[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

What are we going to do about this, folks?


Besides screaming, "Do it to Julia." I didn't bother to count up exactly how many soldier points/horse archers that is. The spike is clear enough. If Mackoti rears back and swings, I'll get knocked down hard, but I do have a lot of cities and pop to turn into spears to at least make his knuckles hurt. (I hope. That's so very many horse archers.) I haven't cropped the pic so you can see the area Mack would likely hit first. (I haven't seen any scouts of his, so he might not know exactly where I am, but he's seen me on his East, so he knows my general direction.) If he were super sneaky, he could bypass south of Harmony Valley to try to get to my core, but the distance is longer, and I'm protected by hills and a river. The spear you can see poking his head above the graph will move back to get a fortification bonus in the city. The scout will move to take his place as an early warning beacon. I had wanted that scout on my east to see if Rusten would use our enforced peace to plant for the sheep and deer you can barely see on the edge. (The turn I declared war on him, Rusten offered a ceasefire. I responded with a peace treaty (and then a second offer for a ceasefire. My understanding is that if he declined the first, he would see the second?). My goal was to show my friendly intentions after violating his borders. I hope he saw it like that and not "Great. Here's a newbie who's given me ten turns to settle in his face."




Mr. Cairo moved and moved. No chance to kill the chariot, but it is no longer a threat to any cities. It can obviously still be annoying, and maybe accidentally he keeps navigating to my core (and then my borders pop and trap him and he has to pass through my territory to get out), but now it's something to watch with interest rather than trepidation. New Jerusalem switched to yet another spear after I took that pic. Never enough spears.

[naufragar]

Shallow Old Human Tourist has also whipped their empire to the bone in the last two turns, but who cares? They aren't a neighbor. I had the optimistic thought that maybe Mack and SOHT were slugging it out, but why would Mack hit them when he has me and Aretas? If Mackoti sends his army my way, I can't hold Harmony Valley, but I can at least load it with spears. I had thought that his army wouldn't be an existential threat, that I could defend in depth and at least not die, but boy. He could have a right proper horde.

[naufragar]

Now it looks like I'm building too much military. And it's all spears, so it's not like I can turn those hammers into conquests.


And I've still got like three spears in queues. Oh well. They don't go stale.

Mr. Cairo is trying to get the lay of the land.


If that chariot goes south, I kill it. I've moved my spear out of the city so it can use the road to hit either of the free tiles that chariot could move south into. If he slips through my borders here, he can run around in the big empty area between Thorny Vineyard and Fort Survivalist. Plus in four turns New Jerusalem's borders pop and make it difficult to get back east, which incentivizes him sticking around, which makes my worker movement a pain. If the chariot goes north, it gets to live. (Although it gets tailed by the spear near Harmony Valley.) Unfortunately, he isn't going to move north because he doesn't want to fight the bear, and it must be tempting to squeeze through my borders to get a better idea of my layout. Oh well. I read some of his PB32 thread, and he had no problem with ancient era warfare, so this could get nasty, but like I said, I've got a lot of spears. (Also stone for walls and horses in 4 turns.) I'll offer a cease fire immediately after, which isn't binding, but hopefully he views it like a slap on the wrist and not on the cheek. I have an 8/0 EP advantage on him, so if it comes to real war, I should get graphs before him. I also think he's a little closer to the mounted horde of Mackoti, which he has hopefully noticed. Gah. I don't want to declare a meaningless war because, as I've learned from lurking, acts that one side doesn't even blink over look like eternal vendettas to the other. You can also see me moving an axe to cover a worker from Rusten's worker, forgetting that we have enforced peace.    Speaking of Rusten, we're now even in city count despite my fast start and his religion+oracle. Those spears I built probably should've been a settler. I've got another spot for a city, but it is right towards Cairo, whose nose I'm about to bloody. (That's the reason I can't offer a peace treaty.) By the way, my tech rate is painful, but I really want Mathematics ASAP.



Our intrepid workboat keeps on keeping on. I think the city to its north is superdeath's capitol: it's about 15 tiles horizontally from Rusten's which seems like roughly the distance for a few others. Those islands look nice. Hope they are a source of great conflict.  

Just realized the borders of Rusten's city Halcyon+On+On expanded, so he now has his peak, which means he can see into Water Garden, I think. We knew this would happen, but we should probably put in a couple extra units as a show of force.

[naufragar]

Hey, could I get lurker input on a double move question?

While I was playing my turn, Mr. Cairo logged in and moved his chariot.


I had already moved the axe (indecisively, it's back on the same tile it started on. Oops.). More importantly, there are two workers under that axe. Mr. Cairo just moved his chariot into a position that can hit them, so I want to move my spear to cover. It feels a little weird to interweave turns like this, but I don't want to not move and lose 150h of stuff due to modesty. I also don't want to make Cairo unhappy when he sees I logged off, logged back on, and moved the spear into position. I am totally in the clear here right? I'd prefer to hold off finishing my turn until I get guidance.

