Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[The Black Sword]

Hmm, thanks for that, I thought he only had 1 real military unit. If he's got 2 then maybe he can actually afford to harass us. The sentry is on the way at least.

Regarding Knights, I think they're far enough down the tech tree that it's almost always profitable to attack in that era.



Let's hope dtay plays nice with us. 1 warrior guarding Mario too. He has 4 cities, just like everyone else now with the exception of Gaspar, who just got writing. I just got his graphs too, switching to dtay now.

Here's the situation in the West:


Hope he doesn't make that low odds roll. In the East we revealed a new deer on the island with our worker:


Also cost us 1g in supply costs, I should have delayed that. The demos are improving a bit, particularly since we have no whips scheduled for a few turns now, need to kill the barbs and hook the horses to fix that military:

[Ceiliazul]

great thread guys!

axes are 5k, iirc

[WilliamLP]

Axes do contribute 6k power points in BtS

Code:

<UnitInfo>
<Class>UNITCLASS_AXEMAN</Class>
...
<iPower>6</iPower>

[Becko]

If he's got 2 then maybe he can actually afford to harass us.

Maybe, though maybe he'd prefer to mess with Commodore. Still, good to have the sentry up soon.

Here's an odd thing: can you find AH in Commodore's graph? The first three techs almost have to be Agri-Hunting-BW, the latter being that big bump on T27. Then after BW, there are only 1K changes (i.e. pop) except that 4K bump on T36. Now, that could be AH and a warrior, but then he still wouldn't have The Wheel. I guess some of it could be masked by whips -- e.g. on T52 there was a tech discovery and two 1-pop whips. Doesn't mean anything in particular I suppose, other than I got his tech path wrong.

[The Black Sword]

He's definitely done some whips, so that's probably what's masking those 1k increases. We ran into a slight problem this turn:


Thank god for the hills in that region, otherwise we would be in even worse trouble. I figured we couldn't delay the horses any longer, we'd possibly need to whip out a chariot or two.


The first warrior suicided on our C1 guy in the forest, I whipped out the emergency warrior anyway, so we could cover both the city and the workers with 2 warriors. Unfortunate 4h lost to overflow though. We'll probably want to whip a chariot in Maker of Men. Seeing as Pindicator is probably our immediate neighbour, I switched EPs to him from dtay. Gaspar settled 2 new cities btw, so he's first to 5. Here's our next one:


We'll grow to 5 as the furs come online, the extra tile will allow us to make 70/100h as the next chop comes in. Dtay's got some nice looking land:


Our dry tundra has more character of course.

[The Black Sword]

Damn barbs.




Only 50% odds again thanks to 1 measly hit, it's either take this roll, overflow another warrior, or delay horse hook up another turn. Lose again. .
We clean up with the 1xp warrior, now 2xp unhurt.

Guess this is my fault for prioritising a slighter better start for Maker of Men over hooking the horse. Hopefully that next warrior continues along the forests and suicides into the city. If he lands on either of the resources I'll probably doubleteam with the C1 warriors.


If Pindicator moves onto the hill that my warrior is on, I think I'll have to whip the chariot from MoM.

[Becko]

Ah, but we are blessed to live in... No, wait, interesting sucks. Boring was much better. :S

So, how to give this a positive spin? Hmm... OK, maybe it was the baptism of blood necessary to convince our people that we cannot risk sharing the land with anyone else. At least that's what we'll call it in retrospect, since, you know, the winners write the history.

A little more seriously: how do you think Gaspar/Lewwyn/BGN will play this? I mean, they don't want an actual war, but how far would they go in looking for opportunities? At least they shouldn't have our graphs yet.

When is Copper online?

[The Black Sword]

I actually think it's pretty likely that he doesn't follow us over the hills, 3 of them with a chariot would be pretty annoying. He doesn't have our graphs, he can't have any idea on our copper setup, safe move is not to hassle us.

When is Copper online?

Er, preliminary estimate, T75. We have the option of moving it up to ~T65 though.

I was messing around planting cities, it seems to me the first 6 are fairly cheap and then cities 7-9 cost ~9gpt in expenses. They pay probably 3gpt back immediately of course via trade routes and centre tile but we have to be careful when settling those. I still think we'll have a lot of surplus hammers, and I'm not sure where to use them. In particular, I'm wondering whether Maths is a great tech choice, converting beakers -> hammers. We can probably make around 30bpt at 50% breakeven gpt with those first 6 cities, another 6bpt with OB trade routes, which we might get soon since Oxy just researched writing.

[The Black Sword]

Just had a look:

1. Pindicator moved 1N
2. Commodore adopted Buddhism
3. Oxy accepted OBs! Settling The Searchers can't come quickly enough. Feeling a bit better about the choice of Sailing now, I was beginning to regret not going for a religion.

[Becko]

Hey, really getting the post intensity up

Too tired, that's obviously Pindicator (and not Gaspar et al). Anyway, that isthmus looks like it could end up being important, too. Where should our city in that area go? The hill where the warrior is?

Commodore seems to have the inside track to Priesthood and The Oracle. If he gets it, do you think he'd go Metal Casting for Forges or Code of Laws for Caste System?

When you're saying you're not sure about Maths, are you thinking that we should delay Currency? I usually go Currency before CoL since, well, they are in that order on the tech tree. :P Also I figure trade routes and Wealth are more useful for teching CoL than Courthouses and Caste System are for teching Currency.

Trying to think of a couple scenarios where CoL before Currency is improved (not necessarily to the point of being better).

• Organized/HRE (cheaper/better Courthouses)
  
• Spiritual/Representation/need GPP fast (access to Caste System)
  
• High-maintenance map (more maintenance to reduce)
  
• No religion (Confucianism)
  
• Always War (no foreign trade routes)
  
• The Oracle (Priesthood is sunk cost)
  
• High food/hammer ratio (Courthouses can be whipped, Wealth can't)
  
• Forests are scarce (Maths loses appeal)
  

Is that about right?

Sorry for giving you questions rather than advice, but it feels like I'm catching up not only on the game but on a couple of years of MP experience at the same time...