Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[novice]

Challenge: Fastest Stonehenge after following your micro plan up to T36.

Stonehenge EOT39:


The 9 hammers in Ganymede from T34-35 are sunk into Stonehenge.

t36: BW in, whip settler. Ganymede (now size 5) works 2xfp, lake, cows, rice, builds worker. Avarice & Cowardice road rice. Belligerence moves to forest hill 1S of Ganymede.
t37: Titan: Settler->Worker, works grassland cottage, 1fp, deer, furs, fish. Ganymede two-whips worker, works 1fp, cows, rice. Belligerence chops. Avarice chops forest 2W of Ganymede. Cowardice moves to forest 1N of Ganymede.
t38: Cowardice chops. Ganymede starts Stonehenge. New worker from Ganymede roads towards Io. New worker from Titan moves to same tile as Cowardice. Titan starts work boat (for city 5). Callisto whips granary.
t39: Cowardice & partner chop. Chops complete, Stonehenge completes EOT. Ganymede builds warrior for city 5 next. Io founded, works fish. Titan grows to size 6 on work boat build, settler for city 5 is next build there. Callisto starts work boat for clams.

[SevenSpirits]

Nice work.

You're right, that power jump is nuts (and it scares me). I looked into it, here are the facts:

* Between t19 and t20, rival best power rose 10k from 19k to 29k.
* Between t19 and t20, only Fierce got a tech - it has to be him.
* Fierce has Hunting, Mysticism, Mining (t5), Bronze Working (t14). He had 5 turns to research a tech.
* Fierce has only one city, and was already at his current size (3) on turn 19.
* All techs that give 8k+ are too expensive for him. I.e. he could only have researched half of Iron Working.

I think the most likely scenario is he produced an axeman (6k) and researched the wheel (4k). Other possibilities are:
- Spearman (4k) + Archery (6k)
- (He actually researched Archery earlier and built a warrior; he finished BW now and built a warrior.)

OK, so he built an axe, that's kind of scary if he's our northern neighbor. (Also he had 19k before; I'm guessing thats 1k from pop, 12k from BW + Mining + Hunting, and 6k from three warriors.) So I'd say we have a 1/4 chance he's our northern neighbor, 1/2 chance that if he is, and if he rushes someone, it's us. So at most 1/8 chance we have to worry about that axe before we can get horses up, and actually I think he's mainly built the axe for barbs. If it does show up, archery is a 4t tech, though we don't have slavery.

I don't think we should divert from our farmer's gambit.

[spacemanmf]

I don't think we should divert from our farmer's gambit.

Yeah, if we get knocked out early we all get to enjoy Christmas with our families...

[Gaspar]

Yeah, if we get knocked out early we all get to enjoy Christmas with our families...

[SevenSpirits]

Stonehenge EOT39:


The 9 hammers in Ganymede from T34-35 are sunk into Stonehenge.

t36: BW in, whip settler. Ganymede (now size 5) works 2xfp, lake, cows, rice, builds worker. Avarice & Cowardice road rice. Belligerence moves to forest hill 1S of Ganymede.
t37: Titan: Settler->Worker, works grassland cottage, 1fp, deer, furs, fish. Ganymede two-whips worker, works 1fp, cows, rice. Belligerence chops. Avarice chops forest 2W of Ganymede. Cowardice moves to forest 1N of Ganymede.
t38: Cowardice chops. Ganymede starts Stonehenge. New worker from Ganymede roads towards Io. New worker from Titan moves to same tile as Cowardice. Titan starts work boat (for city 5). Callisto whips granary.
t39: Cowardice & partner chop. Chops complete, Stonehenge completes EOT. Ganymede builds warrior for city 5 next. Io founded, works fish. Titan grows to size 6 on work boat build, settler for city 5 is next build there. Callisto starts work boat for clams.

