[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Bacchus]

I didn't realise the settler just got loaded, thought he could walk off the boat.

[Bacchus]

OK, so if you do the CY readjustment by subtracting dtay and the two laggards, the pack average is 268, so don't beat yourself too hard. We are going to around 10 pop pretty quickly across the newly founded cities, which is another 20 CY easy. Dtays previous peak of expansion was a little earlier than ours.

[Coeurva]

T118

The barb galley moved 77 without pillaging. Loaded off the settler and moved our galley 39, next to it. If the galley sinks, welp; we'll build one at Ignis quickly. I've chosen to build a sword at Westward, which will come in handy both as garrison and against the barb city -- 10h exactly, so we can single-whip it in a few turns. Westward doesn't really get production (especially since the capital has taken the horse for GLib) but its food surplus is nice, and it puts in good commerce.


Sherry is a cool city, but it would only get 10hpt while building Moai after modifiers (not to mention that we don't actually have stone yet; maybe we can trade for that), so all it can do with that food surplus is to whip it away! Most of our island cities are similar. Pomewater and Sphinx are the ones to look out for.

We're working a bare plains at Whitehall to get to 60/150 hammers and thus a 4-whip on the market next turn. Sherry can then take the fish from Whitehall and whip a barracks, then colosseum -- or Whitehall can keep the fish; depends on what we want to do at Sicil, really.

The market at Cowish will be worth ~10gpt on 0% sci. We get 109h of overflow on the market (whipped this turn), just as planned. Maybe something to look forward to.

Finally, there's confirmation that the forest did put the Heroic Epic at 202/200h. One more unit.

About Yuri:

These cities are incredibly forkable (corn tile, cottage tile...). I think we should emphasize our UU, spears be damned. Don't even need stables with CHM, colosseums are enough to get C2+Shock (or Cover), what's he going to put in front of that? They're better for defense against dtay than CR swords would be, too. Should still build 6-8 catapults, cover them with our ancient junk and 1-2 NumCav, and move them around while we cut off Yuri's roads and make him guess.

Those city sizes are juicy. Hopefully we can grab them before, by and by, the whip taketh all away.

About Savant:

I've called Regna "audacious", but this island is actually closer to him than anyone else except Donovan (3t from Sorpigal, i.e. Savant's "natural" fourth city, 3t from Donovan's shores and closest harbour as well). Westward is 4t from there, Ignis 6t (!). That's all before you count circumnavigation; in reality, Savant's excellent move to secure it early means that he just requires 2t to move units from Sorpigal to the island.

However, X17a (the jungled peninsula) is only 2t from here as well. Goes to show how much difference scouting and early IW will make, I guess.


The GNP leader is dtay; not sure what's up with Joey, probably at break-even (18 gpt). The alternative explanation is no Currency + huge army; he did enter the Classical Age rather late... We'll see if he spikes soon.

City counts:
JR4/Ref -- 19 iirc, last one founded this turn
Dark Savant -- 18 (but has two settlers underway)
dtay -- 18
us -- 16
Joey -- 15, last one was Red Coral
Gavagai -- 14, hasn't added any in "ages"
Krill -- 14? I forgot.
Yuri -- 8
Donovan -- 5

Incidentally, if dtay and Joey declare on Mongolia at the same time with their synchronous Golden Ages, the Khatunate might well toast, but dtay has a much easier target, so I doubt that's going to happen. I wouldn't want it to happen, either.

Six cities grow eot. Maybe that will fix our crop yield (no, it won't).

Btw Yuri has research vision on us, but not city vision, and won't be getting it within 20t either, even if he kept investing 4EP/t from here. (I think it's actually 3EP/t.)

[Bacchus]

Wow, losing GNP in a golden age to someone who isn't... And he has the GLH! He must still not have Currency, no other way about it.

Moai should be built via a whip cascade anyway, so natural hammers not too important.

[Coeurva]

It's more difficult to whip-cascade when you can't double-whip axes for 58h into stone-doubled Moai like in BTS. We still need to get overflow from somewhere. Maybe we can workshop that plains tile and get acceptable hpt at Sherry.

A short observation on cothons: If they add a trade route per city for +3c, and then add 50% on each trade route's worth, they're actually worth 6c apiece (3 * 4c trade routes instead of 2 * 3c); since they're food-neutral like most buildings, that's like three free lighthoused coast tiles. So whipping up to three of these off for a cothon is always worth it (especially if you regrow onto one of them at once), which will soon be true for half of our cities if it isn't already.

Not sure if we should take Compass or HBR first, though. Vermin could make 1t 4XP NumCav starting T122 by going HBR first (not counting production from other cities, that's more or less 20 NumCav by the prospective launch). We'll obviously save gold with Compass selected in either case: no need to show our hand to Yuri too early.

[Bacchus]

HBR looks good. Why build if the Epic, if we are not using it, and I agree that Numids are better than swords for this venture. We got value out of IW anyway, so many hammers and jungle clearance.

