[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

How can I grab a good global view for posting here? Zooming out too much covers everything in ugly cloud blur & makes the national borders invisible.

[The Black Sword]

Things were looking very nice when I logged in!

Zooming out totally usually looks ok to me. You can put on the culture toggle to show the borders again, but then of course you lose the resource tags. The only other option is probably flying camera, but I've never used that myself, I'm not sure how to set that up.

I started another Impi in the Capital instead of a Settler, reason being, I just can't see another good settlement site yet. The island to the west with Sheep possibly, but it needs a galley to be built and to scout it out a bit. An Impi will let us scout out the area to the NE which I hope has something.

I gave Il Mercenario the plains hill forest btw, to finish the WB this turn and put the capital working the cottage instead. I agree another Impi sounds good in the capital as we grow to 6. It might be an idea to move the axe down to the CH border btw, I'm not sure how many turns of peace are left, and we don't have much there. Then maybe whip 2-whip a worker instead of a settler? Could use the overflow for another military unit too instead of a worker if you feel we need it. For areas to settle next I'd consider:

1. The island, as soon as we can get a galley built in Ugly.

2. The North:


We need to send at least an Impi up here first to defend the spot and so we can figure out the best one given the enemies borders. But there's so much good stuff up here I wager we can find a good city even if we have to give some of it up. Also probably needs two spare workers to go with the settler, to road to the spot, chop some forests/improve the first tile.

3.

Looks like there's some nice land out here, but no food. Like you said we should send an Impi out to see if we can find some.

4.
For the pig+river. Again we need an Impi, maybe an axe too and some workers to settle down here. Would like to check for seafood before deciding a location.

So, we do probably need some more military and workers before settling new spots, but we still have some nice places to settle available.

Happy Christmas.

[agent427]

That axeman.. I initially sent him south to garrison a border city so I could juggle units around and put a happy-garrison warrior in Bad. But then I saw a barb spearman bearing down on Il Mercenario so I scrambled to get him up there.. but then the barb retreated into the fog. So for the moment I'm thinking of leaving the axe out in the open in the crossroads whefe it can move to either front within 2 moves.

Merry Christmas!

[agent427]

Just what I always wanted Santa, a free worker!


No roads here & a chariot won't help him so no immediate reprisal visible. I think I'll actually mosey 1SW-1SE, landing on the Marble hill, to get a little scouting in as I escort the worker to his new home.

Whipped Granary in Ugly, finishing off an Impi. Angel Eyes (L3 Impi) has healed up & is ready to scout.
Mercenario working the fish tile, workers chopping the PH Forest into a Granary.
Bad switched to a workboat, which will finish the same turn its culture pops.
Chopping a granary in Fistful of $.

Lands to the Northwest..


Yellow is an aggressive but high-food plant towards HRE. Pink dot is a brutally aggressive plant in their face.
Green dot is Plains Hill, grabs Crab, Wet Rice, and a whole lotta peak tiles. It would form a choke point against Rome.
Blue dot is crappy but marked just as the only other PH in the area.
Red grabs pigs & Green dot's stuff, Red and Green both could be settled.

[agent427]

we are 2nd half of turn timer btw.

[GermanJoey]

That axeman.. I initially sent him south to garrison a border city so I could juggle units around and put a happy-garrison warrior in Bad. But then I saw a barb spearman bearing down on Il Mercenario so I scrambled to get him up there.. but then the barb retreated into the fog. So for the moment I'm thinking of leaving the axe out in the open in the crossroads whefe it can move to either front within 2 moves.

Merry Christmas!

More like, Merry Axemas.

Cheers on Il Mercenerio, that's one of my all time favorite Westerns. The staging is sooooooooo good......... some of Ennio Morricone's best work too, on the soundtrack. For those who haven't ever heard of it, here's a peek. This has gotta be one of the best scenes in cinematic history; you don't even need the subtitles to follow it.

[agent427]

"When a man with an Impi meets a man with a warrior, you said the man with the warrior's a dead man... Let's see if that's true."

..this is getting a little embarassing.

