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

[Fintourist]

You wanna leave a city undefended? :P

Mmmmmaybe

[Fintourist]

Here is the new sandbox (Start of T100).

Hammers in Endor fixed. Suttree's pillaging taken into account. Have fun!

PS. I had to log in for the 100th time and do one tile switch. Managed to squeeze us one extra beaker on T100 compared to previous approach..

[TheHumanHydra]

First of all, congratulations, guys; we have won a great victory! 100% enemy casualties for 0% friendly - that's a dream. Perhaps the military disasters theme is paying off? Anyway, the nearest city is Jamestown, so I hereby name this victory the Battle of Jamestown, 400 B.C.; its name shall be appended to the roll of battle honours of each participating regiment.

...

Anyway, I don't think we want a fight right now. We've accomplished our objective and the projected force ratios aren't really that promising for an attempt at exploitation; time to consolidate our position. As for the Great General, I believe their most profitable use in general is as a super-medic, but you rarely need more than one of those, and you don't need one if you're not fighting (obviously). So if we follow my advice not to attack now, we might be tempted to settle him. However, seeing as we only just got this general, it seems unlikely we would be able to generate another before launching our own first invasion of a neighbour, in the Middle Ages, say, as I have recommended. Furthermore, a Medieval or Renaissance attack should generally be cavalry-based, and cavalry units reach the 5 XP promotion-point with just a barracks and stables (which should be built while teching Guilds); adding a settled Great General on top doesn't do much unless you're Charismatic. Even if we were to launch an infantry-based attack, because we're Aggressive, our infantry units get their second promotion with just city infrastructure (barracks) as well, so the settled Great General isn't so necessary (though it does get them their third promo, which is admittedly good for CRII or Formation). Taking all this into account, if we intend to launch an attack with cavalry no later than the Middle Ages and do not intend to do serious fighting before then, I recommend we save the Great General for a super-medic scout, chariot, or horse archer.

If you want my random devious advice that I don't think we should actually follow, we could make a Woodsman II/Morale axe, stage it on the tile 1E of Hastings and hit suttree's northernmost city out of the fog. But only if we somehow learned it was only defended by one unit that we had odds on. Yeah, not likely.

[Fintourist]

so I hereby name this victory the Battle of Jamestown, 400 B.C.; its name shall be appended to the roll of battle honours of each participating regiment.

I like that!

And I think you are correct. Hopefully, (hopefully!) we do not need to do more fighting in the near term and when the fighting again continues it should be from our initiative and with forces that could use support from a super medic.

Although barracks+settled GG would give us triple promoted melee and gunpowder units... Formation spears for example..

[Fintourist]

Suttree's chariot move suits us perfectly!



If suttree had pillaged the road where the chariot started it would have delayed re-pasturing our cows by many turns. That would have been really annoying and the chariot would have lived a turn longer. Now we can just kill it with our fresh spear from Endor and decide whether we improve cows or bananas first. I think cows, because it's a 6-foodhammer tile and can be finished 1 turn earlier.

In the south suttree covered the worker with an axe. I think we could continue being annoying and move Viqsi next turn to also threaten that worker. If suttree chops the forest, he will lose his defense bonus and our triple-promoted hero can kill the axe + worker pair unless he brings more troops or retreats.

Dancing continues..

[Fintourist]

Suggestion for our worker and city micro on T100

[TheHumanHydra]

Basically my rule of thumb is the first GG makes a super-medic, then those subsequent get settled in the HE and other high-production cities, then if the first has died, the next replaces him. I believe this will be effective in our situation: the first makes a super-medic to assist our first campaign; the next (generated by said campaign) gets settled to help promote the units that will defend the ground we've seized.

[Fintourist]

Turn 100 - part 1

After checking our border areas I took the freedom and promoted our spear to C2 (you might disagree, sorry!, but my thinking is that C2 Formation Spear at our northern border would be good in future):



99.6 % odds were enough and suttree's forces have now been erased from our country. I also performed the worker actions (they were very straightforward this turn) and assigned tiles and builds as I think they should be. Don't wonder about Cannae, the city will get +1, +1 and +3 food surplus and grow to size 8 eot 102. (Of course, working unimproved sugar instead of riverside cottage is always solid, but now I preferred cottage because sugar does not help the city to reach size 8 earlier. Size 9 is different thing though.

