[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[Dark Savant]

I'm also concerned that Coeurva is going to attack CML.  CML did finally show signs of life this turn (will elaborate later), but he's still behind.

I suppose we could build chariots and see what use they could be put to.  Now I realized that since we are probing Coeurva's borders with a chariot, he's been alerted to put spears there.  Oh well.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 72 (1120 BC) - Part 5

Domestic update:

Castle Ironfist 2-pop-whips its settler.  It already has an axe partially built, so I might complete that before starting on chariots.

edit: Castle Ironfist also just had Buddhism randomly spread to it -- though I'm no longer sure getting JR4's religion is superior to getting Krill's religion.

Sorpigal produces another work boat and is now working on a granary.  This work boat will check out the nearby island; it doesn't need to plant on the crab until Sorpigal reaches size 3.

New Great Lighthouse plan:

The previous t84 plan took a long time to put production into a settler.  I realized that this only really makes sense when your tech is relatively slow; we can have the needed tech for the Great Lighthouse in 3 turns.  We can still whip Castleview repeatedly and apply overflow to the Great Lighthouse:

On t72, Castleview just reached size 6, and has a spear at 30/35 (which recently started undergoing hammer decay) and the lighthouse at 56/60.

• t72: Swap to stele.  (Not a chariot; we need a stele here if we fail to get the Great Lighthouse and we don't attack Gavagai.)
  
• t73: stele 9/30
  
• t74: stele 18/30, swap to lighthouse and whip it.
  
• t75: Masonry arrives, lighthouse done, swap to Great Lighthouse, finish chop/mine of forested grass hill.
  
• t76: Great Lighthouse 67/200, swap to spear and whip it.
  
• t77: regrow to size 5, spear done, swap back to Great Lighthouse.  (Fortunately, one whip unhappiness will expire just this turn.)
  
• t78: Great Lighthouse 109/200, swap to stele
  
• t79: stele 29/30, whip it
  
• t80: stele complete, swap back to Great Lighthouse, finish reminaing 3 forest chops this turn
  
• t81: Great Lighthouse complete (with some overflow)
  

Castleview will still be okay on happiness at size 4 even with three whip effects lingering.  It can even pop out a chariot naturally on t83 (if we do that, Gavagai will see that one chariot when he plays his turn).

We can accelerate this by one more turn if we whip the stele on t78, even -- I only realized this as I was writing it out (yeah, this is why I write out long posts); this plan comes up with something like 215 hammers by t81, which we don't need.

So okay, this is now a t80 Great Lighthouse plan.  I'll have to scramble to a bit to get the workers all in place, but it can be done.

I don't think I can shave another turn off of this.  

[Dark Savant]

Turn 72 (1120 BC) - Part 6 (C&D)

Score tally:

• Us: +2 points for +1 pop in Castleview; -5 points for a -2 pop whip in Castle Ironfist (20 pop total); +6 points for 5 land tiles controlled by the first ring of Sorpigal for 20 turns.
  
• CML: +3 points for city #6 (12 pop total); 3 new land tiles were claimed.
  
• Coeurva: +2 points for +1 pop; -2 points for a -1 pop whip in Ignis Fatuus (19 pop total); +9 points for 7 land tiles controlled by the first ring of Lifeblood (city #4; we don't know its location) for 20 turns; +6 points for an Ancient-era technology researched in 7 turns.
  
• Gavagai: +5 points for +2 pop; -5 points for a -2 pop whip in Edirne (18 pop total).
  
• GermanJoey: +3 points for +1 pop in Seven Mysteries; -3 points for a -1 pop whip in State of Zijin (17 pop total).
  
• JR4: extremely hard to follow, I think he's the first rival I just won't be able to figure out soon, but he gained 10 points (very tentatively a pop point and +6 land tilesedit: now believed on t74 to be +2 pop, +4 land tiles) and -5 points for a -2 pop whip (very tentatively 20 pop total).
  
• Krill: +12 points for 9 land tiles controlled by Animal Farm's 3rd ring for 20 turns; +18 points for building The Oracle; +12 points for a Classical-era technology.
  

