[SPOILERS] PBEM 8 - Shoot the Moon's Thread

[Shoot the Moon]

Well, things are certainly interesting at this point.

First things first, I whipped my second city from two pop to one pop to get a worker out. Although I will be switching off the copper mine to regrow, I'd rather get another worker out to start chopping sooner, as with fast workers that provides hammers even more efficiently than the copper mine.

My planned third city site got stolen by Warrior knight:



Up to this point, that was the only source of horses I had found . It looks like warrior knight has not revealed the horses though, as he settled 1 tile away from them. Thankfully, my western explorer found this:



Oh, thank god. City site "C!!" now becomes imperative. As you can see, my cap completes an archer and grows this turn. The next build will be a settler, which will be whipped for 2 pop at the earliest available time. At the same time, I have my workers roading to C!!, and the warrior there will explore a bit further out. If Maya beat me to that spot, then I will really have no choice but to go for an axe rush. No two movers in AW is death.

In other news, I have moved my archer out of my second city. I am going to move it to the plains hill 1N of thacelonica. If the warrior remains the only defender in the city, I may attack. More likely however, I will simply leave the archer there. It is promoted with guerrilla 1, so it will be quite the pain in the ass to remove -- an unpromoted axe has only 3% odds to defeat it! That should also give me quite nice visibility on any attack coming from that direction, so it should work quite nicely.

Finally, here are the demogs:



Keep in mind that this is right after having whipped my second city, and with a cap that has already been whipped twice and will soon be whipped again. I'm pretty happy with that demogs screen considering that.

Also worth noting is that according to the victory conditions screen, I am only 3 pop points behind the leader warriorknight, which I'm fine with as I've whipped quite heavily. However what is worrying about that is that he has 7 pop, but I can only see 6, which means he is at 3 cities already! That means he is most likely very thin on military -- a fact that my EP graphs of him confirm, as he is a bit below me, and I only have warriors and one archer (and three pop points less too)! I'll be watching his graphs, but if it stays that way I may decide to get a couple axes together and take out a city of his.

[Shoot the Moon]

First off, upon further inspection it does not appear that I can definitively say that warrior knight is at three cities, as the two cities I have visibility on are not his In my defense, he is the only one to have changed his in game name, which kinda threw me off.

In actual turn news, cap completed an archer this turn and started on a settler. The archer went to go attack the Mayan warrior choking 1S of my cap at 56%...and didn't even scratch it Even if the combat odds had gone against me, I would have at least expected it to get damaged enough for my combat 1 warrior to easily mop up, but no.

Anyway, I micro with my cities worked out almost perfectly, as giving corn to my second city this turn and switching it back next allows my second city to stay on a high food tile the entire time (pigs get pastured next turn) while also allowing me to two pop whip the settler as soon as possible (on t33, in 2t). Worked out quite nicely.

[Shoot the Moon]

Only two things of note this turn. First, moving my archer next to Byz's city revealed this:



Two warriors in the city, so I won't attack with my archer. However, the city is not hooked up (and has no visible workers around) so unless something appears next turn or the turn after, I will have that axe I am producing move toward the city. To do so, I will road the tile 1S of the city to get it there a turn faster. Alternatively, I may wait for a second axe to be produced with that chop I have coming in...I can't quite decide. Most likely I will just go in with the one axe sooner rather than later, as even 1 axe (or even an archer) in the city would stop 2 axes just as well as one axe. If Byz doesn't have a worker or unit appear next turn, I think the only way they could stop me is if they have a unit or a worker (to chop) on the forest S-SW of the city that same turn. If they do have something appear to stop my attack, I will most likely put the axe on the same tile as the archer to continue my semi-choke/sentry.

The other news is that in the west my scouting warrior revealed a sheep in the BFC of my next city site (which is now roaded to with the settler getting double whipped next turn).

[Shoot the Moon]

Founded my third city as planned (sorry, forgot to take a screenshot).

An Axe appeared in Byz's city I have the archer next to. He now has an axe and four or five warriors in that city. At this point, that city has been quite the drain on his empire: it is still at size one, and doesn't even have a food resource hooked up. In contrast, my second city already has two food resource in its BFC hooked up (one shared with cap though), is size three (and has been whipped on top of that), has had two forests chopped, has produced one or two workers (can't remember), a granary, an axe, and soon a spear, in addition to providing copper.

Note to self: have the second city steal the capitol's corn next turn.

[Shoot the Moon]

Big news for this turn was this mini-stack coming toward me:



Last turn I had seen the workers making that road, and now that stack appears. In response I moved my warriors onto the forest-hills to cut off the archer. That stack has no chance of threatening the city, as I will have two axes and two warriors in it before the stack could reach the city. It could be a bit annoying to remove if he decides to choke me, but that's not the end of the world. Considering he does not know what is in my city, my best guess is that that is simply a stack to protect a settler, although he could indeed by trying to choke/attack me.

[Twinkletoes89]

I take it you will have the axe in Vijay(...) before that Archer can strike? Who moves first?

[Shoot the Moon]

I take it you will have the axe in Vijay(...) before that Archer can strike? Who moves first?

