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

[Fintourist]

Both workers finish the cotage t106 (and Hastings works it for a turn), then one does the farm from t106 to t108, the other does the dye road t108-9 and both finish the plantation t113. Except that we don't need it until t114, so one worker can move to another jungle tile t113 and road again.

That's solid!

[Old Harry]

The turn won't roll if you keep watching it. Go to bed!

[Fintourist]

Turn 105 - starters

The turn rolled, because I went to bed it seems! And sleeping was also good because we were greeted with this:



Let's make some friends and let's make some money, I thought, and accepted..



France and Isandlwana received immediately +3 commerce trade routes. Mostly_harmless does not seem to have island cities and therefore our core cities did not profit from this. It also seems that he is profiting quite well from this deal. I believe that he previously only had +1 commerce trade routes. Well, this is fine for us, because m_h should be getting open borders with anybody he wants and I'm happy that he chose us for now. +4 commerce for us is.. well, +4 commerce..

The barb decided against attacking and moved SW:



I think we want to bring Hykephalos to Hastings and kill the barb next turn when it moves to flat ground.

I also carried out the worker micro and made initial build/tile selections:



Everything looks fine, but here are the bad news:



How many units is that? 3? 4? It's not a tech.. %&¤%ing suttree



Demos. We are 2nd in power. I don't want to keep building more!

Ok, so I left our military units and scouts pretty much unmoved. We don't need and we don't want to whip units in Hastings & Jamestown this turn. Currently I still have the chop at Jamestown going into a granary and I think it should, if we need units out of Jamestown, let's whip it next turn or something..

So, if we want to react immediately I suggest whipping an axe in Dunkirk. It's painful, but not as painful as delaying granaries in Hastings and Jamestown. We are planning to whip those granaries next turn in Jamestown and T107 in Hastings.. We need to consider next turn whether we have still balls for doing that.

What is your assesment of the situation? Do we still threaten that worker? There are some minor economy-related topics that we could talk about, but unfortunately suttree is stealing the show. Balls.

[Old Harry]

I agree on the chariot and moved it to Hastings. We need to think about options - the Dunkirk axe is probably for the best, but will it reach the front in time? If not I'd whip the chariot. And work the copper.

Other things we could do:
- Move Brick or Mero to the jungle to threaten the worker
- Move BaII so m_h doesn't realise we're planting a city there soon. S or SW?
- Move Rowain E to be absolutely sure there isn't a barb in the fog

I also moved LP and Lunch, who didn't uncover anything interesting. We can finish Alphabet at 80%, it's not far from finishing at 70%. We might need wealth builds to get AH next turn...

[Fintourist]

We need to think about options - the Dunkirk axe is probably for the best, but will it reach the front in time? If not I'd whip the chariot. And work the copper.

Hmm.. A shock-axe would be more useful, because I think it has odds against any units that suttree can offer. The risk is of course that if suttree adds a huge load of units exactly this turn and the axe will be 1 turn late. On the other hand, if that attacking stack will have even 1 spear, the chariot will be just useless.. Consequently I vote for axe I think.. I mean, if we whip the city.. We probably must.. It's just really painful to whip away so good tiles: And increase our already high unit costs.. Well, by working banana+rice Dunkirk will luckily grow fairly fast at least back to size 4.

Other things we could do:
- Move Brick or Mero to the jungle to threaten the worker

Let's bring Mero to our zone defense tile E of Hastings and threaten the worker with Brick. If we manage to tie up some of suttree's axes with one non-shock bowman, that's just great and we know that we still have some time e.g. possibly to do those granary whips.

- Move BaII so m_h doesn't realise we're planting a city there soon. S or SW?

Maybe just play it conservatively and bring it closer to our workers? 1 spear is not that much.. No strong opinion here though!

I also moved LP and Lunch, who didn't uncover anything interesting. We can finish Alphabet at 80%, it's not far from finishing at 70%. We might need wealth builds to get AH next turn...

Now that we already horses, it's not that crucial whether AH comes in eot 106/7 I think. If we can get it comfortably on T106 that's nice of course, but no need to do huge sacrifices for it.

Other movement ideas:
- Let's move the warrior in Dunkirk to cows? Just in case suttree moves in/adds new forces and we need to ignore that barb. Then it might be useful to have one extra body that we can put into Hastings if needed.
- Let's move the bowman in Endor towards Dunkirk? Partly as a back-up for suttree front, partly so that it can cover the roading process to city K.

[Old Harry]

That all sounds good. Perhaps a turn into a bowman in Endor now would be wise though...

What about moving BaII to where Flugauto is and move Flug up to help at the front? We can finish the bowman in BoP and get him down to the m_h border pretty quick. Alternatively we could use Flug to menace the Banana city - if Suttree's leaving his back lines empty this might encourage him to send units back...

That graph is a bit hard to make out (last 50 turns gives more definition) but it looks like Suttree's power went up 26 000 over those three turns. He hasn't whipped again since then, so I'd guess that is as big as his army will get until the whip unhappy wears off. Very roughly he went up about 5 000, 13 000, 8 000, so that's probably
- an axe + whip
- 2 axes + pop growth
- 2 spears or 2 chariots
Someone could be providing horse to him, but two chariots isn't worrying. If those two axes were three chariots then five chariots would be worrying, but I don't think he has enough cities to produce six units in three turns?

