GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[thestick]

Re: expansion, fair enough. Will adjust accordingly, and look into how to squeeze out another whip in Toulon. We could always two-pop whip in Toulon, since the foodhammer conversion is still better than 1-1 with the Granary.

Re: Green, understood, will discuss the tradeoffs later.

Re: Toulon, understood, will ease off the cottages and emphasize chopping/roading to new city sites and foodhammers > commerce. Was hoping to use the second worker for roading.

What if we two-pop whipped the Settler T53? We hit 50/100 on T52, so we swap to an Axe to grow on the Crabs for a turn, then whip and quickly regrow.

Re: Lodi, we currently don't work Toulon's plains hill mine. We only work it for one turn on T51, but then the Sheep finishes T52, so Toulon can work it again.

Will have to look into the timing of whipping off the copper. I'm not sure we'll have enough hammers to complete the Granary T56 while putting out the Axe, unless we want to work the Copper over the Sheep. The fundamental issue is that due to the geography, even if we go chopping immediately after finishing the Sheep, the chop won't finish until T58, and without it, I can't really see how we pull out 95 hammers in 8 turns, especially since we don't have the food for efficient whipping yet.

EDIT: I think if we want to whip a city other than Toulon, it should be Arcole. 7 food surplus, plenty of forests to chop, and lower opportunity cost of whipping since it has no improved tiles. Maybe we could skip the Granary at Lodi and just slow-build Axes at Size 3?

Will be on Discord in a couple of hours or so to hammer stuff out.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I think regarding toulon, we can still get 1 cottage in, and then send davout north to whichever city we found.

With Lodi, we can go for another worker instead of a granary.

[thestick]

Scribbled out Green City plan.

-Settler completes in Toulon T54 via two-pop whip.
-Worker completes T55 in Lodi. Doesn't look like we can squeeze that out faster without swapping it before the Axe, which I don't think we should do.
-Green City founded T56.
-Davout (Toulon) and 4th Worker (Lodi) are road to the Green spot and finish the Toulon-Lodi road, respectively. Road to Green spot is finished the turn that it's founded.
--There isn't enough time for Davout to build cottages. Luckily (?) due to the heavy whipping, Toulon can just work the Ivory and plains hill mine for a bit.

All in all, our lack of roads hurts. We need roads to practically defend Green spot, we need roads to shift Workers from Lodi to Toulon/Green spot, and not working the copper at Lodi stings.

I think that we should slowbuild the fourth Worker at Lodi. Even when whipping it, it doesn't come out fast enough to speed up Green city. Plus I don't think the 2 food to 6 hammer conversion is worth the roughly 1 food to 1.2 hammer conversion via whipping.

EDIT: Just so this doesn't end on a whiny note, I'm okay with this plan, copper notwithstanding. I do think we should consider Red city, since Green city will be a huge military and Worker sink, and I think it'll take too many Worker turns and hammers tied up in military to make productive at the moment.

Spitballing, will consider sending Davout (near Toulon) to go road to Red city. Then send the 4th Worker from Lodi to finish the Toulon-Lodi road, then cottage up Toulon. Murat (Lodi) will probably have to road a bit, since the geography east of Lodi is so hilly that moving him back west without roads seems too wasteful.

[thestick]

Scribbled it out in Red City and Green City V2 plans.

-Brain was mush. It is not worth it to whip the Worker in Lodi, it only shaves off one turn and we lose the copper. The terrain means that we can't chop it out, either.
-Red city settled T55. Road finished the turn Red City is settled, and pigs can be camped the turn after.

I like the Red City plan, for the reasons mentioned above.

[thestick]

...oops, I missed that Arcole's corn is irrigated, so it's a 6/0/0 tile.

EDIT: We whip a turn earlier, since it's not worth pausing the Settler to grow without the Crabs. T55 Green City, T54 Red City.

[thestick]

T49 Pre-Report

We founded Arcole last turn.
   

Graphs/Demos:
   
   
   
   

Well, GKC, you were right, Joao of Inca is scary. Domestically we're breakeven at 90% research, surprisingly. I suppose I'm not used to Monarch tech costs and Aggressive's 25% city maintenance modifier. You were right, we need expansion.

Also, I swapped EPs from only Gavagai to even across the board.

Incidentally, I have no idea why Gavagai's still at 2 cities. It's probably not Oracle, since we snagged Hinduism. Maybe he was going for Stonehenge?

[thestick]

T50: TBW's scout wandered out of the fog to the east. He has three cities. Gavagai also settled his third city. Swapped EPs to get demos on TBW.

Our Scout managed to beat a Barbarian Warrior wandering around in the jungles.

Everyone's surprisingly bunched up in city counts. Excluding Raskol who we haven't met yet, SD has four cities, everyone else has three. SD and Cairo are ahead of us in expansion now, but I am consoling myself with the knowledge that SD is basically pure landgrab, and Cairo's pick is great in the landgrab, not so great elsewhere. Though with the breathing room in this map, that may be enough to snowball... nothing much we can do about that at the moment besides expand, micro, don't screw up irreversably, and watch/wait.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

First encounter with a proper barb, spearman heading for the capital. We should be secure. We have good news on the diplo front- we will not be fighting a thre-front war, and gavagai seems to be aligning with us against superdeath.

[thestick]

Oh, good. He's on the other side of SD?

Where are you hoping to send Toulon's Settler? I need to start drafting up the next micro moves.

[thestick]

T52 Pre-Report

The big news, of course, is that the barbarians are coming. I was not expecting Spears to start showing up this early. Everything will hold, but this probably delays the fourth city.

If that Spear beats our Axe on a hill...

   

We have Stone and Marble to the north, choked in jungle and a defensive liability. Luckily we have IW coming to chop the jungle and hook up praets, a good all-around melee unit. Maybe we could go Masonry->Monotheism->Priesthood once our military and worker situations improve?

Will also have to rejigger the dotmap later. Probably need to go OR, since rushing Marble first ring leaves terrible dotmapping potential. Maybe. Will rethink later.

   

Toulon has enough hammers to two-pop whip the Settler, but frankly, there's no rush. If we don't, maybe we can two-pop whip a Worker or Axe after the Settler finishes? We also might consider going off the Settler for one turn to make use of the one turn we get to work the Crabs.

   

Lodi shows how extensive micro is worthless at this point. Was hoping to do a Worker in Lodi, but GKC swapped to an Axe to deal with the barbs. Think if we keep the Worker here, we should road 1E of Lodi. Then... chop and mine grassland hills?

   

Arcole is finally getting off the ground. Chop + 1 pop whip = Granary.


We'll also want to figure out how to pop borders here... OR, probably.

   

Note I took the liberty of doing the obvious shifting of unworked Crabs to Toulon and finishing the Sheep, so we look better on the demos   .

   

   

How in the world are we first in GDP even with Raskol's Stonehenge, Cairo's Creative, and SD's Terraces? They should be producing as much or more culture than our religion.

I'm really hoping that Raskol's delay in rolling the turn is due to him scrambling against a barb, or something. Also holding out hope that SD overexpanded and is going to get something eaten by the barbs.

Everyone's getting 21 point increases... I wonder what tech that is?