[SPOILERS] Kaiser and Adrienier are leading Japan to a good bowl of Ramen

[Kaiser]

Perfect I will send you an email, I believe the easiest way would be if you log into my Steam account, as it is directly connected with PYDT

You are right, I updated the sheet accordingly

[Kaiser]

Turn 36 - back into Agoge



The turn starts with us finishing State workforce



Thus we switch back into Agoge to be able to build some more units soon.



This brings us back into the lead due to the 2 points for the district, I am quite sure that Bacchus did not yet finish a district but instead grew both cities on the same turn. I will confirm that on turn 38.

Suboptimal is really lagging behind without his 2nd city.



He and Rowain are around 80 military power for the moment, we are still around 40 due to the loss of our Warrior and Slinger so far. We really need to change that.



Especially as Ichabod is also building more and more military. I assume he has 2 Warriors, 2 Slingers and a Scout for the moment.



Our Scout founds an island to the N of Ichabod, as it is on the same continent it is likely that he had to research FT fully as we did with Craftsmanship.



Our Slinger takes the opportunity to check the SE sea and is sitting on a promotion.

Here is a score overview

[Kaiser]

Turn 37 - English agression incoming?



We start the turn with microing Kikyo to lower production higher food so we will hit the 4 population one turn earlier shortening our Early Empire timeline and only loosing 2 cogs for that purpose while gaining 0.8 science and 0.3 culture.




When checking the other players I realize that I can ask England not to settle to close to me, shall we do that?



Checking his trade screen reveals that he pushed a 2nd Settler for 100 cogs out and settled another spot, this is a very aggressive opening but it means that he has production superiority and it is backed by his isolated position and his choice of pantheon enabling him to produce military units at the same time.



His military strenght is at 88 with another likely Warrior finished thus he likely has 3 Warriors, 2 Slingers and a Scout at the moment, some of them slightly damaged. I am seriously concerned by this as it means he is close to having a force capable of attacking Shido.



Looking at his choosen city location, he went for the agressive spot settling next to the horse resource there. This city is actually difficult for him to defend against us as there is a lot of open terrain E of it and we control the southern access currently with Shido. This could be a hint that he goes aggressively for Shido, as All-Along will be vulnerable as lon as we possess Shido.

In case he has another horse resource at his capital, we will likely see early Horsemen attacking us and it will be a tight call if we can get to Defender of the Faith before to be able to defend Shido or even Kikyo.

Sadly I moved my Slinger at the beginning of the turn and so he is even more out of position at the moment. We definetivly need to get Archery as soon as possible and get tow Archers to Shido to defend it.

We will definetivly need at least 2 Warriors and 2 Archers near Shido as a defensive force. We can try to keep the Archers and Warriors to the E and S of Shido to keep the city unoccupied and target him from there. With a Warrior in the city itself we should be able to hold it as long as it keeps healing and we can whittle down his Warriors.

However with Horsemen this is a different situation as they outdamage our Warriors heavily we could try to go for a Spearman to have somebody on equal footing with them but they are slow to produce and I am not sure that their bonus against mounted units works when they are garriosoned in a city. I will confirm that!

Let us check his current expected and known techs, he definetivly has Mining and AH for 25 science each, in order to get to Horseback riding he needs 50 for Archery and 120 for Horsebackriding. With Eurekas he can lower this cost to 25 and 60 respectively and we already know that he has the Eureka for Horesback riding.

So a total of 135 Science if he was beelining Horseback riding from the start is necessary to get that technology we so far have accumulated ~180 science so far so it is possible with a large margin that he already has the technology.

We can get Archers in 5 turns from now and think we should hold back the gold for the moment to upgrade our Slingers to Archers for 30 gold each. It is very likely that Genova will take the horse tile soon when Ichabod manages its quest for the 2nd envoy but we just do not have the gold at the moment to upgrade and buy that tile at Shido.



Here is an overview of Ichabods current lands, hopefully he is just trying to grab an important resource with the horses and does not have a 2nd source available at his capital.

As you can see our Scout is next to the barb camp he is currently attacking, we can try to steal it from him and I think we should. We would deny him 50 gold and an important Inspiration (flanking will be uncovered passivley when researching Military Tradition. We ourselves are currently researching it and could finish it soon as well if there is a need for it.

