[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

Turn 26:

Nothing moved next to the scout, so he will heal for a while. He's 8 turns away from 100%, but I feel like a scout is valuable enough through the entire game to sacrifice some movement turns for a chance at keeping him around.

We grew to size 3 and got our first warrior. I'm taking the risky scouting plan with him:




It's debatable and not the ultra-conservative play but I'm having him loop around the lake to the SW for map info. The next warrior is available T34, and Darrell couldn't attack our capital by then, even getting through the border patrol bears. We can also rule out a really close opponent to the east who knows we exist, because their scout is dead. I don't really fear pre-40 warrior choke moves, unless maybe Mindy is ded-lurking the team.

Darrell grew to size 4. Interesting that he opted for this rather than a fast second worker or settler. This means we won't be seeing a T29 city from him after all!

A couple graphs:




We should expect his graphs to show an empire 4 turns ahead of us, which it basically does.




He's researching Bronze, probably, or in theory it could be Pottery. It's something with a prereq. He's a size point up on a river for the +1 advantage on us.

Meanwhile I have the hold on last place secured. I won't finish a tech until turn 32! So we should be able to comfortably widen the gap on the last place score. This next level metagaming will bamboozle everyone into submission. Then, wham, out of nowhere we'll have score parity with the lower middle of the field while also being 2 beakers ahead.

The interesting graph:




The bad news is that Darrell's hut tech was Wheel. The good news is that at least it wasn't Bronze, and because of the Myst start it only really gives him tech parity, not a tech advantage. Eventually our 124 gold in the bank is worth at least that much.

There are a couple of off-by-1 errors here for sure. I should learn to read this graph precisely, there's some nuances with whether it reflects the state at precisely which part of which turn turn. I know the warrior came out on turn 22 (because I see it on the map with 1 move left on turn 23), but it doesn't show until the turn 24 demos.

And he actually popped Wheel in the middle of turn 20. And he had mining on Turn 19, but it's two turns behind wheel showing. So maybe the off-by-1 is because the power graph shows the state, after techs and growths but before builds, at the end of the turn 2 turns ago? Or I'm just messing up something. I should check what the precise rules are.

Demos at size 3:




Respectable food at least.

[WilliamLP]

+1 happy in our cities is like adding an extra city early on. With all this food, happiness is our biggest problem.

I think we have to get over not having Dumbo in our lives. It's 3 tiles from Darrell's capital culture (5 from ours, would be 6 from the "fair" capital.) The chance that he settles for it with his third city (or even second) is very high, probably more than 80%. As Joao he's going to want happiness as much as we do, maybe more. So I don't think the aggressive settlement will even be an option.

The figurative golden age of Keshiks isn't going to be for a while in this game, long after the first few cities are down. This, even if we go for a Krill-style fast tech to HBR. (Speaking of which, I should study his tech paths, as the leading spokesperson for horse bullying.) We're up against someone who has a clear 4 turn advantage and is gaining because of EXP / Imp, where we're playing a civ with zero early game advantages. I also admit that after PB13 I really don't want to play a game all about axe, spear, and chariot micro on turn 50 and would like to have economic viability relative to the rest of the world on turn 100.

I'd still really like to know who the eastern player is. If it's Novice / Krill or Plako that's a really different set of considerations vs Jowy, which is different again vs MYKI. (If it's MYKI, nothing personal against him, but it would almost be ridiculous not to plan on a strategy of taking him over while holding a peaceful border with Darrell.)

[MindyMcCready]

+1 happy in our cities is like adding an extra city early on. With all this food, happiness is our biggest problem.

I think we have to get over not having Dumbo in our lives. It's 3 tiles from Darrell's capital culture (5 from ours, would be 6 from the "fair" capital.) The chance that he settles for it with his third city (or even second) is very high, probably more than 80%. As Joao he's going to want happiness as much as we do, maybe more. So I don't think the aggressive settlement will even be an option.

