[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Lewwyn]

ok, here's another issue. This is an (old) picture of our capital:


we do not have vision on the tile SW, SW, SW of our city spot. I think? that its early enough we don't have to worry about barbarians. azza doesn't know where we are, of course, but he could get really lucky and move NE from that spot. if he did it after I moved and I didn't log in to notice it he could hit our capital in 2 turns - it takes us 3 turns to build a warrior (I'm moving early in the turn to keep from double moving serdoa with our scout race, but I suppose I can start playing later now that we'll be splitting off).

3 things we can do:
1. build a warrior after the worker. not really a good idea unless we want to stop chopping and start roading until the warrior is done. we can build him in 4 turns if we grow to size 3 in the process.
2. put 1 turn into warrior, delaying settler by 1 turn.
3. risk it, stick to our current sim. if we do get surprised, our 2 workers are on different schedules, so there's a 2 out of 4 chance one of them will be finishing a chop, and a 1 out of 4chance one of them will be one turn from finishing a chop. that chop can go into a warrior if it means we'll die otherwise.

I'm going with option number 3, I think we're safe enough considering. The settler will found the turn he leaves our borders, so no worry about animals eating him. But I thought I'd put it out there for discussion in case someone is risk adverse .

Risk it

[Bigger]

turn played. serdoa double moved us and sent his scout to the east . worker completes next turn and a chop will go into the settler.
But we have more important news. First, azza's borders:



that jungled rice is a horrible tease. If it wasn't jungle, it would make a great second city for azza. maybe if we go early iron working we can steal it from him? (and we may very well be forced to if we don't have horses).

you can see some a land bridge to the east where serdoa's scout snuck around his capital (although I guess he could have DOW to pass through). I can follow that bridge and find serdoa's capital, or follow serdoa's scout to explore the eastern peninsula closer to us. thoughts?

second, azza played before me and I almost had a heart attack:



azza found us. luckily, that's a scout at 50% health, and not a warrior. oh well, I guess we won't be getting early research visibility on serdoa . I switched all EP's to azza until we get graphs.

He must have gone south towards serdoa initially with his scout. if had gone west he would have nabbed the hut before us, and if he had gone northeast he would have found our capital well before now or run into us while we were racing serdoa. at some point he turned around to head north - its possible he just got anxious without the north explored, or maybe serdoa boxes him in like azza boxes us in?

btw, both serdoa and team nakor have score decreases on civs stats, which I assume is a whip. makes sense for nakor, as they are spiritual and would have revolted as soon as they discovered BW - a little more interesting for serdoa. also explains why his city dropped off the top 5. maybe he went worker/settler, revolted, and whipped a second worker? still pretty damn quick. maybe he built worker, grew to size 3, revolted and whipped settler?

this is interesting:


azza has the size 4 city. well that means he has no settler and only 1 worker. also im guessing he built a workboat and warrior? his capital is coastal. hopefully not 2 warriors.

demos:

[Bigger]

question for someone who understands unit vision better than me - Can azza see inside our capital from where he stands (i.e. that we have no garrison). What if he moves 1E? will the forest block his vision?

[Old Harry]

With forest in the way, you're safe...

[Bigger]

With forest in the way, you're safe...

ok, good. I'm glad I asked Serdoa to remove his post in the tech thread.

Lewwyn, if you have time, maybe you can work on a micro post-settler? I'm not sure I'll have time before sunday (thanksgiving plans Thursday, Friday, and Saturday - I plan on putting on 30 pounds ). Depending on how fast the turns roll, we may be almost finished with the settler by then.

[Old Harry]

C&D again - some catching up to do...

t24
Slowcat grew
Commoth got Bronze working

t25
Land points for Brick, Mero, Nakorfool, pindicooter and Xenu
Commoth grew to 2
Plako grew to 2 and might have got pottery (or some other 0 soldier tech)

t26
Azza and Serdoa got land - I think Azza either got 5 tiles and BW or 11 tiles - any ideas?
Azza also grew to 4
Serdoa also got BW
Nakorfool grew to 2

t27
Commoth whipped to 1
Serdoa whipped (I think 2-pop to 1)

t28
Nakorfool got AH, Hunting or Sailing
Pindicooter might have got BW

t29
Pindicooter grew to 3
Xenu got 6 points mid-turn, is that what he'd get for a new city? Or did he pop a tech from a hut?

t30
Brick got 6 points mid-turn, new city or hut tech?

Over this time I think five warriors have completed making eight in total, unfortunately Azza might have two of them! It might be Commodore, but you might want to be careful...

[regoarrarr]

The only points you get for a new city are for the 1 new pop point. Generally that is less than what it is for a tech, so it's usually pretty easy to determine which mid-turn score increases are cities and which are techs

[Lewwyn]

Spent a little time in the game looking at it and thinking about what we'd like to do. I think it's still imperative to finish pottery first and simply focus on growth. Granaries and cottages. I think our 3rd city should likely be towards Azza, 1 W of the corn. That site gives us a little overlap with city 2 and is not too far from the capital, but it gives us the Oasis, corn, and a coastal city with 4 lake tiles. That's a great food surplus on what has appeared to be a food starved map... for us. Also we don't have to worry about monuments or culture because both the corn and the oasis will be in first ring. That means it can have its first build be either a warrior or a granary depending on how many warriors we pump out of Gilgamesh.

I put a sign down on the grass next to the cap that was open at the start. I think that is either iron or horses since we can't see copper so I don't want to put a cottage on it and have to pasture or mine over a developing cottage.

