[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits and The Black Sword - Baguettes and Circuses

[The Black Sword]

Sure thing, I figured that was the case. Hope you have a good time over the holidays.

[The Black Sword]

Looks like I messed up last turn and put 3h into a WB in Bombix instead of a warrior.


I settled the new city and broke the alphabetical order, calling it Terroix. The lion did not co-operate and I had to advance the warriors this turn.

Pictures from our explorers:




The southern guy defeated his lion opponent, 1.6 health with a promo pending.

Demos:

EOT, Asterix became a Hindu! Need to decide what to do with the southern worker next turn, which probably has knock on effects on what Bombix is doing. I should have time today to think about it.

[The Black Sword]

The lion killed one of our warriors at 27% odds:


We returned the favour and took no damage. However, this means the warrior will reach the hill a turn later than planned and can't cover our worker. So here's what I did:


2 workers continue to road towards the gems site. Next turn they road the wheat, the turn after one of them jumps on the hill, covered by the warrior. Then they can pasture and road the sheep before returning for the wheat or gems. I then put the 3rd worker onto the riverside plains forest instead of helping the roading effort. He can road and cottage-chop that, and if he's aided by the next worker coming out of Asterix can complete it just in time to help improve the wheat. But he takes just long enough that Maths should be in. One of the workers can chop the forest W of the wheat into a granary in the gems city.

I also started moving Terroix's warrior toward the gems site, since the city has enough hammers to crash build something if a barb appears.

In the south, I moved our worker onto the plains hill to road toward the fish site. Bombix can complete the warrior while growing to size 7 and whip the settler. The 2 warriors can go cover the settling party, our returning explorer can become the new garrison.

I think we make exactly enough science to 1t Fishing next turn with no overflow to be rounded down.

Scout:


I promoted the southern warrior to C1 and finished healing him.

Demos:

[The Black Sword]

Things are moving along in the core. Capital started the settler, Bombix grew to size 7 and Terroix completed its monument. The workers are roading and I picked up Fishing.



I think the WB can move to that tile 1S of the rice before returning in time for the fish. Regarding the city location, there's a question of whether we should found on the hill instead. I like the location marked, we can found a turn earlier and it takes 3t to grow and whip in a monument. So that's a 2t delay for the border pop, the extra clams resource and 2 hills for some production. It probably has a good chance of getting a free religion spread eventually, so I don't mind the monument too much.

In the north we ran into a barb warrior:


If we retreated and he pushed on we'd be trapped and force backwards, so I took the hill instead. I was hoping to loop around the lake, guess we'll see what the barb does. Would be nice to get some real units in play if barbs are coming out.

We also found more goodies to the south:


Immediately south of Bombix all we see is a plains sheep. Maybe we should find somewhere to settle there though as a step toward this land.

Top 5 cities screen sure looks good!


Demos:

[The Black Sword]

Our work boat made quite a discovery this turn:


Stone! And where there's stone, there's usually marble ... somewhere. I'd be more interested in the marble, because I don't think Pyramids are a priority. It also seems like we have enough islands that GLH would make 2c per city, and most of our cities have been coastal so far. One of our neighbours already knows Sailing btw.

I've been thinking maybe we should keep the Terroix forests for any potential wonder run(I had been planning on chopping one into the gems city granary). We don't really have any great wonder production sites, even that only has 4 forests.

Other explorers:


I wanted to backtrack a bit with this guy to see what we could settle with the sheep.



If the barb warrior returns to the forest next turn, we could fortify our warrior so he gets odds on the defence and stack him with the other worker to defend the workers as they improve the sheep? That city is getting founded next turn.

I put tech at 40%, we had 35c so any even setting would do and this gave 15b exactly. We need 2 more turns to finish Math.

Also, where to aim our first island city for? I'd like to steal the Ivory, fish spot if we can. If that's Yuri's only horse (and we only have a single horse and copper source) then an axe would be a good defender.

Demos:

[The Black Sword]

A turn appears!

I settled our 4th city of Monix, increasing our costs by 5gpt:


We found Mackoti to our South East:


I think we pop onto the hill next turn to make contact and complete defogging the are before continuing south.

