[Spoilers] Harry Hydra Tours his Hit Charitable Thoughts

[Old Harry]

       

That was a rollercoaster of a report!

Well one thing led to another!

Turn 72

It's all go. We're trying to find Cairo's mainland. He's got a galley around so we'll find out how friendly he wants to be. The trade route icon hasn't popped up, even though he settled this last turn. That's a bit odd.


Meanwhile the barbs now come with axes... We have 80% odds on defence here, so fingers crossed.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 75

We can't find any good city sites (at least until we get to Calendar) so we decided that attacking Donovan Zoi would be a good idea. Camera flying makes me think his land looks like this. The northern city is either his capital or the Buddhist holy city, the southern is his third (he's still only on four). Unfortunately I think there's a hill that makes landing a battalion of chariots to fork the two cities impossible.


I think our forces want to be 3 chariots (2 get dropped on the fork tile), 2 axes and an archer. Then whatever is in the northern city can get hit by amphibious chariot or axe, while the southern city gets hit by chariots. At this stage burning the cities for failgold might be our best bet, but if he's built colossus in one of them by the time we arrive that would be just great.

We got trade routes with Mr Cairo (and set up a wheat-crab deal) and met Superdeath (FIN/IND/Carthage/Great Lighthouse) in the east. Hmmm... Do we want to change target? I think he's probably too far away right now, but perhaps after we eat Donovan? This is my guess for how the world looks.


On the circumnavigation front our work boats are 49 tiles apart, so with a fair tailwind could meet in 12 turns. Unfortunately there seems to be a bunch of land in the way that will make for a more twisty-turny route than that.


Demos and power. Krill lost some soldiers. Is he at war with someone or did he lose a scouting chariot to a barb?

[Old Harry]

Turn 76

We've decided that Alphabet is badly needed to dig us from the tech hole the next few cities will plunge us into. So we'll skip Archery in the hope our neighbours are still expanding and not planning for war. We also have a plan to get this gold settled asap. It should be Superdeath's, but maybe we'll beat him to it.


This is Cairo's land, his Galley didn't kill our work boat, which is a good sign. We also met Elkad in the far east, he's down to one city at the hands of Gavagai, so I'd say Gav qualifies as a favourite alongside Krill at this point.


Demos. It looks like its another 16 turns until we get tech visibility on Krill. Is it more important to know what he's doing than Cairo/Superdeath/Donovan/etc?

[Old Harry]

Turn 77

Quiet turn. We ran into a dead end here - should we declare on Superdeath to keep trying for circumnavigation? Superdeath already has gold so he might not try to settle this one.


In foreign news Elkad has met Cairo, but Cairo hasn't met Gavagai.


Demos and power. Lewwyn lost 7 points as the turn rolled which must be losing a city (size 3?) to the barbs.

[Old Harry]

Turn 78

We declare on Superdeath in the west, meet OT4E in the east and Elkad dies. I'm hoping Superdeath doesn't have a galley hanging around. Or maybe that he does but wants to compensate for the counterproductive settler-kill in PB38 by allowing us to sneak past...


Here's a juicy barb city (by the standards of the map). I suspect Krill will grab it, but if we could just get there in time that would be nice. Free at last will whip the granary next turn, then it can overflow into another spear, a chariot or an axe. Which is more use?


Demos and power. We're finally above average at soldiers. Cairo has an axe/spear pair in the city nearest to us, noob must have been building enough military to defend his empire!

[Old Harry]

Turn 80



(I know, it's probably popped from the mine, but why let that dilute the drama?)

Almost ready to take out my anger on someone - unfortunately I didn't get the selected chariot out in time to attack t82 so we'll declare war on t83 instead. Any reinforcements needed will be chopped and whipped from GloryGloryHalle then galley-chained across the water.