He will definetivly go after us earlier than later, we just need to delay him as long as possible to get Defender of the Faith and some military up to hold Shido and C4.

What do you think?

With the 50 gold we could buy the horse tile at Shido giving it something good to work and securing this important tile for us while having enough gold to upgrade 2 Slingers to Archers.

[AdrienIer]

Trying to steal the barb camp is good, but that comes down to luck on how much health the spearman loses. I agree that archery becomes a priority, along with getting units out.

Sending the "don't settle near us" is probably a good idea. He'll know we're paying attention.

[Kaiser]

I was thinking along these lines, I will prepare for a Slinger in Kikyo next turn and the question is if we want Shido to switch as well to a military unit?

If I do not get around to play the turn you can go ahead as you see fit and think it will be best, you have the spreadsheet with the actual short term planning at hand. I changed the techs and everything else in the spreasheet accordingly and also updated the gold amount but there seems to be an issue with my gold formula as it is a bit off the value we are at. Be careful when considering that value I will have a look at it next week.

I will send you the login details for PYDT later per email. The last time I can play is tomorrow morning I believe as I need to head out directly after work, I will post here shortly in case I catch the next turn or don't. Please remember switching Kikyo off the unfarmed Pwheat back to the PHF after the next turn, as only work it now to get the EE inspiration earlier.

[Kaiser]

I came around playing the turn this morning. All in all I have to compliment Ichabod for his strategy so far, I do not know if he planned this setup from the beginning but choosing GotF and then pushing out 2 settlers and maybe even more to aggressively settle your neighbor is a strong opening, especially on a Pangea map with a corner position where his only direction to use these cheap troops is against us.

I hope we will be able to land the first Religion before he attacks us as that should roughly equalize his current production advantage for military units.

He can now use 3 citites to pour out units but if we manage to hold onto Shido this would probably set him to far back economically to catch up with the others. I believe he will use a mixed approach with another Settler from Guardian and units from the other 2 cities and could try to go for another forward settle on our C4 spot. We need to prevent that from happening and thus need to keep a look on units passing to the N of Shido.

A unit placed on the hill there should be a good idea for multiple reasons and we should likely go for that spot with our next settler.
Let us dive into the turn, thank you for taking over for the weekend Adrienier

Turn 38 - Operation Three Archer Deterrent (TAD)



As discussed we start the turn by telling Ichabod that he is settling to close, if he settles another city close to us we might get a Casus Belli against him. It also shows him that we are paying attention and are preparing for whatever his planning to do. Hopefully this will get him to slow down his aggession towards us and we will be able to reach DotF on time.



I also saw that Rowain has good relations to Ichabod meaning they probably traded with each other and likely in Ichabods direction as he has the smiley face but Rowain does not have it for the moment.
Rowain has 50 gold fewer than last turn and Ichabod also misses 10 gold so I believe he got a 50 gold loan from Rowain and invested that into a tile buy, which I cannot locate for the moment.

Maybe this worked the other way around, you can check next turn if Rowain bought a horse tile at his city we can see the border of.

He likely had to offer 2 gold/t for 30 turns to Rowain to get that loan and this I sadly did not check during my turn but you could check next turn.All in all this is not too good news as Ichabod being supported from the current Banker of this game, Rowain, will mean that it will only get harder for us.



Scorewise Ichabod gained a small advantage in comparison by his opening, as we are about to finish another tech and civic next turn, we should take the lead position again.

His military is still at 88 so no new units finished last turn. After playing a test game I assume that he either has 3 Warriors and 2 Slinger + Scout or 4 Warriors and 1 Slinger + Scout for the moment. Maybe there is even an Archer in there reducing his number of Warriors further?

4 Warriors could actually threaten Shido at the moment if they all go for it even with a Warrior inside. Luckily at least one of them is 7 turns away from it at the barbcamp. We need to have a defensive force capable of keeping Shido unoccupied. My feeling is that 2 Archers should be sufficient and 3 quite safe for defending the city as long as we can keep it unoccupied.

The forests to the W of Shido are not helping at the moment as they block shooting lanes and provide cover to Ichabods troops. We need to get rid of them at some point, but do not have time to build a Builder for the moment so we have to live with them.
The horse tile would benefit us with another turn of forewarning (I marked the given sight in purple) on top of a good tile for Shido. However we will need 60 or 90 gold for Archer upgrades and are currently at 60 gold, so I think we can only buy it if we are able to clear at least one barbarian encampment for its 50 gold.