Apart from our victorious spearman I left our scouts and military unmoved. Here are some random comments:
- The spearman from BoP could head towards south, maybe hang around near Gallipoli and then support settling of our city K (founded T108/109)
- The bowman in Hastings could go to Endor. We are friendly with dtay, but having a spear+bowman pair in the north is probably sensible.
- Let's keep our GG still on that copper tile. Endor is currently defendless and even though it will soon have 2 defenders in it I feel safer if we have the GG in place so that we can do some kind of emergency-morale-extra movement-action if necessary

About suttree:
- I looked so fast last turn that I did not realize that there were 2 axes SE-SE of Hastings meaning that he retreated the worker. We can now decide whether we move Viqsi to support our bowman or if we retreat Brick. Of course those 2 axes are not alone especially terrifying so if they move SE of Hastings we are not petrified, but..
- Pitboss graphs come with 2 turns delay IIRC. It seems that suttree added another axe 2 turns ago. Next turn we'll see the drop..
- In light of the previous bullet, your C&D and our previous discussions, I think suttree has enough forces and whipping capability that it would be too optimistic to start an invasion with our current forces
- Let's hope that he is not in a total "my only goal is to make you lose" mode..

Other stuff:
- Ym settled their 9th and 10th cities this turn and they have a size 10 second/third city. It seems likely that they have taken control of the floodplains area between them and m_h. Their geopolitical situation also seems nice with weak neighbors suttree & m_h, and suttree is even raging into our direction.. In other words, they are doing quite well.
- Overall we know that there are at least 6 civs in this continent and it seems that we, dtay and yurimack are the competitive ones here while Jowy/TBS, m_h & suttree are behind in expansion and I would say that they are out of the race to win this. We, dtay & ym can of course also easily drop into the no-chance group if one of us has to fight an unproductive resource-draining war (most likely us now)..
- I think we need to produce couple of galleys pretty soon. It's not impossible that a barb galley finds its way to our lands and we need them for effective logistics as we hopefully settle more islands.. (not that many though as the island where France is seems pretty big and we hopefully get at least 2/3 additional cities there..)

Macro plan:
- let's get Alphabet (eot105) and improve our economy through trade route income
- let's backfill religious techs and bulb philosophy while adding couple of new cities (t106-115)
- let's spread taoism into our empire via org religion, tech MC and start whipping/producing infra (library/forge/courthouse/markets) while settling as many cities we can afford and have more or less peaceful spots (t116-150)
- let's eat m_h or suttree (or part of their lands) with knights/maces/cats (t150+) and let's try to do it economically. Our war effort should not crash our economy totally, partly maybe, but it's not ok if it means 20 turns pause for teching...

[Old Harry]

Turn 100 part two

I did wonder when I logged in why half the units had moved already... :P Happy with CII on spears though, with formation they get to 9.8 vs mounted units! Moving BaII uncovers our trade route to m_h - who has all the strategic resources but badly lacks happy. He must be stuck with a happy cap of 5 or 6 still? His latest city is very nice though with corn, fish and pigs.


Moving the spear to Gallipoli and then further south makes sense. It also allows Flugauto and BaII to extend the sentry net further. So I moved Flugauto to uncover some more jungle. Moving here next turn isn't a step too far is it?


I like moving Viqsi to the jungle with Brick, but do we give her a promotion? CII seems like a good multi-purpose idea, but I think holding on to the promo for now might be better. We should keep an eye on Suttree's axes. Our other units need some healing - if we want to follow THH's super medic plan (and I'm pretty much convinced) we can 2-turn a scout in Dunkirk, add the great general and get it to Hastings (or the jungle) to help them heal. Ceiliazul can just sit on the jungle and heal in two turns, but THH and Merovech could do with a promotion - how about CII for THH and shock for Mero? We could give one of them Medic I but if we're going to build the scout there's no point doing that.


On military distribution, I moved the bowman from Dunkirk towards Endor and he'll be joined by the victorious spear in a couple of turns. Our core is covered by warriors, in the south, between our two bowmen and the spear we should be able to settle the iron city easily enough (m_h already has iron, so he doesn't have to rush to this site). In the east we have a spear playing zone defense between Dunkirk and Hastings, a decent force in and around Jamestown and two axes and three bows on the Jungles by Hastings. If Suttree moves his axe pair north next turn should we move Viqsi and Brick to cover THH, Mero and Ceil?


A quick t100 buzz around our cities, just in case anyone is interested:

I didn't end turn as I think we need to promote THH and Mero and we could build the scout in Dunkirk. What do you think?

Edit: Gallipoli could work Banana and sugar instead of the two cottages to grow quicker?

