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

[Old Harry]

I moved the spear where you suggested. We have 2 bowmen and a warrior in Hastings. Then 2 axes, a spear and 3 bowmen between Hastings and Jamestown.


If we move an axe to join the spear the spear is likely to defend against both chariots and get odds in both fights, then both chariots can be killed before they get a shot at Dunkirk. If we don't then one of the chariots will get 18% odds against a CGI bowman. Edit: just seen your suggestion with the warrior from Endor - I like that.

That would leave us with an axe and 2 bowmen on the Jungle and a spear and bowman in Jamestown. If Suttree moves his 3 axes, spear and chariot to the corn we can move our five units into Jamestown and I'd be confident that they'd win on defense. We could move an extra bowman out of Hastings to the jungle to let us put six units in Jamestown or keep one on the jungle.

I'd be inclined not to chop the banana this turn too. Will stick with the dyes.

Edit: Also we could set research to 0% this turn, to allow Cannae to get more food, then back to 100% next turn.

[Fintourist]

Hmm.. What if suttree moves his stack onto city ruins and blocks our route to Jamestown? If we move our axe W of Hastings we will only have 1 axe to hit suttree's stack and rest of our units won't have odds against his 2 remaining axes (or chariot). I like the idea of us being able to kill both of those chariots immediately, but I don't want to encourage him to any forking activities. If he does that anyway I think we want to have both of our axes in range..

Ok, I vote against moving the axe W of Hasting for aforementioned reasons. We must be able to deal with those chariots without him

I did not completely catch what was your idea of unit compositions on the jungle tile and in Jamestown. Also because of the aforementioned forking scenario I would like to have 2 bowmen in Jamestown. Btw, this would be a good turn to put 1-turn worth of production into bowman in Hastings. Just that we have the ability to whip one if required. The stupid turn order destroys our ability to do any emergency whips unless we are already prepared.

Edit: I think we need to run the slider at least at ~20 % so that our beaker generation will be enough for completing the calendar next turn. Probably something like 50 % could be solid. It's not the end of the world if Cannae does not work e.g. the gold tile despite the 50 % slider..

[Old Harry]

Turn 98

Lunch stays still - I think the island is big enough to hide more barbs. Meanwhile the other units over here try to get Lord Parkin to WII, France starts on a worker to be whipped next turn.


mostly_harmless's city has popped its borders already. I've added an x? which is off the coast, on a hill but with enough culture could steal the corn. Do we want to agravate him?


Should Yossarian go east or down to Jamestown to help out?


The warrior will join a bowman in Dunkirk to ensure Suttree doesn't take the city next turn. I expect the chariots to retreat, but they may head around to Gallipoli. If we whip the spear in Bay of Pigs this turn rather than building wealth it can get to Gallipoli in time to prevent that.


In the east I've left a GII bowman and warrior in Hastings, but put a turn into a bowman as suggested. The jungle contains the two axes (you'll be pleased to hear) and two bowmen, Jamestown contains a spear and two bowmen.


I've left research at 0% - 100% next turn will definitely complete Calendar. Looks like some other people have been fighting too.


Demos

I didn't end turn in case you want to whip BoP. There are also a few movement points left in the war zone if we want to fiddle with things there?

[Fintourist]

mostly_harmless's city has popped its borders already. I've added an x? which is off the coast, on a hill but with enough culture could steal the corn. Do we want to agravate him?

M_h does not have any military, right? I guess I still prefer a more conservative site around iron that captures e.g. rice. However, I haven't thought much about this yet.

Should Yossarian go east or down to Jamestown to help out?

You don't mean declaring do you? I guess the next two moves are S and S, after that we could decide based on our confidence level.

I expect the chariots to retreat, but they may head around to Gallipoli. If we whip the spear in Bay of Pigs this turn rather than building wealth it can get to Gallipoli in time to prevent that.

Damn it. That's again pretty speculative, but it would be annoying if he approached Gallipoli and whipping the spear now is the best way to protect our cottages around Gallipoli. I hate this, because it's very possible that we do it in vain.. That whip could be 30 hammers into a worker or settler.. but let's do this anyways..

In the east I've left a GII bowman and warrior in Hastings, but put a turn into a bowman as suggested. The jungle contains the two axes (you'll be pleased to hear) and two bowmen, Jamestown contains a spear and two bowmen.

Was I too annoying?

I've left research at 0% - 100% next turn will definitely complete Calendar. Looks like some other people have been fighting too.

