[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[Hitru]

Looks like you have a lot of land to expand to and economy that can handle it, so building settlers and expanding asap sounds like resonable thing to do.

[El Grillo]

Mhmm, I'll be building 4 more Settlers over the next few turns via whips and chops. Should've done this earlier, in all likelihood. Military will be a bit thinner than I'd like as a result for a few turns, but at least now Olympic Forest is big enough to 2-turn 5xp units.

[El Grillo]

T110-T111:

T110 screenshots, with brief comments:

Ramk gets to keep the city he captured from GKC, and GKC and gira have been doing an impressive amount of fighting.


No comment


City #14, Repulse Bay on Hong Kong island. I suppose I should invest the Missionary and Workboat, even if I doubt Plemo leaves me in peace for 40t.

T110 screenshots, no comments:

T112:



Gira and GKC finally made peace after a remarkable amount of blood spilled. Gira razed a size-2 city of GKC's and managed to avoid losing any of his own cities, and Ramk sniped an Indian city as well. Hopefully GKC can still put up a fight when Plemo inevitably comes knocking, but this turn of events definitely favors the Dutch. I'd be very curious to see how this went so badly for GKC, who was fighting at tech parity but had more cities and pop and initiated the attack.



Superdeath made a Great Scientist back on T109 and bulbed Alphabet with it, then proceeded to spam a ton of Research builds to finish Currency, and it looks like he's continued to build Research/Wealth. So, uh, no Praetorian timing attack at all, despite bordering the weak Mjmd? Who had that line in the pregame betting?

Scouting:

Demos:

Tech turned on to Aesthetics, then back to Polytheism to unlock Literature. As for civic swap timing, the Great Person is still 12-20t out depending on how heavily I emphasize it. The plan is to tech Code of Laws and Monarchy before setting up a Golden Age to swap into HR/CS/Pacifism, ending with a swap to Slavery/Theocracy. I haven't run the numbers yet, but it should be doable.

I offered to trade my currently-useless marble to Lazteuq for his second stone so I can build Moai with it in time before the GA. Let's see if he's willing to play ball, I think it's appropriate for those of us lagging Plemo to cooperate whenever we can.

Graphs:

Note superdeath's 300 GNP spike when he was teching Currency with lots of KNB, two prereqs, and probably a bunch of Research builds (no way else for his GNP/MFG to both spike like that). It looks like he produced one round of Praetorians and then stopped, but the tech-trading screen shows that he has Construction as well. That being the case, he must be planning an attack, but I haven't found his stack yet with my scouting WC.

Lazteuq has been whipping a lot recently, and either the tracker is glitching again or two of those have been 4-pop whips. Markets from scratch? Plemo also had a 4-pop whip recently, so maybe they are just infrastructure builds. Plemo doesn't seem to have gone for Calendar as he hasn't hooked up any plantation resources yet, so maybe he went straight to Metal Casting for Triremes and Colossus? I still haven't figured out who founded Confucianism.

[El Grillo]

T113:




Mjmd has an Axe and Settler on marble island, and I'm fine co-existing peacefully with him there for the time being. I do need the marble for a bit until I can build the Epics but honestly after that he's welcome to raze or capture the city. In the long run, it's a weak filler without enough shipbuilding potential, and a forking opportunity for Plemo. For now, thanks to Olympic Forest being so close by, I can easily bring over a Shock WC or C2 Spear before he can threaten the city.

Lazteuq hooked up his own marble source so our trade didn't go through, and I re-offered silks, which I don't think he has.

Scouting:

Turns out the Confucianism founder was Mjmd, who has now founded 3 religions. I also noticed some interesting resource and gpt trades between superdeath and Mjmd and vanrober, but I couldn't make sense of them. I thought the point of the fish-for-fish and copper-for-copper trades was to decline and re-offer to indicate tacit approval, without actually letting everyone else know about them? Because from the looks of it, superdeath wants to partition Mjmd with vanrober, but Mjmd is paying superdeath a small bribe not to?

Demos:

One Settler finished this turn, two at EoT, another will be whipped in a couple of turns.

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T114:



Aesthetics is in, and this time there should be absolutely no way anyone beats me to the wonder (GNP scanning showed no one knowing Aesthetics yet). Saving gold on Code of Laws next, because we're running max specialists in Springer Mtn. for our next Great Person in 6 turns.



Still bitter about the Mausoleum, but oh well, this way we can swap straight into Caste System and Pacifism, make a Great Scientist and a Great Merchant, and either build an Academy and run a trade mission to tech to Guilds, or launch a second Golden Age into Guilds. I haven't really thought about the tradeoffs for that decision yet. Either way, at that point we swap into Vassalage/Theocracy and look to do some damage to Plemo before he can get to Astronomy or does Liberalism->Nationalism->Great Engineer for Taj or builds all the marble wonders or whatever he and his lurkers have decided is best.



Mjmd proposed a his-Fish-for-our-Crab trade which I saw no reason to decline. He also settled with just an Axe on defense, which feels a bit dodgy facing WCs, but again I have no intention of claiming all this land right away so he'll have peace for a bit. There's room for another city on the island too for the clams, but the only site I have for it (1E of copper) would really need a border pop. Perhaps this can be timed for when we run Caste System during our Golden Age.

