[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Cheater Hater]

I'm really tired right now, but here's T105--I didn't play T106 since I am so tired, and I didn't want to double-move a settler if given the choice (even though there's no one near the 2 spot). There was some interesting foreign stuff though--Adrien declared on ipecac, and ipecac came to us asking for a loan (55 gold for 6 GPT). I didn't accept since we're researching CoL the next two turns (100%, then 90% along with a wealth build), and because it's a horrible rate (only netting 5 gold? That seems terrible ), but I'm wondering what your thoughts are on playing global politics like this? Is it a good thing to try to prop up a losing team (presumably ipecac is losing, since Adrien was the one that declared), or is it bad to anger the civ closer to me?

[Cheater Hater]

Last night I played both T106 and T107 to get us back on track--I meant to post this after I played, but you all deserve a new report, since I haven't done one in a long time
T107 Report:
See if you can guess what tech I got at the end of T106?




Yeah, CoL finished in-between the two turns, and I am spamming Rathuses everywhere--I started four now, and I'm starting three more next turn. In addition, I should be able to two-pop whip a bunch of them on the second turn (Aachen, Vienna, Augsburg, maybe Carib and Mainz), which should let my GNP recover (each Rathus saves 4-5 gold a piece, and that will only go up as I make more cities). I feel like I should get a Rathus everywhere eventually, even in Rillanon (maintenance there is around 5 GPT now, and I'm building more cities even before I go to war)--am I going a bit overboard with the Rathuses? It doesn't feel like it, since my power seems to be okay (and I'm planning to put the whip overflow of some of those units into more units) and my only other options are Wealth, Markets, and Settlers.

One thing that having all these Rathuses means is that I have many more Espionage points to play with--for comparison I think I have only four Courthouses total in PB18 in the moment, and I could use a lot more Espionage there
I'm not that used to playing with an espionage surplus--right now my default 4 points have been enough to get and maintain graphs with everyone, but with the new point sources should I be trying to get as much research visibility as possible (focusing on johns and Whosit first obviously) or going deep on one person (johns probably) to get city visibility and/or actually start performing some spy actions once I get Alphabet? I know it was possible to do some good things with espionage in vanilla BTS, but both Spies and spy actions have been nerfed significantly since then, right?

One thing you may notice is that I have a bunch of new cities now--Pisa was founded on T106, Luxemburg was founded on T107. Pisa is set up to be a good production city, but Luxemburg is less clear--it has a lot of food so it could be a secondary GP producer, but it also has a lot of hills so it could be production too--we'll see once I get a couple more workers there and start improving the city. Part of that depends on whether I should windmill all the hills or not--I haven't used them much so I'm not sure how I should be using them. Of course, I still have more spaces to settle--the only question is whether I start to backfill my easy spots (F1-F3), or try to expand, mostly likely (for reasons that will become clear in a bit) to my northeast:


There's three things going on here: johns settled a city which blocks off my 3 position, a new barb city popped up, and I have my new possible city very far north. I feel like my plan for the barb city is to let it be for the time being; it has 3 archers in it, and I don't think it's profitable for me to send a bunch of units all the way up there at the moment, at least until it grows to size 2. Thinking about it a bit more, my Axes should get odds since I have the innate Cover, but that requires me to pull a bunch of Axes away from city defense and far away from the rest of my empire--I should be able to do it eventually (assuming Whosit doesn't beat me to it), and it's a decent city. The city I'm more likely to get soon is either 4A or 4B--my original thought was to go for what is now 4A, but the blue circle being on 4B let me know that the Fish is in range of the city--that combined with the stone being a 2H city tile, the sheep being first ring in a city I'm not guaranteed to get, and it being a little closer makes me favor 4B a bit now--any thoughts?