The Defense of Shido
I marked a potential positioning strategy utilizing the River and the hill in order to defend Shido. I believe necessary are the red Archer and the blue Archer to keep the two green marked tiles safe as long as possible. The yellow Archer would be a huge improvement of safety on that front.

The blue Archer would control the N and see any approach from All Along early enough to respond accordingly, I marked his field of fire in dark blue and his expected sight in light blue, but I am unsure about the light blue part. The good thing, if my light blue sight assumption is correct, is that we would have sight on All Along and the Horse tile, thus knowing when he will have access to that horse resource.

The red Archer controls the forests to the W and the southern tiles beneath it. It has a quite strong defensive position due to the river and Ichabod likely coming from the W. Due to Shido being adjacent it could fastly shift into Shido to defend any attack from the N as well.

The yellow Archer would provide firepower to the S and control the southern access better as well as support the main attack direction covered by the red Archer. It also has a good withdrawal possibily by going to the E and further covering the two green tiles and its original position. All units attacking it would have to take at least 2 shots from this Archer and the red Archer while they move backwards.

All positions defensive boni have been marked in the map as tiles individual defensive bonus from the expected direction of attack, so a hill for the blue Archer and a hille and a river crossing bonus for the other two.


TAD calculations
Please note that all above numbers are estimated averages. Each Archer has a base defensive strength of 15 and likely have time to get a shot into any attacking Warrior before he can attack us. For the sake of security and easier calculation, yes I am lazy right now, let us assume full health Warriors attack our Archers on their positions.

Warrior vs Archer on hill / hill + river
20 vs 15 +3 / +8 = ~30 damage / ~25 damage

Warrior with Battlecry vs Archer on hill / hill + river
20 +7 vs 15 +3 / +8= ~42 damage / ~ 35 damage

We will hit PP on turn 48 at least a couple turns before Ichabod will manage to do so, so we could pick Oligarchy to further reduce the damage on our Archers.

Warrior vs Archer on hill+ Oligarchy / hill + river +Oligarchy
20 vs 15 +7 / +12 = ~ 27 damage / 22 damage

Warrior with Battlecry vs Archer on hill+ Oligarchy / hill + river +Oligarchy
20 +7 vs 15 +7 / +12 = ~ 37 damage / 30 damage



On the other hand our offensive will look the following, please note that we are practially guaranteed to get first full health shots at enemy Warriors, besides he has an Archer himself shooting first from flatland.

Archer vs. Warrior on plains / in forest
30 vs 20 / 20 +3 = ~45 damage / ~ 40 damage

Archer vs. Warrior with Tortoise on plains  / in forest
30 vs 20 +10 / 20 +13 = ~30 damage / ~26 damage

Again on turn 48 we will get access to Oligarchy and could use it

Archer with Oligarchy vs. Warrior on plains / in forest
30 +4 vs 20 / 20 +3 = ~52 damage / ~ 47 damage

Archer with Oligarchy vs. Warrior with Tortoise on plains  / in forest
30 +4 vs 20 +10 / 20 +13 = ~35 damage / ~31 damage

Conclusion for TAD
We have a clear advantage here as we outdamage him and have the further benefit of not being damaged back in return as we use ranged attacks. My assumptions calculated tentatively, as we did not see any Warrior with a promotion on his side yet and our Slinger has already a promotion although it is Garriosn and will only benefit us when in Shido itself.

I believe we should get out 2 Slingers next and send them to that region in preparation to be upgraded, as the second Slinger would finish one turn after Archery will be researched, we either delay Archery by one turn or let the last Slinger auto switch to an Archer and finish it one turn later. That saves us 30 gold and comes shortly before we can switch to Conscription to save money on the Archer maintenance. I adopted the planning accordingly.

The biggest danger is for Ichabod to show up with Horsemen in the next 20 turns, we need to figure out if he has a 2nd horse resource at his capital and if not when he builds an encampment to be able to build these guys.



I checked and confirmed that we are currently the only one with GPP, we have 24 turns to go until we hit our religion if nothing changes. With DotF we should be actually able to repel even a Horsemen attack with Archers and Warriors. We need to get a shrine in Kikyo to buy a Missionary or build a HS at Shido to get it to our religion there as fast as possible.