This is awesome. I played around a bit, and I think we have the option to only chop 2 forests if we like. That means only having to use 2 workers so it seems worth it to me. Micro is thus:

t36: As you said, except Belligerence can go to the forest 1N of Ganymede instead.

t37: Ganymede does not yet whip worker, instead switched back to stonehenge. Works Rice/Cow/Furs/FP and a 1/2/0 forest for 9h, total = 18. Avarice chops forest 2W of Ganymede, Belligerence chops.

t38: Ganymede whips worker, work Rice/Cow/FP.

t39: Work Rice/Cow/Furs for 7h. That's 25 + 26 from chops + 29 from overflow = 80h.

We could alternately try to get with 3 chops (39h + 29 overflow + 7h on last turn means we need only invest 5h in it beforehand). In either plan I prefer to whip the worker on t38 so its overflow hammers don't become failgold.

[SevenSpirits]

Some other miscellaneous thoughts.

1) Tech. (Assuming we get Hinduism.)
You suggest Monotheism. Any particular reason? Just to have another holy city? I don't think we'll have much use the 25% OR building bonus for a while yet. I would normally like to head up Math and probably Currency soon, though here I'm wondering if Iron Working might be worth prioritizing. Sailing could also be fantastic (especially with Writing). Monarchy I don't feel like we need for a bit longer, and I don't think we should run up to Aesthetics for wonder spamming or national epic. (If we did, main draw is the music artist IMO.) Metal Casting seems completely uninteresting.

2) Great People.
Say we get Stonehenge. In addition to the free gpp we can run a couple priests if we want and get out a super fast prophet. Is that good though? If we do we'll probably get more than one prophet this game, does that mean we should settle the first one and build the shrine with the second?

3) City specialization. I've been kind of looking at Ganymede as a farm/mine/gold city (especially if we get Hinduism of course). Opinions?

[SevenSpirits]

Did more C&D around Fierce, because a) scary power and b) he has mysticism and could compete for henge or a religion.

I looked at approval ratings and see that he has not whipped at all. However I would say that he barely had enough time to produce 23h (an axe) since the earliest he could have hooked copper with a single worker, namely t17, and only if you include overflow. (The odd part is that demos show no high hammer tiles being worked, but that's his mistake.) Anyway he seems to have produced an axeman on t19, and notably it removed his "we fear for our safety" unhappiness.

That unhappiness is still gone. This strongly implies, given what I think is his skill level, that the axe in question is being fortified at his capital.

The other interesting piece of info is that from t17 to t18, rival best power went up 4k from 15k to 19k. I don't think it's possible that this was Fierce - since he didn't get a tech that turn it would have had to be a spearman, on the first turn he could have had copper. (And this would rule out him getting the axe later.) So I think actually that 19k was luddicator jumping into the lead, having researched Hunting/AH/Wheel/Archery for 14k, grown for 1k, and built a second warrior for another 4k in units.

My best theory for the recent 10k increase then is Fierce gaining 12k from an axe + archery, and someone losing a warrior.

Summary: we probably don't have to worry about Fierce.

[SevenSpirits]

Got it and played... partially.

[SevenSpirits]

Here's the important news: YNL's warrior has shown up.



Here's demos and mackoti land pics, but they're not important.

I've not ended turn yet because we might want to consider switching to a warrior build. Thoughts?

Couple other things -
* I believe YNL coincidentally finished BW last turn.
* I notice that their warrior came straight south on the last move. So they intentionally stayed one away from our borders (or didn't see them) - which might be caution or might be peaceful signalling.
* They've met someone else based on their 2eps vs us. (Btw I switched EPs to them since we have enough on Mackoti.)
* However they haven't met Mackoti.

[novice]

I've not ended turn yet because we might want to consider switching to a warrior build. Thoughts?

We lose worker turns by switching, almost as many as we'll lose by having the cows pillaged. So I say risk it.

At least we won't have to worry about being rushed by Fierce.

Interesting that they're scouting with their warrior, btw.

Final thought - remember to assign all EPs to YNL.