[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[Charriu]

Well those are absolutely acceptable odds, but don't forget that he will whip next turn.

[El Grillo]

T42:

Amicalola whipped on his turn, but didn't finish a Quechua last turn. What could that mean, possibly a Barracks with overflow into more Quechuas? Melee units can't take City Garrison, fortunately. Or could it be a Worker or Settler for some reason? That would be quite a surprise to me, he still lacks the Wheel so there's no way those units would help him. Anyway, the plan is to deliver two attacks next turn, with the attackers covered by incoming WCs. I think the priority is to get hits over pillaging tiles. The clock keeps ticking on +20% culture and Archery tech. At least we're threatening to interrupt one chop attempt.



Plemo has yet to play, so he could still declare war and create a 3-way split, but I didn't want to hold the turn on the off chance that he did, since we just had a couple of long delays. I do have the 6th WC in position to head back and defend next turn if needed, but I'd really prefer not to, the extra hit could be decisive against Amicalola. If Plemo just sits on that tile though, I'll have another Warrior finishing out of Humboldt Forest to just double-team his if it moves in.



Domestically, the capture gold let us continue straight onto Fishing without needing a turn of saving gold. I'm pretty sure the plan is a min overflow 2-pop whip of the Worker at the capital into another Worker via 2 chops, with overflow into a Settler which will be finished with more chops. This will both clear space for cottages and provide the Workers to build them and the fresh pop to occupy them. The capital will be at the happy cap at size 3 for a few more turns until the first whip anger fades, but I think that that should be manageable.

Abroad, GKC is the first to 3 cities as of T41. Indian lumberjacks doing their thing, I suppose. And this is him without a EXP or IMP leader!



Uh, everything okay over there Ramk? That more recent larger dip has to be a dead Skirmisher, but how in the world did that come to pass on T40? Also, he still hasn't whipped even once despite an early Bronze Working, while everyone else has now that Amicalola whipped T41. I suppose his Crop Yield hasn't been great, so maybe he's waiting for a Granary to finish before whipping is worthwhile to him?

[El Grillo]

T43:

Amicalola finished another Quechua last turn, that explains what he whipped. As planned, I decided to send in two WCs against the full-fortify and 15%-fortify Quechuas. Fortunately, both were victorious, taking 3 and 2 hits respectively. I turned Units Auto-Promote on for a turn just in case Amicalola tries a counterattack.



That leaves 3 Quechuas in the city, and the top defender will have 10%-fortify next turn. My C1 WC gets 80% on that one, so the fresh WC should get around 78%-80% as well. The Worker we spotted last turn either ran away or was deleted, but at least it wasn't able to complete its chop. WC #5 can hit in 2 turns, WC #6 can hit in 3. The plan is to definitely send 2 WCs next turn, then evaluate how the wounded C1 WCs do.



At home, I did the 2-pop Worker whip at the capital. Plemo moved his Warrior 1S, not the most threatening option, so I decided to send WC #6 south. Two Warriors finishing within the next couple of turns should be able to take care of it if he plans to move SE-SW to sit on my horses. Demos obviously look bad with the whip, but in my opinion working unimproved 2f1h tiles is barely adding any value to the overall growth curve.

[Charriu]

Looks like you have everything under control.

[El Grillo]

T44:

We were able to play a second turn today, very nice. Amicalola was able to finish another Quechua, as expected.



Three more combats, two wins (5 hits and 2 hits) and an unfortunate loss at greedier odds (1 hit only at 63%). Losing a unit here actually saved me 2gpt in unit maintenance and supply, if anyone's counting Still looking okay over the next couple of turns, though hindsight suggests maybe pillaging the plains hill mine a turn earlier. The badly wounded WC will probably be sitting on it next turn. I had figured it wouldn't matter because by whipping every turn Amicalola would've been able to finish at least this many Quechuas anyway.



Plemo moved as expected, so I moved my capital Warrior to triple-team it if he declares war. Ignore the Warrior in the queue at the capital, after some thought I decided to put that into a 3rd Worker instead.

[El Grillo]

T45:

I had an 85% chance to finish off Amicalola this turn, but rolled a bit poorer than expected (which brings overall campaign RNG to a bit better than expected), leaving us in this situation:

Springer Mtn. will finish one more fresh Quechua next turn and this one will heal to 50% hp. Should be a wrap, the sims give me ~100% odds to win that. Even if the cultural borders pop to 40%. Amicalola never finished another tech after what was presumably Hunting, so I have no fear of an Archer.

