Ventessel's PB37 Fiasco

[taotao]

Hi Ventessel.
Unlucky with Krill moving in your direction with his first settler!

That's also some prime resources that he's managing to get into his capital.
Where exactly did he end up settling? On the hill (btw is it desert or plains) where the settler's in the screenshot or 1E?

If he settled one east, in your shoes I'd be severely tempted to try a chariot rush.
Now, there's a reason we rarely see chariot rushes at realms beyond. If the opponent gets spears you'll stall almost immediately and in general just fighting with ancient era units is a losing proposition. I'm not sure you have any better options here though. 

Also, based on Krill's thread title, I'm guessing he's planning on playing a rather warlike game...

The thread title could be just a smoke screen by Krill. He's actually not that opposed to a farmers gambit (especially early on).
However, the very set up of this game with 4 very competent and aggressive veterans and 5 newbies means that some newbie is likely to get eaten very quickly. All the vets know this, and they also know that they'd need to eat a neighbour soon as well in order to keep up.

That means relatively early war.
In Krills case that probably means horse archers, but being aggressive I wouldn't completely rule out swordsmen (with shock axes as support).
Both swords and has' come too early for you to be able to counter with c-k-n. That means you're likely to have to whip up an army of spears and archers or something similar.

If you anyway have to sacrifice expansion to military, why not get an incan city or two to pay for the whole thing?  
Krill will have great research capacity once the silvers come online, but these early turns you'll keep up in relevant techs (not having myst as starting tech, having a 3t headstart and being financial).



[In general it is possible to scare Krill from attacking. However, that requires evidence of really stellar play in general (hard to show if you haven't played on this site before), well defended border cities and general layout of the border regions which is defensible from both sides according to him (probably not possible in this case with capitals so close?)]

[AdrienIer]

So what happened since last time ? Did you find a good spot for a second city ?

[Ventessel]

I've been scouting, busy with work but will upload more screenshots shortly. Krill did build his city East of that hill, so I may go for that chariot rush. What conditions would you recommend aiming for to launch the attack?

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[Ventessel]

Apologies for the hiatus from updates, this week was quite busy. I've put some new screenshots into the imgur album, I'll see about resizing some and posting them directly here this weekend, particularly some overviews of the area north of my capital which I've just finished scouting.

I've just had slavery become accessible and would like to know from people with more experience than me whether it is better to switch immediately or wait until my city grows more. I currently am 1 turn away from Size 2, but have 3 turns left on a warrior. If I switch this turn will my city still grow?

Research currently set to Wheel to enable chariots, would whipping the warrior and having the overflow go into a chariot be a good idea or not so much?

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[Mr. Cairo]

You won't grow on the turn you revolt. The generally accepted wisdom on the slavery revolt is to do it while your first settler is on its way to the city location, therefore you don't delay the settler by revolting earlier but you don't end up with two cities worth of citizens doing nothing during the anarchy.

[AdrienIer]

Ok first things first, if you switch to slavery you go into anarchy so nothing is produced that turn (including food). But you have to go through that at some point, so switching now or later isn't such a big deal.

What is a big deal is if you waste a pop on a pointless whip (like a warrior). If you whip a warrior you lose production, mostly because you can't overflow more than the value of what you're building, so you can only overflow 30h from a warrior, while a whipped warrior should oveflow 30 + whatever you already had in the warrior hammers.

Also, speaking of chariots you didn't mention that you had found horses, where is the nearest resource ?

Edit : just seeing Mr. Cairo's response. Here we will probably want to whip the settler in some way, so revolting late is not an option.

[Ventessel]

Wow, quite an oversight on my part. I had forgotten that chariots required horses, and thus far I haven't spotted any. There is a copper two tiles west of my capital, though.

I still have a little scouting to the west to do, so hopefully I will find one there. Otherwise, I'll have to reevaluate how to deal with Krill...

[AdrienIer]

But do you have AH ? That would explain lack of horse.

[Ventessel]

Once again, derp... I thought horse was revealed from start. I guess my research after Wheel will be AH.

As for building the second settler, should I start in on that immediately after finishing the warrior? Or switch to slavery, and whip overflow something into a settler?

[AdrienIer]

Ok so a couple things after taking a peek in the game :
-Is the worker going for the copper ? It's probably what makes the most sense. After the wheel you'll need to go through hunting to be able to get the cow, which IMO is most important.
-I suggest either starting the settler next or, my preferred choice here, revolt to slavery once the warrior is built and then start a workboat to grow into some of the good tiles that are around the cap. Also, you should dotmap the area soon (most important is the second city, but it's always better to actually dotmap). Specifically, the area around the marble island is going to be tough to dotmap.
-We got cheated on a commerce on the oasis tile. It should be a 3/0/3 tile but because the game considers that the river extends to that tile we don't get the financial commerce bonus on it. Not fun.