Yuri's naked settler showed up by our scout. A bit risky no?


I thought about it and decided that Yuri was likely to have a warrior coming behind it so I decided to try backtrack.

We settle city 5 next turn. Do you want to name it Seven, since I got the last 3?


Went with an axe in the capital, since barbs are showing up. IIRC, the plan was to leave one of the workers to finish cottaging that plains forest and the other moves to put a chop into Monix's granary next turn.

We can probably set ourselves up to Oracle Currency at little risk after Maths. Put 1t research into Priesthood, move workers to forests. Next turn, check if we have a pre-requisite, if not, finish Priesthood, chop 1, whip something, next turn overflow +chop out the oracle. That's why I'd like to meet Mack, since he'd be the major worry for the Oracle. Of course, Ichabod is the other religion founder so not having contact with him is problematic too. He's probably to our North East by process of elimination. EDIT: Actually, we'll easily have enough gold at 100% to 1t Priesthood.

Demos:

[SevenSpirits]

t44



Running away isn't working. Maybe we have a chance of running through English lands if the barb follows us? Oh, also, look, it's a barb city!



Moved our warrior to meet Mackoti, and he has Priesthood. I am therefore assuming that we will go for Sailing next, not Priesthood.



I founded Aquatix and moved the worker onto the hill. Sorry if this is just worse than building the road. I thought it might be valuable to have the second good tile available right away, when we really want a granary here. The price is, I think, 3-4 turns more of no trade route to this city (until we get Sailing).



We got graphs on Yuris so I took pictures:

Also snapped pictures of rival best pop/land, and our domestic advisor.

[SevenSpirits]

We settle city 5 next turn. Do you want to name it Seven, since I got the last 3?

Well as you can see, I didn't want to name it Seven, since that doesn't really fit our naming scheme. I did consider naming it Six though.

[The Black Sword]

Well as you can see, I didn't want to name it Seven, since that doesn't really fit our naming scheme. I did consider naming it Six though.

Heh, that must have been hard to resist.

Too bad about Priesthood, I guess oracling currency would have been too good to be true. Sailing next sounds good. I wonder should we keep the axe for defence or send it up to that barb city.

A mine looks fine for Aquatix if we don't plan on whipping the monument immediately. I wasn't really sure yet whether we should go with that or wait for a religious spread.

[The Black Sword]

If we repeat the position 3 times it's a draw right?




I messed around in the sandbox a bit and thought about what to do with our core, where two more whip cycles are coming up. Cities are getting pretty expensive, more on that in a minute, so I think we're best off going with something like a settler, a galley and 2 workers from these whips. With that in mind, there's no immediate need for this worker to set up a new city, I had him start building a new shared grassland cottage for Bombix to work.

In the capital, finished the axe with a chop, working the new cottage. Next turn I was thinking of overflowing a workboat who could go check out the islands in advance of our galley and then probably net a fish. We need to be careful to work the grass forest over the mine though, or I think we get >25h into the settler and can't triple whip. Then we whip that settler, who goes into the galley built with the overflow(Sailing should come in 3t, just in time). Not ideal to have him sitting around for a turn, it might be possible to get the settler from Bombix instead. We probably want to send the axe on the galley too.

I feel we need a bit more of a plan for the next few turns, so I was thinking about the next city locations to prioritise.

1. We have the dry wheat/gems spot up north, could try to steal the fish from Yuri too. We also might be competing with him for the sheep/river area. It costs around 10gpt.

2. We have 2 cheap cities we can settle close to our capital. These are 3-4gpt cheaper than other options. They are backline though. Still, I think Horse/clam would be good to prioritise, since it'd be good to get the horse connected too. I'd like to delay the other spot(on the jungle?) until we have monks ready.


3. Some good land in the south, but we sort of have to skip over a bit of weak land to get there. I'm not sure where we would want a city first here, maybe on the plains hill W of the corn? Again this is really expensive. I doubt either of the seafood spots to the east are worth it at the moment.


Demos: