[PB59] Lazteuq worries for the endangered lurker species

[Lazteuq]

Turn 49.
Last turn I settled the copper and fish city, Beluga. I'm thinking the 4th city might go south on that mini lake, where I can get first ring wet wheat and corn. Floodplains can wait, nothing beats those two 6-food tiles.

The granary is done in Dugong, and I'll be putting 2 chops into Vaquita's granary in the next few turns.

This expansion feels too slow. I'm below average in production, population, and land. Population and land rankings don't scare me too much, but I'm also worried about being only average on food. Hopefully my decision to get early granaries and 3 early workers will help me pull ahead in the next 20 or so turns.

Copper will be connected T54, but I'm not seeing a lot of potential for early aggression. By the way, I'm really happy about the Barrage for siege units that AGG gets now. One idea is to get Accuracy catapults and actually bombard defenses down in a reasonable time.

I found GKC's borders, and I think my warrior is scaring his scout a little:

GKC is putting a lot of EP into me, and Charriu is too. I only have graphs on Ramk right now, because we're being civilized and stopping at 44/44. Ramk has tons of hammers but little food, and 2 cities. I wonder why GKC and Charriu have both chosen to invest EP in me.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 53
Ramk has a pretty good excuse for only having 2 cities: He built the Oracle! He's not even Industrious. Impressive.

I've been wandering around GKC's copper with my warrior, just being annoying. I expect he has a second source of copper like me, so I don't think I'm disrupting him too much.

Finished AH, found horses.

Now I think I'll go for Mysticism, but I'm indecisive, so I'll just save gold for a bit.

I'm trying to use Avoid Growth in Vaquita to get the granary benefit before the city grows. Still not sure if I really understand how Avoid Growth works.

My choice to delay AH means any early chariot harassment isn't happening. Axe harassment may still be viable., but I'm more interested in just spamming settlers with granary 2pop whips.

Based on the military advisor, it looks like the world is a very long, narrow strip. Interesting!

[Lazteuq]

Turn 57
I met Mjmd in the southwest, I think that means he's one of Charriu's neighbors.

A couple barb warriors have spawned in unfortunate places to my south. I whipped up an axeman in Vaquita to make sure I can settle City 4 securely. Then city 5 will be by the cow and floodplains.
I think I'll send an axe down toward Charriu, but it will most likely arrive too late to really cause any trouble.
Mysticism will be important for monuments to make my borders expand to include horses and gold.

My warrior near GKC encountered a weird situation: GKC had already played, and he left a worker and a 0.1hp spearman just sitting there in range of my warrior. I could totally kill either one. Maybe he mistakenly thought I had already played this turn?
I set aside my confusion and attacked the worker. I feel like it would be insane not to take it, unless I had some reason to want to keep GKC friendly. I then sent him a PM that we're at war. I also sent a peace offer. Ideally he takes the offer without trying to counterattack.

Then, I started thinking greedy. I looked at GKC's power graph and noticed no major jumps in the last 5 or so turns. Unless he just finished a unit in the capitol this turn, I think he won't be able to retake the worker with any unit other than potentially his own warrior. The safe play would have been to delete the worker, but I'm not playing safe here.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 58:
I got away with being greedy! GKC took peace and now I'm escorting the captured worker back with the warrior! I'd like to keep exploring West past GKC, but escorting the worker is first priority.

City 4 will be founded in 2 turns, and then city 5 another turn after that I think. I've continued falling behind in demographics, but I expect to rapidly catch up, especially now that I have an extra worker! Beluga's granary is almost done, then I will have 3 cities that each have 2 bread loaf tiles and a granary. Settler spam time!

Considering how many highly skilled players are in this game, I feel blessed by good neighbor RNG. Overall, I'm feeling very good about this game right now.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 62:
Settled cities 4 and 5 recently:

I chose to settle Bowhead in that place because I wanted to get horses and to share tiles. The pig NW of Bowhead will soon be taken over by a city on the floodplains. While I was excited about it earlier, I now think settling the floodplains too early would be a mistake. Sure, they're great tiles, but they're slow to develop and the foods are far apart. Also I'm in no rush now that I know it's uncontested land.
I'm dead last in GNP, that's a little concerning. Maybe I've whipped too much.
I'm sending an axe down the southwest land bridge, hopefully to encounter a underdefended Charriu city, or at least to explore a little.

