41 Vice: Commodicator/Pindore

[Commodore]

What’s the micro for the next dozen or so turns look like?

It's not as tight as I'd like, but generally, the are 3-4 foci. 

1. The capital, Burr, will be wrapping up the settler for Clinton and then tosses out a skirmisher or two as it grows to size 4. Pottery comes in in three more turns, but the granary won't be a big deal as we're neither growing nor whipping soon. Sitting at size 4 we'll be at either 12hpt or 15fhpt, so that's a swift...anything, really.
1.1 The second city, Clinton, will be growing on a granary and then probably enjoy sheep/wheat stagnation for a while while it tries to recover from out slow start by making more workers.

2. The worker (yes, a single one). Abusing the nice low-labor start, we're looking at this poor guy being out only laborer for at least another dozen turns.  He's going to road another floodplain (ew), then farm the wheat once Clinton's borders pop. I dunno man, what else are workers supposed to do?

3. NOW, THE ARMY OF MALI (one skirmisher and one warrior)...we're charging in at max speed towards Superdeath. I delayed the skirmisher's walk by a single turn to ambush Superdeath's warrior, which worked beautifully (2xp, only one hit taken, able to take cover or shock at will), now the warrior moving with the skirmisher means we can pretty confidently risk even getting pretty injured in the tiny-numbers game that is ancient archer combat. Superdeath is fine with massing archers defensively, but he seems to have gone for bronze working first. We can basically shut him down with the skirmisher/warrior pair until he gets at least three archers, and there's always the chance we'll be able to bait him into a 10-20% shot at breaking the choke which leaves his capital exposed. Hell of a situation to be in for him, he's trapped and there honestly is very very little he can do in this duel. Cre/Pro Mali when you're Spi/Exp Carthage? Yikes.

[pindicator]

Turn 27

His warrior retreated and so our scout advanced.




We aim for the Pig. I mean the HAM. Gotta go for the HAM! (A little codenames humor for those familiar with the current game.)

At end of turn, a warrior appeared in his capital. And a settler from ours.

[Commodore]

So here's a test for Mr. Death. Do you risk a 50/50 shot to clear out the scout? Or do you go across the river?

I'm curious to see the answer. Carthage is definitely on its own little bit of land. He's ridiculously boxed in.

[Krill]

So here's a test for Mr. Death. Do you risk a 50/50 shot to clear out the scout? Or do you go across the river?

Question for you: Why have you given Superdeath this shot?

[Commodore]

So here's a test for Mr. Death. Do you risk a 50/50 shot to clear out the scout? Or do you go across the river?

Question for you: Why have you given Superdeath this shot?

Because if he'd lost, I could have just taken his capital. He won, sad.

...but hey, here's a second city.

[pindicator]

That slider is gnawing at my soul

[pindicator]

Turn 034

Saw that we were last to play and figured there weren't too many moving parts for me to screw up, so I jumped in and kept things flowing.







Superdeath continues to need to push out archers, to the point where he is now the #1 power.  He has 2 archers in his capital, another archer and a warrior on the forest to the southeast, and a second warrior on the forested hill by the pig.  He whipped his capital 2 turns ago, which has led to the glut of archers.  And all of this is wonderful for us in the long run.  I did get a little paranoid and moved the warrior northeast to check if he was trying something risky like sneaking a unit + settler combo along the northern coast, but clearly that isn't going on and the warrior should move back next turn.  I think all these units want to do is just stall him, force him to build a lot of units of his own to the point where he has to dump so many crucial early-game hammers into worthless archers that he ends up hopelessly behind.

Meanwhile, we're pumping economy back home.  The settler at the capital is maybe a bit of a stretch ... I think it's meant to go to the GERRY! sign and just fatally box Superdeath in.  However, that may not be the strongest longterm play, and we are playing against 6 other teams so we shouldn't be too attached to Duel Island! no matter how charming that may feel.

Three cities and one worker is also a bit of an issue.  But one we can fix pretty fast: once Bronze Working comes in we can whip a pair of workers in our 2 cities and overflow into granaries and be fine.  I think, I haven't actually simmed anything lately.  (I've been replacing spreadsheets with a girlfriend as of late, which makes me glad I teamed up for this game instead of trying something on my own.)  But I do hope to get some simming in later tonight if I can get all of my other errands finished, because I really do want to see how the worker shortage is going to affect us and the best way to get more workers and settlers out while mixing defense and even *gasp* a wonder push, because I really want that Lighthouse with how this map is shaping up.  Btw, remember how I said the PB8 Zulu downfall was due to us trying to mix early aggression, early REXing, and early wonders?  GUESS WHAT I WANT TO DO HERE!



In the meantime I decided to emphasize pasturing the sheep over continuing the road east, as I think I am on the same wavelength with Commodore in that we won't be killing Superdeath soon so we need to emphasize development and the long game.  And that skirmisher goes west because who cares about barbarians really?

[Commodore]

Archer flood time. This is 100 hammers of archers on his part. It's going to be discouraging to see our second skirmisher.

Our own next settler finishes next turn.

[pindicator]

Comm asked me to take a look at an interesting archer rush - I'm not sure if he realized just how interesting it really was!  Because after the turn rolled, our Bronze Working finished and I logged in to see this:




If he settles in place we can still deny copper for some time.  And if he settles on top of the copper then that's a horrible city location and we really can push out ahead in development.

[Commodore]

Whoa. Okay, so he settled in place, we can definitely make that work. I took a little time looking at the power graph, though, and I noticed something even more interesting. Those four archers are ALL his archers...

...hrm. 70% odds on the capital warrior.

Also, I think we want to go for "bear hill" but Stone/Pig/Wheat is interesting.