[chumchu]

Blood for the blood god!

[Coeurva]

T119

First of all, Joey offered OB for 6gpt, which I've actually accepted. We'll close them with Savant soon enough (and also open with Gavagai in a few turns) because I don't want to give him the option to do the same and feel like he's in control of the position. Besides, if Donovan ever goes down, building good relations with Joey will help us (make no mistake, this deal is lucrative to him, we've dropped to dead last on Import/Export; but 60g is also worthwhile to us). Meanwhile, we need Gavagai's alliance more than ever because:



I don't think Krill is defending these cities adequately, and this is an audacious settlement no matter what. After the colosseum whips at Vermin and Lifeblood, our goal will be to create a fleet of four galleys (we have two already and will whip the third in 3t; Savant invalidated X17b, so I'm steering the galley southwards with chariot and settler on board; those go for the one remaining island near Maudlin, small "x") loaded with eight swords (most at CR2). If we're willing to delay the invasion of Yuri further, that is, because dtay's power is growing harshly, now higher than Mongolia's (still not higher than ours, but it won't be long).

I've also noticed that this is a version of RtR in which the Colossus gives +2c to all coastal tiles, not only the city it was built in as it was in PB27. I had been tacitly assuming that the wonder wasn't too critical when it absolutely is on this map. dtay has lots of pop simply working 204 coast. His GNP is 455 on this turn, which I suppose is some old tech on the path to Feudalism (probably Priesthood etc.)

We'll start four cities on colosseums next turn and whip them all T121; that should do. Afterwards, it's time to actually build military. Not garrisons. Maybe GLib will make people think we're still in "builder mode" or whatever despite barracks in almost all mainland cities; well, that can only help us.

(Maybe war with Krill with inspire dtay to go for Yuri's throat, Yuri will send all his forces southward to meet the threat, and we can mop up his northern cities with NumCav. Pipe dream.)

[Coeurva]

To be clear, we're talking about the following plan:

Code:

T#   Vermin    L'blood    Zodiac
120  colo       colo 20h  galley3
121  colo 80h whip 80h 2whip
122  sword1   sword2    galley4
123  sword3   --"--         2whip (or 1t later)
124  sword4   finish      
125  sword5   (archer)
126  sword6

With the loading tile being 6666 of Vermin (next to silver/Sphinx) and the staging tile being the clams at Sphinx, unless Krill pops borders at the fogged city, in which case we have to stage 669 of Sphinx. This means war with Krill on T130, with amphibious assault on the city on that same turn.

We obviously don't open borders with Krill at this point. And we need insurance against Savant in the north, but cats should do nicely. Btw, guess what Savant's defenses at his newly-built Emerald Island (88 of now-defunct "X17b") might be?

A single spear, and its promotion is the only shock about that. I don't like that he's getting away with this, but he hasn't seen a single sword from us, so...

Swords7 and 8 finish in Westward / Vermin eot. Since sword8 has 0 XP (Westward doesn't have barracks), might want to grab another sword from Lifeblood instead.

Now's the time to decide. We shouldn't build that many swords if Yuri is our target, although if Krill turns out to have fifty million archers in the fog, we can still use them against Russia instead, but NumCav would be more effective there.

[Coeurva]

Also, I'm thinking to send Gavagai the following offers next turn, to give him time to build up:

* Map/OB for Map/OB (The map trade is meant to make him aware of our close neighbourhood with Krill. Also we're selling out Savant's map; he will give Krill our map anyway once we declare. I have no doubts about that.)
* Iron/crab for iron/crab (Separately, because we want him to decline this and re-offer, to decline in turn. No need to make our alliance public. The seafood is in there to signal a naval attack, because Gavagai would otherwise think Savant was the target, most likely. In a wider sense, seafood = Krill but I think that's forbidden communication; problem is I can't signal "we'll attack with boats" without also making that connection. Also, Savant is a legitimate naval target as well, so a sense of mystique in the spirit of AI diplo should remain.)

For the second trade, I'd like lurkers' opinions on whether that's fine. If not, I'll just send iron/iron and Gavagai will have to intuit. Or wait for us to declare and see who the target is.

We might have a real world war in this game soon. I don't doubt that Joey is gunning for someone, with his 15 pop whipped on the same turn and subsequent Golden Age. I don't think it's us (that would be bizarre now that we're actually kind-of-allied for the moment, since I doubt Joey would want to nuke his foreign trade routes anytime soon, while we can tech Compass if Krill is our target and break almost-sort-of-even with his GLH), which leaves Savant (unlikely), Donovan (possible; Joey might have given him silver to get better cities or give him a false sense of security) or Mongolia.

I assume it also depends on what dtay does. That he'll declare war on someone is out of the question, you just have to look at the power graph. I'm assuming xbows/trebs for his force, but he could be getting knights soon enough...

EDIT: One last thing, I've made a slight micro mistake: the Heroic Epic just needs 20hpt for the sword, so Lifeblood can take the western iron. I'll change that when it comes up again.