[SPOILER] - Suboptimal finds trees, still seeks forest

[Banzailizard]

I agree with CMF regarding dark age/Heroic age. You do not get much from either a dark or heroic age with your current plan. You are not generating the faith for Monumentality, the religion for Exodus, or the right districts for Pen, Brush and Voice. A normal age next round does not preclude you from picking up Free Inquiry in a Medieval golden age. None of the dark age policy cards are particularly useful for you either right now. The closest would be Twilight Valor, except you will be using mostly ranged units anyways. In other words if you can pull it off sure, but do not sacrifice playing well over it.

[suboptimal]

CMF/Banzai, those are all valid points. Especially since we picked up two this very turn...

Turn 22

Pantheon is in! There are 23 pantheons available, so we’re first in the gate there. I take Goddess of Festivals as planned. We get 2 era points and the Mysticism inspiration.

What of the barbarians at the gates of Nubia?




Good, nobody moved. Slinger attacks for 35 points, gaining a promotion and taking the warrior under 10 damage. I’ll kill it next turn and complete Archery on Turn 24...which is when we would have completed it without the eureka. We’ve gotten 5 turns into Pottery in that time so that’s just fine by me. Once Archery completes I’ll upgrade the slinger, take the promotion (hey, barbs are still worth 1XP each) then go kill the slinger, the camp and perhaps that other warrior that may be wandering around.

The warrior moves southwest into the plains forest. This doesn’t uncover any new ground, that’ll be next turn.

Archduke and Alhambram have settled their second city. Pindicator is the only one left to not do so. He’s off to a slow start.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Good news, good news all around! That's worth fully 4 culture just at our second city alone, and I see more tea in the south. We just need the builder labor and then we'll be in very good shape on culture for the early game.

[suboptimal]

The only problem with those tea resources is that they're third ring to Nazca and a city settling to their south in order to claim them in 1st or 2nd ring would have no fresh water, little food/production and lots of desert.

Turn 23

Open the save to a notification that Ağri Daği is now active. The builder in Mashed is done, moves out to the horse and pastures it. We get the eureka for Horseback Riding and I swap the citizen from the GFH to the horse for the extra food. I decide to go with the interleaved production queue mentioned a couple of pages ago and start a slinger. I say slinger because Archery isn’t complete yet. I switch techs over, kill the barbarian with the slinger and the tech will be done next turn. As stated previously I’ll upgrade & promote the slinger in Dauphinoise and then deal with the barbarian slinger (unless it advances, in which case I’ll kill it first).

Warrior moves to the PFH, finds two more to the SE and E. I’ll move SE to see if there’s open terrain and continue east.

Nothing new internationally except for some era point gains (including 4 by Cornflakes).

[suboptimal]

Turn 24

There’s a notification of a volcanic eruption. Mount Semeru blew its top:




The notification states that two tiles gained fertility. We can see one of them – the plains hill west of the volcano is now a 32 volcanic soil tile. We can farm that for +1 or mine that for +1 if we get a city up there. I expect that we will hear more from this volcano as the game progresses. I do wonder if the spearman in the camp was damaged...

Archery is complete. There should be overflow into Pottery but I don’t see it reflected in the UI. The builder at Mashed moves to the rice; that will get farmed and bring in the Irriation eureka next turn. Dauphinoise is up to 2 population and I set it to work both bananas. Next population in 6 turns and the builder is down to 8 turns. We have 88 so I upgrade the slinger to our first potato gun Pítati Archer and earn 4 more era points. The archer can’t one shot the slinger – I’d need to heal or promote to do that. I’ll promote next turn and then the following turn move to the hill across the river and kill the slinger from there.

Down at Ağri Daği the warrior moves SE, opening up a bit of a view:




There is nothing on settlervision and all of that flat land is floodable. I am going to move SE into the floodplain and if I don’t see anything I’ll turn NE. That will let us get a good portion of the area south and east of the Lakshadweep Sea defogged prior to going to Nazca.

Craftsmanship is at inspiration + 1 once the turn rolls. I am going to put another turn into it so that it completes during Turn 27 (when the camp goes down). That would get us Agoge (and the military builds out of Mashed) one turn faster than originally planned.

[Banzailizard]

Out of curiosity, how many cities do you need to break even on military production? Basically scenario A is you spend most of that production on military and conquer cities. Scenario B is if you had spend the production on settlers instead. How many cities do you have to get to equal the number you could have founded? Note I am not suggesting deviating from your plan, just asking when should you consider the ROI sufficient? It would only be a rough calculation anyways since military provides security and scouting as well.

