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

[NobleHelium]

What's our GG count btw?

[scooter]

Ok, I did not end turn, but I did play. Let's hit the domestic stuff first. I settled Boston Market.



Seriously, these are our cities right now:



We have 8 cities, SIX of which are size 1. Excellent . But hey, 109 beakers/turn out of 13 population. In related news, I love the Great Lighthouse. I'm putting us on 1T of wealth at Culvers:



Next turn (sz4) we should start a settler build. Sid's will also pop borders EoT letting us use the Fish:



That'll be nice. We should consider getting the granary/lighthouse combo in here next. Once India is gone and the silver/wines are in our borders, this city will suddenly have a pretty large happy cap, and it'll have some serious food to work with. Workers will need to slide over here once the early chopping is done at Boston Market. Serdoa captured a Xenu city:



That drops poor Xenu down to 4 cities. I took a quick glance through and counted up city totals for the teams we've met, plus I included Brick since we can see his land.

Commodore: 14
Serdoa: 11
Lewger: 10
Azza: 10
Scoopin: 8
Brick: 7 that we can see
Xenu: 4

Serdoa/Commodore and Lewger/Azza showdowns will be pretty interesting for the lurkers I'm sure. Demos show India is still not completing anything:



The thing here is they're producing 16F, which is a +8f surplus at sz4. Size 4 has a foodbox size of 28, so that should be a 4 turn growth (possibly 3 if there was overflow from previous growth). I believe they've now been at sz4 for 5 turns sooo.... Are they building a freaking settler?? It... sure looks like it. I give up, and I suspect they've already done the same.

I'm going to hit post now, and coming up next I wanted to start talking about the tactical situation on invading FG.

[scooter]

Ok, units available for this attack:

2 catapults (CR1)
1 GG axe (lots of cool promos)
2 axes (CR1, C1 + CR1)
2 chariots (C2, C2 + Shock)
2 Impis (C1 + Cover, CR1 + promo available)
--------
9 units


Here's how things look:



Every unit listed above is pictured here. The hover right now is over the 2 galley stack up north - the medic Impi is on that. The medic Impi is actually not included in that 9 unit count, so technically there's 10 units available - overkill. So we have two options for how to approach this:

1) Next turn we load and stage 4 units onto 2 galleys accompanied by a 3rd empty galley (the C1 galley). This drops off 4 units on T136, with up to 6 more able to be dropped off on T138. The logic here is it gets the catapults (+2 units to defend them) onto their island so they can sit and bombard for 2T while we wait for more units.

2) Next turn we wait for the 4th galley to catch up, then we load and stage on T136. We drop off 6 units on T137 (2 cats, 4 best hitters), going back for more units that could be dropped off on T139 if needed.


Now, there are two major variables here

1) They do have a galley somewhere, and they could block our approach by covering the 1 coastal tile 1S of the plains island. This would slow everything down by 1 turn minimum, possibly 2.

2) If they ARE building a settler, we might be wise to wait for the later option. Either way, they have more hammers in the box right now than last turn, so they're still building whatever it is. The reason we might want to wait is they might sail away with the settler on the galley, making it safe for us to invade FG without being hurt by the galley. If they intend to whip the settler, it would be fantastic for us as that's pop they can't use to emergency whip more units.

So with these two options and two factors, I'm sort of torn on what we want our approach to be. Pindicator, any chance you'll be on chat later tonight?

[scooter]

Last turn: they had 36h in the box
This turn: they have 48h in the box

They are making 4h and 8f surplus. So yes, they are definitely building a settler.

Double whip is available next turn for them. Would be awesome if they take it.

[NobleHelium]

Hmm, Commodore's teching MC. Need to keep an eye on that.

[pindicator]

Hmm, Commodore's teching MC. Need to keep an eye on that.

He'll beat us to it. Our path will take 10 more turns, and then we can try for Metal Csating. Being IND we want to get those forges. But probably not before Monarchy.

[scooter]

*checks Civstats*

Oh hey, there's that double whip right on cue.

[scooter]

Here's another picture from yesterday that never got posted.



Workers are hard at work prepping for our upcoming city plants. On the western side of the island, they are repairing/completing the desert/iron road. It wasn't complete when we invaded, and then we pillaged it a bit to protect from counter-attack. On the eastern side, those workers will head to chop the jungled pig, and they'll be able to improve it as soon as the city is planted. Also, fogbusting! Fun. Anyways, new turn rolled overnight. I logged in for a quick glance a few minutes ago, and confirmed the double-whip that I saw on Civstats. I went through and re-assigned a few tiles now that we have a few more border pops and pop growths. I offered a map trade to Bigger the other day, and apparently he accepted:



So we have our first slowcheetah sighting. Or rather, "FredBob360" . Also, from glancing around the map it looks like it was actaully Plako who got MoM (for some reason I thought it was slowcheetah). I'm really shocked nobody has managed circumnavigation yet - it'll be insanely valuable on this map. I imagine slowcheetah or Plako will get it.

Noble - Pindicator and I are talking about finishing Meditation (only 60 or so beakers needed) at some point soon and building a quick temple in Sid's Sushi. If we do that, we can run a priest to go along with the merchant GPP that will be growing there. End result is we either get a merchant faster, or we get ourselves a Hindu shrine, which would be a nice perk. We're also thinking if we can get the shrine, Culver's would make for a nice National Epic + Wall Street city with its massive food surplus. Sid's has a massive food surplus too, but we can turn that into a production monster. I'll try to go into more detail tonight.

[NobleHelium]

Temples require Priesthood. You want both?

[pindicator]

Temples require Priesthood. You want both?

Oh yeah, we need priesthood still...