TBS: Suleiman of Maya

[The Black Sword]

He survived!



He definitely deserves his 5xp. The barb axe ignored him, so perhaps he's headed for chumchu's territory?

Chumchu settled 2 cities on the inter-turn, including the contested region. Nice play, I thought he might have been falling behind. I'm not too cut up and will follow my original plan of settling the two 'x' spots. If they can hold their second ring, it will be a very defensible border. A nice bonus is that I now have trade routes with chumchu, though I thought I would need to defog a bit more coast around the northern fjord.

[The Black Sword]

I've been trying to come up with a bit more of a long term plan.

My next city is going to rush that ivory just north of the barb holy city. It's a decent enough city anyway(at small sizes) with cows and horses too. I think if I can get Ivory, I'm ok with delaying Guilds. Str 8 Elephants should work fine defensively, Knights are only necessary for offense and I don't have a clear plan for that. (Surprisingly Gav looks like the best invasion target at the minute, but I'll need a bit more evidence before I try to invade Imp Gavagai).

If I can delay Guilds, I'll rush to Liberalism instead. Complete a Library in my capital in the next 5t, then 17t for a GS to bulb Edu. Meanwhile I get the National Epic up and start racing it in my third city, get a second GS to bulb Liberalism 5t after the first. Take nationalism and 1t the Taj Mahal in the 7 forest spot by the Eastern river(settled in about 7t).

Competition for Liberalism could be tough. GJ has access to Caste system, so could burst out the GPs quicker. Ot4E has The Great Library, so he could also get 2 GS quicker than me. However I can always throw a golden age slightly earlier with my Artist to speed things up if I see competition. It is also not too risky a plan either, Philosophy is a tech I want for my GA anyway, tech Paper to bulb Education for its own merits is not terrible for a Philosophical Civ with stone, and I don't have to invest any beakers into Liberalism, if someone beats me there I just don't bulb it.

I'm slightly sad that this plan can't incorporate an early academy somewhere. If I want an early academy, then generating a GS quick is the best play anyway and I'm doing that. So I have some time to think about the benefits of an Academy and if it's worth altering things.

Other news: Mr Cairo is doing really well, particularly for playing Darius. GJ got a great engineer and presumably will get the MoM. I guess that was his plan instead of an early Bureau bulb.

[The Black Sword]

Pictures of the above plan:



The next two cities I'm going to settle, in the south for Ivory and in the east for the Taj Mahal are labelled.

The capital works on the library, Lakamha probably focuses on spitting out a few missionaries now. Third city will whip the library once it gets OR and follow up with the National Epic. 4th city is going to be my Heroic epic I think and should probably build barracks+stables+units. Newer cities keep pushing settlers.

Barb defenses:


Wish I had marble instead of stone btw, but I think that source is a bit too far away to steal.

[The Black Sword]

This looks pretty tempting ...

Ot4E went for an Academy with his first scientist btw. Definitely a strong move with TGL, but I think it means I should be able to beat him in a race to Liberalism. The 2nd GS is probably the limiting factor and I should now be faster than him to it.

[The Black Sword]

Some nice looking city spots:



Definitely want to settle that coastal spot quickly. The other spot is quite close to Gav and he still hasn't settled his river yet:



I don't have many cities capable of producing settlers right now though. My best two cities are busy producing infra and my cities in the west need to get out a couple of Holkans next.



I think that was a real war dec, their power definitely spiked. And I don't want horse archers wheeling on me. My next city is going up here, on the iron:



There's still a few more islands to compete for too:



I'm probably going to get started on the Hanging Gardens in my capital after the forge. I think I'll need an aqueduct anyway and we have stone for the wonder. It will just have to be slowbuilt but I think that's fine. The hard part for the HG is getting enough cities that it's worth building.

[The Black Sword]

Well crap.



That's a bit more and a bit earlier than I expected.

I offered some carrot: horse +rice for horse+18gpt. Combined with my trade routes, he'll be throwing away 26gpt by declaring war on me.

I also started preparing for him to reject that deal. I'm pretty sure Mayapan will hold, I had to dry whip a War Elephant in my capital(just connected Ivory) and I can have 1 holkan, 2 archers and the WE in the city, all of which should have odds. Calakmul is vulneruble though. It can also get a pair of holkans and a pair of archers but without a hill they won't be as strong. I think I might be able to save the city by culture bombing it, but I'm not sure whether I'd do that. Still, he doesn't know how far I'm willing to go, so I showed him the artist to remind him.

Obviously I set up a bunch of whips elsewhere.

[The Black Sword]

Chumchu took the money. I set up another couple of settler whips and aim to have units behind walls when I cancel the deal.

I also met GJ, who only has 5 cities IIRC. He just revolted into Caste System but it's too early to go for Lib now I think. My own timeline is slightly delayed, the National Epic is taking a few more turns to set up than I hoped, but I'm feeling pretty confident now. Ot4E has teched Machinery so he definitely can't go that route and it feels like GJ might have too much on his hands catching up in expansion. I'm not sure how well the MoM has worked out for him, it's definitely a powerful late game wonder, but it does nothing to push the snowball and the early forge and specialists must have slowed him down.

Right now, chumchu and Mr Cairo seem to be my biggest competitors, which is not what I expected going in to this game. I need to find Mr Cairo, it might just be he has an inflated score; with wonder points from the Colossus and perhaps more techs than the others being Darius. I haven't been closely tracking civstats but I think he has a decent city count too though. And again, Darius, he's supposed to be slow. I have chumchu's graphs and I'm also pretty impressed with his food/prod output, despite building at least 7 horse archers. My default thought when a neighbour builds an early army is that you're just helping people on the other side of the map. But he'd need to build a couple of units for defense anyway, and for the extra couple he built, he managed to get 180g out of me. So in this case at least it probably worked out for him. It's my fault for not having my defenses in order.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, I met Cairo(not sure where) and he doesn't look so scary. He just finished a (super early) GA and he's up two techs on the others, one of which is Theology. That would certainly account for the high score. I'm not really sure why you'd research Theology with the AP banned too. 

City counts:

TBS: 9
Chumchu: 6
Ot4E: 6
Gav: 5
Cairo: 5
GJ: 5

[The Black Sword]

Going for a 13 city Hanging Gardens by T143:



Chumchu founded Taoism; so that's another person to pay attention to in the Liberalism race. He's also settled an island city. I want to compete with him for those islands to the west, my galley is heading over there after I found the 2nd city on the unfogged island.

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to try steal the river from Gav. I already have two planned spots that 'should' be his, but they fit into my defenses nicely and don't feel like such an obvious middle finger. 

My second city has got a lot of whipping done. 

[The Black Sword]

Some good techs to bulb:

Scientist:
Printing Press
Astro or Chemistry (Chem -> Sci Meth -> Astro also works )

Later on we have the Physic + Biology line.

Merchant:
Constitution(don't open Banking)
Banking
Economics
Corporation

Given that we won't be teching through cottages, we we'll want to get some good bulbs off. I like the idea of double bulbing constitution during the GA, while manually teching to Cuirs.