[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Having not opened your save stack yet: Does the settling of eastern J require the pillaging of that road. I'm still pretty skeptical about leaving that bowman completely exposed. Partly, because combat roading is possible even if we destroy that road, partly because suttree will have odds to just kill the bowman with chariot and return to the jungle tile with extra XP.. Well.. -1 unit costs is something I guess.. And do we have a reason to do it now, instead of e.g. next turn? Situations change so quickly that I think we should delay this move as along as it's reasonable. Note that destroying that road also costs us the vision of that jungle tile, which sure is improving my sleep currently..

Hydra: I think the odds that Harry wrote included bowman's city defense bonus ability.

Utilizing Caste artists will be a good approach in the future as long as we are sure that we don't need emergency whips!

Agreed, our initial plan will be: let's grow BoP a bit and then double-whip a settler for a city in the south. We might just be able to get enough worker support as the most urgent jobs are finished around Cannae, Dunkirk & Gallipoli.

Wealth building is good at this point as we really need Calendar, but on general level we should not overuse it. Agincourt, Dunkirk, France, Gallipoli and also BoP will all want Libraries eventually that we could be building with those hammers.

Hydra is right, at this point we should have microed ourselves at least 5-6 holy cities..

EDIT: I'm going to look at your save stack a bit later and comment on it! Personally I'm still very undecided about the location of "Jamestown", but if I'm reading you correctly you both are preferring the western site currently..

[Old Harry]

Turn 95 part one

The desert and mountains might make a nice border for us with dtay and Jowy, I'd be happy to grab the two x's and allow them to settle all the no-food land. Although gold-rice is a nice city, and settling a coastal city to share J's rice wouldn't be bad.


Lunch uncovers Ichabod and given your galley-warning I've left Mardoc by Isandlwana rather than exploring further (perhaps he should move back in?)


See sea food? Mmmmmm... If the spear doesn't attack this turn then Lord Parkin gets 80% shot to get WII next turn. Although I'd probably just move him back behind the river for another defending chance instead. I'll move Rowain the bowman back to France unless you have a better plan for him?


In the war zone the only units I've moved are the worker and bowman. From left to right we have
- The worker S of Dunkirk has full movement and could move as far as Hastings this turn.
- an axe + spear
- spear + bowman + warrior
- axe + 3 bowmen
- a bowman


I propose:
- moving the worker to cottage the tile 1W of Hastings,
- pillage the road (this prevents Suttree moving a chariot onto J this turn, but isn't a total deal-breaker)
- having axe, spear, 2 bowmen and a warrior in Hastings
- an axe, a spear and a bowman on the jungle (add a bowman if we don't pillage)
- move a CI bowman to J

Then next turn:
- move the axe and spear from jungle to J to join the bowman
- move axe and spear from Hastings to jungle
- move both workers to J
- move settler to Hastings

The turn after:
- road J
- settle J

What do you think?

You might also notice that Calendar has dropped to a 3-turn eta - after shuffling the tiles around it's exactly one comerce over the threshold. We have 181/563 beakers so that means we need 128 beakers per turn. We are making 105 + 1 beakers so our multiplier is 1.207 - am I right in thinking noone else is giving us known tech bonus and the 0.007 is just a rounding error? It doesn't really benefit us much as all but one of the jungle chops are timed for t100.


Crosspost with everything!

[Fintourist]

for everything, except I'm still not sure about doing pillaging now vs. later vs ever! Btw, suttree founded a new city last turn. That's kind of a good sign!

EDIT: That *thumbsup* included the approval of suggested worker/unit movements

EDIT2: I don't think we have to keep both Rowain and Mardoc in cities. Maybe progressing with Mardoc while bringiing Rowain into Isandlwana is safe enough.

[Old Harry]

C'mon, guys, why don't you have a religion-founding timed to pop borders in that city the turn you settle it? Micro, people, micro!

Between western and eastern J I prefer western. We'll just have to make sure we have a good strong zone defence, and settle one of the other river valley cities soon (if we feel we may be settled up on from the north).

After checking the combat odds and with the vision that the mountains will give us after Hastings borders pop I think you're right, we should risk the western one.

Having not opened your save stack yet: Does the settling of eastern J require the pillaging of that road. I'm still pretty skeptical about leaving that bowman completely exposed. Partly, because combat roading is possible even if we destroy that road, partly because Suttree will have odds to just kill the bowman with chariot and return to the jungle tile with extra XP.. Well.. -1 unit costs is something I guess.. And do we have a reason to do it now, instead of e.g. next turn? Situations change so quickly that I think we should delay this move as along as it's reasonable. Note that destroying that road also costs us the vision of that jungle tile, which sure is improving my sleep currently..

If we're going to do it we'd do it this turn to stop a chariot sitting on J this turn or next turn to prevent two chariots pillaging the road from Hastings to J when Suttree realises what we're doing... The chances of chariot-on-J are low, but two chariots to pillage the city ruins then pillage the road could be accompanied by axes and make a tough nut to crack. (I think our axes would kill the chariots and then our bowmen would trade 50-50 with the axes, but I haven't checked).

Hydra: I think the odds that Harry wrote included bowman's city defense bonus ability.

bowmen get +50% city + 25% hill and + 50% melee. I've had to look that up about fifty times so far this game...

