[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[OT4E]

We'll have to Stage the Cavs 1SW of Donkeys since he can see 1W of the city. We might want to keep building Culture for a turn to keep hold of the hill 1NE?

He cant have 1NE tile because it is in our first ring. What was % of his/our culture. He got both tiles we were competing for, but I guess it is just luck explained by inner turn order.

Staging cavs yes, on 1SW or in galleons. Lets put 1 gren aboard also, if he keeps rifle on the hill, we will shot it out. But we need 4 workers to make road right to his city after we take it.

[OT4E]

Btw, some thoughts:
- we have the 3rd gems inside of our borders
- we dont need to buy SoL after chopping, we can just whip it or if we make peace with DZ we can delay it
- lets start saving gold for urgent purposes. We can use it for settlers or just rise scientific slider

[OT4E]

Since Gaspar planted on flat we can consider giving him 1 more turn.

Pros:
+ 1 less turn of whips/drafts for him

Cons:
- he can put rifle and MG together causing us more losses
- he will more likely whip that city
- 1 more turn for us to heal and or regroup after we attack
- more chances that DZ will not give us peace

So I am currently thinking that we must definitely attack if we see rifle and MG on different tiles. I see no logic in how he moved them so far.

[Dreylin]

2 possibilities I can see for the troop movements:

1) He changed his mind; was going to plant on the hill but didn't want to wait the turn and let our borders pop first so planted on flatland instead. The Rifle had either already been moved before he made the decision, or was on auto-move and finished on the Hill.

2) He always planned to plant as he did but moved the MG to the hill for greater visibility before planting and then put the Rifle there to cover an incoming Worker against a Cav raid.

Probably some combination of the two.

Regarding Culture; I didn't think to check the percentages on the tiles, but he must have made 10c in one turn. My concern is that if we shut off culture production in Donkeys, it would only take a couple of turns for him to overcome the existing culture on our first ring if he keeps building it. I think we probably need to keep Donkeys on Culture for one more turn just to be safe. OTOH, this turn a second chop can complete into its bin so we could just 1t a Theatre instead.

We have 7 Workers in the immediate vicinity and one more just the far side of Goats that can get in range this turn, so I think we're covered on that score.

This turn all we could attack with are the 2Rifle & Gren that are in the Galleon in the Fort. At the end of this turn we will have the following available:

Up to 5 Cavs to staging 1SW of Donkeys
1 more Cav that can reach the Galleon on Goats.
3 Galleons in range (from Fort or Crabs)
2 Cats, 1 Treb, 2 Grenadiers & 2 Rifles in Galleons along with the 1 Cav.

That leaves 1 space in the Galleon which could be a drafted rifle from Goats?

The second round of Cavs are 3t away, so I think we probably have to go in next turn even if he's stacked both units in the city as we don't really add anything from the extra turn except the choice to keep the Cav on land.

Agree with starting to save money for emergencies / research. Gems we can either send the Worker N of Goats back (leaving us 7 at the front) or pull one across from Guinea Pigs or up from Chameleons.

Donovan has played with 2whips and ended turn, so we can go in and take a look. I think we need to offer him Peace this turn since I think the risk that he doesn't take it outweighs potential early warning to Gaspar.

NobleHelium has logged in for the first time in a while, so not sure whether that is meaningful. If we want to have chance of being first in the turn order next turn, then we have to play first this turn as well. How important is that to us?

[OT4E]

On T286 city becomes ours, T285 is the current turn. There is no point in building culture. He needs 100+ culture to overcome our 12 culture points in the first ring tile and it will still take 1 extra turn just to gain control over that tile. So building Culture is a waste because there is litreally no way for him to steal those tiles and therefore we'd better prebuild/buy Cav or barracks for the future needs.

Agree on sending peace offer to DZ.

We need slightly less workers to attack, probably just 4 workers on T286 and just 2 on T288. But dont hurry with sending them away.

About turn order, I think that both phases suit us. Basically I'd try to move first this turn to be able to choose next whether we want to be first or not. Though we still have an option to postpone an attack to T287 if we do not like the phase we get.

[Dreylin]

OK on Culture; wasn't 100% sure how it works so was being caustious. We have 2 chops into the city, so can either complete a Barracks or be in position to 1-pop whip a unit next turn. I lean towards the unit since it will have 2xp from Theocracy, but do we need another Gren or Cav more.

Actually, we may be able to 1t a Gren in which case I'd favour that.

Plenty for the Workers to do around the new city regardless of the attack - Corn & Iron to improve and an irrigation chain for the Corn. I'll probably send the one North of Goats back up to the Gems though if we don't need more than 4 for the attack. (with any luck we'll be able to pick up a few more from him as well)

I'll play when I can and not bother too much about where it is in relation to him until next turn.

Sounds good!

[OT4E]

Not even 2 exp unfortunately, just a plain unpromoted unit. But may be it is just what we need? Not gren though, we have enough imho.

[Dreylin]

Oh yeah, D'uh.

[OT4E]

As I expected he has 3% culture on that hill, we have 4%.

Barbarian are surrounding him well, may be my net of spies was not brilliant idea.

DZ ran with explorer:


His power is growing, good time to make peace.

[Dreylin]

Well with any luck he'll start sending a unit down to that one and it'll be out of position when we attack ... either way, we should benefit from those barb cities.