[SPOILERS] Back to Basic - Mardoc plays Augustus of China

[Mardoc]

Ole' Durkula getting a missionary? Non-religious cleric just seems wrong. (Also, he needs cows)

Yeah, Belkar can afford to wait for a natural spread, but Durkon needs culture right away. Need the settler and the worker force first, though.

In tree news, I see Math is incoming. Planning on murdering 6 somewhere for a 1t 'mids once stone is hooked? (Assuming 20h elsewhere, which is a snap).

Hadn't thought about it in detail yet, but that seems logical. Or maybe 5 forests with a lot of overflow from a whip - say, in the capital. Unless...well, I did get a little scouting news this turn; not quite what I was hoping to see, though. Can't even murder this thing until 9 more turns pass, and he might have a decent garrison by then.

[Mardoc]

Ok, so Mids give GE points, and I can get some more by running an engineer, and apparently GE bulbs Machinery, which would unlock my UU quite early. Cho Ko Nu's ought to be able to let me prune back Twinkle a bit.

I think I'm going to start running an engineer somewhere pretty soon, therefore. Probably in Roy, the whip cycle for balancing its size seems to be more often than 10 turns. Which would mean it's got a bit of excess available. Downside is the high chance of Prophet instead - but a Shrine is looking to have significant value, so that wouldn't be a waste. On top, Roy is probably the easiest place to put up the Mids, assuming I can get my hands on stone before Twinkle grabs the area for some extra GE points.

[HidingKneel]

Heads up: I just got a "Just_Fun_A_BC-1280_to_Ruff" in my inbox. I'm guessing that was for this game...

[Mardoc]

So, Ruff is gone for a week, and the save is in my inbox. Seems like a good time for grand strategy thinking, and perhaps even a microplan.

So, grand strategy topics to think about:
Twinkletoes reactions
Wonder plans
Settling plans

First question: what do we do about Twinkletoes?
- What do we need for military? To defend, to shove him back a bit, to aim for conquest? I lean toward defending for now, not worth doing anything more unless we can end him, and that requires at least catapults. Unless he stays ridiculously low Power, anyway.
- Should we rush to settle Durkon? Any other city sites worth rushing for?
- Should we alter the dotmap? How does his closeness affect defensibility?
- What can we do to speed scouting? Information is gold.

Second: Wonder plans? Still going for Colossus/Mids/Great Wall? Where will they be built?

Third: settlement plans. Time to figure out which order to settle my remaining dots, and to try to figure out how to do them *fast* but still with adequate worker/garrison/missionary supplies

Other: Great People plans. I want a Great Engineer, I could use a Great Prophet, a Great Spy would make me well defended against espionage...anything else? Sure sounds like a good case for sticking a bunch of wonders in Roy, since I'd be happy with a lot of potential pops. Best to get those GPP stacking up fast so we can have more than one of them. Obviously Colossus can't go in Roy, it's looking like Haley is a likelier candidate.

Not sure I have answers, but that's the way my mind is going. More tonight, when I finally get around to playing the turn.

[Commodore]

You want that stone, but tryin' for a little more axes first, lad.

[Mardoc]

You want that stone, but tryin' for a little more axes first, lad.

Yeah, I'll slip a couple more into the queues somewhere. And probably a spear or two as well, since I know for a fact that Twinkle has horses - at least for the moment.

Good news: Twinkle's city is his newest, and this is how it's guarded:


He still has 8 turns to fix that, but if that's all he's got when the treaty ends, I'm inclined to raze it. Meanwhile the axe will continue scouting, I think.

But it does mean that I shouldn't have to rush for the stone. Twinkle probably can't claim it super fast, not unless he keeps going farmer's gambit.

Going to be a smidge longer before my next batch of settlers in any event, I've got a significant happy boost from Hindu and that'll just improve as I get the furs and silver online. I'm thinking Roy needs to grow to a 6->4 whip cycle, and Haley needs to grow to a 5->3 cycle, at minimum.

[Mardoc]

Methinks a couple spears are a bit more urgent than axes. Will start building them next turn in Roy, at least.

Also, sadly this looks like it's not far from a Twinkle city with culture. So at the very least, we need to establish a defended border over here. Be nice to know if he's got copper or not

How useful are walls? Especially if we manage to steal away the stone, and need to defend against a possible instant strike?

[Commodore]

Ruh-roh. Looks like Twinkle might be pretty near.

[Mardoc]

So, what's been happening lately? Been building spears, exploring Twinkleland, and finishing off Forges while growing cities vertically a bit. I want very much to whip them again and get another couple settlers and workers, but I'm trying to hold off.

I did have Vaarsuvius double-whip a missionary for overflow, to finish off its Forge. I still think Haley's going to get the Colossus, though, Vaar needs to start on either a Lighthouse or units.

In TwinkleNews:


That's a core city, alright! No sign of copper yet, but maybe he's got it closer to home. Fingers crossed for lacking it, because he's close enough that fighting is nearly inevitable. I'm hoping to do the fight with ChoKoNus, but that requires some luck.

Also, he's not quite the pushover he was a few turns back.



On the brighter side, he's been splitting his EP, so he's presumably got another front to worry about, and we'll have research visibility in a few more turns.

At home, you can see the Forges nearly done:



The low-but-increasing Engineer odds:



Generally things are going well. Running low on infra to put up with current tech, but that just means we're free for the important stuff: military, workers, settlers, and a wonder or two. Demos still look good, although I'm starting to worry a tad about the GNP, that might actually be getting into an era where it matters. Currency next, that combined with a bit of vertical growth in the core should boost us back up.

[Commodore]

That's not a core city, that's his capital!

Well, looks like third ring borders, anyway. So either his capital or the Holy City.