RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Zara of the Ottomans

[WarriorKnight]

Reply, they quoted us, so I took that bit out.

Hi guys,

""

I think I should be able to finish a road within the next 5-10 turns (need more workers!)

""

We have Tricky there, our intrepid first warrior, now Woody 2, whose double function is fogbust/sentry. It will remain there, so you can expect a heads up should we spot anything.

""

That's a tricky one. Because of the Civil Service mishap, we will only be able to start spamming units from our HE City from T110 onwards (we need to build/whip/chop Forge, HE and stables all in three turns...). If you do plan to attack around T115, I'm not sure I could get those units into position in time for the attack. I'm currently very light on units, and both of my spare Horse Archers are currently on their way to India.
One of them is to your north, which I planned on gifting to Ruff for him to run over to India. I'm not sure if he would arrive on time for the attack, so I could move him south to your lands, but I'd need to know when exactly India plan on attacking.
I'd gift you the Horse Archer currently in your borders, but I could only do that if you have a HE unit yourself.
Anyway, let me know what you think.


Regards,


Ilios for DIM

Mixed bag of news. On one hand, they are going to finish the road in a few turns and they have a sentry down near that area. On the other hand, it looks like we won't be getting much help from them in the strike against Krill if we do it this early.

I'm having second thoughts about this attack. We don't really have much of an army ATM and hitting Egypt the same time as India would be tough with our current position (not to mention lots of whipping to lose our current population lead). Maybe we should prepare a defense instead if England attacks us on T111 and if they don't come, keep preparing an army for an offensive attack.

[WarriorKnight]

Apologies for the lack of updates, so here's one for you lurkers. Sorry for the lack of pics, but I'll try and get some shots up soon.

We've decided against the attack on Egypt on T116ish, mainly because it's too soon to effectively get enough units out. Unfortunately, SB has disappeared and he's in charge of Domestic stuff. So Peg and I got together and decided on:

Aquilonia: Forge -> Military
Nemedia: Forge -> Barracks -> Military
Zingara: Forge -> Courthouse -> Monastery
Cimmeria: Spear -> Forge -> Military
Brythunia: Forge -> Hammam
Ophir: Forge -> Courthouse -> Settler -> Hammam
Koth: Granary -> Forge -> Courthouse

I think we've made forges a priority. 3 of them will get whipped this turn, and another one next turn (Sacrificing some 12 pop ). While painful, we are clear first in pop and they will all grow back, while providing a very useful production bonus and +2 happy .

Anyway, I'll make a better update soon (with pics!)

[WarriorKnight]

I plan to do a bigger update next turn on T110 with pics, so here's what happening on T109:

Byzantium got Machinery this turn, a turn ahead of schedule. I've gone and requested it off them.

Mali now have paper, so I'm willing to bet that they are going to start working on Printing Press now that they've got Music.

Barb Hunter got rid of the barb warrior and is now on 8XP. Where are we going to put HE? Aquilonia is an obvious choice, but it might not stay on military for the whole game. Cimmeria probably will though, or maybe Koth (although that's too new).

No PAT stacks have appeared yet, which is good news so far. Perhaps they are hoping to Lib steel? I dunno.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that an AP resolution to stop trading with Byz came up. Given that it doesn't really affect us, I voted no. Will see next turn if anyone defied.

[Sockboy]

Unfortunately, SB has disappeared and he's in charge of Domestic stuff. So Peg and I got together and decided on:

Aquilonia: Forge -> Military
Nemedia: Forge -> Barracks -> Military
Zingara: Forge -> Courthouse -> Monastery
Cimmeria: Spear -> Forge -> Military
Brythunia: Forge -> Hammam
Ophir: Forge -> Courthouse -> Settler -> Hammam
Koth: Granary -> Forge -> Courthouse

I'm back in business!

This all looks pretty good, only two comments from me.

1) Zingara already has a courthouse so it can move straight onto the Monastery. Also that's pretty much a one turn build thanks to the overflow, so I presume it's moving onto military after that?

2) Since we're not heading for an attack on Krill at t116, why not push the settler after the forge in Ophir? I think the earlier we can get it out the better. We've got a few forests in the region to chop so the courthouse should finish pretty quick anyway. We should be able to get a unit from Aquilonia in place to act as garrison by the time the settler completes.

I've had a quick look in game, but I won't say too much so I don't steal WKs thunder Anywho, all looks pretty good to me, even after the latest whipping festival.

One question, are we gifting our HAs to Ruff so he can get them over to India? Or are we sending them onto india ourselves? It's a minor thing but could save us some cash (although we are currently being bankrolled by others, so we technically wouldn't save anything).

[WarriorKnight]

I've had a quick look in game, but I won't say too much so I don't steal WKs thunder Anywho, all looks pretty good to me, even after the latest whipping festival.

Well, actually we are waiting for a reload to T109 since no-one could connect to the game for about 30 hours and it actually rolled over before half the people (including us) could play the turn, so it actually might look better than this. Update will be delayed but will hopefully appear shortly after we get back on track.

[WarriorKnight]

Looks like the game's back up. I'm assuming that you can do the micro again SB? I've already whipped the forge this turn since I wanted to see the demogs were afterwartds but you can do the rest .

EDIT: Forgot something, can you switch all our EP's to Carthage? They are close to finding our research and that would be very bad.

1) Zingara already has a courthouse so it can move straight onto the Monastery. Also that's pretty much a one turn build thanks to the overflow, so I presume it's moving onto military after that?

