[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Qgqqqqq]

Huh, its not noted in the changelog :/

[Lewwyn]

Played turn on gchat with bigger. I'm very happy with the developments. I'd love to start cutting Azza off from the other part of the continent, but we can't afford to crash our economy yet. Cow city is too good for unit production and Azza defense and we need the silver. Our next city after that should likely claim our iron and the pigs because all those forests are glorious. Then we need to complete our buffer with Azza West of Odyssey with the shared sheep city. Though maybe if we feeling strong we'll settle for the stone. I think that's a reach. Leaves us too open to an attack on either side of the lake without being able to react and consolidate forces.

After sailing I think we'll go priesthood in order to secure prereq bonuses for writing, monarchy and Code of Laws. What do lurkers think of this? Bigger post a shot of our current tech tree as well please.

[Bigger]

ill post a turn report in an hour or so. the turn may or may not have rolled by then, we're only waiting on azza.

Got some errands to do.

here are the EOT demos, in case they change:

[Nicolae Carpathia]

A downside of binary research is that floated gold is mostly useless. They only get turned into useful beakers when used to pay your maintenance.

Therefore, I try not to float more gold than it costs to tech the item that I'm most interested in, so that I can get the tech in immediately. Binary research used that way gives the best of both speed and flexibility.

[Bigger]

A downside of binary research is that floated gold is mostly useless. They only get turned into useful beakers when used to pay your maintenance.

Therefore, I try not to float more gold than it costs to tech the item that I'm most interested in, so that I can get the tech in immediately. Binary research used that way gives the best of both speed and flexibility.

well this will only be the 2nd turn that we haven't ran 100% research. the first was upon completion of monotheism, I thought it would take longer to complete Iron working than it did and wasn't 100% we would do Iron working next instead of sailing or even archery, so I turned off research.. that was a mistake, we could have ran 50% instead of 0 for a turn and finished Iron working a turn earlier.
Luckily, we secured peace with azza and nabbed the iron city so that didn't hurt us.

all our gold reserves so far have come from huts, not running less than 100% research.

[Bigger]

having trouble connecting to imgur for pictures. I need a secondary hosting site anyway. Any recomendations?

[Lewwyn]

photobucket

[Bigger]

Turn 75: The long peace

ok, I lied. Azza logged in and played his turn but we're still waiting for team nakor/tatan/fool. (what nickname are they calling themselves for short???)

pictures. First, the barb battlefield:

1. This was a pleasant surprise. azza had 3 turns into the iron mine, so we were able to complete it immediately. thanks Azza . it won't be roaded until next turn, hence the warrior build, but we were able to switch beowulf from the hill mine to the iron, which was very nice.
2. ok, the barbs. Lewwyn wanted to bring both injured but promoted chariots to cover the workers to get us a C2 chariot from the barb warrior suicide. I convinced him to be safe and cover it with one of them, and an uninjured chariot, as you can see. The second C1 chariot, diomedes, will fully heal this turn in theodyssey. This proved to be irrelevant, however, as for some reason Azza chose to fortify his spy warrior on that hill rather than run. I think the warrior will attack Azza rather than us, although I'm not certain. Azza's warrior has a 25% bonus for the hill but no fortify bonus (maybe 5% when the turn rolls??). I will have a hearty laugh if the barb warrior wins. Azza does have a fully healed chariot in the area but apparently wants to give the experience to his warrior instead (or, if he put the chariot up the barb might decide to go after us, so he wants to guarantee he gets the experience and not us). It might just be better for us if the barb is dead, though, so we don't have to cover those workers next turn (they will both have to road the iron next turn to finish the road).
3. Odysseus II is our 4th chariot, unpromoted, in Beowulf. I am hopeful that our odds will be high enough that diomedes can kill the eastern barb next turn, get the combat II promotion, and Odysseus can go to the gold mine and start working his way south to explore (hence the name). Lewwyn and I are in agreement that we need to make contact with additional civs for discounts and potential trading asap, and I would like to at least know where Serdoa's borders are.
4. the settler in theOdyssey is at 53/100 production. with 1 chop incoming, it will gain 27 food hammers at EOT. another chop comes in next turn to complete it, and all the overflow will go into a spear. behind the spear we have 3 hammers already into a chariot which we might as well complete. long term, I think, we'll need a chariot in Gilgamesh to protect against barbs in the west, and for the eventual HR happy bonus.