We have a dilemma though following pottery. We either need archery or a strategic resource for some kind of protection. I'm not really scared of Azza, but we do intend on settling towards him in hopes of blocking off our area, as food lacking as it may be. So after pottery I think we have to tech hunting. Hunting is pre-req for both AH and archery. But horses are only revealed after AH. But we can only pasture with Hunting. It makes sense to go Hunting first to save on discount beakers and keep our options open on whether we want AH or Archery after that. I'm leaning Hunting>AH. If we do not have horses we may be forced to go for IW... Probably with archery before that. I'm hoping we have horses 1W of the cap. It would be a great tile and easy horse access.

As for micro we need to swap into slavery while the settler is moving and continue to chop forests until we have pottery for cottaging. I think the build order in the 2nd city should go WB>Granary and the cap should go warrior>with chops going into a worker until its finished>granary w/chops>settler w/ whip>warrior. Obviously I'm going to refine that this weekend into an exact plan, but something along those lines. I don't not want to whip the granary, we should chop, slowbuild it and now that I think about it maybe we chop the granary before the worker and whip the worker and regrow while building warriors till we hit pop 4, then 3 turns into settler and 2 pop whip it... I'll work on it.

[Bigger]

harry - it isn't possible to 2 pop whip to size 1. and serdoa never had a size 4 city, so he could have only 1 pop whipped.

[Bigger]

Spent a little time in the game looking at it and thinking about what we'd like to do. I think it's still imperative to finish pottery first and simply focus on growth. Granaries and cottages. I think our 3rd city should likely be towards Azza, 1 W of the corn. That site gives us a little overlap with city 2 and is not too far from the capital, but it gives us the Oasis, corn, and a coastal city with 4 lake tiles. That's a great food surplus on what has appeared to be a food starved map... for us. Also we don't have to worry about monuments or culture because both the corn and the oasis will be in first ring. That means it can have its first build be either a warrior or a granary depending on how many warriors we pump out of Gilgamesh.

I put a sign down on the grass next to the cap that was open at the start. I think that is either iron or horses since we can't see copper so I don't want to put a cottage on it and have to pasture or mine over a developing cottage.

We have a dilemma though following pottery. We either need archery or a strategic resource for some kind of protection. I'm not really scared of Azza, but we do intend on settling towards him in hopes of blocking off our area, as food lacking as it may be. So after pottery I think we have to tech hunting. Hunting is pre-req for both AH and archery. But horses are only revealed after AH. But we can only pasture with Hunting. It makes sense to go Hunting first to save on discount beakers and keep our options open on whether we want AH or Archery after that. I'm leaning Hunting>AH. If we do not have horses we may be forced to go for IW... Probably with archery before that. I'm hoping we have horses 1W of the cap. It would be a great tile and easy horse access.

As for micro we need to swap into slavery while the settler is moving and continue to chop forests until we have pottery for cottaging. I think the build order in the 2nd city should go WB>Granary and the cap should go warrior>with chops going into a worker until its finished>granary w/chops>settler w/ whip>warrior. Obviously I'm going to refine that this weekend into an exact plan, but something along those lines. I don't not want to whip the granary, we should chop, slowbuild it and now that I think about it maybe we chop the granary before the worker and whip the worker and regrow while building warriors till we hit pop 4, then 3 turns into settler and 2 pop whip it... I'll work on it.

but, but, I want the pyramids
we're basically on the same page. hunting --> AH for the next 2 techs. if we are lucky enough to have horses, I like mysticism -- polytheism -- masonry (if hinduisim is still out there, if not skip straight to masonry, we can probably grab judaism and OR as well). if we don't have horses it gets more complicated. Certainly archery after AH, and I'm afraid we may have to do iron working after that (the upside? we may be able to nab the rice/gold location close to azza's capital if we wish).

ok, if we don't have horses we may have to just call off the stone maoi sight . can we defend that sight with just archers?
what if we do have horses? the sight I'm thinking is is one E of the stone. its an inferior city to 2E of the stone, but it saves us the forest to chop a granary or culture building, and more importantly it is much less right on azza's ass and feels less agressive (hopefully to him too). It requires 8 roads to connect the stone to the capital (I don't think there's anyway we could build the pyramids in a reasonable time in the stone city). if we build it as city #4 that may be too late, and anyway that would create 2 fronts for us close to azza's capital, which doesnt sound safe. So we'd have to make it city #3, which would mean passing on the yummy corn city for awhile, plus much more distance maintenence, and we'd have to fill in the space between it and the capital with a really lousy city

ugh, ok, the stone city just isn't going to work . Can we still grab the pyramids without stone? Im thinking in the capital after we found city #3 by the corn and have a fairly healthy military. scooter built the pyramids on turn 54, but he was IND, and got stone in his second city, AND popped a tech from a hut that he needed - lots of luck. he built it on the same turn someone else built stonehenge!

we won't have stone, but we still have a lot of forests, and we're IND, so they're worth 30 hammers. we can mine furs and the other plains hill, and the grassland hill, camp the furs outside of our BFC on turn 50, and have city #2 work the shared cottages so we don't fall behind in cottage growth. still possible turn 70-75? I think its worth trying, although scooter is IND here too and will be gunning for them.

ugh, gonna be close though. anyway agree with workboat -- granary build in city #2. im less concerned about the granary in capital, just because we have so much damn food. But of course we'll need it eventually.