SAT - #2 Pencil only Please

[Sareln]

Pictures to be added later.

North:

South:

Demos:

Next turn use the worker to finish the farm, swap Geometry from the Grassland-Hill Mine -> Wheat, and swap the capital from working the Plains-Hill-Forest to that Grassland Hill Mine. Store a turn of Gold.

Sian settled a new city. He doesn't know about the gold (or he chose not to settle it, much more likely to be the first option though). I think we should probably set up a double-whip in our capital for a settler after the worker finishes, and then probably another worker. We'll put hammers into a Holkan if we spot anything untoward.

[AutomatedTeller]

a double whip in the cap make much sense.

[AutomatedTeller]

save is in - I won't be able to play till tonight, so if have the time, feel free to grab the save and play it during the day.

[Sareln]

save is in - I won't be able to play till tonight, so if have the time, feel free to grab the save and play it during the day.

I've got it then.

[Sareln]

Sian is really tempting my better nature. If that city is still empty next turn (T27) I say we go steal his worker and possibly raze his 2nd city next turn. Alternatively, we use public diplo to tell him that we want to be friends and as such are moving right along.

Normally it doesn't make sense to hamstring an opponent who might swear unholy vengeance in a Free-for-all, but Cataphracts! might make this the stronger play.

We should dotmap our land, btw.

Overview:

Sian:

Demographics:

Top Cities:

Espionage:

[Sareln]

Here's my stab at a dotmap.

I think it might benefit us to leave Sian alone and keep him as a buffer against Nicolae. We settle the red-dot city and just stuff it full of pikes and cats (which he should be able to see).

[Sareln]

From the Public thread we know that Tankra & theStick are busy fighting each other. Or more accurately, theStick choked Tankra; so Tankra is weakened.

We expect map layout to be:

Sian -> SAT -> theStick -> Tankra -> Nicolae -> Sian

Once we run out of expansion room, or even before that if the opportunity presents itself, we should grab someone else's land. Chokepoints are pretty good on this map so far, so if you can conquer to the choke you're going to be in good shape. If you can't it's going to get weird.

Choices are Sian or theStick.

If we successfully pressure either, we can safely assume that the neighbor on the other side will (all other things being equal) push as well in an attempt to grab something. Nicolae is fairly aggressive, so I think that if we push theStick and Tankra joins in, Nicolae will attempt to push Tankra. If we push Sian, depending on the era, I expect Nicolae to join in, and Tankra will keep enough units on their mutual border to prevent theStick from interfering.

I expect that Nicolae and Sian are thinking on similar lines.

[AutomatedTeller]

Those make sense as ideas. We could come back and take his worker later, I guess. it seems pretty trusting of him.

[Sareln]

Those make sense as ideas. We could come back and take his worker later, I guess. it seems pretty trusting of him.

Not too much trust, given that he can skip that worker away from us if necessary, but he has been polite with his EP spending and I think I like him better as a buffer. The problem is that if we leave him alive and unmolested at some point he gets Cataphracts and could potentially ruin our day. Other idea is to run up the positive feelings as much as possible and hope he tries for Nicolae instead.

Dotmap thoughts? This is probably one of the more important things to get right...

[AutomatedTeller]

yeah, sorry for no feedback on that before

Ok, I think Orange is obvious - it allows us to build a workboat on that lake plus lighthouses. Moving it 1S is worse, as it removes a hill and means we can't build WB. I think orange is a no-brainer. Cities further north get a little more complicated, especially if we want to try to boat people up there.

Red is fine. It means we can't get boats in the water against Sian, but then, it means he can't threaten to boat us, either. which is probably good.

Pink I like - I guess it would be a pure commerce site, with the wines and incense? It's vulnerable to being boated by theStick and I don't know that it will be able to create much of a defensive navy. But then, we are close enough to him that he'll probably just come at us by land.

Those are my thoughts for now, other than I'd love to get a city either 1N or 1 NE of the stone - that would be a very strong production site and relatively hard to boat - but that's longer term and requires more scouting.

As to our opponents - well, we are a little hosed. Cataphracts or jannissaries. Yikes.

I guess Cataphracts scare me more, plus he's industrious, so will probably have more wonders to take, so from a meta game, I'd prefer to hit Sian first.

It probably depends on how things go, more than anything. In any case, I think it's too early to be pissing people off. If we thought we could take the city intact and keep it, though... well, that would be worth it.