Oh, I missed this comment about research and put it to 10 %. Are you completely completely sure that we finish it? With the current setting we could not have done it this turn and now we whip BoP, next turn France and if we are unlucky it is possible that we have to whip e.g. Hastings & Dunkirk too. If you are sure feel free to put the slider back to 0 %, but since I havent calculated it myself I was about to play it in the safe way.

That power drop from slow..

I didn't end turn in case you want to whip BoP. There are also a few movement points left in the war zone if we want to fiddle with things there?

BoP was commented above, but I give you the freedom not to whip the city if you want to gamble... The war zone is looking in my eyes as solid as I think it can be with our units.

[Old Harry]

Should Yossarian go east or down to Jamestown to help out?

You don't mean declaring do you? I guess the next two moves are S and S, after that we could decide based on our confidence level.

No - I meant S, SE or S, S, SW...

Damn it. That's again pretty speculative, but it would be annoying if he approached Gallipoli and whipping the spear now is the best way to protect our cottages around Gallipoli. I hate this, because it's very possible that we do it in vain.. That whip could be 30 hammers into a worker or settler.. but let's do this anyways..

Could we whip a spear in Gallipoli itself instead if needed? Are there five hammers lying around?

Was I too annoying?

Too annoyingly correct...

Oh, I missed this comment about research and put it to 10 %. Are you completely completely sure that we finish it? With the current setting we could not have done it this turn and now we whip BoP, next turn France and if we are unlucky it is possible that we have to whip e.g. Hastings & Dunkirk too. If you are sure feel free to put the slider back to 0 %, but since I havent calculated it myself I was about to play it in the safe way.

We only miss a couple of beakers by playing 10% this turn, that should be fine.

I'll log in to play in a couple of hours unless you can get there first..

[Fintourist]

Could we whip a spear in Gallipoli itself instead if needed? Are there five hammers lying around?

Does not look too good.. We would need to produce 5 hammers during this and next turn so that we can whip the city on T100. That means that we must work 3 times a 1/1 tile (bare plains or grassland hill) to get the job done.. So I guess whipping that spear in BoP is a better option.. Well, we'll probably get to use that spear in our border areas.. I just hate unit costs and want more workers..

[Old Harry]

Logged in to end turn, whipped the spear and decided not to muck around with the tile selections. We need to get on top of the sandbox again.

I left research on 10%.

[Fintourist]

Logged in to end turn, whipped the spear and decided not to muck around with the tile selections. We need to get on top of the sandbox again.

Yeah.. The last sandbox was not anymore quite actual, so it made planning a bit difficult. I don't promise, but I might have time to update it in the evening. That said, I have couple of ideas related to micro/macro in the coming turns:
- Agincourt can start our next settler already next turn (if we cant afford it, then next turn..). Assuming not too much pressure from suttree & m_h our existing worker in the south will be able to support it. Currently my favorite site is probably S of iron. In short-term it will be food poor (story of our whole game..) but later I think we will be able to chain irrigation from that mini-river to rice and make it a decent city working 2x dyes for commerce and iron for production..
- We should not finish the spear next turn in Endor, we can always do it if necessary. Instead the city can either start a settler or a worker. If it is a settler, BoP can build galley + WB for the settler and we go and settle the island close to slowcheetah next (desert hill capturing two sea food resources). Isandlwana can provide required defenders for the site. Another option for settler location is the desert hill E of Endor that will get dyes+flood plains, but in our current situation it might even be more difficult to organize proper support unless we count on dtay's friendlyness. Your opinion?
- Next turn Cannae will be in tech mode working at least gold. Starting from T100 it will work first cottages + 2 scientists and not grow while we are saving gold. When the sugar comes online (T102) we will manage to grow Cannae fairly soon to size 8 despite scientists. At this point research is turned on and Cannae will probably stagnate until we finish our GS on T115 (note that of course getting Alphabet earlier probably has bigger impact than microing most out of Cannae's library so we might turn tech on a bit earlier..)
- Dunkirk should probably put 1 turn worth of production into axe (just in case we need to whip one) and then start a worker
- Gallipoli just wants to grow and work cottages + produce eventually a library. We might condider whipping a worker or even a settler from the city when it reaches size 4 or 5.
- France's job is to grow onto new cottages as we manage to chop that f***ing jungle away. But meanwhile we want the worker that is whipped next turn and then settler+wb+worker+military in some order so that we can found a city that gets clams+silk+dyes that are located SW of the city. I think that fish+pigs spot further west is a bit too stretchy at the moment, but as with all these suggestions, everything is up to discussion
-Hastings tries to get barracks and granary done. We could whip barracks already next turn, but that of course means that we won't be able to emergency whip a bowman if required. Everything here has to be decided based on how our situation with suttree develops. Hopefully the workers that are around Dunkirk can improve a farm+cottage+dyes for Hastings pretty soon..
-Assuming everything goes well Jamestown will get rice improved first and based on situation we continue with chopping a granary or improving the corn. Unfortunately we probably have to wait with corn until Hastings has popped its borders (supporting earlier barracks whip in Hastings). Btw, I don't believe this is enough of a reason to prioritize CoL over other options. 10 turns for border pop is annoyingly slow, but teching CoL + working artists is not that much faster and requires a decent wealth build investment..
- Isandlawana's (can't type that thing!) forest will hopefully be fast turned into something useful! First granary, then options include at least a defender for the possible city close to slowcheetah and a worker. After we later get a border pop I could see this city producing a settler that captures silk and river tiles or even that fish+pig site if Ichabod has been busy.