CML now has quite a few cities, but they aren't that big and he's falling behind in tech.  I don't think he is a threat to build the Great Lighthouse because he doesn't seem to have the tech for it.

Ventessel is still not getting any points from the third ring of Anchorage.  I'm mystified.

There is no one we know of with a higher power rating, though our power rating has a lot of points from barracks.

[ipecac]

Alphabet and Metal Casting would make the most sense, with Alphabet being more likely.

I don't think "Krill wants us to do it" is a good enough reason not to do it. Krill is going to be vulnerable himself for the near future, and we do need to think about having something ready to prevent Gavagai from eating Krill.

Hmm...I'm not sure how the Ventessel situation is, but it doesn't seem like Krill and Gavagai have neighbouring cities yet. I doubt Gavagai will send a strike force to hit Airship One anytime soon, not least because city maintenance would be high. There is a resourceless 'deadzone' between Krill and Gavagai just like we have one between us and Couevra.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 73 (1080 BC) - Part 1

Sandro pulls back a bit, and while he finds nothing much new ...



GermanJoey can chop those two third-ring forests between Seven Mysteries and Yellow Maple, and they'd go into his Great Lighthouse build.  (The forest 3N of Seven Mysteries should go into State of Zijin.)  If he's got a lot of bonuses like mined copper or more whip overflow than I thought, that might even beat a t80 Great Lighthouse.  It's absolutely still worth pursuing our build; we don't have to commit to the later three forest chops until t79.

Gem doesn't get vision on any of JR4's cities, but she does confirm that Borte is 6E 14N of State of Yue.

Other scouting work boats that are intended to actually be fishing boats in the near future reveal terrain:



Does forested coast do anything but provide +1 hammer and impede movement?  Wait ... I should probably double-check that.  (edit: Yes, it does.)



Look at all the islands.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 73 (1080 BC) - Part 2 (Coeurva)

The whip in Ignis Fatuus turned out to be for a chariot; it also regrew to size 3.  I'd have 50% odds of beating it and razing the city, but I have no other military nearby.  My feeling is that a coin flip isn't good enough; I do want to have Charity continue scouting too.  So I continue to poke around:



Charity reveals Coeurva's second city, Dragonish Sicil.  It's size 3 and has a granary (no library), and is also not currently garrisoned.  Coeurva can know we can already see into the city, but I'm not sure that he actually does.  We can move closer next turn if desired.  I figure that's probably okay -- Coeurva's warrior is still looking at Harmondale (and might be wondering why we have an unhappy face there, heh).

Also, the event log shows something that may or may not be related to Coeurva:



That must be from a war CML or dtay is in.  (Krill vs. Ventessel is the only one we know about, and that one looks dormant.)  JR4 seems to be in full-blown builder mode, so I don't think he's fighting dtay.  Before I thought it would have been most likely CML and dtay fighting each other, though it's also possible CML is fighting Coeurva.  We know Coeurva built a bunch of axes, but we haven't seen any of them now that we're taking a look at what Coeurva has.  I wonder where they are?

Yeah, Gem is definitely pushing to make contact with CML.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 73 (1080 BC) - Part 3 (Gavagai)

I should post a clearer map of the Gavagai-Krill border:



You thought that the area in between was a wasteland, but Gavagai actually has a good forward plant site on the plains hill 4N 1E of Samsun.  It would be vulnerable to Incest Empire chariots rumbling out of the fog from the tile 3S of Room 101, but the site is otherwise defensible, claims grass sheep, and shares 2 cows with his nearby cities.

I'm really not sure whom to potentially prosecute war against.

[Dark Savant]

Okay, without overwhipping, or disturbing either our Great Lighthouse build or our new cities, we can produce something like 6 chariots out of Castle Ironfist and 5 out of Harmondale in time to attack either Coeurva or Gavagai by t84.  We currently have 2 chariots, and can build another chariot in Castleview if we are attacking Gavagai.  This includes the transit time to those cities -- we can follow those chariots up with more, or things that aren't chariots.  It takes 3 turns for a chariot to get from Harmondale to Castleview.

