[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

I made those moves, got France to put a turn into a bowman (it'll whip the barracks next turn) and ended turn.

Just quick comment on this! Let's keep the France on barracks or granary! Those 2 hammers into bowman delay the granary in a very unpleasent way, if anything appears there we should still have time to produce a 2nd bowman!

EDIT: Switched back to barracks! Otherwise looking good!

[Fintourist]

Btw, are you completely completely sure that we want to go barracks before granary in France? My guess is that it will cost us roughly 30-50 hammers due to slower growth. I haven't calculated it exactly though, but I think I would have time in the evening..

[Old Harry]

Not completely sure. But I thought the granary felt poorer in the run-throughs I played.. If you reckon it's that many hammers (how far in the future are you still counting them?) then the benefits of the early border pop might be outweighed.

I could just be paranoid we'll discover a bunch of axes (barb or other) bearing down on France any minute now. We should probably send the galley back early to transport a bowman and worker before picking up the settler and another bowman...

[Fintourist]

Not completely sure. But I thought the granary felt poorer in the run-throughs I played.. If you reckon it's that many hammers (how far in the future are you still counting them?) then the benefits of the early border pop might be outweighed.

Ok, I ran the test until the start of T98. That felt like a fair date for the comparison as both cities have their granaries full and actually both start the turn at size 4 with 17/28 food in the box (that match was pure luck). The main difference is that when I went granary first I had time to 1-pop whip an extra bowman on ~T94.

Consequently, I was 31 hammers ahead when I went granary first. Due to the later connection of whales tile I was 6 beakers behind and since there is still 4 turns until whales come online in granary-first scenario it will lose another 12 beakers. during the turns 98-101. (I'm assuming that the alternative for whales tiles is working grassland forest)

So to sum it up:
Granary first wins by 31 hammers, but loses by 18 beakers and gets the +1 from whales 6 turns later. I'm going to next check your save stack in order to get an idea, how much that +1 happy is helping us. Getting those hammers in France of course makes settling our 2nd island city safer from the military point of view. (I'm assuming that we want to use those hammers for producing military, probably in reality we also don't let the city grow to size 4 and instead whip it on T97 regardless of the scenario..

I could just be paranoid we'll discover a bunch of axes (barb or other) bearing down on France any minute now. We should probably send the galley back early to transport a bowman and worker before picking up the settler and another bowman...

Nah, you're not paranoid, it's always a reasonable to worry about a young lightly defended city that can't whip defenders. However, that location looks like a fairly compact island with no other cities yet and I'm not too afraid of naval attacks yet. And I'm feeling a bit more confident that we can handle incoming barbs. City I grabs cows + iron? That would be easier to settle than crabs+fish spot, but has less food..

[Fintourist]

Before looking at the save stack here are some delayed comments:

• The trade route to dtay must come through that coast! It does not mean that we would necessarily get trade route income if we would be able to open borders though. For trading resources it is enough that one of us has unfogged the coast between our cities, while for getting trade route commerce you have to do it yourself. This is my understanding of that mechanic anyways!
  
• I'm not a huge fan of cottaging the tile that we are hopefully later going to use for chaining irrigation!
  
• for that hut! I totally approve of transporting Lunch there immediately! Popping a tech (AH) or getting a fair amount of gold would be awesome!
  
• The aggression between dtay and Jowy/TBS is great news. That power drop also indicates that a fair bit of hammers have been just been erased from the map! My obvious hypothesis is that they are both located somewhere NW/N/NE of us and this must somehow help us grab more land
  
• If the city razed really not was an early size 1 city I'm surprised, but I'm definitely not an expert regarding how civstats work.
  
• Thanks for all your C&D detective work!
  

[Old Harry]

Turn 85

I turned this down. We don't want to re-offer do we?


Sutree's axe turns up again - does he have designs on that hill? He can't enter our borders or declare until t89, but we're not going to settle the city until t92ish. Will he beat us to it? Also should we move the bowman in Endor south to help out or send him E-E to cover the workers while the other bowman goes to discover dtay?


Over here I'll let you decide what to do with France. We get the hut next turn.


Looks like the fighting might be over?


And Demos

There are still a few worker moves to do and the build order at France to work out, I've just done the obvious stuff.

[Fintourist]

I turned this (map trade) down. We don't want to re-offer do we?

Hmm.. They are not our direct neighbors, so it's not a terrible idea. I don't like the idea of suttree, m_h or dtay getting our maps, but I'm not sure about this. Will yurimack trade our maps to suttree & m_h? I trust your meta-game skills on this one and accept whatever you decide! I'm really undecided!

Sutree's axe turns up again - does he have designs on that hill? He can't enter our borders or declare until t89, but we're not going to settle the city until t92ish. Will he beat us to it?

Remains to be seen.. If he leaves the axe there as a sentry but has not founded the city, we might want to think about what is the sneakiest way of founding the city H. Maybe declaring again on T89 and trying to get another 10-turns of guaranteed peace before we show our intentions.. I think our back-up spot will be somewhere NE of Dunkirk so that we grab some flood plains and dyes tiles.

