We are a city on a hill with 50% defence bonus.
it shouldn't be too easy to take our city. 6 axes might even be somewhat on the low side.
it shouldn't be too easy to take our city. 6 axes might even be somewhat on the low side.
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[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world
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  Oxy took the peace deal! So we get a 10-turn NAP. I don't know if he could have taken Primavera. The cheesy chariot war teleport move to take one of his axes out of the fight would have helped. He could have had at least 6 axes, a spear and 2 archers, and I could have had 3 axes (2 fully fortified), an archer, 2 spears, and 2-3 chariots. So I probably could have held I guess, without analyzing it too closely. I think we can say that Oxy is playing to improve his position and not playing on tilt with a vendetta and motive for revenge. This is a relief. Even if he could have taken the city it would have been bloody, and he'd be looking at a long underdefended border with Rome to his west. Honestly, so far rival moves in this game have worked out better for us than I expected. Situation in the east:  I think we're going to get our city here. It's interesting how the settler chess works out. He doesn't have any options to block us from settling. The chariot that came from the SE saw he has nothing there. One issue with my dotmap, is that it would be extremely nice to control a tile next to the lake to the E, for eventually spreading irrigation. Maybe the southern city will slide over 1SE for that purpose. Or I could move the north dot 1N, and then move the south dot NE. I'll think about it more but I actually think I like that better now, and it also means settling 1 turn earlier. It doesn't get first ring corn but citites that suck for 10-20 turns is what I'm used to.   I could whip this for 2 pop, but it seems like a waste because I may control the only marble in the known universe. I really should have had this wonder by now. In foreign news, Suttree is tearing Sisub a new one. Judging by the score changes, he captured 2 cities, and at least a couple of wonders. And he now has the Buddhist holy city! Also Boldly got Hanging Gardens last turn, which is a great move to get it this late. The population means a lot of extra production and military from the whip if nothing else. I think the clear leaders are Sutt and Retep right now.
Most important things first: Kuro has fatigued, and this is now this thread is back in first place for post count!
 It's going to be a really interesting experience reading other threads a few months from now. I couldn't be more curious about what Kuro is writing about in there to get so many views! And the lurker thread should be a blast.With the pseudo-nap with Oxy, it's back to peaceful building. Boldy has conceded the eastern jungle area to us, it seems. I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out how to get another 2xp for a HE axe. The age of open land for barb spawns is basically over. And Azza and Boldly have scouting units in our jungle doughnut hole to spawn bust! (Boldly actually has a chariot locked in there after he closed borders which is kind of funny.) One option is to take a 75% swipe at a scouting chariot, from someone where diplomatic damage doesn't matter. There's one belonging to Sisub in our land that is a great candidate for this. Mausoleum finishes next turn! Now it's a question of how to actually get another GP out, but I have a mediocre GP farm in progress of building up. The madrassa is a really nice building for this enabling 4 specialists! What I take from this game is that it's a really underrated building. All three of its features are turning out to be extremely valuable in this game: extra culture, extra specialists, and enabling priests. Wetbandit has construction and catapults. That probably explains how he romped over Azza recently. The cat in Belvedere seems defensively placed, but I'll have to keep an eye out. We should finish Construction in four turns. There are economically better techs but I want to have comfortable security first. And it would be nice to start amassing a few cats since they stay relevant forever. We got retep's graphs. This means Suttree is the only competitive player we don't have them for. Sisub is toast.  The largely irrelevant score graph. Score certainly overrates some wonders, and probably land tiles. (Why is a landlocked city worth so much more than a coastal one?) Still, I think our fourth place position is accurate.  Molach is the king of GNP, and other than him we're quite competitive with the shrine and currency. Retep has the GLH. Suttree has the Buddhist shrine and a really massive empire.  The power of GLH expansion is showing here. You can see the hump where I saw Oxy's axe stack moving up and switched to "oh crap" mode.  Key tiles have come online and we're in good shape here.  Retep has gotten away with a disproportionately light military. I don't know what the geography looks like to the east but it doesn't seem nearly as cluttered and contested as our south. Kuro has a bit of a spike, but his absolute numbers are so low I don't think we need to be very concerned. And he has no horse so we'd have ages to react to anything he does.  Rome is creative, Boldly has the wonders, we have Madrassas and you can see Oxy working artist specialists through Caste and SPI.  This is perhaps the best screen for us. Here's my empire expansion plan:  The SE city is to contend for irrigation, and to have the lake to the E and the desert to the S be a natural border. There are 3 interior fill cities to plant. The western one is most important, to connect dyes. After that, ambitions for future expansion are to the north!  It shouldn't take very much to start taking land from Kuro. I'm betting he couldn't deal with a decent stack of Horse Archers + Axes + Catapults, and we wouldn't even have to wait until maces or knights if we really wanted to move in.