The micro for whipping isn't graceful for those two cities because it's very easy to hit the overflow cap, but I can probably work something out.  Overwhipping for chariots won't do much good in our bigger cities, we'd have to do it in our developing cities for it to help (they do both already have barracks, but no granaries).

If we build axes and spears, we can produce something like 10 (we're producing an axe next turn either way), except transit times are slower -- it takes 5t for an axe to get from Harmondale to Castleview (6t to actually menace Ankara), and 4t for an axe from Castle Ironfist to menace Ignis Fatuus.  Except Coeurva has seen both our existing chariots and has never seen an axe of ours, so it's possible he will respond by overbuilding spears, so this might work out better if we are attacking Coeurva.  If we instead attack Gavagai, we could get something like 6 axes from Castle Ironfist, 3 axes from Harmondale, and 2 from Castleview (1 already there, 1 produced after the Great Lighthouse).  Any more will require either hard whipping or attacking after t84.

We need to decide which unit to produce, if we're doing this at all, by next turn.

This includes any decision to commit harder by whipping extra units out of our newer cities.  If we produce axes, we need a decision on whom to attack as well.

If we can't come up with a firm decision, my inclination is to continue to build and instead strike in the classical era.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 73 (1080 BC) - Part 4

Domestic update:

I may need to adjust a few workers to commerce tiles to be sure I get Masonry on t75.

Castle Ironfist finished its whipped settler; the overflow will go into the partially done axe and finish next turn, which will in turn still have enough overflow to complete another unit the turn thereafter.

Harmondale is due to 2-pop-whip its settler next turn.

Castleview will be producing a stele for one more turn before the whipping for the Great Lighthouse begins.

Sorpigal has its corn farmed now.  It will grow to size 2 next turn, and size 3 in 2 more turns after that (yeah, without a granary).

The settler from Castle Ironfist is heading to red dot; it will plant on t76.  Two workers are already preparing roads and will be ready to start improving its food immediately.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 73 (1080 BC) - Part 5 (C&D)

Okay, now that someone has entered the Classical era, I can investigate known tech bonuses, which I could have done last turn (oops).

• Archery: +3 KTB (Gavagai, GermanJoey, probably Ventessel, cannot be Krill)
  
• Horseback Riding: +0 KTB
  
• Iron Working: +0 KTB
  
• Masonry: +2 KTB (probably GermanJoey, and I don't know who the other might be)
  
• Meditation: +1 KTB (JR4)
  
• Metal Casting: +0 KTB
  
• Polytheism: +1 KTB (Krill)
  
• Writing: +4 KTB (Coeurva, Gavagai, JR4, Krill).  Uh, that was a waste of time, wasn't it.  
  

Also, you CAN get a KTB with an ancient tech; someone just needs to have gotten out of the Ancient era.

Krill doesn't have Alphabet, since he can't propose Open Borders.  He can't have Code of Laws because he didn't found Confucianism.  And he can't have any of Metal Casting, Horseback Writing, or Iron Working, because those show no KTB.

So he must have one of Aesthetics, Mathematics, or Monarchy.  Yeah, I don't know either.    The best thing I can think of is that he wants to unleash the Statue of Zeus with Aggressive/Charismatic Boudica ASAP.

Score tally:

• CML: +6 points for an unknown ancient tech researched in 17 turns.  Wow, why did that take so long?
  
• Coeurva: +5 points for +2 pop (+1 in Ignis Fatuus) (21 pop total).
  
• dtay: +3 points for +1 pop (18 pop total).  My hypothesis for his 28-point gain on t71 can't be right; new hypothesis is +3 pop/+11 land.
  
• Gavagai: +3 points for +1 pop in Edirne (19 pop total); +6 points for an unknown ancient tech.
  
• GermanJoey: +8 points for +3 pop (+1 in Heavenly Star); -2 points for a -1 pop whip (19 pop total).
  
• JR4: +4 points for 3 land tiles claimed for 20 turns.  You can't score 4 points with any of pop, tech, or wonders, so it must be land, and this must be for a border expansion.
  
• Krill: +5 points for +1 pop in Animal Farm and +1 pop in Room 101 (14 pop total).
  

People seem to be awfully reluctant to end their turn -- I haven't partly because I was figuring out military micro for a while.