Now onto foreign stuff--and it turns out Adrien declaring on ipecac was a precursor to something much more interesting for our tastes:


Well, there's the action I was waiting for--why couldn't it wait 5 turns until I had all my Rathuses built?
The dogpile has started--but johns appears to be letting his guard down, at least a little:


Obviously Sabata 2 hasn't been abandoned or anything, but there are fewer Axes in it now--it does have the 20% culture bonus though, so I probably can't attack it yet, especially since I've moved a couple units away from Vienna to guard Luxemburg. I have no idea how long this war will last--I still don't think I can attack pre-Construction unless johns moves even more units out, but we need to keep an eye on johns's power along with CivStats to see if there's any actual combat going on:



One more thing before I go--if you're reading this Caledorn now that you're back, feel free to rejoin the team--I could always appreciate more voices in the discussion (and more input makes me more likely to write reports! )

[Cheater Hater]

Of course, all the interesting stuff would happen the turn after I write my detailed report
(and seriously, why are all the basic smileys messed up? )
I don't feel the need to give a play-by-play of the whole turn right after a full report, though the pictures are here if you want a peek. Here's a rundown of the two important things:
1. We started the turn by declining two diplo deals: Adrien wanted to trade maps (I felt I had done more scouting, but this one I'm willing to re-offer if you think these type of trades are generally good to make) and johns wanted my spare ivory for 5 GPT (obviously I don't want to help a close competitor, and I certainly don't want to do so by possibly providing War Elephants, since I have no clue how close johns is to Construction).
2. The much bigger news is that johns actually moved a bunch of units out of Sabata 2! Only four units are left in the city (two Axes, two Impis), and my current force probably could take that (a rough calculation would be using two Axes to kill each opposing Axe, one Axe to kill each Impi, with an Axe and Impi left over in case of bad luck--I certainly wouldn't try this without a sim at least, since each of the Axes has +45% between fortify and culture). The one thing I'm really worried about is that my window appears to be extremely small if I am going to attack--I wouldn't attack this turn even if I was 100% sure I wanted to attack (since all the units are only 1 turn away at the moment, and could just move back into the city), and since ipecac/Dreylin made peace with Adrien this turn, that could prompt johns to make peace as well. I think my window might be one or two turns away at most if I want to take it--maybe three if I want to push my luck and think johns won't make peace. Of course, I also have to worry about everything else--that Galley would destroy my seafood for certain (and that's assuming it doesn't have any units on it, and I don't think I can make that assumption), and we also have the other two borders to defend (or possibly attack, especially near Aachen)

I hope you're still around BGN (especially now that your PB18 wars are done) so I can get some thoughts on both this, as well as the previous turn's report

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I took a minute to log in and get a feel for the situation so I can give my thoughts.



Johns increased his offer. You can decide if you want to help him. This is a tidy sum for him considering his GNP sucks. But do you want to give aid to your most aggressive neighbor? I don't have a great feel for this situation, but taking the deal could make him a more favorable neighbor, possibly reducing border tensions (and garrisons?), which could provide an opening for you at some point.

If nothing else, there's the gold. I'd be tempted to take it, the price is reasonable.



You should open borders with this guy like yesterday. This will let you get your trapped warrior out, but more importantly, you get a nice GNP boost at no cost. He's last on the scoreboard so you don't care if it helps him. This is an easy call.



No one else has open borders so he must have just teched Alphabet. He is not the GLH owner, so no cause for worry. Sign up ASAP.



GNP is in a good place. First place with no tech selected at 30% research. Build more cities. With rathauses coming online you can afford to build cities more than you can afford to miss out on the rapidly dwindling open land.



Keep an eye on this. Rather than building a fort in the far north, you should have built one here and have had a workboat ready to put onto the lake fish. Note the culture progress each turn. If he is rapidly gaining ground, as he will now that he has spread Hinduism, you will want to know how much time you have before you lose this tile. You don't actually want to lose this tile, do you?



Just confirming that Rome did not build GLH.



Nobody puts baby in a corner! Get him out of there and go explore. Also, his axe looks like it's trying to stake a claim. Don't let that happen. You can push your garrison one city further without needing more troops than you already have. Settlers are cheap for you, put a city in his face. On the same topic, put a city on the desert hill to your north, NE of the Moai city near where Johns has his isolated/reachy new city. Minimal distance from his city, but you ought to control that peninsula of land anyway. I didn't realize it had a choke point with mountains, else you could have claimed it long ago and taken all the land on the peninsula straight away. He's fighting a war somewhere now so he won't have unlimited resources to contest everything you want to do. Settle defensively on the hill. Put some cheap archers in it if you have to.

