[Spoilers] REM and AdrienIer's thread of football, spamming and blaming it on the mod

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Just tried to make the sim bigger. We both definitely need to zoom out a lot more on our screenshots. Really hard to look back and work out what is going on.

With letting the settler be slaved a turn later like I mentioned before, we can settle the closer plains hill t31 or the father plains hill t36.

Costs are 1 gpt for the closer one, 3 gpt for the further one.

Unless we do some tile rearranging, we will not get poly until t43ish with the further one either. I think that is definitely too late to be competitive. Unless we specifically work coast/lake tiles that cannot be improved. I think it would be possible to juggle the settler there, but the worker will build 3 roads and then be kinda stuck. He could carry on but it would be pretty much impossible to cover him and the settler. He would have to go back to the capital to chop I guess. The more I look at it the more I cannot see that as city 2 working... It is just a step too far really. We cannot get worker support there.

Perhaps best play here would be to actively harass and duel GJ with the first warrior, to slow down his micro which would then allow us to grab the further site with city 2? It is ridiculously aggressive play but I actually think it carries a better long term outcome.

[AdrienIer]

Ah I wanted to play before class today but mackoti hasn't played yet...

I guess you're right and we should plant on the first hill. What's the plan then ? Should we go with masonry after poly to get the marble in line ? If we don't get hindu I suggest chopping a barrack for culture. The problem is that if we miss hindu the WB will have nothing to do for many turns. Are we going WB-Worker after the settler build ?

Yes to send the warrior to GJ, as much as I wanted to play this as a mainly eco game if we can take all the land we can see right now we'll be in great shape.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ok, lots of screenshots and information from the turn here. First domestically:

I moved the worker to the grass hill to road next turn. We will grow to size four and get a second warrior out at the end of the turn, and move to start building the settler. We need a revolt to slavery next turn and then we are good to go. We are going to just road towards the east? If so we will want to delay the whip until turn 29, then we can get city 2 settled turn 32 on that plains hill. I will have a look at trying to maximize commerce for poly today, see if we can get it a turn sooner or so.

I also compiled an updated dotmap. The only ones I am not too convinced about are the 2 to the SW. Not urgent but just for some thought. Also the extreme south filler city may be not really worth it.




The contested ground:



Now GJ:
Moved to scout W then S like discussed. He definitely has no other land around him :/ He is gonna have to go towards us to expand then! There was no warrior in the city (sorry missed the screenshot of his cap before the move). Also of note is he was not working the hammer square of the grass hill to the NW like he was the turn earlier. It's likely I guess that he was maximising food using his 3 improved tiles.






As to where the scout should go next, we are going nuclear here so why not go back towards his food? I think next turn, going NE, and if there is no warrior in there, NE to sit on the sheep again? Then even if he gets a warrior out the turn after we can move to sit on the pig for a turn... If he does have a warrior we can go NW and escape his cap unharmed.

Speaking of a warrior out, here are the graphs.








Firstly the last one - they have met someone. I guess there was someone else to the north - my bad. However we have gained a lot of info going south to his cap! That does counterweight GJ a fair bit and will change his settling priorities that we worry he might go towards us - the land to the north is more productive and nicer looking than the land towards us.

Now the power/score. There initial starting strength is from their mining tech. The first strength rise is for their hunting tech they have used to pasture their resources. The final increase are to going to 2 pop. So I am confident they do not have a warrior out. Score wise this all checks out (the weirdness t20 is the land score bonus) except that they got a tech a couple of turns before we popped fishing. They did pop a tech, I just checked back over the civstats logs, and it is one that gives no soliders. It could be any of myst/masonry/pottery/agri... So that is about the limit of my C/D abilities. The last score increase is from pop count.

Here is an overview shot of the contested area.



The fish 2W1N of Messi makes settling for that copper interesting. It would be awkward to make it first ring without either killing the fish or settling on the corn. I do not believe that they would be planning for there atm if they do not have copper visibility. I put the tile counts to that site that we want - it is 13E 4N for us and 7W 4N for them. I think we can win a settle race for there with a second settler.

To the west there is a lion 2W of Ronaldo, do we want to take the risk moving him towards the plains hill? If we go NW then we will see if he will be hit, so I think we should plough on but not take the risk and forget moving there for the time being if we would take a hit, and move to continue on to the hut.

Moved Webb to the hill, but then realised this - that bear is likely to be still poking around...



There is the route I think he should take. But realistically I think we should spend a turn or so healing up first... No point loosing him to a bear really. God I hate barbs, I do find them a pointless addition to the multiplayer game. Especially so if you are looking for a balanced one... But I digress. We could risk it, but I would be surprised if he was not eaten.


For the cap, throughout today I will look at possibilities for the next build and tiles, especially whether it is worth working extra commerce tiles. My gut feeling is to actually overflow into a worker for a big bonus on that, we can get him out in 3 turns, and then chopping the workboat in city 2. That way we don't have a useless workboat if we miss poly, instead we have an extra worker to help road to the front tile.

Tech wise I do not think masonry will be smart play. We are going for an aggressive play here and should be trying to find either horses or iron or just sucking it up and getting archers the tile itself being tundra is fairly poor (1/2/2) and would take a long time to improve, around 8 turns I think as quarries take a long time and tundra makes it longer!



