{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[Dreylin]

Please, no librarry before we have a stack. Forges has higher priority too. In cap at least we need it. Make some overflows and schedule it.

GS is for poping borders I guess.

Gotcha.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention in-thread: AI/REM are equal to us on cities, but HAKFlakes are at just 4.

Someone out there has Alpha from the import/export demographic; what are your thoughts on Open Borders with someone if they come offering?

Also, what about declaration for Scouting - either ours or someone else's? Should we declare on AI/REM to take a poke around (they would then be free to do the same)? What if HAK comes along and WB declares to pass through - should we let him or kill the WB?

Map trading seems to be a thing that's going on; we've resisted up to now, but should we take someone up on that - knowing they can trade it on again?

[OT4E]

They are so open for trading maps, this is what I dont understand. May be we should. Killing WB is also an option so is declaring war. I dont mind.

[Dreylin]

Well, we got another good event this turn:


156gold will fund us through most of Currency research ... which will be good, because we're falling behind dtay at the moment.

I'd misjudged the Granary build at 54 and forgotten the whip nerf - 9/60 = 3pop whip, which is not on the cards. Waiting a turn to run just the 2-pop.

Also, HAKFlakes declared on us and moved his WB in at Los Millares. I decided to let him know that I wasn't impressed and offered him a Peace Treaty. Unfortunately he'll be past LM before we can get a boat out to threaten him with, but maybe he'll get the point. dtay is walking his Quechua back along our borders, but next turn I'll put our new Spear next to him and see whether that changes....

[Dreylin]

Turn started with religion reaching our shores:


Hinduism is AI/REM's and they are located conveniently to our East...

I also found Breakfastland approximately where we expected.


Since we're already at war, we can explore through his territory without issue.

So I was looking at our Northern front with dtay and wondered whether we might want to shuffle locations a bit:


I was thinking about placing the "later" city sooner, but it has no food resources 1st ring. 1SW on the forest has the Sugar first ring and then the second Sugar and Wheat 2nd Ring. That would shift the "front" location 2S past the hill, but that fits better with a potential city on the "Sentries" location.

Since the adjusted Coastal location seals borders with dtay, it also blocks him from the island....

[OT4E]

I was thinking about placing the "later" city sooner, but it has no food resources 1st ring. 1SW on the forest has the Sugar first ring and then the second Sugar and Wheat 2nd Ring. That would shift the "front" location 2S past the hill, but that fits better with a potential city on the "Sentries" location.

Since the adjusted Coastal location seals borders with dtay, it also blocks him from the island....

There are 2 things you must take into considerations when you are thinking where to plant city.
1) How fast will it start being good?
2) How are you going to defend it?

When you are planting on the only forest in the area it is bad, because this first forest will save you like 10 turns of 1). About 2) you are going to plant closer to dtay, in fact in the dangerous range of chariot attack from his own land without any way of being noticed by us for at least 1 turn, right beyond the line "I'd rather keep my workers cottaging somewhere instead of razing this useless city"

Lets say we keep 2 spears in that city. It takes about 6 chars to kill it. We lose 170 hammers while he risks with 120 only. Can we keep more? May be but this city will make us keeping more and more units there without any flexibility. My city will be later, further and behind the river. This will make him to think twice before going into desperate attack. Considering landscape is very important. Dont tie your army to one place.

I marked my city as "later" right because it can be usefull only when we attack sugar to our land somehow, not any earlier.


I have an idea that we can try to raze his front city from the galley. I doubt he keeps much units there. Galley can reach it pretty quickly, may be he doesnt expect it. The chance is low though, but if we bring 2 well promoted axes, it can work. What do you think?

We can get alpha in just 5 turns, may be switch to it? And bring a spy there? No need to hurry with building settler for island since we have a lot of guys to open borders with?


About micromanagement. Focus on farming and chopping. We dont need cottages urgently.

[OT4E]

I decided to switch to Alpha, but we have some time before end of turn to rethink.

[OT4E]

Btw Hit&Key already has currency with his 4 cities. He has many trade routes :D

Some more thoughts:
- Chop near Los millaries too.
- Dont make too many mines. We will need windmills later more likely than mines.
- Right now we need to focus on growing and making basic defences. Delay building except granaries and special city plans for later, when we convert religion and use Organized civic.

[Dreylin]

Re: city placement; that all makes good sense. I was thinking about how best to keep him off the island, but it's not even a disaster if he gets there because we can take it from him. Not thinking about the big picture which I need to get better at.

Re: Alphabet; who are we planning to Open Borders with after Alphabet? Only HAK & AI/REM get us off-continent routes, but do we want to trade with one of our neighbours? Is regular routes with Commodore better than an extra internal route?

Re: Workers; I've really only been putting turns into Cottages as free Worker actions. Samarkand needs another 4fh tile option and the Mine hammers will help with building Workers. Similar thoughts at Maryland, which only has the one Hammer tile now the forests are gone.

Forest at Los Millares could go into a Lighthouse, Granary, or straight into the fleet?

[OT4E]

Re: Alphabet; who are we planning to Open Borders with after Alphabet? Only HAK & AI/REM get us off-continent routes, but do we want to trade with one of our neighbours? Is regular routes with Commodore better than an extra internal route?

Commodore, plako, REM, H&K all are good.
You get 2 coins for the route on the same continent which is same as island route or 3 for interconinental foreign. I am not sure they are actually on the other continent, but may be they are. Declaring war spoils trade routes, but it wont really affect us I think.

Forest at Los Millares could go into a Lighthouse, Granary, or straight into the fleet?

This is what we must think about. If we try to make some harm to dtay we need units quick. There are 2 chops, and 2 extra pop to slave. Fortuitously we have got rax there, we can use it also. Chopping granary is not good since we have grown it and it is working 2 mines. If we do not approve my boating plan then we'd better leave forest for some missionaries later.

[Dreylin]

I'm not sold on the boating plan; it seems that the most we could gain would be razing that one city (which is on "his side" of the halfway line), and he's got the size advantage on us. Does knocking out that city at this stage gain us anything other than a pissed-off neighbour?

If he planted something nearer the "later" spot or went for the island, I'd take that as provocation, but he's been very deliberate about staking hi claim at the border and not past it. He's grabbed the "best" territory in his area regardless of distance/overlap/etc. whereas we have so far stuck to a more compact arrangement. Our next round settles some good spots, while he will be backfilling, so we should catch up some as a result.

Anyway, back to the boating; I see there is some short-term value, but don't really see how it helps long-term.