2nd, city expansion. we are using the 10 turns of enforced peace to not only build spears, but a couple of yummy cities as well.
city #5, the aenid, will go where Lewwyn has the sign - you can see it in the previous picture. It will be primarily responsible for producing spears after the granary comes in.
city #6 (name undecided) will go here after sailing comes in:

this will be just will be just wonderful for our economy. +2 commerce trade routes in every city except our capital ( for that), a nice silver tile to work in addition to the fish, and +1 happy empire wide. the latter may even be the most helpful. besides giving gilgamesh and theIliad the ability to work an additional cottage, it will really help us recover from the massive whip unhappy in the Iliad and the Odyssey. the workboat is working its way towards the tile 1E of the city spot to ensure there are no barbs up there so we can drop off the worker and settler first trip (I'm a little more paranoid about this than lewwyn is - don't want to pull a Commodore here)

we will likely have to stop expanding for a bit here. It depends how our economy looks once we have the silver and gold hooked up, and far away from currency we are. but we have our future cities planned nonetheless.

city #7:

the left sign will be city #7. was nice before, the prescence of Iron just makes it more yummy. we have another grassland iron, 2/4/0, a 5/1/0 hill pigs, 2 grassland river tiles that are not in the capitals BFC, and *9* forests to chop.
a) those grassland river spots can be cottages initially. one of them will likely have to be farmed post-civil service to get a farm chain going. the only non-hill spot bordering the 1 tile lake is the iron spot, and we won't farm that
b) this will be a great spot to chop out MoM. I'm not entirely certain will be able to nab this, but I want to try. in the mid to late game we will have a lot of great people by running rep/environmentalism/caste, so MoM will be an amazing wonder for us.

the right sign MIGHT be city #8, we have plenty of time to decide. It will be an ok city, it can steal theOdyssey's sheep for growth, as well as start its own farm chain from the river. it shares a grassland river tile with the pig/iron city and claims the last riverside grassland spot that is outside of the capitals reach. it will have horses and a couple of mines for production and a few forests to chop out the essentials.

neither of these cities can build a Dike, but thats ok - our first 6 cities can all build dikes!

ok, I'll have to make this report 2 parts. I'm having trouble with imgur again .

[Bigger]

photobucket

k, ill give it a shot.

[Bigger]

ok, imgur is being a shit ill try to finish with photobucket. don't like ads every time I upload an image. oh well.
possible alternative city #8:

ok, so this is a mediocre, maybe even poor city site, obviously. the only food will be the 3 lighthouseable lake tiles. it can share the gold, but without food won't be able to. post civil service it will be better, when we can farm the grassland tiles connected to the city (thanks to the lake, which should spread irrigation through the city). still, it will be quite useful for the empire - by denying the large, yummy, eastern peninsula from Azza.

Why is this important? well:



lots of nice cities there, including a barb city that we should be able to keep. if we can cut off azza we will be the only ones with a land bridge to that area. No one else will be able to settle it until astronomy, although if we don't hurry we may lose a spot or two to a galleon settler. well, maybe serdoa can load a settler on a galley and travel up the east side of the coast??

that is still a while off, so azza may try to rope off that area himself. If he does, I think its worth reinitiating the war - especially if he doesnt have metal yet. I hope that we can stay out of war with him until knights, but there really is no way we can ever be friends. The map has really ensured that we will be in conflict until one of us has eliminated, imo. But I think a long peace can ensure we have a bigger advantage in the next conflict than we did in this one.

this city will become necessary post-currency if we cannot secure foreign trade routes:

it can ensure we get the +2 commerce trade routes in every coastal city. But I'm hoping we can get open borders with serdoa or someone else by then. if we can get foreign trade routes, I'd rather skip it for quite awhile. there is no city spot that can pick up the crabs and the fish, so eventually we'll have 2 mediocre cities to pick up each. the crabs city will be a decent maoi spot, but honestly we have plenty of good maoi spots so thats not a motivating factor.

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