Also should we move the bowman in Endor south to help out or send him E-E to cover the workers while the other bowman goes to discover dtay?

I think we could put him S-S of Endor for a while, that's kind of a flexible location for a zone defense unit. Maybe we keep it there at least until we get the border bop in Endor and the first 2 forests are chopped?

About your save stack:

It's awesome!! Superb work!! You have very elegantly solved many of the problems that I recognized when I did my after-silver micro run! It's a very nice peace of work!

Here are couple of comments/suggestions regarding future turns:

• I'm now convinced that we should go granary first in France. I actually forgot that we get 2 extra cottage turns with that plan and thus lose only 14 commerce compared to barracks first plan. But most importantly, we get 4 more commerce before T93 and lose 18 commerce between [/b]T96-T101, which means that we have more breathing room when it comes to getting Currence EOT93. That earlier +1 is not really helping us that much either. We basically have to grow Cannae 3 turns later to size 7, but that's most likely the only thing affected. Maybe capital has to stagnate for 1 turn, but that's not too bad either. I think that getting those extra hammers are worth the costs. They make the founding of City I significantly safer. After all those 31 hammers mean that we will have an extra bowman.
  
• I think that the worker at France should road NW-NW of France after it has built the cottage. We should unload the settler in France on T94 and use the land way to found the city on T95. I also think that we can transport one of the workers supporting Cannae to the island along with the settler or latest 2 turns afterwards if we want an extra bowman immediately onto island
  
• I like how our sentry net starts forming itself! However, I think that we must direct more of our units to east so that they can support our new cities. Our core cities can always whip more defenders if required, but those cities can't do it and we really want to have enough units in the east so that suttree does not get any bad ideas!
  
• I'm sure I had at least one extra point that I'm currently forgetting, but I'll spam again when it comes to my mind!
  

One more time! Superb work!

[Old Harry]

I'd rather not give our map away just yet, we're not planning to do any attacking any time soon so I don't think we get any benefit from it. Perhaps when trade routes are possible, but not yet.

We need to start roading on t90 for Hastings to get settled on t92 so I don't think we can be sneaky about it. I like the idea of the declare/offer peace trick t89, I wonder if Suttree will go for it again? I'd then like to send a bowman to check if any settlers are making their way over towards us. If we won't win the race there is a desert hill that gets all the dye, then the grass hill east of the dye seals off the rest of the area (assuming Suttree settles the hill, which he might not - he'd be more sensible to go for the corn himself).

Thanks for your kind words!
- I'm on board with granary first in France
- Roading to I sounds good - I'd go NW-W so the worker can start the pasture earlier unless you have a tactical reason for roading the forest? We have three workers at Cannae to get the sugar hooked two turns after calendar comes in - can we afford to delay it?
- The military movements were fairly random in the sim, so I'm happy to concentrate them for Hastings
- I've written the micro up until t92 (except France)

[Fintourist]

I'd rather not give our map away just yet, we're not planning to do any attacking any time soon so I don't think we get any benefit from it. Perhaps when trade routes are possible, but not yet.

Agreed.

We need to start roading on t90 for Hastings to get settled on t92 so I don't think we can be sneaky about it. I like the idea of the declare/offer peace trick t89, I wonder if Suttree will go for it again?

I have an additional idea on how to handle this, but let's wait first and see what suttree does. I think he is still at 3 cities, which is pretty crazy, so I guess we can expect anything from him now.

I'd then like to send a bowman to check if any settlers are making their way over towards us. If we won't win the race there is a desert hill that gets all the dye, then the grass hill east of the dye seals off the rest of the area (assuming Suttree settles the hill, which he might not - he'd be more sensible to go for the corn himself).

Mixed feelings about the bowman since I would not like to give any hints that we are expanding into that direction and we can't really speed up our settler ourselves. That desert hill was what I was eyeing myself too!

- Roading to I sounds good - I'd go NW-W so the worker can start the pasture earlier unless you have a tactical reason for roading the forest?

No, NW-W sounds good. That was just a very rough idea. I haven't counted how that works out when it comes to worker turns, so let's think about this more carefully and see what's the best way to organize stuff.

We have three workers at Cannae to get the sugar hooked two turns after calendar comes in - can we afford to delay it?

Well, pretty much. If I understood correctly you we're getting sugar online at T101 and now we are getting both whales and sugar during T102. In the micro plan you have still two workers near Endor doing stuff that does not seem super critical so we might want to consider running one of them to Cannae in order to replace the leaving worker. But that's still 15 turns in the future and so much can happen before that so I don't think we should test anything just yet. Let's wait at least until T89/90: Getting that worker on the galley should happen fairly easily without much planning.

- I've written the micro up until t92 (except France)

[Fintourist]

I just noticed that the tile SW of Dunkirk is plains in the game and grassland in our sandbox. Let's keep your micro intact anyways, cottaging it is still the most useful thing to do as we are shuffling our workers around.