One other thing I noticed is that you haven't build many chariots at all. Have you considered HBR? I know Johns has Impi and chariots don't do anything against them but you should consider having some form of mobile response unit around. You have 20 axes. I'm not sure I've ever built that many axes in any game. It seems like a lot. I would much rather see that be 20 HAs. Rapid response defense, rapid invasion. Probably no need to divert there now, but something to keep in mind.

Don't forget to check builds, there are three cities that will need production orders since I logged in and did not give them anything to do.

[Cheater Hater]

Thanks for taking a look around--it's been a while

The johns relationship is still feeling itself out--did you read any of the stuff in my last post about possibly having an opening? Granted, I don't know if he reinforced his garrison from last turn (I'm logging in soon), but I feel like a lot of this is based on whether I think he has Construction or not--if he does it's a horrible idea to give him War Elephants, but if not that GPT will certainly make things hard for him to do so. If it was anything other than Ivory I'd do the deal in a heartbeat at 9 GPT though.

Hooray, open borders! I'm assuming it was just researched, or Adrien probably would have come to me asking for it (considering the map trade offer last turn). Assuming Adrien does accept, how much exploring should I do in his territory? I assume ipecac and/or Elum is to his west, so that gives me a lot more information (especially if I finally get contact with Elum), but I don't know the intricacies of actually using open borders for something other than trade routes.

My intent with the northern fort (other than that the workers were already there since they had done chops in the area) was that I could build a workboat in Aachen and have it net the crabs by Luxemburg--apparently I can't build a workboat in Aachen for some reason even though it is on a sea (I guess because there's no seafood in the sea?), so that's an obvious mistake
If I'm going to possibly lose that fish tile, is it a good idea to net it for johns? Vienna isn't exactly hurting for food at the moment

You think I can actually settle the city 1W of Adrien's axe and defend it well enough? Yes, Adrien and johns are distracted at the moment, but they probably won't be fighting forever. Right now I just have two Axes and one Spear to defend the city--even if I can send another Axe up there from Vienna, that still doesn't seem like that many units.

Really, I don't have that many Chariots? If I'm not planning on attacking anyone, why would I build units that suck on defense? I already feel bad that a lot of my NE defenses are Chariots, but they're better than nothing I guess. I haven't built that many Axes since Currency came in, but my tendency is still to build Axes since they're so good (with both Cover and Shock). I also don't have Archery yet (should I backfill that?), so Axes+Spears is the default city defense.

Edit: Turn played, pictures are here--I've decided to calm hostilities on the johns border, since it looks like no one else has Construction (there's less known tech bonus than Metal Casting, and we know ipecac/Dreylin has that--this also says someone has HBR though, which is worrisome).

[Cheater Hater]

T110 pictures are here, biggest thing is that the Adrien/johns war is over, and johns has moved all his units back into Adios, Sabata, including a new Chariot--hopefully my current remaining Garrison (5 Axes and a Spear, Chariot incoming next turn, Spear being built), should deter war, along with the ivory deal (which he did accept). Other than that, the biggest question is where my next Settler should be built (for the city you told me to cram in probably)--I think the plan is Augsburg this coming turn, and Bas-Tyra in two turns (after it grows). Adrien also accepted my open borders deal, so I've started exploring there, and once I get the new city built I'll be able to start getting those nice international trade routes (though I technically still have to connect Luxemburg to the network as well, that's almost ready).

[Cheater Hater]

Another busy turn, not enough for reports. T111, T112, and T113 all have pictures, and a bunch of stuff happened--I founded the Hindu shrine on T111, new city this turn, Construction will complete at turn's end. My plan is to do a report for T114; hopefully I'll get around to it

[GermanJoey]

can we get a big overview post for 1AD, including your thoughts on your neighbors and/or other important civs?

[Cheater Hater]

can we get a big overview post for 1AD, including your thoughts on your neighbors and/or other important civs?

Of course--I always take requests
That's T115, right? I'm assuming so (since it's a rounder number--though T115 isn't that round )

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, T115.