This is gonna be good: von Adlercreutz and Taotao

[von Adlercreutz]

This turn we get to see if we have copper. Aaaand:

We have and our 2nd city gets it. Nice to get it early and have another strong tile for our expansion.

Scout move:

Crabs in contested region.

DZ:s power:

Looks like 4000 increase to me. You have kept better count on stats than me, did DZ get a score increase indicating getting a tech last turn? Looks scarily like an impi to me. Then again that would be quite fast to hook up copper and actually build it, he got BW like t18.

[taotao]

This turn we get to see if we have copper. Aaaand:

We have and our 2nd city gets it. Nice to get it early and have another strong tile for our expansion.

Great! Copper in our second city without having to redo any plans really is all we should've hoped for. The downside of the location is that we seem to need to dedicate a worker very quickly to that city in order to hook up furs, improve copper etc., but I guess we'll manage if only we put some thought into it. In the succession game we started I thought it a good idea to leave the copper unhooked for quite some time, but I don't think we have that luxury here with Zulu next door.
I, however, don't believe DZ has built any impis yet though. He researched a 4t tech last turn (t22) and I don't believe he could research anything but a starting tech in that time frame. With the Wheel and Mysticism being his only remaining starting techs and the Wheel being worth 4000 soldier points I believe we can safely attribute those points to the tech.

Scout move:

Crabs in contested region.

I'm a bit ambivalent about this. We don't have crabs from before so they'd be nice to get, but it does mean that we probably can't count on just one border city? If we have to make a choice between marble and gold I believe we should go for the gold, but this sure has the potential to create some tension... And I'm still leaning towards putting up a border city towards DZ on that marble before swinging the expansion this way.
(That's definitely how I feel. However, trying to think objectively it could be that it'd be wiser to lock down a border with the imperialistic guy first and push towards impis second, so feel free to come with arguments the other way)

[taotao]

t24
Scout hugged the coast a bit and spotted DZs scout and some pigs for our "C4".



Now, speaking of C4, though being close to the cap, I'm not sure of the early strategic value or potential of that city (+ rivers make movement costly), so it might be settled much later. Perhaps even as late as city 7? (city 4 on marble, city 5 north of stone and city 6 for gold??). It'll be a long time before we need to decide on that, but just some food for thought.

Another thing that has crossed my mind lately is that we're running a tiny risk when settling city 2. On t28 we want to move the settler to the city hill, protected by our warrior. On the same turn though we're planning on having both our workers one tile outside our borders on the road NW of the city. During this single turn a 2-moving animal could theoretically be on 1 of 4 different tiles from which it could either take out our workers or settler (I think we'll have vision on 3 of those 4). Now, in none of my sims have I been close on getting problems with this. In fact, I don't think that I've seen a single wolf? (they need tundra to spawn?) but we do have a couple jungle tiles that could spawn panthers...
In theory we could rush back our scout to eliminate the problem, but then he wouldn't have time to explore the coast en route and I'm not really sure it's worth it for this minuscule risk. What do you think?

the area in question:

[von Adlercreutz]

I feel the risk is quite small. And do animals ignore all terrain costs, hills too? I haven't looked into this that much before.

Re expansion plans: DZ is closer to us, so I want to establish the border against him first. But I haven't yet decided where exactly our southern border should be, I think we should play it carefully and be flexible. See where DZ expands and see if he's building up military, if he has his hands tied on other border etc. I think we should try to get the marble at least, but settling on it and trying to steal sheep also can be too greedy and annoying. 1NE of marble is a fine spot too imo. The last thing I want is get dragged in an early war of attrition because we wanted to get one more food resource.

Gold for happiness is nice, but going for it too early will be a reach, and the spot wont give us much in terms of foodhammers. If Rem goes for it too early, there's really not too much we can do (well rush is always an option, although very risky). The land south is productive, the marble spot wont be just for marble, but a nice city by itself.

Btw what is your theme on our workers, enemy commanders? I think it would be fitting if we actually captured our workers from Russians, but now I'd use more fitting names for members of lower orders.

[taotao]

I feel the risk is quite small. And do animals ignore all terrain costs, hills too? I haven't looked into this that much before.

The wolf doesn't ignore terrain movement, but I believe the panther now starts with woodsman two, making it quicker in forest/jungle.

Re expansion plans: DZ is closer to us, so I want to establish the border against him first. But I haven't yet decided where exactly our southern border should be, I think we should play it carefully and be flexible. See where DZ expands and see if he's building up military, if he has his hands tied on other border etc. I think we should try to get the marble at least, but settling on it and trying to steal sheep also can be too greedy and annoying. 1NE of marble is a fine spot too imo. The last thing I want is get dragged in an early war of attrition because we wanted to get one more food resource.

I'm afraid you're right here. We do need to see what he goes for and what we reasonably can get away with without annoying him too much (early war is definitely not something we want with all this nice land). Actually, the main reason why I'd like a city on marble is not the sheep though, it's more that a city there would let us take our time with settling a coastal city near rice, and we probably wouldn't need to have as many defenders there if "any" attack has to pass through hill city first. In what unoptimised sims I've done so far, we'd be able to settle marble as city 4 on t55 with one axe and one spear from the start.

Gold for happiness is nice, but going for it too early will be a reach, and the spot wont give us much in terms of foodhammers. If Rem goes for it too early, there's really not too much we can do (well rush is always an option, although very risky). The land south is productive, the marble spot wont be just for marble, but a nice city by itself.

