[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Turn 123

We got two free Hindu spreads this turn! The one in Pickle means the borders will pop in two turns . Not sure what to do with the Missionary Englebert made now - he's probably most useful in Cornelius.


This is most of Mardoc's troops, although I did see a horse archer or two somewhere. Azza has an impressive 330 000 soldier points. He's got HBR, Construction, BW and maths (and some others) to a total of approx 50 000, there are about 20 000 from pop, probably under 10 000 from buildings leaving 250 000 for units. There are 113 000 here, another 17 000 in Nothing at all, and about 30 000 on our border, leaving 90 000 unaccounted for. Is that all a rounding error or are there 18 catapults sitting, being threatening somewhere? He'll get Iron working next turn for another boost. He's putting 4 eps a turn into us, we're at 92/154 now - anyone know when he gets tech visibility on us?


This build schedule is a bit more like it . All these HAs will be Knights if we really can complete guilds on schedule (we have a bit less money than I'd hoped, but I think we'll be alright).


They'll join our existing force . If Azza put a 2-mover on the Paranoia tile he could get sight of our HA stack. I think I want to use our scout to keep tabs on that tile


A rough guess on tech rate is that we have 1250 beakers overflow right now. GNP testing tells us:
Philosophy 577
Feudalism 600
Theology 553
Aesthetics 577
Paper 553
Compass 553
Engineering 553
We could found Christianity this turn if we wanted to . I'd suggest that only one player we've met knows Philosophy, but I'm surprised that only one has gone for Aesthetics.

Demos and power (thanks to being on Feudalism we're #1 GNP again!)

[Old Harry]

And of course I forgot to end turn... I'll be able to do it before turn roll but if you get a chance to log in feel free Fintourist.

[TheHumanHydra]

Random comment: the hill the chariot is on is one heck of a fork-tile - that can be got at out of the fog. But Azza first: I hope we can defend against his counterattack - ie. healthy knights to flank his cat-stack. At least it'll just be axes, etc. covering it, a la suttree.

[Fintourist]

Back at home! Quick comments:

1. Ended our turn, no worries, did not screw any micro, everything made sense

2. for hindu spreads. I had left Pickle at 8 culture due to food reasons (did not want to work more artist turns during our GA) earlier and I was hoping that we will manage to pop borders later with religion (or barracks) Cornelius is a decent place for spare missionary.

3. Azza's power (just wanted to repeat the same calculation):
- I got exactly 50k for him from tech (before IW),
- I think he has exactly 25k from population
- Only 3k from buildings (walls at nothing at all, could not find barracks anywhere)
- 113k at Dental Plan
- 5k roaming cat near dental plan
- 6k axe at Zzap
- at least 1 galley = 2k
- Nothing at all + our border ~50k?
-----> So if his total power is 330k, that still leaves 76k for unknown units, some surely stationary at Azza's other 5 cities, and maybe there are more units at Nothing at All since we last checked the city.. I would imagine that missing 76k are MP units (especially at Azza's remaining border city towards Mardoc) + maybe 4-7 zone defense / travelling units in the fog. Our chariot will soon give us more info..

4. I think Azza would currently need ~200 EPs before he sees our tech selection. I wonder what made Azza turn his EPs again on us. Did our EP generation made him lose his graphs despite we have not put anything on him, is he suspecting something or what?

5. Do not do too eager scouting moves apart from the sentry chariot.. Azza got alarmed by my scouting galleys in PBEM45. I would not be worried about Azza attacking us so we might just try to live with paranoia for next ~5 turns..

6. The lack of known-tech bonus for more or less every tech is a pity, but tells that we are very close to being tech leaders at the moment. Maybe we save gold for a good while once we have grabbed Engineering+Banking?

7. Our massive OB deals start to look really good. (lurkers we have met more than half of civs and have OBs with everyone except Barry+Lurker Civ. I think we have already ~15 trade routes that yield 4 or 5 commerce. (those will get free market bonus once we get so far)

8. The turn pace sucks.. Yeah, of course that is to be expected here, but it does not change the fact that I'm disappointed at some individuals.

9. I was blocking someone (someone who has not modifies his files after this gamespy-thing?) so I did not manage to check everything I was planning to so further comments might follow later..

10. @Hydra: That indeed is a nice forking tile. However, nearby cities have really nice cultural defense/walls, so we might need to go for more surprising/less central attacking routes or utilize cats/1-movers more heavily than we hopefully need to do with Azza. (if we ever get to attacking Mardoc)

11. @Hydra vol.2: Reg flanking & Azza's counter attack: Things might get tricky We want to be greedy, but just not that greedy that we fail spectacularly.