It would have been good to build more warriors for city garrisons before I got copper connected. Maybe I should intentionally leave Manatee disconnected from the trade network so it can spam out warriors. The loss of trade income isn't that bad...

[Lazteuq]

I don't want to metagame too much, but here are thoughts about the map: I'm assuming everyone has been given a balanced chunk of land with clearly defined boundaries. That means everyone will have roughly the same land base on T120 or so, regardless of how rapidly they expand. Feels very different from PB56! I think I've been trying to grab land more aggressively than necessary. Settling cities ASAP doesn't help nearly as much as I thought.
I think the big opportunities for expansion come later than normal. I don't think late classical/early medieval warfare is likely to be profitable. The defender has more advantage than normal here. I can't expect any of my neighbors to be easy targets. It's probably only good to attack someone if I can make it a 2v1 or if I have a tech advantage.

On the bright side, this makes me feel better about having two traits which perform well in the later game.

[Lazteuq]

I'm really puzzled by just how bad these demographics are:

I don't feel like I'm doing bad, but these rankings range from mediocre to literally the worst. This is seriously just confusing, because I feel like I'm doing fine compared to my expansion in both PB51 and 56.
Soldiers is the only demographic I'm doing above average on, I guess having 2 axes and a spear does that.
Just finished the settler for City 6 by the gold and cows. Another settler and worker will be 2pop whipped next turn. I have 5 workers.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 67
My adventurous axe encountered a warrior of Charriu:

Also Charriu declared war on Ramk. Charriu's power hasn't gone up at all in the last few turns, but it's certainly higher than Ramk's. On that note, GKC's power is keeping up with mine.

In between whips, I'm gradually building a work boat in the capitol to start exploring the eastern islands.
Vaquita will finish it's monument next turn, so I'll have gold connected around T80. I certainly could have done it earlier, but having ivory means happiness isn't that big of a problem just yet.
I'm going ahead with the plan of leaving Manatee disconnected from the trade network so it can grind out some warriors. I'll ideally 2pop whip a granary on like 29/60h, so I get 2 warriors of overflow.
My entire empire is size 2 cities:

(Capitol switched to a worker after pic was taken)
A barb axeman has appeared in an absolutely terrible spot: I saw him last turn, now he's on the labeled forest west of Bowhead
There were only 3 tiles he could spawn on, but spawn he did. Right as my axe was moving away! Now I might have to delay the cow+gold city. Assuming the barbs don't do the most annoying things possible, I'll settle cities 6 and 7 on T70.

Some absolute madman out there has a size 8 city already.

[Lazteuq]

I'm thinking about tech choices: I still want to go for Monarchy before Currency, which means I can completely skip Math and maybe even Writing! Even so, my economy is already atrocious (9bpt breakeven), and it's probably going to fall all the way to zero before it gets better. I will want a library in the capitol soon to run scientists, but I'm not sure if that's worth doing before HR+Serfdom. I really think Serfdom's commerce on farms will make a huge difference, comparable to the Currency traderoutes, but with the added benefit of HR allowing more tiles to be worked. The big loss is that I won't be able to build Wealth for a long time. I see building wealth as a last-resort option, but I guess it might be more necessary than normal, considering the high tech costs.
The other benefit of Writing aside from a capitol library would be allowing open borders, but that doesn't seem very important. I doubt GKC will give me OB anyway, and I'm sort of antagonizing Charriu now as well.
Detouring to Masonry to get Pyramids failgold might be worth it, but I'll need to get started really soon. Maybe I've already missed my chance. I wish I knew when to expect Pyramids to be built. 5 turns from now, or 25 turns? I don't have an intuitive feel for it at all.

[Lazteuq]

In case someone's wondering why I just logged in and out without ending turn: I was going to play, but then I realized I played after Charriu last turn. I didn't do anything while logged in. I want to declare war this turn, so I need to wait until he plays to avoid a double move. I hope he doesn't get too confused by this, it's just me being forgetful.