So lets guess he adds 2 axes and 2 spears to the jungle this turn. Where does that leave us? Do we need more bowmen?

And if he adds 2 axes and 2 chariots how do we cover Hastings?

[Fintourist]

That all sounds good. Perhaps a turn into a bowman in Endor now would be wise though...

Nah, I feel pretty good about Endor. In case of total emergency the city can just dry-whip a bowman, but I think it's very unlikely.

What about moving BaII to where Flugauto is and move Flug up to help at the front? We can finish the bowman in BoP and get him down to the m_h border pretty quick. Alternatively we could use Flug to menace the Banana city - if Suttree's leaving his back lines empty this might encourage him to send units back...

This on the other hand feels a little bit gambly. We would only have 1 single spear protecting city K and Gallipoli & Cannae can't really provide any support quickly.

I'm also unsure whether flugauto can threaten suttree meaningfully. C1 bowman dies against axe if it has to move onto flat ground and the base strength is not really high enough for attacking a city.

Currently I'm still thinking that BaII should support City K and, well, in that case flugauto probably can do whatever flugauto does.. Moving him towards the battle front is not a bad option. Possibly more valuable than current sentry duties. Well, I trust your judgement on this.

So lets guess he adds 2 axes and 2 spears to the jungle this turn. Where does that leave us? Do we need more bowmen?

And if he adds 2 axes and 2 chariots how do we cover Hastings?

Thanks for the analysis! 10 units of which ~8 are axes still sounds doable..

This is still fairly speculative, but if suttree adds a big force to the tile we probably use our GG and upgrade our warrior into a shock axe and distribute rest of the XP to chosen units. Then we probably whip a bowman in Hastings and in worst case also in Jamestown. (Jamestown should whip Granary T106 and if necessary it can whip an unit again on T108. Because the city does not have barracks, we want to whip military only in the case of an emergency)

If we see multiple chariots, the situation is still pretty good. They won't get attacking odds against our bowmen if our defenders are in cities or on defensive ground. And of course we have two spears that can protect the most important tiles. Btw, if we see more than 1 spear it also makes me happy.

Only 5 turns until Hastings pops borders...

[Old Harry]

Okay, I want to move Flugauto NE this turn, giving us the option to go SW (sentry duty), SE (harass the back lines) or NE (help at the front) again next turn.

Other stuff still to do:
- whip Dunkirk axe (work banana and rice, dye or copper?)
- move BaII (north)
- move Brick to harass worker
- move Mero to jungle
- move Yossarian and Krill into Jamestown to start building fortify bonus (or will that draw the axe back to the worker?)
- move Rowain E
- move Warrior from Dunkirk to cow
- move bowman in Endor towards Dunkirk

I can finish up in an hour or so.

[Fintourist]

Everything sounds good! Except the whip in Dunkirk, but that's also a must.

About next turn:
Let's try to log in early and offer:

1. Open Borders with Ichabod
2. Open Borders, world map trade + 5 gpt (for us) with plako

We could also try to squeeze some gpt from Ichabod, but since he is also our neighbor offering the simple deal might be a good idea. Suttree gives us enough to think about currently so we might as well try to make Ichabod our friend.

Now that we have a deal with mostly_harmless, getting OB with plako & Ichabod would be enough for filling our cities with 3 commerce trade routes. Consequently, I think that if we receive other offers, our general guideline should be this: We turn them down first, discuss if we can profit from the deal somehow (e.g. gpt demands) and then re-offer. For example if we manage to get deals with Ichabod and plako, we could offer slowcheetah also something similar to what we are offering for plako.. I don't know how we should deal with dtay. Give him free trade routes as a friendly sign or try to squeeze some gpt or simply decline, because he is a real competitor in our region?

[Old Harry]

I did all that stuff and ended turn. Dunkirk is working rice + banana to allow it to grow again next turn and be size 4 again on t107. Are you volunteering to get up at 5am to catch the turn roll?

A quick check on foreign relations shows Suttree isn't getting horse from anyone we know so chariots are unlikely. YuriMack is trading gems for gold though, so I don't see them attacking any time soon.

Checking Civstats, since t92 I think Suttree has:
92 - dry-whipped 3 chariots
93 - grew 2 pop, 1-pop whipped 2 axes (or axe and settler)
94 - grew 1 pop
95 - grew 1 pop, planted city, 2-pop whipped axe
96 - grew 3 pop, 2-pop whipped axe
97 - grew 2 pop
98 - grew 2 pop, 2-pop whipped axe
99 - grew 2 pop, lost 3 axe, 2 chariot, 1 spear
100 - grew 2 pop, 2-pop whipped axe, lost chariot
101 - grew 2 pop, 2-pop whipped axe, moved 3 axes to the jungle
102 - moved 3 more axes to the jungle
103 - grew 2 pop
104 -
105 - land points?

That's ten whip unhappy spread over four cities (I'm not counting the brand new one). He has gems and gold, I'm not sure what else, so perhaps a happy cap of 6 or 7, so presumably all his cities are size 3 or 4 max now and can't really double whip any more.

My guess is that each 2-pop whipped axe overflowed to complete another, so for each of those he gets two axes, which would put him at ten axes built. Some of those may be spears. We may also have killed one or two of those early axes on t99, but we can't count on that. The point of all this analysis is

and