The figurative golden age of Keshiks isn't going to be for a while in this game, long after the first few cities are down. This, even if we go for a Krill-style fast tech to HBR. (Speaking of which, I should study his tech paths, as the leading spokesperson for horse bullying.) We're up against someone who has a clear 4 turn advantage and is gaining because of EXP / Imp, where we're playing a civ with zero early game advantages. I also admit that after PB13 I really don't want to play a game all about axe, spear, and chariot micro on turn 50 and would like to have economic viability relative to the rest of the world on turn 100.

I'd still really like to know who the eastern player is. If it's Novice / Krill or Plako that's a really different set of considerations vs Jowy, which is different again vs MYKI. (If it's MYKI, nothing personal against him, but it would almost be ridiculous not to plan on a strategy of taking him over while holding a peaceful border with Darrell.)

Disagree with writing this off immediately. As you say there's a very good chance that he flat-out beats us to that spot. So be it. But it's worth trying for. With this map there's a lot of strong city sites. Our 4-food cap is going to be so strong that it's possible that we could catch up really fast. Our second city will be very productive right away as well.

Darrabod also has better choices. 2-south of his pig he's got a plains-hill pig-sheep-cow location. The elephants location isn't that good for him. It's good for us because of the pigs and/or corn and/or sheep. We have some chance at this and it's a big prize with food + lux + river connection + military resource. But most hugely, it prevents an effective foil to our UU if we decide to go that route.

Ichabod, based on his experience, would be pretty slow to attack. That city would not step over the imaginary board, just right up to it. Darell, I don't know that much about, but I don't think that he'll itch for a fight either.

As to not wanting to play the axe-spear-chariot game,...well this is exactly the time when you can get away with this type of play. With no cats he'll simply need superior numbers and we should be able to see that coming. We plant our other border city so to not be easily forked (thinking SE of Sheep -hill + river) and we can fork defend from the corn location. If we do this we can face him head-on and that should be deterrant enough. That you're a known competent defender now will definately factor in.

Let's not waste our in-the-corner advantage this game. Please don't take this as throwing stones because I think that you're a very good player but the conditions of PB11 that made peace so profitable (uncontested jungle expansion + Kuro's screwed + selfscrewed start) aren't here. We're going to need to take some calculated risks and I think that this is a pretty resaonable one. We're not pink-dotting, although we're certainly skirting right up to the edge of a pink dot.

:LOL: All bets are off if we don't have copper though. I probably shouldn't be bugging you so early, but I want you to start thinking about the possibilities rather than just an immediate write-off. We'll definately need Archery if we go this route.

[WilliamLP]

It's a fair point to remind me not to write things off prematurely when there is more information to come, like the location of copper.

I assume that luxuries are distributed more or less evenly and conclude the ivory is intended to be "theirs". Settling for it is extremely good for them, simply because it claims happiness which is scarce here. Plus he has at least a couple of really good sites to claim it, e.g. NE or NNE of ivory to claim Corn + Wheat, if not the plains sheep too.

With IMP and a size 4 opening his third city is going to come really quickly so we may be able to see where they plant it.

It would be hard to find time to research archery. Techs are slow and there is much we need very soon (pottery, AH).

When planting a early forward city like that, we'd need units and they'd build units, and we'd need more, and so on. So even if we could hold it, there would be 20 teams out there Rexp-ing, and we could be marginally ahead in a duel, but with the rest of 2014 to look forward to being irrelevant in the big picture. See Wetbandit's attempt at going for Kuro in PB16, perhaps.

So I have to say I'm strongly prejudiced to aim to get to Keshiks in a strong economic position, and avoiding early conflict (even passive conflict) optimizes this.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 27:

Absolutely nothing happened. I rested the scout, started improving the sheep.

Power graph:




In my last post I was just confused. Power for a unit appears the turn after it is built. I was confused about it before because I saw Darrell's warrior on turn 23 having moved and it looked like it had a movement point left. But he moved first that turn, and the number of movement points remaining doesn't show for opponents.

And he popped Wheel from the hit on turn 20, but it doesn't show up until the turn 21 graphs (which you get on turn 22). This is consistent with them reflecting the beginning of the previous turn.

Also, had his second warrior and grew to size 4 last turn.

