[SPOILERS] Commodore, Mist and the Weed. A Farce in three acts.

[Ilios]

Victorian Era Writers? Charles Dickens!

Is Bronte a lock?

[Mist]

I convinced Commodore to move it 1W.

Also, a cheat sheet for city names : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_yea...literature

[Commodore]

I convinced Commodore to move it 1W.

He convinced me to consider moving it 1W. I really think we need eyes on the potential Dickensian sites before deciding completely. Grassland deer and an oasis meet the bare minimum requirements for the +6 rule, but I'd really love to see some more food somewhere. We need to decide at some point soon.



Holy crap, and when I said soon, I mean soon. I haven't played with Imp before, but this amazing rapid settler is awesome. He'll pop out only a turn after the farm is born.



Next up, Mining. Then it's time to see if the fat man still ohms.

[regoarrarr]

I wonder if two turns from now we'll mess with a couple C&D heads. Probably not, but growing, making a scout, and researching a tech might be at least a little confusing.

Yeah that wouldn't be that confusing - Your tech (Agriculture) has no soldier points, and neither does a scout. Now, I mean you'd still probably confuse darrelljs of course....

[darrelljs]

I do not practice the dark arts of C&D, and I propose an inquisition against all those that do!

Darrell

[Commodore]

The crusade against the dark artists (scooter, Serdoa both C&D don't they?) will come soon enough, Darrell, first we must wax strong. This map is obscenely lush, by the way, but Seven has a problem with people settling on hills. Either dot-map will work here, I think Mist. We want to settle all the places as soon as possible, though.



We found the slightly parsimonious food of grass cows and more plains with our scout, MacDonald is looking very nice indeed once we get a method of culture-spreading. Seven nerfed Fin in the long-term by lowering the quality of the cottage-land, but in the short term this much Fin coast and lakeland will be very nice.



Fishing online at the end of next turn, then bouts of crab-working to get Mining and BW online with all due speed.

[Commodore]

So, why the Guilds run with such intensity? Under the aegis of general strat posts, let's kick off a new series:



So, why Byzantium? Once the fog of the initial weird setup cleared, it became fairly obvious that as supercharged as this start was, the old solid standbys were still very good. Lewwyn accepted the loss of a scout and moving his corn to forested plains for the faux Creative of the Inca, and the loss of our scout will likewise probably not prove too bad a ding for getting the awesome goodness of the Byzantines. The Hippodome is any okay UB, helping slightly with happiness once that becomes an issue. But the reason Byzantium is so nice is really all about these guys:



They upgrade to cuirassiers, but why bother? With the base strength of 12, these guys aren't improved much by giving them wheel-lock muskets, except against walls/castles. Not only are they an era-ahead of knights in strength, but cataphracts are replacing a unit that is already pretty dang strong. They get odds on pikes with the first promotion, and even in this game with the unbanning of war elephants, they still get good odds on the big grey buggers if leveling up is possible.

The overarching goal in this game is simple, get to cataphracts as quickly as possible and crush the opposition. As ever, initiative is paramount in warfare, and two-movers are the king of battle from the axe era until rifles. The strategy of knight-invasions is pretty simple, whip self into ground for massive fast stack, send on rampage. Tactics are where it gets fun, with forks making defenders lives hell on wheels. As hilly as this map is, there will be places where the 'phracts get bogged down I'm sure, but this also opens up the fun potential of Guerrilla II stack defenders landing on hills with the main body, protecting the weak-on-defense 'phracts from the angry swarms of defenders. However, even if guerillas aren't available, in general we'll be pretty happy if our 'phracts are being attacked in the open, as that means less wall or castle strength on the victims.

One interesting and fun side-quest we're going to be embarking on is skirmishing early and often with axes, to encourage building non-spear units amongst the neighbors. Veterans that can be promoted up the guerrilla line will be valuable, but the first priority of these fights will be to get Great General point, doubled by our Imperialist trait. The main mass of 'phracts can then be leavened by C2/Formation 'phracts to counter elephants and kinghts, and if we can manage it, Flanking II/Mobility cataphracts to exploit spaces that our rivals had assumed were safe. Just four of those (max a GG can make) sitting in the mass could royally screw over our enemies in some cases.

We'll explore other plans and potentials of the cataphracts as we get nearer, particularly once we get clearer pictures of the borderlands. For now, just look at the stats of those buggers and bask in the warm glow.

[Commodore]

With the discovery of fish I'm actually pretty okay with the Mist-proposed westward dotmap shift, but here's another conundrum. MacDonald is still a fine city location in its own right, but how about splitting it into two cities, one 2N and the other 2S? Riverside sheep are an awesome 4/1/3 tile thanks to Fin, and that would enable the south city to also share those awesome lake crabs. The only bad part would be that the lake is no longer lighthouse-able, although a shift to settling on the bananas might allow that at the expense of a 5/0/0 tile much later.



Honestly, being Imp I almost just want to figure out the tightest ICS grid and fill out that way, but land claims are important in this map setup too. Here's the general area, we need like 5-6 settlers yesterday. I've paid particular attention to sites like Dickens where all goodies are first-ring, helping the lack of culture somewhat.



Fishing came in, revealing no pearls. Next up, Mining -> BW.

[Mist]

With the discovery of fish I'm actually pretty okay with the Mist-proposed westward dotmap shift, but here's another conundrum. MacDonald is still a fine city location in its own right, but how about splitting it into two cities, one 2N and the other 2S?

Split yes, but E-W not N-S. A city ( Gogol ) 1S of the cows and MacDonald 1S of bananas.

Fishing came in, revealing no pearls. Next up, Mining -> BW.

Uhh, no? The plan was Mining->Meditation->Pottery->BW last time I checked. What changed and why don't I know about it?

[Commodore]

Uhh, no? The plan was Mining->Meditation->Pottery->BW last time I checked. What changed and why don't I know about it?

Brain fart? I've been painting our guest bathroom, I claim paint fumes. Meditation is still good if Buddhism hasn't fallen, and naturally Pottery needs to be in soonest.

In any plan, 1S or 1SW of cows is good. I'm not sure what 1S of banana nets us...still need a border pop to work sheep and Calendar isn't in the plan for about a million more years.