Mjmd did decline on trading us stone while we were both in-game, so I rang up giraflorens next and offered him marble and silks. This isn't particularly time-sensitive since I just have one chop and one whip worth of overflow waiting to go into Moai, and we'll be running specialists out of Point Reyes during the Golden Age anyway, but it would be nice to just get out of the way.



We settled city #15, or rather resettled Gooch Mtn. on top of the Incan ruins. It'll get one chop into its Granary, one floodplains farms, borrow the horse pasture from Blacksand Beach at size 2 to finish the Granary, then cottages. Another Settler is ready to settle the rice/iron spot next turn, and another is on its way to the other floodplains spot in 2t. One more will be whipped out of Wildcat Canyon for down by the fish south of Sunol Wilds. The whips and new cities hurt our finances of course down to 30% break-even with no Wealth builds, which is partly why I had been putting this off, but that was probably my inexperience coloring my judgment. This wave of Settlers might temporarily put us back into the lead in city count, but Plemo is still leagues ahead in population and has been whipping recently for more islands in the Lazteuq worldwrap area by the looks of it. I could possibly produce another wave of Settlers to seriously contest Mjmd at the island and vanrober along that border, but that may finally be inviting more trouble than it's worth when I need to be focused on Plemo. Using Shwedagon Paya to fix a border doesn't make as much sense if I settle a bunch of flatland cities out in front of it.

Scouting:

We finally found one of superdeath's stacks, and it's positioned to hit Lazteuq, not Mjmd. I'm still puzzled why Lazteuq is the target and not Mjmd, who seems far weaker. Also, I haven't been trying to interpret the Power charts down to estimating unit count, but he has to have more than that right?

Demos:

Graphs:

Interesting times ahead...

[El Grillo]

Edit by way of post so I can remember to think about this: I need to do some analysis on what makes the most sense to do with the 2 (maybe 3? doubtful) Great People I can get out of the next Golden Age with Caste System and Pacifism. The strategic goal is still Guilds and war civics, I'm ruling out anything like all Great Scientists for a Liberalism attempt, I don't think we can leave Plemo alone for that long or he'll have Dikes and drafted Rifles not long after.

The two options I had in mind were:

A) Great Scientist for Academy, Great Merchant for trade mission
B) Great Scientist and Great Merchant for Golden Age

Too tired right now to actually do the math. Intuition says option A is better in the long run and gets us our tech sooner, but B makes more hammers, gives us more flexibility on civic swap timing windows if we say want to run OR for a bit for Forges and Stables, and overall front-loads more output.

[Miguelito]

Could a culture bomber be good for something?

[El Grillo]

I thought about it to launch a sneak attack against Plemo, but I'd need to do more research as to how effective it would actually be against cities like Rotterdam and Maastrict, and I don't know how exactly how much culture is in those tiles. It would definitely slow down the Guilds ETA.

[El Grillo]

T115:



Gira bulbed Theology and swapped to Christianity and OR, and we did finish Shwedagon Paya as expected.



We founded city #16, Somerset Station, the rice/iron spot 3 tiles away from our capital, at long long last. Well, better late than never. The city is named for the neighborhood where I stayed with my brother in Singapore a couple of years ago, and while you wouldn't think there's much hiking in a tiny urban city-state, you'd be... mostly correct

I'm thinking of moving my northern border city a tile south and planting it on the sugar instead of on a hill so it can't be one-rounded by Plemo 2-movers, but giving up the hill bonus does hurt. There are still decent production tiles to be worked in the copper, plains cow, and forest ivory, worth a Settler once the Workers finish their work near Huangshan Mtn.

Scouting:

Lazteuq has Catapults in position for superdeath, and I maintain that Rome waited too long for an attack to be profitable. Having scouted out the rest of the island we share with Mjmd, there's only really room for one more city, though maybe I could put one on the desert and Mjmd could share his crab. More likely he gets a city with clams first-ring before I bother to ferry over another Settler.

Demos:

Graphs:

We keep on keeping on.

[El Grillo]

T116:



Plemo got his Great Engineer as expected, but opted for an immediate Golden Age instead of rushing a wonder. I assume he's going to get a few more Great People due to all the Rep specialists, and swap into Bureaucracy by the end of it. Not looking forward to the production graphs... at least maybe he'll spread some more Buddhism for us?

Scouting:

Lazteuq has quite the welcome party prepared for any superdeath shenanigans. On the other hand, he's also working two flat grass tiles, and a whole turn has elapsed so it's not just a newly grown citizen.

Demos:

Ugh. Double average MFG and almost as far ahead of average CY. I just can't wait for him to finish Colossus on top of it all. We're in a good position to close the gap in CY, but again, ugh.

Graphs:

I forgot to set satellite view this time, whoops. I'm delaying settling the floodplains X for a turn so vanrober isn't tempted by 3 undefended Workers in neutral territory, and the whipped Settler from Wildcat Canyon is headed down to the fish. That should be the last whips until our own Golden Age.