 Molach fired the first Golden Age of the game, and is now set for being the power GNP player, for a while at least. We got the Mausoleum! This is a big deal. I'd like to get a GP in time for the switch to HR / Bureau. And I hope that our first golden age will be a 24 turn one! I need a plan after construction. One option is using our marble monopoly and going up the top of the tree, to make a run at Music and some wonders like Parthenon and / or GLib. If Molach wants to power through to music instead, he'll be miles ahead of us. Also Wetbandit has the option to just pull it from us in a few turns, if he can live without the happy. Another option is just fill in the economic techs pretty naturally: Priesthood -> CoL -> Civil Service. Then Metal Casting -> Machinery, and maybe Monarchy in there for the double civic switch when the next GP pops.
I suspect that Wetbandit might not have given the marble if it seemed like I was / am a threat to win this game. I wonder how we're perceived by the other players for such a threat right now. I'd still say I'm in fourth place in practical terms.
 The ghost of Sisu suffered another wonder city razed by Suttree. And now Boldly's piling on too. Suttree's declaration against Molach is interesting. I can't see it being a real war since their cores are divided apart by Oxy. I'm looking to settle that city in the north of the screenshot in 3 turns. I'm advancing a few units on Thunderhead Man, about 5 axes + a couple chariots + a spear, to try and catch Sutt off guard if he's overextending. Razing and settling 2N2W would be a dream outcome but I'm not expecting Suttree to leave the city lightly defended. Still... he does have 2 wars going on, plus known tension with Oxy. Suttree has a pretty big empire right now. I wonder how well he's teching, unfortunately I won't get his graphs for a while.
Fourth to whom?
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
I write RPG adventures, and blog about it, check it out.
Molach has a little more land than us and is ahead in tech, and has a higher GNP. Retep has better F9 numbers than we do, and has the GLH. Suttree has by far the world's largest army and empire, though I'm not sure if his economy is roaring or set back. I'm not sure where I'd put those three in order, but I see them as the top right now.
There seems to be a good deal of drama in this game! And I know about very little of it. I wish people would be strict about keeping the IT thread only for discussing game issues in a neutral tone though. It's enough to try and guess what's going on in the game itself, without reading insinuations.
I can see that Sisub's war declaration against Kuro may have been just to give his one scouting chariot something to do! He has one city left, and he or Azza could be eliminated any turn now. I had a chance to take a coinflip and kill a chariot and a worker of Suttree's:  I don't mind being at war with Suttree, since he's probably the game leader and also has other hot borders to worry about. So I took the chance: heads means I kill a chariot and a worker for a chariot, but I attacked and lost. My second chariot cleaned up, which means it comes out two chariots for a chariot and a worker. This is pretty even, and chariots have limited future value. It's good to disrupt his chop in progress too. I'm not sure how much intel he has on my mini-stack (5 axe + spear + archer). It's going to march forward. He has a catapult in Thunderhead and on a hill I don't think I can take it, but at worst they're border defenders.  My barb farming has turned up a city! Hopefully there's something in there that can get my 8/10 xp axe to HE status. I'm going to grab some of the top of the tree now: Aesthetics should finish in 3.
Nice =D
But I think we have to be careful with our relations. our infrastructure is not complete, and we need to do a fair amount of black filling and getting a handful of ships in the noodle-sea for quick movement. Maybe we can build a fort between the the label "city" and the mine. This could shorten any travel by boat with 2 or 3 turns. On a side note, what about moving the the planned city on the noodle-sea-peninsula to the SE. This would allow an additional city 1S of the barb city. I am almost done with the writing part of my graduation, I'll hand the stuff in on Wednesday. So I'll be able to put some more time into this game again =D |