Utilizing Caste artists will be a good approach in the future as long as we are sure that we don't need emergency whips!

Agreed, our initial plan will be: let's grow BoP a bit and then double-whip a settler for a city in the south. We might just be able to get enough worker support as the most urgent jobs are finished around Cannae, Dunkirk & Gallipoli.

Sounds good. I look forward to the save stack!

Actually Agincourt has an issue with growing too fast so another worker or settler there would be good too.

[Fintourist]

If we're going to do it we'd do it this turn to stop a chariot sitting on J this turn or next turn to prevent two chariots pillaging the road from Hastings to J when Suttree realises what we're doing... The chances of chariot-on-J are low, but two chariots to pillage the city ruins then pillage the road could be accompanied by axes and make a tough nut to crack. (I think our axes would kill the chariots and then our bowmen would trade 50-50 with the axes, but I haven't checked).

Damn you, Harry! Go ahead and pillage that road if you think that's the right move! Let's hope suttree believes that it is some kind of a trap and does not take the shot or loses 1 unit in the process.. I'm not sure it is that likely that suttree would put 2 chariots + 2 axes onto flatland just to pillage that road, but that is a scenario, which can becomy costly if we get bad dice rolls..

Sounds good. I look forward to the save stack!

Actually Agincourt has an issue with growing too fast so another worker or settler there would be good too.

I guess I could do a micro run this week.. My girlfriend is in Poland for couple of days so why not..

[Old Harry]

Turn 96 part two
Yurimack really want to trade maps.


Okay, I moved Mardoc back and Rowain out - I'll put Mardoc in between the cities on the road and use Parkin and Rowain to explore. I'm aiming for having Parkin and Lunch on the galley going to explore more new and exciting islands eventually.

On pillaging - as a compromise I moved Oxy back to the jungle so we can have the argument all over again next turn.

We have Slowcheetah's graphs now, and dtay looks to have done something to his GNP:








I ended turn. By the way, Dunkirk can 1-turn a bowman with the stored overflow any time we need it.

[Fintourist]

On pillaging - as a compromise I moved Oxy back to the jungle so we can have the argument all over again next turn.

I already got used to the idea of pillaging that road..

We have Slowcheetah's graphs now, and dtay looks to have done something to his GNP:

Academy? Wealth?

Those graphs show the sad fact that despite having a fairly competitive amount of cities and pop points the land quality that we are working is simply not high enough. However, when we get Calendar in couple of turns, we immediately get 4 new food tiles in our existing cities and Cannae, Gallipoli & Dunkirk become significantly stronger cities. Our GNP will improve as we start working our dyes tiles and the higher happy cap is of course great news. If we manage our Eastern adventures without huge investments (it already has cost us quite a bit) and we make a good effort to micro most out of our lands, I'm sure our growth curve will steepen. It will be interesting to see how far it in the end gets us.

It's maybe pointless to speculate about Dunkirk's builds yet, as suttree's actions will influence them quite a bit, but I think latest after getting Calendar, we want to add one extra spear and axe to our zone defence team.

Have we proposed peace to suttree already so often that a new offer would make us look weak?

And one more thing: Is the EOT95 save in the savestack you send accurate and I can use it as a basis for my sandbox runs?

[Old Harry]

Those graphs show the sad fact that despite having a fairly competitive amount of cities and pop points the land quality that we are working is simply not high enough. However, when we get Calendar in couple of turns, we immediately get 4 new food tiles in our existing cities and Cannae, Gallipoli & Dunkirk become significantly stronger cities.

Yeah, we've also taken our finger off the growth button recently, with our military adventures, but everyone is going to have to do that at some point. Once the jungle is cleared we should have some great land, so I'm not too worried about being a bit behind the leaders at this point.

Have we proposed peace to suttree already so often that a new offer would make us look weak?

Yeah, but our graph would disagree. I'd probably rather not sign peace until we've sealed off the area totally, just in case a settler sneaks past...

And one more thing: Is the EOT95 save in the savestack you send accurate and I can use it as a basis for my sandbox runs?

The money and beakers will be off but the rest *should* be right. There are probably mistakes though, I did rush it a bit.

[Fintourist]

I did a tile change!

BoP was working a plains hill mine. I put it on grassland village located NW of Cannae instead. Cannae started working the new grassland riverside cottage. This means: -4 gold, +2 beakers, +2 food in BoP. I think this is a clear improvement. Of course this means that reaching Calendar EOT98 would be harder, but you said that our jungle chops were also timed so that our workers start improving resources anyways on T100, right?

(If you prefer the mine and want those 4 gold, let BoP still work the village and work plains hill mine instead of the cottage S-S of BoP. That simply wins by 1 beaker.)

[TheHumanHydra]

Re: Odds - Sorry, Harry, for some reason from your post it sounded like you were talking about open ground. I should have thought that you were talking about cities.

Re: J - I mean, it's actually a pretty scary decision. EJ is more defensible, for now. To be honest I think we're going to have to raze suttree's northernmost city and possibly plant a forward outpost if we want that river valley to be safe long-term. Do you guys think there will be some sort of window where we can do that quickly with horse archers or knights before he gets longbows or some such? Or do you think that would make him go berserk and commit us to a total war?

His city is 1S of the gems?

Re: Peace - Yeah, I agree we should seal off the area first.