Wouldn't have mattered. The archer would have had to attack one of my warriors on a forest-hill at bad odds (remember I moved them both on to the hills to block that single archer's path), and then would have had to beat the second warrior that would have moved back into the city. The chances of that happening are extremely extremely low.

Anyway, here is what the situation looks like this turn:



The hover-over in the lower left corner is of the Mayan stack in my borders. SW of that is two Mayan workers (as I expected). At the time of the picture, my axe has moved, while the warriors have not. I decided to move my northern warrior back into the city. The southern one I kept on its hill, as it has woodsman and is thus 50-50 against even the holkan. By keeping it there, I hope he will go to the tile to the north and thus allow me to continue to improve the southern part of my BFC in peace. I have no risk of loosing the city, as as you can see I will be producing an axe, moving an axe (at 4.3 health) and have a warrior in it, on a hill, with 20% culture. All this attack can really accomplish is to deny me my horses until I manage to clear it.

Anyway, here is a wider overview of my empire:



I debated for a long time whether to build a worker or a 3t settler in Bombay this turn (that build was just started this turn as a worker chop just came in). I decided to build a worker, as I don't think I can afford a fourth city until I get some cottages down and the gold and/or furs on line. I may slow build a settler after the worker though, as otherwise the city will grow into unhappiness (although I will have the gold hooked up in 3t, or 2t if I decide to use all three workers to do it, so in fact if I use all three workers there will not be any turns of unhappiness -- looks like I am growing then).

Tech wise, math comes next for improved chops. After that I will go for monarchy for hereditary rule, although I may slip masonry in there so that stone gets connected for a run at the Hanging Gardens.

Finally, here are the demog's:





Tied for first in GNP (and with a gold mine coming online soon), first in land area, tied for first in pop, second in power (and remember another axe completes on the interturn). Most important in my eyes though is the crop yield. Being 50% higher than the second highest bodes well for getting the snowball rolling. If I can land the hanging gardens (which I plan to make a serious run at unless it falls before math is done researching), that lead will only increase.

[Shoot the Moon]

Somewhat quiet turn (no screenshots necessary, let's put it that way). Maya attacked my warrior on the hill with the holkan at 64% odds (I actually messed up in thinking it was 50-50. It turns out I wasn't quite clear on PBEM mechanics, as I thought I would get a 5% fortification bonus when I hit end turn, but I guess there are actually some things that get calculated at the end. Either way, 64% odds still gives me better hammer-hammer ratio as a holkan is 2.3x as expensive as warrior, and those odds are under 2:1). Anyway, he has an injured holkan at 2.4 health and an archer on the southern hill and two archers on the northern hill.

The other big news this turn is that all three cities completed builds. Capital completed a worker which went to pasture the sheep and build set on a granary which will be whipped next turn once I get a couple hammers into the box to avoid the penalty. Vij.... completed an axe. I decided to put one turn hammers into an axe (to avoid whip penalty if an emergency ever comes) but will switch to a granary next turn so that when the city grows in 2t the gran has 1t hammers in it so I can whip immediately. Bombay got put on an axe so it can grow to size 5 to work the gold mine, but I will probably switch it to a settler next turn.

Only real demogs change was a jump in Byz's GNP. Probably them turning on research in combination with now working the gold mine. I'm not really worried about Byz at all though: they are still at only two cities (they are the top rival civ in culture, so their cities' culture count shows up on victory conditions screen and I can see they are at two), and their second city is still only size 1 (with cap at 4 pop, although it was whipped down from size 6, probably for a settler. I expect when I get the next turn or the turn after Byz will have three cities.) In comparison, my second city is already at size 5.

I also got graphs on Maya, revealing nothing all that spectacular. They are below me in power, which leads me to believe that the vast majority of their military is already in my lands. Not sure what they were exactly thinking with the rush, the 5+ worker turns invested in the roads and unit production could have been better used than a very slow choke on two hills and a horse tile. That just slows both of us down, with the 3 other civs being the only ones to really benefit.

[Shoot the Moon]

Not much to report this turn. City builds went as I outlined them above.

Anyway, here are the demog's after I hit end turn (only difference from before hitting end turn was an extra axe and one pop in my cap, which seemed more representative as I purposely whipped such that the cap would not spend more than one turn at 2 pop):



And pop and land:



#1 in every important category Time to keep this snowball rolling.

[Shoot the Moon]

Hahahahahaha. Byz decided to try to clear off my choking archer. He attacked with warrior, warrior, warrior, axe, axe that finally won with odds of 0.0% (no damage done), 0.0% (no damage done), 0.0% (no damage done), 7.8% (one hit), and then the last axe at 30% and got lucky and won. Sad part there is that was still a bad RNG roll for me, and he still lost 53 hammers to my 16 Anyway, I have both an axe and a spear moving in to re-establish the choke on the exact same tile (probably should have had them there in the first place, but I didn't want to risk him going around my choke as that was the only other military I had. That, and if they were there he wouldn't have just wasted sooo many hammers).

Although you obviously can't ask him as it would probably be spoilers, I'd love to know why he attacked with the warriors first. They die in only three hits from my archer, and have practically 0 chance of winning even one round. And, as expected, all three died without scratching the archer at all