I did do a smart thing. Here is the picture:
![[Image: izjjHOXJiOMt7.jpg]](http://i.minus.com/izjjHOXJiOMt7.jpg)
Highlight in yellow shows the area they should have defogged by now. That's the reason I believe he will go south, rather than west. He knows our capital is further down south, so that's what he will be trying to find. As we both agree on settling here, I settled:
![[Image: ibvSsJsMX5NSyi.jpg]](http://i.minus.com/ibvSsJsMX5NSyi.jpg)
No other warriors at least.
New city let's us do some interesting cloak and dagger. Here are demos when working the cow:
![[Image: i2GfRRvrU37I3.PNG]](http://i.minus.com/i2GfRRvrU37I3.PNG)
And here working the copper:
![[Image: iXY6giNHCzpNj.PNG]](http://i.minus.com/iXY6giNHCzpNj.PNG)
The crop leader is not Serdoa, despite having his second city online, neither Nakor nor Sian, but they have not yet founded. In fact, crop yields are strangely low, but we'll see what happens after more cities are founded, so far only Zulu and Sumeria have built theirs, respectively two and three turns ago.
What is worrying is that there is somebody with GNP 31, and we are working three financial-boosted clams AND have +5 from religion. Further to the worry, the 31 GNP rival is
not Serdoa, that is not the only creative civ which has 2 cities. Which means that, at best, somebody has 2 base commerce over us. And it's not Sian, the only financial fisherman, who can have a bunch of seafood online by now. Basically, looks like somebody has a gold mine.
Coming back to our tactical situation. In a sort-of-not-quite-AI-diplomacy spirit, the Egyptian warrior was renamed Gandhi this turn. Of course, apart from non-violence this could mean hostility towards England and thus a cunning semi-ruse, but there you are. AH will take 7 turns to research, in the meantime we could chop a forest and build a shared grass mine. The thing is, that
if we do chop a forest into a warrior, there is no reason to delay the mine — we will have enough warriors to protect both the city, and the mine. So perhaps Gav meant retreating the warrior from copper, and chopping into a worker. I don't actually believe that, as this just leaves copper open for camping, and G-d knows when we will be able to unseat the Egyptian pest.
So here's some elaboration of the possible outcomes of my plan, as a little tree:
![[Image: iqizkgluS8YRM.png]](http://i.minus.com/iqizkgluS8YRM.png)
The possible outcomes in order of preference are of course mines completing, then chop completing (in this outcome the mine comes online on T45), and the worst is retreat. That's a really bad one, and the advantage of Gavagai's plan is that it avoid the potential need to retreat
for sure. The problem is of course that we will have to pay for that certainty with,
at minimum a three turn delay in bringing a 6-yield tile online, that is a cost of 9 foodhammers. Some commerce too, as we will end up working a cow instead of a riverside copper mine.
So, what is the certainty worth to us? The retreat in my plan arises only if the Egyptian goes SW-W-SW. If at any point he does anything else, we get a better outcome than we would from chopping the south forest. When would the Egyptian go SW-W-SW? Well, I think SW is pretty much a certainty, but of course we don't know what other considerations they might have, so let's call it 95%. W I am not sure about — I think it makes sense for him to scout south, for reasons described above. I would say the possibility of W is 30%.
Finally, SW, which entails a declaration of war, entering our borders and threatening the city. I'm not sure they will be so hot about risking this and here's why: 1) for all we know, this is their only scout in the south region, and they still have not found our capital, 2) power graphs are displayed with a significant delay, so they have no way of knowing whether there is another warrior sitting in the city, 3) if they agress, we can freak out and do something like research archery, leading to an ancient era arms race. As suttree said, we should consider that they don't have a full knowledge of our position. Basically, given that there are some good arguments for not attacking, and probably some bad ones, and some which we don't know about, I'd say going SW is 60% likely. This gives us compound odds of 17.1% of having to retreat.
If we evaluate more sceptically, let's say the choice between going west and south is actually an indifferent coin toss (50%), and they have worked out the case for attacking to a strong degree (75%, they will still be considering the possibility that we have prepared for the attack), this gives us 35.6% odds of having to retreat. So I'd still go for chopping the NW forest, rather than the shared.
Sounds alternately like something French, pronounced cerdishebaud, or like something with the Russian root for grumpy -- serditiy. But then there are Bigger, Lewwyn and Noble there. SIN-Lewger