Plemo decided not to harass me and should wander into those Lions from earlier, if they haven't despawned yet. I'm finishing Humboldt Forest's wheat farm just as it grows to size 2, and the plan is to chop in a Granary for it on the marked tile so that it can grow effectively onto the lakes. I'm sending one of the new Warriors to explore the northwest Rice. I'm hoping to be able to use capture gold to fund Mysticism next.



Our 3 WC losses bring us back below top power, which leads me to suspect that someone else is being rushed on the other side of the world. This should hopefully be as bad as our main economic demos ever get, by the way. I'm growing onto a 6-yield tile next turn, and if I can't bounce back in growth after taking Amicalola's capital then that'll be a real blow to me in this game.



EDIT:

Amicalola and I exchanged the following PMs tonight. Good game.

Hey man, 
I just wanted to say well-played re: the PitBoss (just logged in and as I'm sure you know I'm definitely dead next turn). 
You totally outplayed me in basically every way and I'm very curious to look through your thread now.  Hopefully next time I won't go down like such a chump, lol. Wish you luck in the rest of the game!

Hey there,

I'm sorry to limit you to such a short time in the game, but a combination of factors led me and Charriu to decide to commit to this attack, and things played out about as well as I could have anticipated. I hope you stick around for future Pitbosses, and you're welcome to lurk globally or ded-lurk another player in this game. Take care and thanks for the well wishes!

[El Grillo]

T46:



We rolled well and didn't lose another WC taking the city. I was pleasantly surprised by how much capture gold the city yielded, very nice and giving me ideas about where we head next on the tech tree. Also, we're at 22/30 towards the first Great General. I will keep Springer Mtn.'s name both because it's on theme (and maybe someday I'll get the opportunity to make the trip) and as a memorial to the Incan civilization.

After the three surviving WCs heal up, I'll keep one at the city until I can build some fogbusting Warriors, and send the other two scouting like so:



Time for the consolidation and boom to begin. As I thought, getting the wheat farm online was enough to put us back in respectable figures, and now with all this unexpected gold we should be able to expand a bit more aggressively, and tech farther before crashing, than I had thought. I'm considering targeting a religion, ideally Buddhism for Monasteries, right after Mysticism. My reasoning is that I definitely want a self-founded religion so I can use an Obelisk for a shrine, this is the cheapest time to detour for a single tech that I don't think anyone else will want, and I'd actually prefer using Missionaries for culture at new cities instead of relying on Obelisks, even being CHA. We have 3 early happiness resources visible already, and I like that mature cities can contribute the Missionaries while the new city's forests and first whip can go toward a Granary instead. Founding the Holy City at Springer Mtn. would just be an added bonus, and a very welcome one to pick up the three additional improved tiles.

[Charriu]

Awesome. Congratulations. You are firmly in the drivers seat now.




I just wanted to mention that there is an easy way to connect our new city with the rest of the empire with a road on the pig, SW of the pig and Sailing.

[El Grillo]

Good tip. I was originally thinking of planting a city on the desert hill riverside Copper if we rolled poorly and couldn't finish Amicalola off, and I think that city might still make sense, and perhaps even as city #4, since it gives us a lot of security via Axes at a time when I think the worst possible sequence of events would be persistent barbarian trouble followed by Ramk and our southwestern neighbor settling aggressively towards us.

The city also works as a short-term fogbusting pump: it can borrow the pigs to grow to size 4, then work 2 fp cottages and two mines for 9hpt and 2-turn Warriors, then pick up more fp and cottages with a border pop.

[El Grillo]

T47:

Yay, no more turn split means I can play the turn early again. The rice city looks better with the ivory there, though part of me wants to be settling basically all of my cities in this direction on hills, especially while the jungles remain unchopped. Surely there's enough space between us to plant on the flatland here and put up a front city further north?



Some rudimentary dotmapping. I think I've decided on black dot next for security reasons, it's the fastest and safest copper source that I can hook and leaves my Workers in a flexible position. Removing Amicalola opens up the coastal pig/ivory/crab spot that Charriu liked earlier, and I like lavender dot as a high-production city for work boats and a galley. The gray filler spot probably should be 1E trading a floodplains for a forested grassland, but that spot is so marginal that it can be filled in much later. I'm aware that these are all very much safe backline spots, but I think red and lavender are strong enough to merit it, settling them greatly reduces my exposure to barbs, and meanwhile my scouting WCs should help reveal more options.

Speaking of which, Plemo's Warrior keeps skirting the borders of Humboldt Forest, and I have a WC 1xp off of Sentry. I see no reason not to snap that up now that the Incans are gone.






Dead last in GNP for now, but I promise to actually start using FIN at some point