I thought we only had a courthouse in Brythunia and Nemedia. If it does have one, your siggestion is fine, although make sure that there is a barracks in every city that does military (or since Zingara has 0 hills, it could work on a theatre for Globe or something)

2) Since we're not heading for an attack on Krill at t116, why not push the settler after the forge in Ophir? I think the earlier we can get it out the better. We've got a few forests in the region to chop so the courthouse should finish pretty quick anyway. We should be able to get a unit from Aquilonia in place to act as garrison by the time the settler completes.

I'm not sure if it's best for Ophir to work on a settler at size 5. Maybe after it grows back to size 7-8 would be good? Otherwise this is fine.

One question, are we gifting our HAs to Ruff so he can get them over to India? Or are we sending them onto india ourselves? It's a minor thing but could save us some cash (although we are currently being bankrolled by others, so we technically wouldn't save anything).

Since yaz has taken over for Ruff this week and it's best not to give a sub more things to worry about, sending them ourselves is the thing to do.

[Sockboy]

Looks like the game's back up. I'm assuming that you can do the micro again SB? I've already whipped the forge this turn since I wanted to see the demogs were afterwartds but you can do the rest .

EDIT: Forgot something, can you switch all our EP's to Carthage? They are close to finding our research and that would be very bad.

EPs reassigned and worker micro done, we've got six builds completing this turn! Not bad for seven cities.

I thought we only had a courthouse in Brythunia and Nemedia. If it does have one, your siggestion is fine, although make sure that there is a barracks in every city that does military (or since Zingara has 0 hills, it could work on a theatre for Globe or something)

You were correct, the courthouse I saw had just completed on t109, it's one of the builds finishing this turn. Barracks in most cities are probably a good idea since we're probably going to whip sets of units a few times this game (Knights, Janns, Rifles, etc).

I'm not sure if it's best for Ophir to work on a settler at size 5. Maybe after it grows back to size 7-8 would be good? Otherwise this is fine.

I think it doesn't make a lot of difference in terms of speed of settler production, since the tiles it will work from size 5 - 8 are cottages. What it will do is slow down our GS, but if we're bulbing Education then it's not a big deal as far as I can tell. I think it's better to get the settler out first, but am happy to go either way on this. If we do go Settler first then we need to shuffle worker I over towards a different forest to chop next turn.

[ad hoc]

below is the two proposed city locations for stygia, i'm favouring the Desert (yellow) site and WK favours the hill site



A comparison of Ophir/Hill tiles and Ophir/Desert tiles

Hill Site----------------------------- Desert Site
3 Dead (Mountains/Desert)------------3 Dead (Mountains/Desert)
2 Flood Plain--------------------------2 Flood Plains
15 Grassland-------------------------14 Grassland
2 Grassland Pigs----------------------2 Grassland Pigs
2 Plains Spices-----------------------1 Plains Spices
1 Grass Hill --------------------------2 Grass Hill
1 Plain Hill----------------------------3 Plain Hill
-------------------------------------1 Desert Hill
8 Plains-----------------------------11 Plains

I have given the plains hill site the benefit of omitting the grassland tile that the desert site shares with Cimmeria otherwise it would be 15 grassland each.

So the long term question is are 1 grassland and 1 plains spices better than 1 grass hill, 2 plains hills, 1 desert hill and 3 plains. a town on the grassland and plantation on the spices would give 4F 2H and 10C at its best development whilst irrigating the plains and windmilling the hills would give 14F 13H and 8C at its best development.

at the moment Ophir has six develped tiles that can be worked and after the current whip will have four pop, so yes stygia on the hill could work the one cottage already developed by Ophir, but once ophir reaches six pop it either has to work an undeveloped tile, run another specialist (reducing growth) or we have to develop another tile. but if we are developing a tile for ophir we could develop a tile for Stygia.

Long term i don't think their can be any doubt desert is a better site and even short term i think it is.

[Sockboy]

Hmm... interesting analysis AH. Before you posted I was of the opinion that Plains hill was the only decent option, but looks like Desert isn't as bad as I thought it was. I think you need to include the fact that Plains hill gets an extra hammer in the city tile in your analysis, but otherwise it looks good. I think they're pretty much a wash in terms of development (You need to factor in the need to feed all the extra citizens to work the tiles too). With the extra hammer in the city centre and an extra spice tiles, I think it's hard to argue that Desert will get up and running as quickly as Plains Hill.

I guess we really need to decide what we're doing with Ophir. We can put the NE there and farm up a few more tiles and start working on a GP farm, or we can put the Globe Theatre there and prepare it for a massive whipping/drafting festival. I'm kinda leaning towards the second at the moment, which means that Ophir won't ever really grow much beyond size 8, in which case the overlap of tiles isn't really an issue.

Thinking defensively, do we ever want to place a city on the set of desert hills above Cimmeria? There's no food that way, but there are some green tiles and it's well positioned for defence. There's very little food remaining on the map in our immediate area so we should start considering city sites without food. It might be a good place to claim some territory and a nice place to make a defencive stand against the Incans in the future, should that prove necessary? Remember that the Incans haven't agree to a land settlement deal with us and have been expanding pretty aggressively recently. If we're thinking along those lines then Plains Hill lets us have both, whilst Desert limits us a bit that way.

[ad hoc]

i realised i forgot to mention the extra hammer after i posted the other think to consider is the trade available from the extra spice although we would have two extra spices and i believe india has said it will have extra spices as well.

the other option for Stygia on the desert is to farm everything, before biology this would mean a food surplus of +12 excluding working hills (after +23) would this be good enough for the globe? the advantage for this would be to mine the hills and then production of the important infra wouldn't be too whip dependent.

there are plains sheep to the north of the desert hills and it would be possible to plant a city on a desert hill that gets the sheep, 1 FP (in a culture war with inca) and five grasslands (4 river). the problem with it would be there is a hill line that runs from inca territory to right next to the city.