[Spoilers] PBEM 62 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. Mardoc and retep

[Ichabod]

Good catch regarding THH, Mardoc. I'll divert a unit or two to scout him. Hopefully THH still manages to hurt Dazed, so our job gets easier later.

[Ichabod]

The two main things we'll see the next few turns: Great Lighthouse and the Great Person.




I think odds will be something like 60% for a scientist and 40% for an engineer. Nice! I'll be happy with any of these.




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We are already number 1 in power. I finished a chariot in PPM this turn to send exploring in THHs land. I think I'll stop building much more military and start investing in buildings and wealth. Perhaps getting HBR a little earlier and start building some HAs can help with the attack to the W.

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[Mardoc]

I hope when you say 'stop building military' you mean 'slow down'? As #1 in all the demos, I wouldn't be surprised to see Commodore, at least, take a whack at us. And we're pretty spread out.

Last time I counted, we have seven coastal cities, so GLH will be worth something between 14 and 28 gpt, depending on how many routes end up being domestic and not to an island . More, once we start getting multipliers up. It'll be a very good wonder for us, and should just keep getting better with your planned cities. I have to admit, I expected it to take more than four turns!

Could we mine the hill Fleur de Geisha just picked up? Two seafood ought to be able to afford to work it, and I think it would really help get Moai and all our other infrastructure in place. Plus help the city in general. It's a bit of a reach for our workers, I know.

I want to raise the option of giving THH and/or pindicator spare strategics, again. It looks like we have a second horse near Amants and a second copper near Oolong. Neither is hooked, but we could change that in a couple turns. I'm not sure how much horse would help THH, but spears seem like they'd make a huge difference in making him hurt Dazed before he dies. Meanwhile, Pindicator might have opportunities with horse that he wouldn't without it. The main risk is that Commodore and Dazed wouldn't like it, but #1 Power means I'm not too worried about that .

Well, ok, I'm a bit worried about Commodore, because he's clearly our main rival and even with help, I don't think Pindicator could slow him much. It really depends on whether he's planning to catch us by hurting us, or by conquering someone weaker. But THH still has the ability to keep Dazed's attention, I think. Even if Dazed really doesn't like it, there's not a whole lot he can do about it.

[Ichabod]

Well, if THH doesn't have strategic resources, we could make a 5-10 HA stack and try to take a city or two from him, right? Tech HBR after Civil Service? Especially his city closer to us, it's on flat land and doesn't have any culture. It'd give us silver after a border pop...

Probably not worth it, though. If Dazed isn't making any fast advances, that's probably because THH has a lot of archers piled up in his cities. We still have cities to settle peacefully and our economy isn't that strong yet. Better to go for a decisive strike with knights, perhaps also taking Dazed's land while we are at it.

I'll think about the strategic resource gift a bit more.

[Ichabod]

I think i'll divert a worker to mine the hill you mentioned, perhaps also chopping those forests into FdG too. Even if they only give 10 hammers, that's 22 with our bonuses. That city will be really cool with the Moai!

[Mardoc]

It didn't occur to me, but you're right, there's no reason we can't maybe be vultures instead of propping him up. Dazed has done the hard part, but he doesn't have to get all the spoils. Not just cities, it might have a chance of getting us a HE unlock, too, and maybe a couple workers. Having some HA around after the war would be good for deterrence and opportunism. It would even help the turn pace .

Hard to say on Dazed's reasons to stall. Remember his army is even smaller than ours, and he's only got ~6 cities to make more with. It could be that THH has lots of archers in the cities Dazed wants to keep and not many by us. Or it could be that he was only stalled until that recent dip in Power and there just haven't been enough turns to see the next conquest - maybe his army needs to heal.

My gut says this calls for waiting for more information. You're sending a chariot to scout THH anyway. We can look at garrisons, not just geography, and decide what to do after that.

Agreed that Fleur de Geisha has a lot of potential. Glad to see it getting started fast.

[Ichabod]

I forgot to take a picture, but as THH chopped a forest on his border city, we could see inside it. An archer and warrior pair... Yup, a city ripe for the taking. But I don't want to do it. I think that, right now, making domestic investments will pay off more later. Some 5-10 units could probably take down THH, but what guarantees that Commodore and Dazed will just leave us be? I say we focus on teching and growing, and we worry about this later.

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Speaking of strategic decisions, we have a very interesting one to make.




I'm guessing we use him for Chichen Itza, right? I mean, MoM. MoM has reduced value in this map, which isn't so big and also considering we are SPI. But there's no wonder worth more than it in a long time (until Taj Mahal?), especially considering the denial value.

We stockpiled a decent amount of gold, so we can get Calendar is 2/3 turns. Unfortunately, Calendar would only gives us sugar in this moment (and bananas).




There's also the case of going for IW, so we can also get the dyes.