If you managed to follow my thinking:

One useful thing to do now is to check which cities are in biggest need of new tile improvements when we take into account our initial build plans (when we come up with something rough) and consider whether our worker situation is still sufficient in 10 turns.. Of course improving calendar resources and supporting totally fresh cities come on top of this. My opinion is that our situation is tight, but still doable. Cannae's switch to working scientists releases some of the improvements to BoP. Endor could use some new tiles, but keeping it at size 4/5 building settlers/workers with no food surplus is not terrible either. This list could become as long as the previous one.. Getting new workers out of France, and e.g. from Endor & Dunkirk and will help the situation. I could see us building quite a few workers within the next 15 turns.

Damn, I thought that I would only type couple of sentences..

[Fintourist]

Ok,

I made the effort I kind of promised. Here is the sandbox for the beginning of T99 (assuming that suttree does not pillage our cows or some other surprises during the next hours). It required quite a bit of tweaking and I did not manage to make it perfect (would have required more time) and so there are 5 differences compared to our game state:
- Sandbox has 1 beaker more than reality
- We have gems instead of traded ivory for happiness
- We don't have extra health from traded clams
- Endor has 2 extra hammers in spear
- Isandlwana has 2 extra hammer in barracks
These are all issues that can be fixed in future sandboxes, but for now I think our sandbox is good enough for doing detailed planning. I think it would be very useful if we would both make a practise run or two. Bulbing Philosophy could be a decent target. It's clear that suttree situation (and other surprises) will force us to deviate from any plan we make, but having an idea how to play the next 15 turns will surely be beneficial for our decision making.

I also made a small GNP analysis.
- Our GNP is 106 when researching Calendar with 100 %.
- It remains the same when selecting CoL or Compass (nobody has them yet)
- GNP is 107 when researching Alphabet (mostly_harmless)
- GNP is 107 when researching Aesthetics (1 opponent)
- GNP is 108 when researching HBR (I would bet slowcheetah for Keshiks, but who else?)
- GNP is 108 when researching MC (Jowy/TBS oracled it probably, but who else?)
- GNP is 111 when researching Masonry (4 or 5 opponents)
- I did not bother with AH & Mysticism since that would have required doing actually some math...

[Fintourist]

Big turn coming up:



One of the suttree's chariots pillaged our cows, other one approached Dunkirk.
Suttree also moved in his stack that is visible in the screenshot.

Our unpromoted spear gets 99 % odds against the chariot on the cow tile and our 2 shock axes get 76 % odds against suttree's C1 Axes.

What this means in practise is that we have ~50 % chance to win all aforementioned 3 fights. If we do that and win those battles, we might just wait one turn and clean the rest of the units next turn as our victorius axes can take the 3rd promo and bowmen + spear can clean up if required.. However, if we e.g. lose both of those 76 % fights we have no chance to clean those units and we must hope that our defenses hold until reinforcements arrive.. If we lose 1 of those 3 fights, we are unlucky and things become a bit tricky, but I think we will manage. We just have to dodge that 12 % chance where we lose both of our axes..

I think we should attack with our shock axes in any case. I don't like the idea that suttree gets the chance to test our defenses in Jamestown with 5 attackers and we have a fair chance to stop this aggression immediately.

Yeah, this is really the ancient coinflip battle that has a huge impact on our chances in this game..

I also made a sandbox run until T116 and it all looks promising, but let's handle this issue first..

EDIT: Btw, if we win those 3 battles our workers in Jamestown should probably be unmoved so that we can clean up suttree's stack next turn regardless where he moves