[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[mackoti]

Why tech Archery rather than just build some axes...?

Well archer are cheaper and defend good against chariots and axes so if you have just 1 defender beter to ba an archer.

[NobleHelium]

A post by someone else! Thanks for the comment mackoti. You're right, Archery isn't bad to tech in this game since everyone has Hunting anyway.

I asked Ellimist where our iron is and he obliged. We apparently have one source SE of Nitrogen on the hill, so we definitely want to mine that hill rather than the hill north of it. And we have another one NE of Oxygen, which I believe I guessed there might be a while ago. 2/4/1 grassland river iron is nice. Can't mine that one until we see it of course.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, still no turn yet.

[NobleHelium]

You know I just realized our thread title is spelled wrong. God I'm retarded.

[NobleHelium]

We have a record seven people concurrently on this forum I think.

Okay so anyway I've finally played turn 96. This picture has most of the pertinent information regarding the micro that I've set up...



As you can see, the selected worker only used half its movement this turn. The reason is that Oxygen's borders have only just expanded, so I wanted to keep him inside the borders to avoid the supply cost. Alternatively I could have refrained from moving the work boat, but there is no loss keeping the worker on this tile. This worker is for roading the flood plains to the SW, which will take 3 turns, 2 real turns. So it will finish on turn 99. On that turn the settler/missionary pair will be on the cows before moving, so they will wait until the road finishes and then move onto the Neon location and found. You can see the other worker is chopping away that forest now. We will get 16 hammers from that. A little less than expected but well worth the worker turns, plus we can found the city a turn earlier.

Lithium is using the missionary overflow to build the other work boat for Fluorine. The chop went into the settler in Boron, we can now 2-pop whip it at any time. Carbon finished its barracks and can now do 1.5 turn skirmishers. The river mine will finish next turn so we'll get a bonus coin. It's finally working the copper now. The other worker in the area (NW of the selected worker) will road that tile and then use that to scoot over to the east to cottage those tile(s). After Neon is founded we'll want to use the two workers in the area to chop out a granary, mint, work boat and galley, likely in that order. Maybe the galley before the work boat, depending on how easily we can farm that wheat. But we'll need to cottage the flood plains first. Hmm, that's a lot of worker turns. And I thought we had enough workers for now...need to finish up the island and ship those guys over. I'm thinking we shouldn't build that road on the corner flood plain now, and use that worker to help with chopping. The guy building the riverside mine can take his original job in a few turns.

Unseen is the fact that Beryllium is also finishing up a missionary, from its worker whip overflow. We don't really need a library there yet. It'll finish at EOT 98, then on turn 99 the galley can go pick it up. We'll also need to whip the mint in Nitrogen next turn.

Scoutingwise, here's what we've got:



Cows really far south of the jungle, but sort of useful for city placement assuming we can plant that far south. We need to figure out this dotmap soon, and decide whether we want to send the Boron settler down here assuming we whip it.



Kuro is working a forest. Not sure where to head next, the hill obviously reveals more tiles but I want to see whether that city is the one Kuro mentioned that he could chop out the HG at (Karkat). We now have trade routes with two of his cities, Karkat and Aradia Megido. So that city probably is Karkat. So we should probably head northwest next turn, see how large the city is, and see whether there are several workers busy chopping.

We need to turn tech on next turn and run 100% for two turns. Then on the last turn we'll probably want to run the minimum required to get Currency (depending on how the rounding goes, you can sum up the decimal values for gold/beakers and come up with the least waste), then turn off tech for a bit.



I took the cottage from Lithium to grow one turn sooner here, since it was free after the whip anyway. I think we can keep it for a turn or two until Lithium runs out of other cottages, then work that plains cottage (should be built by then) for an additional hammer. An engineer wouldn't be bad either, but I think we definitely want to grow a cottage on that plains tile for Beryllium if nothing else, so might as well get started.



I forgot to put signs on the iron tiles.

[NobleHelium]

Hmmm. EMC's galley is back in Arcturus this turn, and they still haven't planted their seventh city. They've had a settler done for quite a while now...are they going to plant on the middle island already? Is there marble there? Hrmph.

Well, maybe not. They're probably just sending a scouting expedition for now. Their settler was done EOT 90 though, so it's very fishy that it hasn't planted yet.

Oh and thanks for the title fix T-hawk!

[NobleHelium]

Played another turn. I think the galley was just doubling back to explore the east.

If you play the next turn you need to decide whether to send the Boron settler south towards the jungle or settle the border spot with EMC. Settling nearby has the advantage of being built before the HG completes. Sending him south will probably be too slow (we could delay the HG) unless we get to use both moves of the settler which we might very well not be able to due to the Kuro warrior. If you do settle the EMC border location, I've moved a worker onto the forest there to chop out a granary, else you can build another cottage or just chop into Boron. You need to start sending the newly built skirmisher south, to escort the Boron settler against Kuro's warrior in the jungle if necessary. If not it can be Neon's garrison. If it's not Neon's garrison then move Oxygen's warrior there, and the skirmisher can cover until the next skirmisher completes.

Kuro is not chopping out the HG at Karkat. Remember to start Helium on it next turn. We should be good for it.