The thing with gold is that it is easier to support a city there from the north with the cows and REM is bound to settle in that direction early with the copper and everything so I believe that if we want the gold early then we really do need to push for it.
How productive the city is depends largely on the precise location we settle. If you want early food hammers we could even settle on the desert hill S-SW from gold. That would give us a BFC with gold, wet wheat, plains cow, desert-hill copper, oasis and two floodplains. Compare that with settling SW of marble which would give: marble, crabs, oasis and shared pigs.
(or NE of marble: marble, crabs, grass cows and a truly Pink dot ™ ).

Btw what is your theme on our workers, enemy commanders? I think it would be fitting if we actually captured our workers from Russians, but now I'd use more fitting names for members of lower orders.

Here I just wanted names that has something to do with the war (and preferably in alphabetical order). Instead of A and B I therefore named the first two workers Aminoff [Finnish/Swedish military man (lieutenant colonel?)] and Buxhoevden [commander-in-chief of Russian forces]. Adlercreutz would of course be a more prominent figure from the war, but I wasn't sure how you'd feel about risking your own life...

[von Adlercreutz]

The thing with gold is that it is easier to support a city there from the north with the cows and REM is bound to settle in that direction early with the copper and everything so I believe that if we want the gold early then we really do need to push for it.
How productive the city is depends largely on the precise location we settle. If you want early food hammers we could even settle on the desert hill S-SW from gold. That would give us a BFC with gold, wet wheat, plains cow, desert-hill copper, oasis and two floodplains. Compare that with settling SW of marble which would give: marble, crabs, oasis and shared pigs.
(or NE of marble: marble, crabs, grass cows and a truly Pink dot ™ ).

Btw what is your theme on our workers, enemy commanders? I think it would be fitting if we actually captured our workers from Russians, but now I'd use more fitting names for members of lower orders.

Here I just wanted names that has something to do with the war (and preferably in alphabetical order). Instead of A and B I therefore named the first two workers Aminoff [Finnish/Swedish military man (lieutenant colonel?)] and Buxhoevden [commander-in-chief of Russian forces]. Adlercreutz would of course be a more prominent figure from the war, but I wasn't sure how you'd feel about risking your own life...

Re northern border:
If we go for marble in south, I don't think we need to push for northern marble too.


Re naming: Yeah I don't want to be a worker, I want to be at least a GG if I'm going to risk my life . Although then we can think it goes like in Napoleon Total war: if Napoleon "dies" in combat, he's wounded and goes back to Paris for healing. I gave workers some random names, or we can just refer to them by alhpabetic letters.

Scout move, 2S next or check seafood, I'm leaning towards 2S:


And REM has grown to size 4.

[taotao]

Scout move, 2S next or check seafood, I'm leaning towards 2S:

What is your reason for wanting to go south?
If it's just to have a look at those last couple of fogged tiles close by, then I'd much rather check the coast for seafood/islands (and getting this area of the map thoroughly defogged for dot mapping purposes). If it's to protect our settler/worker I understand it better, but the scout will still be 1 tile from protecting the settler on the crucial turn and so it'll only be about decreasing a minimal risk, not eliminating it altogether. If it's to get past DZ and meet his other neighbour, then sure, why not, but I still think we have time to make a one turn detour to west of pigs.

Re northern border:
If we go for marble in south, I don't think we need to push for northern marble too.

That was sort of my point with the gold vs marble discussion. I'd rather push a bit to reach gold as we'll hopefully have acquired marble at an earlier stage.
The new jungled gems complicates things slightly though. if we push for gold, a reasonably likely dot map would be settling one city 1N of stone and then gold-city 1NE of copper. If REM then settles marble before we manage to, a likely "non-obtrusive" site for him would be 1NE of marble (getting crabs and grass cows). That, however, means that we wouldn't be able to get gems in the bfc of a single city (unless we found a city o n gems).

[von Adlercreutz]

Scout move, 2S next or check seafood, I'm leaning towards 2S:

What is your reason for wanting to go south?
If it's just to have a look at those last couple of fogged tiles close by, then I'd much rather check the coast for seafood/islands (and getting this area of the map thoroughly defogged for dot mapping purposes). If it's to protect our settler/worker I understand it better, but the scout will still be 1 tile from protecting the settler on the crucial turn and so it'll only be about decreasing a minimal risk, not eliminating it altogether. If it's to get past DZ and meet his other neighbour, then sure, why not, but I still think have time to make a one turn detour to west of pigs.

The last one, and who knows, there might still be unclaimed huts.

[taotao]

Played t26.
Went 2S with the scout as per your suggestion. No new resources revealed.
REM and DZ have now met. REM only put 1EP on us last turn and we might have graphs on him next turn (unless the required EP goes up).
Second chop will finish next turn, meaning the settler will also be built then.
Gaspar, playing for Krill, whipped 1 pop point this turn (second city incoming?).
So who's logging in with the strange names for Serdoa...?
So far I've seen one mid-turn point increase (that isn't a 6p-tech) and that was dtay last turn. As he was last to play I'm not certain on it being a second city though and I think we can assume that while we're not necessarily the first to a second city, we'll definitely have a competitive time all the same.

[von Adlercreutz]

If you're correct that sounds quite nice, I mean, we don't have imp or exp. Then again our capital is at s2 while Rem has s4 cap, but this way we get to work the strong resource tiles faster.