[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[Coeurva]

Tempest in a fucking teapot. Disregard doom and gloom. Combat roading actually doesn't make any axe reach the gold; there is no axe on the tile that the scout/warrior occupy >_> -- apparently I just needed something to panic over. (Except the comment that I shouldn't have played / signed up, these pretty much stand, but sunk costs...)

We're perfectly fine (unless the warrior wins vs archer on a hill, but fuck it all if so).

[OT4E]

Lol man, reading this straight forward made me nervous a bit.

Are you commited to attack him with 1 axe+archers and spears? Or any chances to make charriot from overflow? It could really turn everything in our favor as I see.

I know we dont have horses but superdeath offered horses for ivory, we could use this for an instance... Ah damn barb city spoiled our trade routes... Or we could demand horses for open borders which could also work. But what I am talking about must be performed in 2-3 following turns. So nevermind.

Whats wrong with your mood? People here show much worse performance so I believe we kept our chances even after losing a city and workers. Not that I think that RFS is opportunistic enough to take chance.

[Coeurva]

RFS has to make a choice, settling pigs alone or pigs/wheat. If he goes for the latter, that's an 8fpt site touching the second ring of our core city 3t from Rungholt, whose second ring doesn't even touch his culture. I believe we'd be formally violating the No City Gifting rule if we let that stand. Yet if he grants us the wheat, I'm fine with a mutually peaceful border for the time being; it looks like shallow_thought or Charriu will attack him at some point anyway, so allowing him some prosperity is in our interest, and we'd both show each other an interest in cooperating, too. In fact I'd just offer him straight OB if he goes for the "sharing is caring" solution to the conflict. He's an ideal trading partner: difficult for us to conquer due to an insanely-stretched position afterwards, so we want to make it difficult for others to conquer him, and he's probably not an existential threat to us at this point.

First of all, if he settles pigs/wheat, we will make yet another whip in Venusberg for a second axe in 2t. This screws the city for happiness (capped at size3 afterwards ), but seizing this spot from RFS is more than worth that. It's also possible to upgrade a warrior to an axe, but that's not a light decision, as that money could go into Currency instead.

Further planning depends on whether he goes for the spear/worker bait by combat-roading (unlikely based on your read of him). In that case, we have to attack 1 axe (3xp non-AGG), 1 warrior, (1 scout) with 1 Shock axe (injured to an unknown degree), 1 Shock spear, 2 Shock warriors, 1 archer, which is "pretty good odds" (considering that we'll add the second axe soonish, too -- if we can overwhelm the remaining axe, our supply line is better and we'll win, I think); otherwise we gain 1 more spear + axe while he gains an axe, effectively. The city will be on flatland with 0% cultural defense, good for us; we have to watch whether he has enough hammers in the box to chop an archer, though (we'll be able to see his worked tiles; and hopefully he'll try to pasture first, rather than putting defense above all else). I'm not sure whether RFS has researched Archery, for that matter (I've seen no Mongol archers anywhere yet), but we should assume the worst.

The archer currently on the gold tile might step out of our borders to try and block off his forest road against potential reinforcements. The situation is tricky; we might want him at Schilda instead (we do have the three workers to chop another archer for Schilda, probably before Charriu gets any ideas or chance to act on them, but it's unclear). It's something to keep in mind, though.

If we can raze the city, I'll obviously offer peace to RFS. It's unclear whether he'll take it; but we could go for IW if he doesn't. I don't see what he'd do against AGG praetorians on the defense; the issue is delaying Currency. (We can in fact ignore Maths for now -- we should head directly for Currency.)

[OT4E]

I dont believe RFS will step back and leave us wheat. But I also have doubts that he takes your bait attacking worker. I dont read his thoughts but he must be in "wow, nice piece of food is still unclaimed" intentions rather than seeking for troubles.

If you were going to set a trap you should not put any defender.

Anyway we have an option to attack him right now with what we have or make peace and come in 10 turns with some praets. If it doesnt work right niw I dont see big deal in letting him stabilize his city and capture it later. But we can lean to the 2nd option and not make him worry too early.

The worst thing he can get is walls you know. But fortunately for us I have "ignore walls perk".

Initially Maths were for HG and enpowered chops for praets. But of course we can make praets without Maths and it can happen that we cant afford wait for Maths for both economical and militaristical reasons.

[Coeurva]

RFS-81 inadvertently double-moved us in a settler race, the scoundrel! He's sent me a PM asking if we'd like to request a reload (and correctly noted that he couldn't see the settler)...


...I think I'm fine with how this shook out, though. (Let me know if you disagree.) Incredible!