Demos still look okay, although as we're bumping badly on the happy cap all the food is going into settlers (which we don't want to use until we have Alphabet) and workers (which we don't get the 35% bonus for building with food). In world news Mr Cairo has stone - if we could find something he'll trade for it then we could get Moai in BB and put some hammers into the pyramids.

[Hollybombay]

Turn 80



(I know, it's probably popped from the mine, but why let that dilute the drama?)

Almost ready to take out my anger on someone -

Dont you have Gems though?

[Charriu]

Yes, but we had to work for that and settle on the gems, because of the jungle. He just got lucky.

[Old Harry]

Turn 82

New year, new server. Thanks to Ramkh and Zulan for porting us to the German server so quickly! In honour of the move we got two cities onto the top cities screen for the first time. Religious culture helps a bit, but all our food is pretty handy too.


There are a few cosmetic changes with the new mod - not all the civs show but there's more info in the scoreboard. The foreign affairs screen also looks a bit easier to manage.

Next turn we can offer Superdeath a cease fire. His cities lack military police units - meaning they can't grow so big and they're vulnerable to boating. Hopefully Donovan is playing in a similar style...


Speaking of Donovan - we'll be attacking next turn. He adopted Buddhism last turn (took a turn of anarchy) but hasn't built Colossus for us yet. He could complete it this turn or next turn, but given the revolt then I doubt he's trying for it. I've got GGH selected and all the things in the build queue have hammers in and the Chariot or Spear could be whipped next turn. I think we'll put a chop into the granary next turn then whip it the turn after, then we can whip and chop whatever units we need to reinforce the attack on Donovan.


Demos and power. We're second on power (presumably after Gavagai) but Krill is following close behind.

[Old Harry]

Turn 83

Exciting times! First thing I'm greeted with on logging in is the news that we've met Donovan somehow, EP spending suggests t82, so he may know that we're coming. No sign of whipping from him so hopefully he just sent a workboat via the highlighted tile.


Checking via GNP we know that one of our contacts has Maths, one has Iron Working and one has Metal Casting. I'd guess that OT4E has Iron Working as he's on a similar latitude to us, Krill or Cairo will have taken Maths and Donovan got Metal Casting from the Oracle. This will be worrying if we get into a drawn out naval battle.

Anyway, we declare war and move in, landing a chariot on Donovan's copper! Is it his only metal? Magrathea is in the wrong place as far as my camera-flying and culture-spying goes. This means there isn't a city 2SW of the chariot, and that the border pop we saw back on turn 62 was the capital hitting 60% borders (CRE + palace + holy city = 10 cpt, so I'm not quite sure how this happened so quick).


The upshot is that we can safely unload a chariot on this hill to check out the lie of the land, uncovering some stone and making me think that the capital is the yellow splodge. The green splodges are flat ground, the blue are water, so the new plan is to unload everything on the copper tile. Next turn we capture Magrathea, put a chariot on a hill to get sight on the capital (possibly we do these in the opposite order) and then we reload a couple of galleys in Magrathea. Then we unload four units by the capital on t85. (The southern route is a bit slower so all the boats will go via the north.)

With 60% borders the capital should be a tough nut - Donovan can get archers whipped in by the time we arrive - so we might have to just be satisfied with taking Magrathea (if we don't think we can take the capital do we burn or keep Magrathea?) We're due for a spear to arrive at Magrathea on t88, so Donovan has a small window to hit us with chariots. We'll have to see what he does.



TLDR:
- Bad news is Donovan met us somehow, so may know we're coming.  
- Good news is he didn't whip.  
- Bad news is he may have set production up to finish an axe or spear naturally.  
- Good news is that with three axes and three chariots that's not a problem for us!  
- Bad news is that he's spent 2 EPs on us so we met last turn somehow.  
- Good news is that he hasn't met Krill, so Krill won't know what our power is for until we actually take the city next turn.  
- Bad news is that the capital has hit 60% borders and has sufficient warning to whip an archer next turn, so we'll have to be lucky to take it.  
- Good news is that it was a fun turn!  

Demos and power.