[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[NobleHelium]

Well the top archer still has full fortify so it didn't move. We can't see the other ones obviously.

If we take FG, I definitely think we should build Moai there. It's probably the strongest location in the game for Moai.

[scooter]

They played pretty quickly today - guess they don't have much to do anymore. Pin - I played it through with Noble. So first off, we had this decision to make:



India's Trireme chased us, and I felt we needed to take this opportunity to pop it. It's down to 1.7 health. We can do a bit of sleuthing here. Who did he fight? Had to be Xenu. Xenu also was the one who declared, so it LOOKS like Xenu attacked this trireme and lost (evidenced by the lack of promo, implying it only got 1xp). I don't care about the 21% odds - if we get lucky then cool. The odds of winning with a second galley is around 84% odds. We decided this was good enough - better to take this now when we KNOW the galleys are empty, and then we can feel a lot safer in these waters. So we took the shot. We lost, but we redlined it nicely:



Done. So we picked up a catapult + 3 workers with the unmoved galleys. The cleanup galley is not able to pick up mainland units this turn, but it can pick up a settler. So we look like this in the water:



The perk here is we can drop off the settler onto the corn tile next turn, and we can resettled corn city on T127. We'll also have an army of workers ready to farm the corn. This should work out nicely. We're in no rush to get the last 2 workers on the mainland since Commodore can't kill them for another 7 turns or so.

Ok, so CC. He double-whipped it down to sz2. Let me just show you the end-of-turn configuration and then walk through the thought process.



1) A double-whip is odd. The only way he could double-whip an archer is if he did it from scratch. However, nothing was produced last turn. So he either wasted a turn of production last turn on something other than an archer, or he double-whipped a different unit. As far as we can tell, nobody is giving them horse/iron/etc, but we cannot be 100% sure. But it seems highly unlikely.

2) There's still some uncertainty about what happened score-wise a few turns ago, so maybe he got construction and whipped a catapult?

3) Hey look, he has a BRIDGE. So he has Construction. Alright, $5 says he whipped a catapult, but let's prepare for all possibilities.

4) We could configure these units any number of ways, but spreading them out like this minimizes the damage from theoretical catapults. First off, a catapult cannot hit the axe + chariots on the floodplains. Second, we split up the axes onto jungle and hill, defending the jungle with an impi (in case he got horse and whipped a chariot) and defending the hill with a guerilla archer (same). The GG axe is of course defended by chariots, so those would defend in case of a chariot. Also worth nothing that the axes (that could be collateral'd) almost all have promos available, so they could heal up some of the collateral damage and it would have overall minimal impact.

5) If he slams a cat into one of the stacks and has just 3 archers to defend, CC is falling next turn barring something weird happening.


I did check the coast for any sign of a GG galley or something.



Yes, the tile 2E of the impi is also empty. So we really have no clue what they're doing with their axe/gg. Maybe they're going up to hit Xenu .

[scooter]

One more thing I neglected to mention:



This is the timeline for Clam City. It still has just an axe in it. We can get the chariot from JJ into the staging tile if we leave next turn, so we'll have 2 chariots ready to roll on T129. Only way this gets set back is if they're able to grow and whip in a second unit prior to the attack. If that happens, this will take some more time.

[pindicator]

Scooter got me caught up to speed, and I convinced him to swap Sid's Sushi to a settler. We're going to need lots more cities and sooner the better

[NobleHelium]

Settler build at SS makes sense, since then the unhappy citizens won't eat this turn.

[pindicator]

Jumping in - India has just finished their turn...

Commodore offered us world maps.  I don't think anything has changed from the last time we shared world maps with them, so I accepted.

Somebody built SoZ

And there's this:



2 points for Scooter

[scooter]

Ok, so we attacked CC. The top 2 archers were at full fortify and we figured they would be tough to crack. Our goal at first was to soften them up a bit. First attack was a CR axe:



We got ONE HIT on their archer. This wasn't entirely improbable, but it was still a bummer as a 2.5 health archer behind walls + fortify bonus is still pretty formidable. Next we sent in our C2 Chariot and... NOT A SCRATCH. Argh this sucks. All those nice rolls really coming back to sting. Next we send in another CR axe (also 20.7%), which gets in a couple hits, but still loses pretty easily. Throughout these first two attacks we debated cutting our losses and running, but we kept going. Next was CR axe on their 3rd archer with a non-full fortify bonus:



We weakened this archer pretty reasonably, so that helped. Not redlined by any stretch, but enough that the odds favor us. Finally, we were forced to use our GG. Time to roll the dice. If we lose this, we're in serious trouble:



WIN. Time for another Big Huge Dice Roll:



WIN. From there it was mopup.



100 more gold, nice . And hey, granary.



We're a little nervous about Xenu being a jerk and trying to snipe the city, so we're covering as best as we can:



I think we're OK there. I landed our settler so we'll be up to six cities next turn (WOW that feels nice to say).



3 workers can land on the corn next turn and begin farming it. Our core 4 cities are now out of revolt. CURRENCY TIME.



Look at that - 7 turns! Ok that's really terrible 126 turns into the game, but seriously, it FEELS good for us. SS and CUlvers are at a war-induced happy cap, so they're just going to get us 2 badly needed settlers. Might as well. Best part is it's only costing us 26gpt. We were losing more than that at 0% recently!

Oh, speaking of finances



There are THREE other teams with a worse GNP than us?! Obviously India is one of them, but still. That's a nice turnaround from -27 a few turns ago. Yay for GLH .

[scooter]

Oh, one more thing. Offered to India:



I don't think they'll take it, but it's worth a shot.

[pindicator]

Dotmap time!




I put it at an angle to better fit it in screen. Also gives an idea of how much room we realistically have to work with.

Also, that 4-move galley of Commodore's is back. I bet that thing starts snooping around. Worth going to war to sink that thing?

[pindicator]

Cities*
In order we should settle, assuming our tech path is Currency - Metal Casting - Iron Working. Order can change depending on which tech we have

Domino's - NE of the corn (ruins of GA), will be settled next turn
Starbucks - our next city, N-NW of the crab by Dairy Queen
Krispy Kreme - ruins of the Clam city on the one-tile island
Five Guys - central filler city, E of the oasis, grabs the sheep 2nd ring
A&W - SE of the jungled pig
Resettle IHOP - NW of the iron, gets clams first ring, but misses the sheep
Claim Jumper - the north clam, settled on the desert of the 2-tile island
El Pollo Loco - filler city between Sid's Sushi and Starbucks. Lowest priority

And then the highly unlikely ones...
Sonic - silk island, S of the silk. Only works if we capture FG due to needing to share the fish
Ben & Jerry's - E of the banana on the mainland. Right between Serdoa and Commodore...
Fuddruckers - On the north horse, shares the clam with CC (which needs to be renamed)


Not counting El Pollo Loco and the unlikely ones, that would put us at 12 cities, which isn't awful. And with Currency and The Great Lighthouse, every city is going to contribute 10cpt immediately, without counting the citizens. So lets pack them in tight andsee how fast we can get there



*You don't need to use my names, just keeping them separate in my mind