[PB62] naufragar and Rusten earn their wage in rostygold

[naufragar]

Turn pace makes me happy.



Maybe I was just blind previously? Vanrober's scout is in our northeast.

I haven't had time to reinterpret Bing's graphs. He's on one city at size 3, and as far as I can tell just made a third warrior. This is a tiny bit concerning for our second city. If he's slowly waddling two or three warriors to us and gets lucky on the timings, he could knock over the city. (Just another of my worries. I'm a worrier.) Otherwise, I'm very happy that it looks like we'll beat Genghis to a second city. I've started moving our own second warrior to check out the tundra deer to the east. Man, we're so desperate for Pyramids. I wonder if going for Writing into a Math bulb is better than just going straight for Masonry. Will have to think on it.

City #2 should get founded in two turns unless we get unlucky and that bear shows up on the copper next turn. (That would be very unlucky.)

[DaveV]

Animals can't move onto bonus tiles, except to attack. At least that's the case in FfH...

[naufragar]

Animals can't move onto bonus tiles, except to attack. At least that's the case in FfH...

It would astonish me if this were the case in BtS, but...



No bear! So unless Bing shows up this turn with a couple of warriors (of which he has three ) we found our second city next turn. That worker near the capital had a few choices. He could have moved to the flood plains and put in two turns of farming. He could have moved two tiles up to the furs and put one turn in a camp, but I figured I'd take the slightly inefficient path and throw a spare turn into a forest chop. In my sim, we're able to finish AH next turn with 70% science, but my map dimensions aren't exact and maintenance may get screwy.

That second city will be nice. We're currently dead last in Mfg, crop, and soldiers. Speaking of...

You are also the most aggressive player on the forums.

Hey, Rusten, do you mind if I kill Bing? 

Now, I'm still paranoid of Bing just waddling up a couple of warriors to our second city and killing it a couple turns after founding. (Which is why the first turn of the city's life, it puts 4 hammers into a spear. It loses nothing to spend that first turn on a spear instead of a work boat.) But if he doesn't, we have a very decent chance of disconnecting his copper. We'll be able to see his borders bleed through the fog whenever he founds for copper. If we see that, we can whip or chop and axe. If we don't see tile bleed, we can whip/chop a spear in case of chariots.

Now, the map maker was a real jerk, giving Bing copper on a river that auto-connects to his capital, whereas we wouldn't have that even if we didn't move, so Bing doesn't have to build a road, but I'd bet good money we can still get a metal unit to that tile before he can complete a metal unit of his own. We know that his capital has a grass pig, and irrigated corn, and a plains hill sheep, which makes it way better than any city we could settle ourselves. (And skulls for the skull throne.)

P.S. We've got 86EP into him for his 10. He needs 55 for graphs if we keep our spending at 0.

P.P.S. The shoe is on the other foot if he moves those warriors up in time. This is a brutal map.

P.P.P.S No way Bing has river copper and a second copper, right?

[Rusten]

I'm OK with killing Bing. This crowded and food-poor map means you need to do something special. Either get a gamebreaking wonder like Pyramids or kill an opponent (ideally both).

Are you planning on chopping an axe before the wb? Or whipping it at size 2?

[naufragar]

I haven't decided, and annoyingly I'm pretty busy for the next 48 hours, which is like 3 turns at this pace. I need to sim it out if it's better to chop work boat->chop metal unit->whip metal unit or just chop a metal unit. Velocity vs. mass, I guess.

[naufragar]

I don't know if my poor nerves can take it.


If Bing can show me two warriors by the end of this turn, I'm dead. If he can't, he's dead. I should have waited for him to play, but I was too eager to get the turn rolled. I am not a steely man.

We met Mjmd's scout. All our contacts have met each other.

I moved the northern warrior 1SE. There's no reason for Bing to think we've got a worker on the silks but we can reach him in time. If Bing has two warriors around, our northern warrior can't reach the city in time no matter what. Best case? Bing moves away and I can keep moving towards the deer.

I've turned off science. My sim is inaccurate, as you can see in this screen, so it takes us an extra turn to get to AH. This means an extra turn into the forest chop at the cap, so it's not the end of the world.

By the way, even if Bing doesn't have a second warrior, his Combat 1 warrior gets 12% odds at killing us. That's very high. Brutal, brutal game.

For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little? 

[naufragar]

Easiest Pyramids of my life?



Commodore is an open book.

Let's play a game of read the map maker's mind: we see marble. It's highly unlikely that stone & marble were left unbalanced. Marble was placed with a second city's distance of us and Bing. I don't think there's stone to the West or North. Conclusion? There's stone equidistant between us and an eastern neighbor. Perhaps.

Maybe not equidistant. In fact, I'd bet everybody gets stone/marble. So be it. Let's race.

Edit: Bing moves his warrior away. It's not looking great for him, although he can still found directly on horses in the fog, I guess.

[Rusten]

At the very least we can claim the stone with a city in our original spot (and getting lighthouse for the lake), but I'm hoping to settle more aggressively than that.

Is the tile 1E of the deer fresh water?

[naufragar]

At the very least we can claim the stone with a city in our original spot (and getting lighthouse for the lake), but I'm hoping to settle more aggressively than that.

Is the tile 1E of the deer fresh water?

It is. No lighthouse lakes for us.


You can see that horses popped up near our stone. A city on that plains hill that grabs deer, stone, and horse can build the Pyramids very quickly. 6 forests for 120 hammers, 11 hammers per turn at just size 3 (14hpt at size 4). With stone, Pyramids require 334 hammers.

I had planned to stop the capital worker's chop and move it to the sheep, but I felt that the stone city could use the worker labor to get started earlier. With the chop at the capital, we can finish a worker 4 turns after the settler. Still thinking about Pyramids, I had thought we could bulb Math for boosted chops, but it's a much faster build if we get Masonry before Writing. (We can't get Masonry before Pottery without ruining our economy.)

My Cloak and Dagger readings of Bing are wrong somewhere:


I thought Bing went worker->warrior->worker->warrior->warrior and was currently building his first settler. I'm still pretty sure he has 3 warriors. I don't know where I went wrong. That river copper hook up still gives me nightmares. It's on flatland, so all it takes is a couple of workers a couple of turns and then his capital has bronze. For what it's worth, Bing has not yet revolted to Slavery.

I'm still cautiously optimistic that we can kill Bing, but I want to chop a second axe out of Veilgarden for safety's sake. I'd happily trade those extra turns of working improved fish for peace of mind that we can kill Bing even in spite of the easy copper link.

Btw, before I forget, Bing rolled the turn, so I don't know if he founded at the start of this turn (36) or at the end of the previous. I think he founded this turn, but I can't know for sure until we see the demos screen update.

[naufragar]

Declared on Bing in the second half of t37 but forgot to take a picture of the axe move! It's barely visible at the bottom of this demos photo:


Next turn, I move the worker+settler 1W of the horse to the plains hill. I think I can leave them their unguarded because no two move animals can reach them from the fog. This lets the warrior fogbust a few more tiles for a little bit longer.

Note the 38k top power. Does someone have our idea?

I feel a little bad rushing Bing who was chariot rushed in his previous game.  I've called the map "brutal" or "unkind" a few times. I'm making no comment on balance, just that the map seemed to command an "eat or be eaten" mentality from the start.

Edit: And the new PoE league reduced the total amount of phys to fire conversion mods on the skill tree from like 105% to 90%, so taking Avatar of Fire is a big blow.