled?


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[Nicolae Carpathia]

Good point about the 2nd ring blocking him off. It would be super antagonistic... but what can he do about it? With no strong coastal city available, he would have no choice but cede the entire sea to us. And it would limit his boating actions: he'd have to build ships in another coastal city (perhaps in the antarctic ocean), and fort them through to threaten us. We could even control the tile 9 of the tile marked "WK city?", which would further limit his forting capabilities. He could then either tilt, or focus elsewhere and settle up against Mistoin instead.

It could be because I'm drunk and aggressive right now, but this could be an opportunity to settle a frontier city that blocks off a ton of safe land, and can't be adequately counter-threatened by RMOG.

In fact, the settler that was recently built, and you were intending to put on a galley this turn, can go there right away.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Good point about the 2nd ring blocking him off. It would be super antagonistic... but what can he do about it? With no strong coastal city available, he would have no choice but cede the entire sea to us. And it would limit his boating actions: he'd have to build ships in another coastal city (perhaps in the antarctic ocean), and fort them through to threaten us. We could even control the tile 9 of the tile marked "WK city?", which would further limit his forting capabilities. He could then either tilt, or focus elsewhere and settle up against Mistoin instead.

It could be because I'm drunk and aggressive right now, but this could be an opportunity to settle a frontier city that blocks off a ton of safe land, and can't be adequately counter-threatened by RMOG.

In fact, the settler that was recently built, and you were intending to put on a galley this turn, can go there right away.

You're not suggesting going for the silver island first are you? The galley I don't think would be back in time for the isengard settler for the silver island. We can get a better idea pre committing with a whipped workboat from the gold island. I still think it is possible that that is somehow third ring culture. Should we offer a map swap to make sure? They are scouting us anyway I think, so it's not like we loose out much. I will do that unless you have strong objections. We could see exactly where they could settle to threaten it then. I think they would take it as we have more cities on them.

Arguably this is the easiest way to counter the EAsts. Make sure they never get built!

So we would settle gold island in 2 more turns, SE of cap in 3 more turns, unexplored island from baradur 3-4 turns depending on how much we scout, RMOG silver island in 5 turns from isengard. Not sure how long the UU settler will build in off the top of my head, but it should be whipped in 3turns at the latest. Being this aggressive we should perhaps make a few
More longbows! We also need to start spreading religion a bit more IMO.


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[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Demos

Map

Plan in motion. Can land the settler/lb pair next turn. Baradur set and worker to galley next turn. Will whip northern galley also. Get a few longbows in, although the north probably will have enough, and the south isn't being threatened yet. Not much else to report I can think of.