12. Interesting to see whether we indeed get Guilds EOT125. The calculation we made earlier was rough, but I thought it was pretty realistic and it also forecasted us getting the tech easily.. The large amount of carried overflow makes exact calculations at this point difficult (note lurkers that we are once again completing a tech with just overflow).

[Old Harry]

1. Thanks FT - the game file might now be too big for this crappy laptop . If so can you follow my spreadsheet to play the next turn? The most important thing is moving the scouting chariot NE-NE-Screenshot-SE-SE .

3. I would assume much of his recent increase is Horse Archers or Elephants. Possibly hanging back a little from the front?

5. Scouting Galleys (potentially filled with units) are a bit more threatening than scouting Scouts, but yeah, I'll attempt to control my paranoia.

8. From turn splits and F4 bugs I think it's Furungy failing to play until 36 hours or later :rolleyes:.

10. That would be a great location to attack Mardoc - in an ideal world we'd get OBs with Azza instead of taking Dental Plan ourselves and hit all those border cities/stacks from the fog, but I dunno if we're going to be on good enough terms with Azza for that...

11. One of the benefits of how spread out Azza's initial expansion was is that if (IF!) we can take his capital on the 2nd turn of the war his culture recedes massively, giving our two movers an advantage over any cats he's building .

12. This is a case where wealth or research builds could be quite important to make sure the EOT upgrades happen...

Hope the holiday was fun!

[Fintourist]

1. Thanks FT - the game file might now be too big for this crappy laptop . If so can you follow my spreadsheet to play the next turn? The most important thing is moving the scouting chariot NE-NE-Screenshot-SE-SE .

Sure, I can cover the next turn. My schedule might be tough tomorrow, but with the long timer that will not even be a problem,

3. I would assume much of his recent increase is Horse Archers or Elephants. Possibly hanging back a little from the front?

Yeah, that is a decent bet. I think our chariot will get an idea of that during the next 2 turns.

12. This is a case where wealth or research builds could be quite important to make sure the EOT upgrades happen...

Actually thanks to not having quite enough overflow to finish Philosophy or Engineer with 0 % research it was in the end easy enough to calculate the amount of overflow we have currently. We are pretty much exactly where our estimations say we should be at this point and getting guilds eot125 will succeed It would have been nice to 1-turn all the way from Monarchy, MC, Construction, IW, Machinery, Feudalism to Guilds, but I guess 2-turning the last tech is good enough for us.

And OH, remember to celebrate our incoming achievement of 500 points (in-game score). We are still behind the 2 wonder gatherers, but at least the gap to dtay is already pretty small.

Although, now I'm starting to get worried as well! Mackoti is already 6th in score!

[Old Harry]

Looks like the delay on the turn means I'll be back in time to play tomorrow. Feel free to do the scouting moves if you'd like though - getting to it before Azza plays reduces the chance he'll close borders on us before we have the info we want.

[Old Harry]

Turn 124

Fintourist took the opportunity to move the scouting chariot - you can see the results in signs here. The extra HA and three Catapults account for another 21 000 soldier points, only 50 000 points (and whatever he produced in the last couple of turns) left to find now. We'll get sight on his capital next turn. As we didn't see any Elephants yet I've put us onto another Knight instead of the Crossbow in Izzy.


Question: How much do we want to conceal our forces from Mardoc? This Chariot could uncover our HA stack next turn. Any thoughts? Do we want him to be preparing to attack when we do? Also apologies Fintourist - Cornelius can't grow this turn if we want to have enough hammers to 1-pop whip it next turn and the turn after.


This turn we're finally working all of Alfie's cottages. The last grass hill cottage had to wait for a couple of turns so that the city could grow this turn.


Demos and power

[Old Harry]

As an addendum I did some worldbuildering to try and figure out what Azza can see through EP spending. It won't be perfectly accurate because the AI kept turning the EP slider up , but should be good enough.

Right now we have 154 EPs on Azza and he has 96 on us.
At 170 Azza needs 76 EPs to see our graphs.
At 215 he needs 88.
At 255 he needs 100.

I don't think its worth trying to put 100 into him to hide our graphs - that would give our intentions away as sure as our power spike will.

We make 20 EPs naturally, but could make up to 50 with spy specialists, so at what point do we want sight on his cities? If we're attacking on t129 I guess we should start with 20 on t127 and then consider how many more it'll take to see the important cities by eot129 and use specialists accordingly. Of course that's all fine until he runs the slider against us...

[TheHumanHydra]

I don't think it's a big deal if Mardoc sees. He's not allowed to communicate with Azza even if he wanted to (is declare-peacing allowed?) and it might be helpful as you pointed out.