So currently, we need to decide on:
1) do we sit on GJs food if possible? If we do we slow him down more, if we don't then we could possibly get peace for long enough to get our warrior up there, and work on his assumption that we are new to pitboss and didn't realise which square we should move onto with our scout.
2) What to do with Webb ie heal or risk it?
3) Ronaldo to brave the hit or not?
4) tech after poly? I feel hunting - an hus is a good move here to try and reveal horse. I could see the utility in sailing to quickly connect our new cities, although we would want roads for troop movement anyway. Also we should swap off poly if it goes earlier. (I did also forget to check if poly went this turn sorry)
5) next build - I think the worker to chop the workboat is stronger, but could be wrong.

[AdrienIer]

I think you're right about overflowing to a worker, except that it means we won't grow back after the settler whip. Hunt-AH-maybe even HR would be super aggressive but probably worth it if we're really going all in on GJ. No pb on squatting the food but diplomatically we might be better off leaving his territory as soon as possible. I expect his second city to be 2N3W of his cap now, and chopping a barrack for culture. Webb can heal if he can still move fast enough to protect the settler later on. Not sure about Ronaldo.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

We are at 0 food anyway, so we would need 3 turns for growth, and it would be onto unimproved tiles, hence I thought a 3 turn worker was optimal. More gut feeling than vigorously simmed, but I cannot see an obvious way that could be bettered in my head to try, and I think overflowing into the work boat is risky, as it is hammers wasted if we cannot get the holy city on the plains hill tile. (the workboat chop would be in the newly founded city if any confusion.)

If we were to go HBR after AH we should stick archery in before it, as that is needed before we can build HA and is quicker plus has more early utility. Depending on where the horses lie and the stiuation in 10-15 turns we can decide, but I am weary of delay granaries too long. I would prefer if we could fit in pottery somewhere, but I don't see a great option early... perhaps after AH?

Bare in mind we have the second warrior at the end of this turn, who will be able to cover the settler if we are agreed on the closer settle location. Might be worth Webb healing on the hill he is on now as he will spawn bust all the nasty tundra/ice spawning animals.

Ronaldo can move towards the grass hill site and see if he would be hit and change his mind if needed, I think that is the best option. Odds would be about 75% on the hill I think.

I think we should avoid sitting on his food again, otherwise we might make him go more unit orientated which is worse for us as we are going to rile him :P

[AdrienIer]

Ok worker it is then. I seem to always forget that to build horse archers you need archery, which seems extremely logical but somehow hasn't made it to my memory. You're right of course, it would be archery then HBR. Or pottery first depending on whether we see spikes in GJ's power graphs or not. You're right, leaving now makes us look peaceful (and he might forgive us sooner for the pig move). I hope the horse is close by, I'd rather not have to change the dotmap to get it. The only thing I don't like with our dotmap is that the whale in the east isn't used, while with the move from optics to sailing it's actually worth something.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I often forget. HBR first can be good if you want to get stables up first, but we clearly would not have time for that and archery is useful (btw archery is needed for camel archers too, which always slips my mind, although I don't seem to get arabia too often)

Trouble is to use the whale the deer or the corn need to be settled on. I would actually settle the corn if I were GJ, because either that or 1E needs to be settled for the fish. That gains the whale and also gets copper first ring, plus it gives a tile food bonus. But I guess they wouldn't realise that without knowledge of bronze working teched first, and are likely to want to settle on the 1E tile if they are just seeing the whale. If they go there that would be incredibly helpful and really hard for them to control the bronze if we claim that other settle.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I opened up the save to find that GJ had offered 10 turns of peace, not a cease fire. I tried to have a look around and use the charts to see if he had built a warrior (I know you can use the F buttons) and accidentally closed the window... Bah. Do we want a 10 turn peace treaty btw? On my own I would have accepted. There is a small chance that he is sending the other scout to us and it will be right outside our borders at the end of 10 turns I suppose, so a cease fire might be better but it may make him take the breaks off military and go about expanding. Also of note, I think they will probably notice at some point that we are only putting EP on them and realise that we have not met anyone else.

I assume it is ok to send GJ/borsche a message that he can play without waiting for us to end the turn? I don't want to hit end turn and have the scout teleported next to a bear or something irritating like that, although we will probably need to sit and heal up before we attempt to head north to find the isles other inhabitant. We wont survive a wolf attack in this state.

In other news the lion moved to where we could make it to the plains hill without jeopardy, and I moved Webb to the hill. I kept the new warrior in the cap as he can use the road next turn so will not gain anything moving this turn.

If you agree with peace over a cease fire could you propose it in game and send GJ a message on here that he can play despite not ending our turn? I would have done it myself but I wanted another person to confirm that is ok in a non diplo game. Oh and I forgot to check religions, could you check poly hasnt gone. I revolted to slavery so tech isn't an issue this turn anyway.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I offered peace to GJ again and sent a message saying they could play out of turn. After he accepts one of use just needs to check the scout position.

[AdrienIer]

Hmmm I'm not sure how this goes with the AI diplo setting for the game. GJ hadn't played so I assumed they didn't want to do anything outside a strict turn order (with less than 10h on the clock that was possible). I think it's better to avoid doing any superfluous diplo, even as small as "you can play the turn even if we haven't played ours". So it meant moving Messi towards outside their borders, so NE NW. Here's NE :

Note that their scout is at 0.1 strength.
And then NW again with absolutely nothing there (actually I expected a FP looking through the fog instead of the grassland 2N2W of their capital) :

Turn ended, we'll see how they react.