We will have to live with the possibility that the Religion spreads to Ichabod eventually and thus give him the same benefit for his cities with our religion. At least that is the way I believe it works and it would be great if anybody can confirm or test that.



I was able to micromanage Kikyo back to its standard tile layout and it will still grow next turn, there seems to be a small difference between my spreadsheet and the game for the food calculation as well.

I also put EE for research so it will be finished next turn together with AH. We might have a small loss here as I do not know if the culture research or the inspiration will be counted first, bit is a fraction of 1 culture we are loosing worst case.



The Scout will move E and seach for Bacchus and the end of the Pangea there. I intend him to try to pass S of the hills in order to save some time and catch more ground but feel free as you like.

Sadly I moved my Slinger S to scout the tundra a bit the last two turns and now it has to take the long route to Shido. It should arrive in about 7 turns and wll be able to do some more scouting on its way.

The backfill city we marked looks better than thought if we place it one to the E. It would have the TFDeer and some TH and THcopper to the S in its thrid ring as well as the GH to the N.
Its main weakness will be its food supply but it can share a part of Kikyo's farming triangle and use the Swamp and the GCow.



At the english Border, Ichabod is currently not taking the barb camp as he likely fears that we will snipe it from him. I moved my Scout on its path and we might consider staying around the camp to threaten the snipe longer or we can move teh Scout to uncover Ichabods capital. It then can either stay around to provide intel or move NE behind Stockholm and search for Rowain.

I moved the Warrior to the PF so you can actually choose to use him instead to get that intel on Guardian if you'd like. Having him there actually gives us some nice additional intel on the situation W of Shido and I am startiing to look for more tiles where we could place lookouts later on.



Here is a score overview I will try to do it each turn from now on to better track the game's progress. Sadly the extended view does not fit on one screenshot.
Good luck with the upcoming turns Adrienier

[AdrienIer]

T39 (sorry for the screenshots in french)

Two important news. First, our scout to the east met Preslav ! And we're the first to meet them, which gave us an envoy, which made us finish the slinger in Kikyo this turn. Nice ! Also that area looks really nice for a coastal city (maybe even two). Their quest is to get a great scientist




Secondly, I decided to move the Ichabod scout south (it can snipe the barb camp just as well on that other desert hill). And it uncovered a lot of things ! (note that Ichabod is up to 105 in military score)




Less important news : only wgh and us gained a point in the interturn.

BTW the new patch screws us big time. Slinger to archer upgrades are now 40g, which is much much worse.

[Kaiser]

Yes it does as it emphasizes our start and makes Ichabods start harder.

We build a district which is now 10 % cheaper and he build an additional settler which is now +50% instead of +20 cogs. In total we spent 8 cogs more for our district (halved for japans ability) and he produced the 2nd settler for 20 cogs less than we have to invest.

This results in a 24 cogs disadvantage for us due to the patch, that is nearly a slinger build with his pantheon.


Btw. I am hitting my head against a wall here for not scouting that direction earlier. The quest is bad but the first envoy of great help.

That is quite some intel the scout gained, he can threaten shido with 3 warriors and a slinger but we just need to keep it unoccupied so it can heal between turns.
I think we should keep it there to keep him from getting the barb camp. Remember that the scout gets +5 strength on the coast DH.

We have to swallow the increased cost for the two archers, maybe you can find away to clear the barb camp at C4 for some additional gold?

Thanks again for taking over, French is fine for me :-)

[AdrienIer]

What I find interesting is that no one else has met Preslav. It implies that we don't really have an eastern neighbor, or that he hasn't scouted this way yet. Which is pretty good news.

Oh and about clearing the other barb camp, I think that's unlikely because the units coming out of Kikyo must head west to help defend Shido

[Kaiser]

Yeah I think so too. In 5 turns we should have the 80 gold for the two archer upgrades the other one should be build as planned.

The patch clearly tries to put the emphasis on early districts instead of more settlers which is what we did here. I like its approach it is just bad timing for our situation :-)

Can you check next turn how many rounds our slinger in the tundra will need to get to Shido?
Can you also please note down how much cogs a HS and a Settler require at the moment?

Thank you