[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and Q Eat 'Em for Breakfast!

[Qgqqqqq]

Xpost.

I believe I've mentioned fogbusters on the BC border for a while now

[Cornflakes]

Our next two cities (next turn and the turn after) are going on the edge of the jungle, but they'll have enough tiles to work short-term (riverside grass or shared cottages) until at least size 4 so IW for jungle clearing can wait. We have enough gold to finish CoL and all of IW or 1/3 of Calendar. If we go CoL > IW we'll get IW in 6, Calendar in 18. If we go CoL Calendar first we'll get Calendar in 12, IW in 18. (NOTE: these are pessimistic estimates, we can probably do them a turn or two quicker, maybe more)

We could get either CoL > [Alphabet or Monarchy] in 8.

We can't chop a wonder out of Mars for 20 turns or so because we need a border pop which requires library tripple-whip. If I find marble then I'll plant a city on it if it's within 10-tiles of my borders. Wealth building preserves overflow, right? That could give us a little more flexibility.

[Cornflakes]

I noticed that you just logged in. I'm going to be shortly though so I might not comment on anything else you post this evening. All our logins and posts yesterday and today might make some of the players nervous

But on the subject of logins ... AT and Jowy have had an unusually high number of logins in the last 2 days (coincidence that there was a "situation" in the game over that same time period??).

[Qgqqqqq]

Oh sorry.
I placed a bunch of signs (like, a LOT ).
Most importantly, I swapped the market build at [southern city] to gold to preserve overglow.
In general markets have little payoff and aren't wanted in the early game, but I didnt want to radically chnage until wed discussed (I left the one at GS as 1hpt isnt worth bothering about, and our cap will want one eventually).
I also swapped the Banana farm for the corn, as it was unworked by either city.

I think we want to offer peace for ~20 gold this/next turn.
Any later and we have no advantage, so he will likely not take peace (opting for a fued instead - he may do that at this point too).
After the hamlet is pillaged/his axe in [city name] we should go for straight peace, as we want out of this war ASAP.

[Qgqqqqq]

Our next two cities (next turn and the turn after) are going on the edge of the jungle, but they'll have enough tiles to work short-term (riverside grass or shared cottages) until at least size 4 so IW for jungle clearing can wait. We have enough gold to finish CoL and all of IW or 1/3 of Calendar. If we go CoL > IW we'll get IW in 6, Calendar in 18. If we go CoL Calendar first we'll get Calendar in 12, IW in 18. (NOTE: these are pessimistic estimates, we can probably do them a turn or two quicker, maybe more)

We could get either CoL > [Alphabet or Monarchy] in 8.

We can't chop a wonder out of Mars for 20 turns or so because we need a border pop which requires library tripple-whip. If I find marble then I'll plant a city on it if it's within 10-tiles of my borders. Wealth building preserves overflow, right? That could give us a little more flexibility.

Do you mean 8T for IW? (second example, first scenario =24T, second =30T).
I think Alpha is worth considering, the TT game is about to open, and it would let us dissaude war with Azza.

Actually why not offer hunting/PH for some of Comms gold?

[Qgqqqqq]

Expanding on that point, I think we should offer PH for 80 gold, and Hunting for 50gold to them next turn.
While these seem low values I think they're relatively high actually as we are both gaining from them, and as an empire that's expanded further the gold is of more benefit.
Plus the gold beaker skew means that their gold is worth more.
Those are, IMO, high values that we can then be negotiated down from.
Its a worthwhile deal because they're not getting any immediate worth out of it (presumably as they haven't researched yet) while the gold value is immediate for us.
I think we should let ourselves be negotiated down because we want good relations with them, and the deal will still be beneficial later.

I also think we should consider how we see azza relations.
We basically have two options: we can make peace with the intention of of restoring relations, or we can make peace with the idea of getting our units back without a bad hammer exchange, and a 10T secured border.
Reflecting on it now, I think the damage dealt to azza makes it unlikely that he'll break a blood fued for the entirety of the game.
In which case, do we make peace or continue the choke?
If we make peace it needs to be before he has the forces to kill our army (I.e. soon, especially if he whips an axe in [second city]. Does it have connection to the cap?)