[suboptimal]

From a perspective our next two settlers cost 280. That's equal to four archers. The "breakeven" point on that scenario, based on production alone, is two. There are a few differences here that make this comparison a bit tricky. If we assume running "ideal" policies (Agoge for archers, Colonization for settlers) then the next two settlers cost 186.7 yield while the archers cost 31.1 yield. That turns the archer/settler ratio to 3:1. The third settler would be 113.3 yield, which is almost four archers by itself. Another issue is city placement - with the settlers we control the placement while with city-states we know that their placements will be...suboptimal

[suboptimal]

Turn 25

Open the save to a notification that the archer is available for promotion. Yes, I’ll take that later. Builder farms the rice, Mashed will now grow in two turns and Irrigation is boosted. Archer crosses the river and shoots the slinger for 79 damage. That will die next turn. Hopefully it moves to the northern diamonds so that I can move west to defog a few hexes before shooting. Warrior jogs southeast, finds some wine and copper but not much else. Curiosity gets the better of me and I move towards the river junction instead of northeast.




Another sea. I do check the river names. Bassac is on the Khmer list and the western river appears to be Tonlé Sap, which is also on the Khmer list. Pindicator is wandering around down here but nothing has shown up on settlervision. Given the coastal areas to the northwest there’s a possibility he’s in the fog to the southeast or east, though not along this river. There’s time for me to cross the river, summit the hill 2SW of the wines to take a look around and then start heading back upriver to meet the archers at Nazca. If we do find Pindicator’s borders over here I’m half tempted to avoid making contact until I can get a full raiding party down here.

The warrior needs to be outside Nazca for EoT37. At that point in time we’ll have two archers in position to start the city attack. There would be a warrior and two more archers completed while the forces are getting ready. I’d likely send one archer (second out of Mashed) to scout north from Mashed while the warrior meets up with three archers from Dauphinoise and heads south, particularly if we see Khmer borders in that direction. The second warrior out of Mashed would hang around for home defense.

Craftsmanship is just under 60% complete if the GUI is any indication. Despite the fact it’ll speed things up a turn I switch to Foreign Trade. This is out of a small amount of paranoia than anything else. In some recent GS games I’ve completed civics by getting the inspiration and NOT gotten a policy change out of it. I think this was usually because it was the second civic completed in a turn. However, I don’t want to take that chance.

[Banzailizard]

Khmer is a good neighbor to be next to for a rush since they are a builder civ. I agree about not making contact until the last moment, don't let Pin see your military score.

[suboptimal]

Too late for that...

Turn 26

Open the save to a notification that we’ve met Khmer. The screen centers on Dauphinoise when I click the notification so I assume his scout has found us. The scout is not visible on screen so I assume he’s somewhere in the fog in the south. He has 30 milpower, 181, 4, 2 and has 0 (!). Forgot to mention he has no resources hooked up and hasn't met anyone else. Selecting GPT on the deal screen shows he's currently making 8 per turn.

Pottery is done, Irrigation has 6 turns as does the builder out of Dauphinoise, though that city will grow in two turns. I’ll need to keep Pindicator’s scout in mind while the builder is out and about. Our current builder moves to the deer and will camp that next turn. The barbarian slinger has moved to the floodplain instead of the hill. Based on what I know about LOS rules that prevents me from moving to the western diamonds and shooting from there, so I shoot from my current position and kill it off. One more for the Bronze Working eureka. I’ll move the archer to the western diamond next turn and promote – we’ll get a few tiles revealed and the archer fully healed. It might also bait the spearman (or warrior) into approaching.

Attention turns to the warrior. I cross the river, revealing one tile and then bring up settlervision to see if that tiles holds any news. It doesn’t, but since we’ve met Khmer we get a whole bunch of loyalty displayed:




It seems we overshot him to the south & west. Based on the loyalty I think he’s somewhere northeast of the wines. I’ll move two tiles upriver next turn to try to find borders. I also have to think that both his cities are somewhere in the fog SE of the Lakshadweep Sea. This brings up the obvious question – do we forget about Nazca and go straight for Pindicator? (I say yes). From Dauphinoise it’s 5 turns for units to get to that stubby river (9 from Mashed). We have one archer out now and the following units scheduled:

Archer, Mashed, EoT 28
Warrior, Mashed, EoT 34
Archer, Dauphinoise, EoT 34
Archer, Dauphinoise, EoT 38

I could switch things around so that Mashed gets a second archer out on EoT31 and the third on EoT34, with a warrior for home defense EoT 38 before getting a settler out. I could also change the second archer in Dauphinoise to a warrior (EoT 37) and work two wines instead of two bananas for some extra production. Those changes get four archers at or across the stubby river by EoT 40 with a fifth plus a warrior EoT 43. We could be in Pindicator’s face in the mid 40’s, which should be before he can get walls up.

I will note that if we come across his non-capital city and it’s not garrisoned then two archers and a warrior would be able to take it in one turn. Three archers and a warrior would be needed to take an ungarrisoned capital in one turn. [i]Forgot the -17 malus to ranged unit when attacking a city.[/s]

Here’s the ground between Dauphinoise and the fog in the south:




That archer in the desert will go kill the camp then go find the northern end of Khmer. The archer out of Mashed can provide cover for the builder.

Hit end turn and hear the city-state cash register.