Edit2: Would now be a good time to pillage that road? If we've now killed all Suttree's chariots it's not necessary, can we tell if he has horse?

[Fintourist]

Moving BaII uncovers our trade route to m_h - who has all the strategic resources but badly lacks happy. He must be stuck with a happy cap of 5 or 6 still? His latest city is very nice though with corn, fish and pigs.

Did you offer him open borders? It's at least +4 commerce if he accepts..
If he does not accept we could consider offering world map-to-world map + open borders if we have enough confidence that we'll get that southern spot first.

Moving the spear to Gallipoli and then further south makes sense. It also allows Flugauto and BaII to extend the sentry net further. So I moved Flugauto to uncover some more jungle. Moving here next turn isn't a step too far is it?

In my plans we finish the banana plantation on t103 and on t104 one worker moves onto the bare grassland hill and roads it t105-106. So.. that worker must be covered somehow. If we start bringing BaII back and use the spear we are probably fine and flugauto can go one step further. A barb axe or m_h unit in a bad location can of course complicate things, but we should be fine. Fingers crossed..

I like moving Viqsi to the jungle with Brick, but do we give her a promotion? CII seems like a good multi-purpose idea, but I think holding on to the promo for now might be better.

Agree!

We should keep an eye on Suttree's axes. Our other units need some healing - if we want to follow THH's super medic plan (and I'm pretty much convinced) we can 2-turn a scout in Dunkirk, add the great general and get it to Hastings (or the jungle) to help them heal.

I don't think we are in hurry to do that. Our units have more or less healed already when the gg scout arrives. Let's build the scout a bit later? I would like to get that worker out of Dunkirk pretty fast..

Ceiliazul can just sit on the jungle and heal in two turns, but THH and Merovech could do with a promotion - how about CII for THH and shock for Mero? We could give one of them Medic I but if we're going to build the scout there's no point doing that.

If we are to promote them I agree with CII and Shock, but do we have to? Suttree should be out of chariots currently.. To your later question, if someone who we haven't met gives him horses we can't see it though (Lewwyn's thread name refers to this kind of a situation in PB8) But overall I would be willing to leave our units on the jungle tile unpromoted, or maybe promote Mero (bowman) if you want to! Then we would have two bowmen to protect our axe's from chariots.

...

If Suttree moves his axe pair north next turn should we move Viqsi and Brick to cover THH, Mero and Ceil?

Very nice pic! If suttree moves north, what I doubt, we must protect Hastings too... If that happens, let's see what's the best way to shuffle our units.

A quick t100 buzz around our cities, just in case anyone is interested:

Our lurkers can count the amount of pre-calendar 5+ food resources that we have in our first 9 cities.. Jamestown with its wet corn and wet rice brings our city quality into a whole different level..

Hmm.. I think the answer is 6..

I guess we have 3 amazing 4-food resources.. though..

So 9 cities and 9 tiles with 4 or more food. (Forgetting our amazing Jamestown)

About Gallipoli's tile assignments.. (Sugar vs riverside cottage)

It does not affect the time when the city grows to size 4. IIRC Gallipoli has 11 food in the box and with current assignments it grows like this
14
17
20
26/26 (banana improved t103 supported by one of the workers currently working on sugar)

With sugar worked it looks like this:
15
19
23
29/26

So yeah, 1 food > 1 commerce, but similarly as with Cannae I'm prioritizing the cottage growth here as it does not affect the immediate growth time. I won't complain if you change that though, if you want to emphasize food! Btw, I think I want to double whip a worker out of Gallipoli at size 4.. That generates some overflow that we can use so that we can also double-whip Library in the near future.. (if we don't want to wait a bit longer for potential OR bonus..)

Edit2: Would now be a good time to pillage that road? If we've now killed all Suttree's chariots it's not necessary, can we tell if he has horse?

Maybe we should heal our units first and do it then. On the other hand, as you said, it's not that important currently, because he does not have an invading force ready and Hastings is producing culture already making it our road..

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Another thing that we need to think about is dot-mapping our next 3-5 cities. I think immediate possibilites are
a) city close to southern iron
b) desert hill in NW close to slowcheetah
c) desert hill E of Endor (no food resources, but couple of floodplains and other river tiles)

I think I want that southern spot, because that's pretty easy to organize with our existing bowmen and workers (micro is also more or less ready), but I'm not sure about our city 12 (City L). What do you think? b) or c) or some other spot?

Later options include a city SW of France, that plains hill N of Jamestown, even the little penisula N/NW of Endor and some others.. No pressure to draw anything, but I know that you are good at it..