If I were really into it, I could try and reverse engineer his tile micro from the food and hammer graphs, but I'm really not that into it.

[MindyMcCready]

Questions with little thought behind them:
1. If Darrell shows up with those 2 warriors are we going to survive?
2. Do we need a second worker before the settler? Given the plains-hill wet wheat wouldn't it be better to get out that settler ASAP?
3. If we stay with the 2nd worker first does the warrior get back in time to escort the settler?

[WilliamLP]

Questions with little thought behind them:
1. If Darrell shows up with those 2 warriors are we going to survive?

I think so. He got his second warrior on turn 26. It could then attack our capital on turn 37. We get a second warrior available on turn 34, and if we saw the threat we could always interrupt the settler to build another one.

Also, the bears are our friends here. And he's Joao, he is going to need a lot of warriors for settler escort and garrison against human barbs and "scouting" neighbors. I think him rushing with 2 warriors is as close to a zero chance as it's possible to reason about.

If it were a more erratic player (say Jowy or Bacchus) it could be different. Darrell is going to think he's a better civ player than us, and in that position high risk and high reward strategies probably aren't going to be what he wants to do. (Whether or not he is better, I don't know or care.)

My preferred position is to be viewed as a noob who makes a lot of silly plays, but not one you want to attack or pink-dot on. Not the kind of player skilled enough to compete in a game like PB19.

Influencing the score to put us in dead last place for a while is partly a conscious effort to engineer this perception. (And thus, it's ok to leave us alone and try to win the longer game because we're going to fall out of it for sure, right?)

2. Do we need a second worker before the settler? Given the plains-hill wet wheat wouldn't it be better to get out that settler ASAP?

It's a very good question and I gave a lot of thought to that before you started following this thread. I think it's close, and our settler is going to be really slow for the RB meta. (It comes out EOT 38, to settle on turn 40).

Considerations:
+ The capital can work the fourth food resource on its own immediately.
+ The second worker gets the wheat improved a full three turns earlier. (It starts 1 turn closer than the first one returning from the sheep, and the two workers can both farm for 2 turns.)
+ In passing two workers create a road 1NE of the capital that allows the settler to speed up by one turn, wasting only 1 turn in transit instead of two. There wouldn't be time to do this with 1 worker without slowing down the wheat.
+ The second worker gives a head start on other roading, and means we get the 5th food faster too - we may be able to start improving the cow the turn the second city is planted.
+ It allows a fast chop in the second city, probably toward a granary.

- Settler first at size 3 finishes at EOT33 instead of 38.
- The city plant is worth quite a bit immediately. On a plains hill with an immediate river connection it's worth 3F / 2H / 3C per turn, even without improvements, which is a lot. (+2 commerce from trade routes, +1 commerce from city tile, +1 from working a river tile, -1 for maintenance.)
- And the food it makes is the best kind of food - that starts snowballing a new city.

I'm not that sure, I may be making some flawed assumption somewhere. But I feel like the extra worker turns are more of a bottleneck than the bit of extra food and commerce from settling earlier, leading to more improvements later.

First plan (the one that I'm doing with worker -> warrior -> worker -> warrior -> settler):

(I'd actually revolt on T39 there though for the one turn the settler is in transit, not T40.)

A version of the second plan (worker -> warrior -> settler):

3. If we stay with the 2nd worker first does the warrior get back in time to escort the settler?

We get another warrior T34 to pre-escort, then another one right after the settler.

We could also get the first warrior back in time. It's a call to make after we see what's to the SW. If it's a land bridge I might be keen to go for a walk. If it's all just coast maybe not, though there is value in planting a warrior somewhere to be absolutely sure no barb will ever spawn in a particular 5x5 square.

[Ceiliazul]

i like the intentionally lowest score bit.

I think you'll find the gap between you and the 19 guys looks smaller when you dont settle cramped against retep. Good Luck!

[MindyMcCready]

   

Also, the bears are our friends here.

Sounds like the right play. Bears are our friends.

[WilliamLP]

Lol. I hope that's the kind of bears we get, and not the ones in Suttree's PB11 thread.