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

[Bacchus]

The old "let's at least ruin somebody's game" gambit? Alternative option: develop soundly, using the few natural advantages that the land does provide, such as the ability of the capital to grow quite tall, and then fish for opportunities in what is, and they now know it, a multilateral game. They can reasonably count that with Mehmed of Mongolia on one side and Sury on the other, there will be some action around our borders. Bulbs are their best answer to stay in the game and even situationally push ahead where necessary, so why not set these bulbs up and look to attack at an opportune moment?

I agree that an ASAP attack would have been best for them, but the window for that is closing rapidly, if they don't set up granaries and libraries now, and instead build stacks of ancient units, they will never catch up even if their war is as successful as they can hope it to be. They are not taking the capital, not with 40% cultural defense there and not with food tiles which let us whip every other turn and still grow. And without the capital, our best cities are useless to them, they will be swamped by culture. Sacrifice vertical development to get what exactly?

Their problem is that the costs of early attack scale rapidly in time, so if you are going to axe-rush, you don't build 4 cities ahead of everyone else. If they have chariots — I can sort of see the attraction of attacking still, but we will know exactly whether Egypt has 'em, once the power graph for the recent two whips becomes visible.

[Bacchus]

In other matters, are we whipping the settler for the corn city for three from the capital after the Oracle?

[Gavagai]

It's T64 and we have completed the Oracle. It's time for a big report, I think.

First of all, demos.











Three important things can be seen on these pics.
First, both of Egypt whips went into units. If those were chariots, we'll be able to deal with them as I will explain below.
Second, Egypt team has screwed up their start. Their GNP is abysmal, given that they have more cultural income than us or than anyone in the game. And what do they have to compensate? Their mfg is only a little higher than ours and their crop yield is equal to ours. And this is given a generally faster start.
Third, we are doing pretty good compared to others. We are running 0% science now, we are the first in GNP on breakeven. CY and MFG are also decent.
Of course, stats will become worse next turn after we 3-pop whip a settler. And then we will have a war which will trash all our stats except power.

Now, a few words about Egyptian threat:



This is an expected war theater. Observe that it gives us a very early warning about their attack.
Let's say next turn a chariot would appear on a forest 1NW from the eastern Corn (probably the best angle of attack for them). Keep in mind that they are playing before us. (We maintain this turnorder for a very long time and if they would want to break it, it by itself would be suspicious.) This means that in the second half of next turn we will order a production of a spear in Yark.
On the turn after next they will put their chariot on a copper mine and we will whip the spear. Next turn they will have a choice: to suicide the chariot against the spear, to withdraw the chariot or to destroy the mine and sacrifice the spear. All those scenarios are acceptable in my book.



And this is an actual war theater - in our war with barbs. Our axeman has just killed a barb warrior, gaining one XP from that. I hope for the next XP and a promotion next turn.



This is newly discovered land to the west. Slowcheetah is sitting on the landmass across the channel in the north. In the south-western corner one may see Sian's borders. 1E from our warrior is a city site with a good heroic epic potential. With 14 pop, guilds, caste and calendar it will produce 31 base hammer. Khm, ALMOST one-turning a mace.

Inside view of our cities:



Londra. Will whip a settler next turn. Next whipping cycle will give us an axe/chariot pair. After this we will build lighthouse/granary/library. Then - growth to max pop and workers/settlers.



Yark. Will whip a worker once this option is available, whipping away this forest. Units from natural production and chops after that.



Croyden. Will whip a granary at size four. After that we will be able to quickly produce four units in two whipping cycles. After that it will slowbuild a settler at size 4 to allow whip unhappiness to go away.



This is what our workers are doing. The one standing on a hill has finished a mine this turn and will go to build a road in the north after that.



Our next city will be on a desert tile 1NW from Ivory.



International situation. Observe that Jester/Nakor already have contacts with SC and Sian. May be we will DOW one of them right before our attack against Egypt to give our military preparations a plausible explanation.
A few words about our tech choices. I actually set research to monarchy. I want to have sailing as our next research target but don't want to research it until we reveal our chariots as sailing gives trade connection with Egypt and makes our resources visible (given their GNP, I don't think they will be able to research sailing themselves). I think Egypt has research visibility on us now, that's why I decided to set research to monarchy so that our delay in turning research back on won't look suspicious.
I offered them open borders. If they accept, we will scout their territory for horses. Of course, they could do the same with us but I think that we can accept this risk: our horses are in pretty much the last place for them to scout. If they don't... well, we may want to consider just researching sailing right now.

[Gavagai]

In other matters, are we whipping the settler for the corn city for three from the capital after the Oracle?

Sadly we will need to settle ivory first to have a forward base for our attack.

[Bacchus]

From the Soldier demos, Egypt's build must have been axes, two chariots wouldn't have given him a big enough power boost to best us, we have 2000 more due to extra population in the capital.

[Bacchus]

Committing yourself to an ancient era attack in a position with a clear economic development route makes me:

[Gavagai]

I'm not happy with it either, believe me; but I think straightforward economic development while having a backward neighbor with nothing to lose is a pipe dream. Can't see them sitting quietly while we are beelining maces.

[Bacchus]

Aye, captain. Ship ready to engage at your command.

One of the funnier consequences of using your fourth and borderline city for commerce is that you can't really field an army. So let's make them feel this little annoyance.

On the ivory city — I don't think it would be as much a forward base as it would be a liability, vulnerable to a freak chariot raid. We'd have to commit an axe/spear pair to hanging around on the desert hill to protect this, I'm not sure it's worth it. It won't have enough prod to yield units, and what we would really like to do now is start maturing them riverside cottages. It will also help pay the considerable maintenance for the army. The only reason for ivory that I can see is happy, but I think only the cap can use this happy in any case.

EDIT: Additionally, what one would really want to do with this city, is wait for a border pop and then chop them 7 forests into something marbly, using that yonder marble. Something like

[Gavagai]

At least one forest would be definitely chopped into a chariot but yes, Mausoleum is a possibility. The main reason for this city is Ivory: we really need this happy face.

[Gavagai]

Changed research to sailing. There are scenarios in which I would want to research it ASAP and this overflow would be important.