[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Gavagai]

We thought about camping the cow with the scout but it isn't going to work. They should have a worker out next turn and they played before us. So, it means that we should let them play first next turn and the worker will occupy the cow.

[Gavagai]

The largest city in the world:



Demos:

[Bacchus]

Breaking the double-move rule for an annoying early-game camp against Egypt whilst founding Buddhism would have made quite an impression on the community, I'm sure.

We are parked next to the civ with literally the earliest access to its UU out of the competition. Even Serdoa has to research two techs to get his vultures. Suitably for such a placement, we are Liz of England, and we have a religion. Oh come all ye faithful!

Still, we are reasonably far, they don't know where we are, albeit the scout's position is giving them a big fat hint, and we will have BW reasonably early to settle copper. We'll have graphs before they settle the second city, so barring horses in-capital and a decision to rush the fuck out of us, we should be ok.

[Gavagai]

The capital of Egypt. That's interesting - no worker in sight and we can't confirm that there is a coast to the north. They have put 4 EPs into us, no other contacts then.
We will at least consider moving the scout to the cow next turn.



It looks like Sian has completed his workboat.

And we landed Buddhism, by the way. Also Mongolia researched some tech this turn. That sucks, actually - I wanted to rename our thread into "Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth are roleplaying Isabella" but now, I think, it would violate AI-diplo rules.

[Commodore]

So full Hydra?

[Gavagai]

So full Hydra?

We are definitely not going to invest heavily into an early conflict (at least, willingly), if that's what you are asking. After all, we are the financial one here and the later the war will be, the better for us. Actually, this is the strongest argument against camping the cows - that they would see our actions like an invitation to some early skirmishes. It increases chances that they would want to invest 30 hammers into a war chariot and retaliate tenfold.
On the other hand - chances are high that they would send out a war chariot anyway. In this case, delaying it for several turns would be nice.

[Bacchus]

On stuff not related to Egypt

Someone received a 2000 bump in soldier score, so unless there was a warrior, Mongolia researched Mining. They definitely have some sort of commerce boost and grabbed Agriculture as first tech.

Looks like Sian's seafood is fish, unless he suddenly started to work a 3f tile, which he avoided in the first turns.

Whoever has 22 GNP is playernumber 1-6, but on 21 GNP we fall from 1st to 3rd, so Sian's likely fish is likely coastal, not oceanic. Sigh.


On Egypt

Their worker will move on T18 and require two turns to get to the cow, so he'll be there on T19 before we move. Which means that we will have to park onto the cow on our T18. I hoped to sneak in some scouting to the west, before camping the cow, but it won't be possible, blasted worker-enhancing capital plains hill. So if we do deny them the cow and go towards nasty early war, the optimum would be to move onto the forest grass hill to the south of the lake on T17, going via the plains tile. On T18 we then, inefficiently, park onto the cow.

If we are maintaining a pretense of peace, we should keep going NW-NW.

Camping will deny them the cow for about 6-7 turns, so 18-21 foodhammers, about two turns worth of building the settler. In return, we will ensure early aggression from their side and, as a minor nuisance, delay our scouting. The decision really depends on how likely we judge their aggression to be in case we play nice. If they are next to certain to try and War Chariot us anyway, then we should camp, if they are more likely to switch on the Pericles and try into wonders, we should be on our way.

Normally I would say Egypt is highly likely to use its obvious military advantage, they have a perfect combination of their early strength and our early vulnerability. The only thing that can change that assessment is that 1) we don't know whether they actually have horses, 2) from his first outing, it doesn't appear that Jester is that much into early war. I don't think either point is that convincing, though, as 1) the map is balanced, so they probably do have a realistic source of horses and 2) even in SP early Egypt rush is viable and Jester should be comfortable with it.

So full Hydra?

[TheHumanHydra]

So full Hydra?

What does this mean? Did I unintentionally name myself after some sort of strategy?

[Krill]

Hydra is the very old name for the strategy where a player tried to monopolize all of the religions, particularly when they aimed to do this from T0 with the capital becoming holy city to multiple religions. It has been attempted with various degrees of success in different games.

[Gavagai]

Hydra is the very old name for the strategy where a player tried to monopolize all of the religions, particularly when they aimed to do this from T0 with the capital becoming holy city to multiple religions. It has been attempted with various degrees of success in different games.

I didn't know that, read it as a starcraft reference.

I think we should go for a cow then. If they have horses close, it would be just stupid on their part not to send a WC in our way. If they don't have horses - than they are not an early danger.