-Sailing finished this turn, went into Iron Working next for Swordsmen, predicting border tension is going to bubble up soon. I wasn't sure if writing was a good idea, as I think only my capital has the realistic capacity for a library at the moment (everything else is building infrastructure or units).

[agent427]

Holy Rome's culture has spread to the Pink Dot spot above

[The Black Sword]

I was greeted with this when I logged in:


I assume they'll accept a re-offer. But I think I'd just offer straight peace. They don't know where we are at the minute right? Why show them where to direct their vengeance.

Also, our impis suck.

In general, I try to have a policy of pissing off only 1 neighbour at a time btw. It is useful to have someone you can take land off if you get a military advantage, so being friends with everybody is rarely a good idea(though it's great if everyone thinks you're friends with them). But you can only really attack one person at once and it benefits you to have the other fronts as peaceful as possible. Not that I really disagree with our opportunistic attacks so far, but it's something to keep in mind. I guess CH won't hold too much of a grudge since all we did was suicide and impi into him, whereas Rome lost a worker. So, it might be an idea to be nice towards CH.

I didn't realise about the barb spear in the fog, so it sounds like you made the right call with the axe.

Regarding tech; I really don't like IW next. Our advantage is building lots of cheap cities ourselves. We don't really need to conquer any off people yet, and that's the only thing swords are good for. We don't really need any jungle chopped and iron will only be a handful of hammers. Writing isn't great, I agree, but Maths, Currency, Calendar is. And we might want 1 library anyway to run some scientists. I was imagining us going straight to Currency, which synergises with lots of cheap cities.

Also on that topic, we should switch back to binary research. Only turn tech on when we get enough gold to finish the tech. The biggest benefit to this is flexibility. We might be planning a currency run, but if a military problem pops up we can detour to HBR/IW/Construction without losing any time. It also benefits from the known tech bonus. Suppose we can get a tech in 6t breakeven, or 3t saving, 3t researching. An opponent discovers the tech on T3. With Binary research we get the known tech bonus on the entire tech instead of just half.

Regarding settling the North, what about putting a city with the rice and lake fish in the first ring?

Some city thoughts:


Ugly really needs hammers. It's borders are about to pop, so it needs a WB and a galley. What about using the worker currently on the cows to chop one of the second ring forests? If we start now, it will complete after the border pops. Could put 20h into a galley, then 3->2 whip it and start building the WB. The settler for the island could come from Bad, which is growing very fast. Maybe grow it to size 5 and 2-whip the settler? That sounds like the timings should match up, though you should check it.

Good is currently working a plains hill. That's a really bad tile. Remember that food is better than hammers and that is even more true in a city with a granary. We should get another grass cottage up for next time, for the moment, just a river grass is probably better. I think we want to 2-whip a worker there next, maybe after we finish the current impi. Overflow a worker, then regrow and the next whip can be for a settler for the north.

The other cities look like they're still getting set up. Are you going to 2->1 whip the granary in Il Mercenerio?

Here's our demos for the lurkers:

[agent427]

I initially offered them straight peace, this is their own counter offer. Same as you I don't like it, so I'll just ignore it for now.

In general, I try to have a policy of pissing off only 1 neighbour at a time btw. It is useful to have someone you can take land off if you get a military advantage, so being friends with everybody is rarely a good idea(though it's great if everyone thinks you're friends with them). But you can only really attack one person at once and it benefits you to have the other fronts as peaceful as possible. Not that I really disagree with our opportunistic attacks so far, but it's something to keep in mind. I guess CH won't hold too much of a grudge since all we did was suicide and impi into him, whereas Rome lost a worker. So, it might be an idea to be nice towards CH.

OK. I figured the metagame here encouraged that kind of opportunism, as with the limited diplomacy it's harder for grudge-style kingmaking to happen.
Is it better to be nice to HRE, who is going to be riding straight on my borders though? Rome is further off, and doesn't know where I am.

Regarding settling the North, what about putting a city with the rice and lake fish in the first ring?

Don't understand what you're referring to. Settling on the wine tile?