Another metagame screw up: I met TBS via workboat and clicked on his name to pull up the diplo screen. It didn't load, but then when it did it had a greeting from him. I guess I hadn't realized that accessing the diplo menu when another player is in game. We pinged each other back and forth before I realized what happened. So then I sent this message:


I wasn't thinking and wanted to just resolve the pinging. Didn't think at all to not broadcast that message to All Chat. Luckily, I'm pretty sure that nobody else was logged in, so I wasn't giving up positioning information. Nevertheless, I'm sorry I sent the message and am posting it here for a record.

[naufragar]

Slept on it. Moved the spear. In hindsight that was obvious.

Logged in to this:


Now, I hope Rusten knows the dangers of practicing AI diplo with a newbie: I have no idea what this means.    Like, I think it signals peaceful intentions? But it's not a 10 turn NAP right? If he wants to signal "let's be friends," great! But I hope I'm not supposed to read more into this. I declined the offer and resent it after checking the rules post. As far as I understand "No using trade window to communicate (e.g. using letters or numbers in a way that could be interpreted something else than a real trade offer)" refers to things like offering horse+city near mutual opponent's border+10g and counting the gold down per turn. Of course, deer for deer could definitely count as communication, but the example makes me think something other than the traditional fish for fish is intended. I guess this is another thing that I could use lurker input on.

As I've said, I met Adrien this turn (Mao of Mali).


You can see that I screwed up playing the first half of my turn. I was so preoccupied with Cairo's chariot that I didn't think to move my spear to cover the worker within striking range of Adrien. Luckily, he was feeling less than carnivorous. +1 Past events have proved your good nature. Next turn the worker+spear pair move onto the tile he's on to road the silver for a turn. I like Mao, and I like Mali. There's a touch of synergy with Pro buffing skirmishers (which now that I think about it, is considerable. 3 first strikes?) Otherwise, it's just two strong component pieces. Nothing more to say, really. Everybody builds archers. Everybody builds forges. Exp and Pro are strong. (And these traits don't actually burn out after the early game. Exp's discounted buildings keep it relevant for longer.)

I have no idea where that warrior came from. Hopefully Adrien lives south of Cairo.

Edit: Forgot to add, Adrien's naming scheme is great.

[ipecac]

Deer for deer is alright.

[naufragar]

Deer for deer is alright.

Thanks!

Superdeath sent me a corn for corn. This one I declined, however. I don't have too many resources hooked up, so can't make a friendly statement with everyone. More importantly, Superdeath is on the other side of Rusten, so I don't feel like diplo'ing on that side just yet. I thought he knew where I was, so this was him making friends with people on Rusten's (his neighbor's) borders. But now I can't remember. Maybe he just saw my workboat?

Mackoti's power continues to climb.

Edit: Glanced again at my screenshots. Superdeath doesn't have copper? I don't judge. I still don't have horses. (1 turn away...)

[naufragar]

Xenu built himself some pyramids. Remember when I said back in the pick phase that I loved his choices? (Hatshepsut (Spi/Cre) of Greece) I love them with pyramids even more. He also founded Judaism. (Not sure why I can see that on my scoreboard.) Get ready for some 20 pop cities in the BC era.

In other news, I declared war on TBS, but had to pussyfoot around.


The boat started 1NW of his fish. I didn't want to end on his crab and in Snow Clones there's a workboat, which, if I ended next to the city, would be trapped (I think). So I had to make this ridiculous move. Hopefully TBS sees I'm trying my best to not screw his micro.

I've got two settlers in queues to get me out of my stall. I let my foot of the gas in single player too, just kind of relax and build infra. Hopefully it's not too late to correct. Unfortunately, the spots I have picked out are backlines, when there's really two places I need to expand towards opponents. I'll see if I can rejig things.

Superdeath has started putting EP into me, so I'm about to lose his graphs (if I haven't already). Oh well. Adrien has 4 EP into me, so I have to watch that. I'm currently trying to get Cairo's graphs.

[naufragar]

At some point, don't you just drop the hammer? Don't know what he's waiting for. This is the definition of "overwhelming force."




Here's what I get for only building spears.


Forgot about barbs. A spear has a ~21% chance to kill a Combat 1 spear on a hill. I don't like those odds, so I moved my second spear to cover. I have so much stacked whip unhappy everywhere that I desperately need that silver, so I've got two workers going at it. Ugly pic, huh?

[naufragar]

I'll stop posting Mackoti power graphs when they stop hurting my heart.


I'm above average in soldier count by just a hair. Mackoti has double my number.  

TBS was far kinder than I deserved.


I, um, did not expect him to have a galley in the water this early. He could still kill the workboat next turn, but it was very kind of him to let it live. I did violate his borders, after all.