Keep the work boat near Fluorine inside borders, just move it 1S. We won't be able to run 100% tech next turn but that's okay, we just need to get Currency in 2t. Whip Oxygen mint. Give flood plains cottage back to Carbon. Take the other village back with Hydrogen.

[NobleHelium]

Okay some pictures from turn 97.



Found another of Kuro's cities south of EMC's quarter in the west. Note their jungle has at least one spices.



Karkat is empty and working the forest that the warrior is standing on. Aradia Megido just grew and the governor put the new citizen in the forest south of the warrior. No, we cannot declare war on him and raze Karkat, since he can whip an archer before we'd get to the city. Note that Karkat is on the inner coast.



Area to the south of our jungle. We know there is no seafood north of the cows besides the fish near the copper based upon what Ellimist has told us. We could theoretically plant a city where the warrior is now. Either way, that doesn't really affect the dotmap in the northern jungle area, so we basically need to decide whether we want two hills in front of the rice city or not.



This shows how long it'll take for the Boron settler to get here. Note that that 5 turn number is actually off by 1, since this is after EOT and the first turn of movement shows as requiring 2 turns. So it'll take us 4 turns to get to that city sign there. HG will take 5 turns. So we could plant this city either at this location or on the hill before we finish the HG. If we do decide to send the settler here then we need to move Oxygen's warrior out and start heading to that hill now, since the skirmisher will be too slow to keep up with the settler. And that means Neon will be empty for a couple of turns and vulnerable to a galley attack, but I doubt Kuro has a galley in the area with a military unit in it. We could probably shift warriors and leave Boron empty and only have one turn of Neon being vulnerable.

So the questions are:

1) Do we send the Boron settler down here?
2) If so, where do we plant? Planting east of the hill has the advantage of having decent production, with one mine, the cows, and the horses. Planting on the hill means basically no production barring workshops/lumbermills/watermills, and whipping isn't going to be very good either. If we plant next to the hill then obviously we'll have to plant east of the rice, either 1E or 2E, which means at least one hill in front of the city.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 98.



Kuro one-pop whipped something in Karkat. Interestingly it's not working the corn, I guess the other city is working it.

I discussed the Sodium location with Lewwyn yesterday and we decided to plant south. You can see the settler in the following screenshot.



The galley dropped off its passengers and is now ready to return to the island. Next turn it will pick up the missionary. Turn after that it can pick up one of those workers on that plains tile by Helium (the one that finishes farming the rice) and then move back into Carbon. The other worker will move down to the last unimproved tile and help finish the cottage, then both those workers can be shipped over right afterwards. The missionary's for Oxygen, who's currently building a worker with the Neon city tile chop and then will work on a library or missionary.

I think we want to build an axe next in Carbon to send to our jungle in case Kuro gets any bright ideas with his warrior. After it does that we can ship it to the center island or something. We'll probably want at least one more skirmisher after that and a chariot at some point for mobility.

You can see EMC is apparently going to scout Helium with their work boat. Not really happy about this, but we're not going to mention it since we're pretty friendly at the moment and they have been giving us information.



Kuro's warrior is a bit of an issue and I am concerned about our workers near Fluorine. Ideally we want to pasture the southern horse because it's by the river and can be used by Sodium, plus then the workers can progress and improve Sodium. But Kuro's warrior will be very close and can threaten the workers by the time we do that. So I think we'll need to empty Fluorine and cover the horse tile with two warriors, which we should be able to do. As long as we have vision over his warrior our Sodium settler should be safe. We also discussed the other city location, and Lewwyn pointed out we could just plant one tile south. It's a pretty good spot. We'll be unable to catch a grass hill north of the dyes this way, but we'd be grabbing more land to the south anyway.



I forgot to post this screenshot last turn. So yeah, EMC's galley doubled back. Apparently they picked up a settler and will be blocking off Kuro from the center island. That is very aggressive and note that they aren't going to have another city within like twelve tiles of where they're planting. Ellimist said that it'll be like another 4 turns before they plant (there's a lot of jungle apparently), so it really must be near the southern shore or something.

Ellimist also sent us a diagram of the resources they found in the northeast corner of the island.



What I don't get is why they're able to see the sugar and silver tiles. One SE of the galley's current location should not be able to see it. So that seems to indicate that they have another unit near that tile...it's rather suspicious. The galley might have had a scout or something, I suppose.



Events of note: we got a Hinduism spread in Boron (definitely need a missionary for it now, Nitrogen is going to finish one next turn). Jkioan adopted Caste System. Not sure why they're doing that...they're not Spiritual. They did whip their capital before switching over, so that's probably another settler.



Kuro is growing a lot, but doesn't seem to have many improvements to go with it. He also planted his tenth city a couple turns ago. We have a bit of a problem in that I am not sure if we can finish Currency next turn. It'll be close, hopefully the (re)growths this turn will hold us up. Neon will increase maintenance though.

[NobleHelium]

So yeah, I played turn 99 yesterday.

I founded Neon and then found out that EMC is apparently going to claim the entire middle island with many built up settlers. I am not sure what to say.

Ellimist also told me that the center of the map has a barbarian city with 60% culture defense, and it's on a 1-tile island surrounded by a moat. I think it has the GLH in it, which is the source of the culture. Let's not mention that to anyone, even EMC who may not have zoomed in and noticed.