[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Turn 71:




Darrell has an axe and 2 spears on the stone tile. (He's moved twice since I last moved.) The two workers by Black Stallion were going to cottage the river plains but I think I need to chop military a little faster now.

The horse city settles next turn.




My sense right now is that this is far in excess of what he needs for defense given our level of aggression, and the fact that he's put EP into nobody else. So it's time to build military as the first priority, above being maximally economically competitive. So Construction is basically mandatory, unfortunately.

And we probably need to pause at 7 cities for a while until confident we can be at parity to defend.

It seems like MYKI has sailing, because we see his resources.

[Ceiliazul]

This is the turn you would have triple-chopped the Oracle, right?

[WilliamLP]

Lol, next turn actually! But if I were actually going for Oracle it would have been on 58 or so!

I never thought of that as a downside of delaying Myst so long: that the other 32 players would procrastinate Oracle so much it would be possible to just grab Priesthood and build it in passing in the mid-game.

I'd love to be wrong, but I see this game turning into min-max military for the indefinite future anyway, starting right about now. And if we live we'll come out of it in the lower middle of the pack trying to play catch up with the rest of the field. Darrell's behaviour right now is consistent with someone who plans to throw the kitchen sink really soon.

[WilliamLP]

Also, I'm going to love Mindy's reaction when Darrell chops out Pyramids in a few turns.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 72:




I settled Horse on the horse, to bring in horse so we can build mounted units.

I didn't know Pindicator's city was there until moving the settler, but probably should have considered rearranging the dot map more than I did, which was not at all. He's not going to like being in competition for the fish there. The trouble is that settling on the hill 1NW is just not that good - it doesn't have any food to start growing quickly and never would be a strong food site. It also doesn't give the horses immediately. But this site will be a source of coastal tension, for sure.

I'm not that thrilled at all with how the dot map is going to look down here, but every choice seems to have compromises.

We got city 6 before Darrell or Pindicator did. City 7 will be planted on the marked spot on T77, with the gems improved that same turn. The wheat SWW of Black Beauty should be improved on T79.

I'm not sure how much we can afford to rush for city 8, or even where it should be. After the gems the most pressing need is probably a first ring land claim to the NW of the capital.

I'm getting Masonry as a cheap tech on the way to Construction. I'm terrified of letting Darrell get to cats (and elephants) long before we have them. And, he's probably terrified of us having cats long before he does, so that mutual tension creates the race, even if neither of us want it. If he were signaling peaceful intent it might be different.

The question also arises, when should we actually get our unique unit? I really wanted at least one key economic tech soon (Calendar or Currency) but I'm not sure we can afford it. Then again, I'm not sure we can afford not to.

Also, please, someone build the freaking Oracle and 'mids already.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 73:

The Oracle finally was built! And it wasn't Darrell or MYKI, which is all I really care about.




I whipped off two cottages in Trigger into an axe at RBMod reduced rates. It's a bad deal but my hunch says we need to keep up with Darrell in power at all costs or die. I'm chopping two forests into units at Silver. The worker N of Silver is unguarded but there's a spear and an archer he can see which can move to guard or retaliate. I'm thinking to get 3 promoted axes in 3 turns at Silver. We want spears and chariots too, but Silver is where the barracks is, and axes are by far where the promotions are the most valuable - because Axe vs Axe combat breaks from 50% to 68% with C1, and slow axes can defend fine against invading chariots given a decent road network and information advantage.

I triple chopped the library in Black Beauty.

Black Stallion has, indeed, crappy tiles without a border pop and it working an unimproved one while growing to whip the barracks. It did get a fortunate forest growth on the plain SE though.




Darrell is still building up power, but Pindicator is producing a whopping amount of units! If this is a naval invasion with mass axes we're just screwed, but I don't think you can really play against that, without just hamstringing yourself for growth everywhere else. Pin does have other contacts, and it's hard to see that a YOLO mass boat mobilization is his best play here this early. Then again... I do know who the hell he is.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 74:

No interesting changes on the map that I see. Most of the workers are positioning to improve the gems city when it goes down in 3 turns.




Pin is getting pretty scary.




We aren't doing that great on food. This is because we don't have any happiness and size 3-4 cities just don't scale with numbers very well, while size 7-8 cities are showing up in the world. Charismatic is situationally good, but I think this starting position would be the absolute best case for its power: when you have a ton of food to horizontally grow onto but no happiness at all.

As it is we're playing with a traitless leader for now (since I avoided early wonders) so demos have to be taken in light of that.

Also notice we're actually number 12 in power, so Pin is likely the world leader. And Darrell is above us too so we're right in a military escalation zone.

[Ceiliazul]

have you been watching civstats?

[WilliamLP]

have you been watching civstats?

Novice's CivStats replacement is really hard to follow! I follow Darrell and MYKI's score every turn but not much beyond that. Since it only shows score changes after a logout, it doesn't show multiple whips or city captures like the regular CivStats does. I know that city captures must have occurred in this game, but it would be really hard to distinguish one from a settlement and whip by the other player. If someone knows how to use these scores for C&D better than I do I'd love to hear it!

And I didn't bother checking who built Oracle.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 75:




Darrell improved the stone. That guy is just going to build a wonder in there, isn't he? Lol. Even culture from the Great Wall would be a bit of a pain.

Black Stallion whips the barracks. It pretty much sucks until it gets a border pop.

Since Darrell's power leveled I figured I could build worker #10 to improve tiles when we get another happy cap in 2 turns.

Darrell has 6 cities now. The scout sees one on the coast. Note a barb warrior also spawned, on the one square where it was possible at the time. It will be free XP for an axe.