[PB74] Tarkeel and civacs Game of the Year

[Tarkeel]

Turn 62 (1520 BC)
The interesting turns continue, we'd really hoped for some plain boring turns by now. Plemo stalked after the chariot with his spear, which doesn't seem very friendly. Amica's settling party also headed NW instead of N:


This might indicate he's got his mind set on the banana/gold site that also claims our floodplains and invalidates DustyHogs, which we've already wrecked our start to secure. I'll happily concede both the golds and give him a culture war over the banana, but if he steals that city we do need some border adjustment. We're also not entirely sure what he's trying to achieve here, as that city will be relying on floodplains for food until Calendar and IronWorking comes in, but he might be that desperate for city spots already. It looks like he's also completely shafted by his start position.

Going by his power graph, that spear should be his only metal unit, so he should tread lightly. (He has 31K total, which should be 18K for tech, 3K for 6-7 pop, 4K for the spear and then another 6K which is likely 3 warriors. We go for applying some pressure, showing of the GG at his borders, while the warrior he can see steps onto defensive ground. THe other warrior sneaks up, and the southern chariot moves in as well.


Hopefully the singleton chariot will indicate that this isn't an invasion, just the threat of a raid. In the north we try to avoid plemo for now, going around the southwest instead.

[Tarkeel]

So my read of Plemo's friendliness was correct, and declared war over PM. In German. Luckily my school-German is good enough to understand what he says.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 63 (1480 BC)
It seems like boardgame titles is something of a cursed naming theme for me, as this game is officially over. Plemo declared war and has a galley threatening both Catan and Augustus; it's not unlikely he will burn both those cities.


We whip the chariot in Augustus (which luckily has 1h left on decay), since he might kill Catan first. We also need to finish hooking the Dominion copper, since Azul's will be disconnected if those cities falls.

I wonder what kind of monster start plemo has to afford 8 cities while still finding hammers to build a galley from a (non-ORG!) lighthouse city and a relatively large army. Even if we take into account the three whips that must have hidden cities, he's barely whipped at all (3 1-pop whips visible on PBspy), so this is mostly natural production. I honestly struggle to see what we could have done differently, and this is what I feared when we discovered our start was a narrow isthmus. Yes, the scout could have circled north after mapping out Dreylin's capital but there was no guarantee it would survive the trip back north though. We also had terrible luck with the barb spear appearing when it did, but that was a calculated risk resulting from the earlier rush.

This also means we need to halt the agression against Amica, and we're likely to dedicate the rest of the game to harassing plemo as much as possible. He really lucked out here and moved from food to best friend in the world. As such we decline to take the worker he offered, instead sending fish for clams and pulling everything back.

[Dreylin]

Turn 63 (1480 BC)
It seems like boardgame titles is something of a cursed naming theme for me, as this game is officially over.

Maybe a fish theme next time? 

[civac2]

I think it's you who will have to lead the fish to world domination in your next game.

[Tarkeel]

Amica had a good fishy adventure in PB60.

[Qgqqqqq]

Sorry

[Tarkeel]

Turn 64 (1440 BC)
Not only did plemo manage to burn Catan, but to add insult to injury he also settled two more cities. I've stopped keeping track of PBspy, but that puts him at double the cities of the next player (well, Pindi settled 6th just now).


His spear got pretty banged up in the fight, but won its 65.5% fight, and then promo healed twice. That means it already had some xp from either fighting barbs or barracks. Augustus is likely to fall next turn, as we can only get a single chariot there.

The saddest part in this is that while we'll feel the loss of our capital, it really wasn't that big of a loss (apart from being 20% of our cities). It had no finished infrastructure and barely had tile improvements. Carcassone was already starting to overtake it, and even CattleCorn might be better to resettle first. I'm trying not to complain too much about the map here but honestly, the game is probably ready to be called now, although I guess we'll have to slog it out to T150 at the very least. We've also been assuming that he has other neighbor in the north, but no way to prove that as he swapped EP spending onto us when we met.

Oh, you're allowed to feel schadenfreude for this Dreylin.

[Dreylin]

Where did it push your new Capital, Cod?

Oh, you're allowed to feel schadenfreude for this Dreylin.

Well maybe just a little...

[Tarkeel]

Where did it push your new Capital, Cod?

Azul/Anchovy actually... Which had just completed it's monument and is now working on a granary.