FInally, there's this spices:




Look at the way the land continues NE. I didn't expect that at all, I thought the peninsula would end right away. Big mistake not scouting it earlier... It's really annoying to settle this area for the spices, considering whatever sea food there's on the fog is probably already claimed by Commodore... 1W of the spices is a really weak city, but it gets the spices, whales sometime in the future and loads and loads of forests to chop whatever we need. After CS and irrigation, it could work. Ah, and it's coastal, so not such a big loss...

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But the biggest question is, how do we use the MoM? I have two ideas:

1. Get another GP, probably using Caste, fire up a GA, get an academy and some more GP. Use GA to clear the way to Guilds (perhaps plan to get a GM to upgrade some HAs to knights).

2. Go to the top of the tech tree. Get the free music GArtist. Rest is the same.

I think we go for CS after Calendar either way and then we reassess. If no one has Aesthetics yet, we race for Music. If someone already has it, we could still go for literature, but we start planning for a naturally generated GP.

Thoughts?

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[Mardoc]

Nice! I didn't really think we'd get an Engineer, so I didn't think about it too much.

I can definitely see the appeal of the MoM, but if we go that way, it pulls us away from the Guilds path. Maybe that's ok. I can see an argument that we want to develop our core a bit more before we go grabbing more land. If we had Guilds next turn, we could only make a handful of knights anyway, given how expensive they are. And more cities might not be super-useful, the way maintenance has been increasing lately.

I do want to mention that a Great Engineer will bulb Machinery, which is a pretty big chunk of the beakers between us now and Guilds - maybe a quarter of the way? It's not a first-to like Music and wonders, but if we get knights early enough, we could even hit Commodore with them. Wouldn't have to keep his cities, even, just raze a bunch and wait for concession .

Although, the more I think about that, the less I like the idea. Still need HBR, IW, Monarchy, Metal Casting, Feudalism, to actually have iron, and to find a bunch of hammers. And probably Construction. And if we go that directly with our tech, we probably won't have time for barracks and stables to make the knights as effective. Even spears can be decent against unpromoted knights without cats.

If you don't want to take the risk of pushing super-hard for knights, then I would push hard the other way instead. All the way to Music and the Great Library. We're going to want lots of Great People to make best use of the MoM, and both of those would probably be worth a GP. I wouldn't be surprised if we could run two golden ages back to back. I do think this is a good time for golden ages - lots of infra available, lots of tiles worked.

But regardless, I think the worst option is to get the MoM and not use it.

Some 5-10 units could probably take down THH, but what guarantees that Commodore and Dazed will just leave us be?

Um...the same as now? Seriously, this is a risk either way, when we're doing this well in the demos. Taking some THH cities isn't likely to make us more threatening, just remove a distraction and hope from Dazed.

We could be more secure by building more troops, or by helping THH and Pindicator build troops. I don't think there's any way we can guarantee they leave us alone. All we can do is try to make it look bad from a cost/benefit point of view.

[Ichabod]

I don't think we need to go on a crazy beeline to Guilds. I prefer going there in a reasonable pace, getting the bonuses we can. For instance, skipping Calendar to get there faster, even if we wouldn't get the MoM, doesn't make much sense to me. It's not like we have to fear THH getting Feudalism anytime soon.

The plan I'm drawing in my head is the following.

1. We get the MoM.

2. We tech CoL. Revolt to Caste (after whipping a courthouse here and there, especially in IB and OT - that's more than 10g per turn saved). Use it to generate a GP for a GA and use it to pop borders in the cities that need it.

2.a. Expand to our east, getting the 2 cities near the cows already mentioned. I'll start planning where to produce the settlers we'll need. And the workers (PPM, our main military pump, will probably get some 3/4 workers in the next 6-8 turns, now that it reached max size). We'll want them to further improve the Capital, that is ready to grow again (temple + sugar + market is another 3 sizes, at least), and to improve the new cities.

3. Fire a GA. Get CS for Bureau, get Music for free GA. Generate at least 2 GP during GA, one for an academy, the other to fire GA number 2 with the GArt from Music.

That's 18 turns of GA with the MoM, right? We can do a lot with this many turns.

4. Get to Guilds, build knights, prepare the attack on whoever seems more beneficial. Barracks (and perhaps stables, but I think we can switch to one of Vassalage or Theocracy) and military infra should be in place already.

5. Try to get as close as possible to Nationalism with the GA, looking for the Taj Mahal and a third GA. Military Tradition is a pretty nice tech too.

What do you think, Mardoc? I'm pretty sure we can get to Guilds before the 2 GAs are over and I think our advantage from there will probably be unreachable.

[Mardoc]

All in all, that sounds like a good plan. As long as we keep enough military on hand to get to the end of it undisturbed .

Edit1: The one thing I want to add, somewhere, is Construction. I think we'll need cats to deter aggression and to finish off whoever we hit with knights. Not sure where, though. Doesn't make sense to risk losing the MoM for it, for instance.

Edit: I still don't think that THH getting to Feudalism is going to be our concern. He's not going to still be around when we get to Guilds. It'll be either Dazed or Commodore who we have to worry about.