Tech thoughts: I think we definitely want calender before iron working, the question for me is if we take monarchy/alphabet first.
I think its a definite NO on monarchy, as we should double revolt into HR/OR (probably? that implies waiting for a GA (as well need religion revolt as well), bah now I'm talking myself out of it ), and mono can wait until its spread around a bit more.
Alpha I'm coming around to, getting in before trades are made is valuable.
This is also why I think we should hold off on mono et al, as its out there for trade.
I think we decide on calender based on what we see in the dye area - if there's close food it'd be a worthwhile city then we should push there ASAP (+2 happy would open us up soooo much), if not we can consider taking alpha/monarchy first.
(Under that plan we'd found on dye).
That city could also give us TR with metra.

[Qgqqqqq]

I realise I'm a bit late with this:

AutomatedTeller (PBEMs 34g, 36, 34s, 5o, 5q, 42, 48)

playing as

HANNIBAL (FIN/CHA)

of

NATIVE AMERICA (Dog Soldier/Totem Pole)

Automated Teller is a good, if relatively new, player. He won his first game here (34g) and has done alright in the others that I have lurked. Specifically, he seems to have an inclination for the warfare oriented duel/34esque setups and has played a lot of them with varying degrees of success (apart from 34g I believe he won both his duels and is a contender in 42. He was dogpiled early on in 34s).
This is his first pitboss and first game on normal speed. Overall I feel he is a strong contender, with good war skills (along with pretty much all our neighbors ).

He rolled charismatic NA, which is basically a Stonehenge mandatory start. This meant he beat us by 2(?) turns
Apart from that he has a relatively late blooming setup, with CHA NA meaning that any land is going ti be hard to take, and FIN to boost him there. So far he seems to have played a decent start with a bunch of high pop cities (in comparison to our ICS). The age of the dog has come and gone (tbh its a pretty weak UU, though it would've stopped Rome short) without an ancient war.

Overall id say this is a decent role, a little slow starting with the no early game trait and the necessity to rush to Stonehenge, but AT has handled it well and is only a city behind our 3F plant start.
I think AT will do well if he is able to expand to a decent portion of land as he's likely to make it to muskets without an invasion and will be able to exploit that safety cushion to get a compelling snowball.
The next 20-30 turns will likely be crucial to them.

Early-game prediction: 3rd of 6

[Cornflakes]

This turn will probably roll awkwardly Azza usually plays an hour after I go to bed, and the turn this morning rolled earlier than I care to wake up ... If Azza doesn't play before I go to bed I'll come quite close to the end of the timer tomorrow morning.

Do you mean 8T for IW? (second example, first scenario =24T, second =30T).
I think Alpha is worth considering, the TT game is about to open, and it would let us dissaude war with Azza.

Actually why not offer hunting/PH for some of Comms gold?

No, each of my examples included 4-turns of researching Code of Laws ... I should have been more clear on the. It'll actually take 4-turns to research IW (4+4=8), 8 turns to research Calendar (4+8=12).

[Cornflakes]

I decided to put overflow at Postos into a worker. We can slow down growth by 1 turn and it syncs perfectly with whip anger wearing off there. Then I'll swap to an impi at 1hpt while I grow 2 pop and then double-whip the worker from unhappiness. We'll be slogging through jungle in the east and west and extra workers always come in handy.

At Grand Slam the market already would provide 7 gpt while we're saving (which is half of the time) and it would raise the happy +1 because of ivory. We have an abundance of food, so I can grow through unhappiness up to size 10 and whip it in. It should take 12-15 turns to grow those pop. The alternative is to put those pop that I grow into whipping a settler, which might be a better idea because that'll allow us to plant for dyes ... the big question is, can we support more cities? For dyes that will increase the happy cap everywhere I think yes.

On the status of Azza war? I think I'll wait until knights to go for the kill. His back is broken and he can't recover. His GNP in in the toilet ... he's making 3gpt now at 0%. We are large enough that he won't be able to make any significant counter attack with only 3 cities (and none of them close and none of them on our body of water). I am quite satisfied with the outcome This was definitely NOT one of those grinding ancient era wars that destroy both sides

– 3 cities burned
– 1 worker captured, and forced him to delete a second
– 0 units lost (only a single impi vs. warrior combat )
– enough gold pillaged to sustain our standing army, so it has cost us nothing so far.

Moving forward I'll keep at least one fogbuster across the water NE of Zombie and one SE of Zombie. I'll pillage all the improvements northeast of Zombie. There's no possible way he can surprise us, and there's no possible way that he can defeat us without catapults because i'll have time to whip walls wherever he comes (if he comes).

[Cornflakes]

NOTE: I have not played yet or moved anything. I just swapped some tiles around, took a few pictures, and meditated upon the general strategy for the next 15-20 turns.