Space Love (an apt name) has vision on Venusberg's city centre, but vision won't help him against brute force, and this isn't the only city we have that can make military units. That said, I don't want to attack him in the given situation at all -- better to wait until someone else comes knocking and opportunistically poach his one.

Next turn, we're going to settle an unexpected X7 for first-ring pigs by roading the desert 1SW with our three workers. That city will be amply covered with an axe, 2 spears, warrior, and archer -- Venusberg isn't hard to reinforce by emergency whip; as per the sign, I'll also enqueue an archer next turn, then size4 builds a settler for the whale island. One of the Munsal archers (CG1) is also en route (not captured in screenshots) and will arrive in Venus T79, when we need garrison happiness again anyhow. While New X7 is a front city on flatland, I think the better food access will serve us more readily defending it in the short-term than planting on the hill instead.

(The settler is covered with two spears against any possible chariots and he doesn't have enough 1-movers in range; the main problem is defending our workers after roading, but since we'll take cultural control of "his" roads in the area, we should be able to drop almost the entire kitchen sink on that tile next turn.)



Overview shot. The axe at Munsal might go towards the southern front, or inspect the coastal barb city. (It's mostly made from older barracks overflow.) I've taken our cities off research-building duties while we're saving gold, and Canoel finally gets its granary (too much happiness to ignore the value of growth any longer). Currency takes 4t of saving gold from here, then 7t with both C and M on research -- let's go for it, I say. (Sailing can be 1ted whenever it turns out to be convenient to make a settler and galley; could be quite soon, in fact I'm wondering whether to change the granary to a settler; but there's a catch: that city is across ocean, and I'm not sure whether you actually gain trade routes across ocean even within your own borders -- need to sandbox this first. If not, settling the Arctic pre-Astro is still useful, but only as a filler village later.)



One growth spurt later (the next is due in 2t, which will grow another 3 pop). That #1 soldiers is somewhat concerning -- it could be superdeath gearing up for the barb city, or shallow_thought gearing up for something (possibly also a barb city), or someone I'm not expecting -- the power graph also shows a recent spike from Charriu. I don't think he has much to gain from hitting Schilda, though (gold would be outside Forza's third ring). I placed the archer back inside the city just in case.

Charriu's GNP looks stable (unlike Zulu and Inca who are still in the dregs), his Crop Yield is #1 or #2 right now, and he has jumped to seven cities (is the name Garula or Galura? nobody knows). MSci has been working notably more hammers than us, but they're either not going into units, or he's losing them against barbs.

[OT4E]

There is the only reason for such a settlement from RFS is that he has a settler right behind. Of course I dont mind how this turned out to resolve if we plant our city.

In any case some charriots could be useful. May be we can trade horses from MSci ? Nothing could help us better than 3 captured workers...

[Coeurva]

I'd seriously feel cheated if RFS-81 objected to us double-moving in return to plant T78 (restoring original turn order) when there may be a settler somewhere we can't see, seeing as we're now in the same position. I'd feel differently had he actually insisted on a reload here, but he left the choice to us; if he did that knowing that he'd settle pigs first as well if we declined the reload, I would absolutely not consider that fair game.

I'd send him a PM to clarify this -- we get to double-move him in return, or we reload now.

The other reason for planting that city is that it's closer to his own borders, actually. Its second ring touches that of the stone/copper city to our south-west, where we saw a spearman; he might want to road there.

We can get trade with MSci via Sailing...

[OT4E]

Well at least not only barbarians are surrounding us. I started to worry that we could share original Rome's fate.

[Coeurva]

Not to worry, the more or less ridiculous Migration Period events are disabled along with the others. Have you ever been killed by Vedic Aryans?

Got a response -- RFS-81 agrees with us double-moving our units including the settler on T78. Cheers! The guy's been dealing fairly, it seems.

That means we get a land split, just with the roles unexpectedly reversed. Strange outcome, but I'm looking to change our policy to cooperation now -- whatever his intentions, I believe the result is such that we can both live with this border. His city is stronger post-Calendar/IW, but it'll take long enough to get there, and I believe we can always take this city if that becomes more convenient, although, while he owns it, our front gets forked. But that's exactly why I'm looking to reassure him and avoid a mutually harmful build-up.

Doesn't mean I'm not still looking for an opportunity to take his 3 workers with a chariot because obviously that's too huge of a swing to pass up, but I doubt we'll get it even if we can buy horses from someone. The workers have no reason to move into tiles we could strike without warning after he finishes the farm.

[OT4E]

This could only happen in case we attacked. The only concern is that he can chop SHenge in this city. He has masonry for long. Is it still available?