[SPOILERS] Small Wunders and Izzy of Inca: The fat lady sings

[MindyMcCready]

I don't really see someone investing 2 axes per archer to take a city like that (with archer bonus on a hill) in the ancient era. It's 70 hammers to 25!

Well you're right when you think of it as invested hammers - 70H: 25H. However, post-battle, the hammer exchange is 1 archer: 1 axe. Which is well worth it if it lands you a great city and sets the #1 score leader back.

I don't know if I can see him as a spiteful player.

Maybe we'll have to agree to disagree on this. I don't consider the actions I'm assuming of him to be spiteful behaviour. Rather just a naturally changing set of objectives once you significantly downgrade your chances of winning the game. It's rational to not invest in the future to the same degree because you see your timeline shortened - you build military insted.

Also, when someone settles so close you, you consider that aggressive. Aggression breeds aggression so you enter standoff mode and if your opponent is (optimally) investing in the future, you have an opening with your military focus. This I consider natural, rational and non-spiteful.

My intuition says that war is inevitable with our city plant. I've also lurked enough games to also see players tilt on such moves. The initiator of this kind of move almost always thinks that "its not so bad" but the receipient of the plant is incensed. A neutral third party might very well agree with your rationale regarding distance,...but the only opinion that matters is Retep's in this case. Also, if Retep could somehow beat us to the spot (say resources were distributed different) and planted 1S of our Silk plant - equidistance between our capitals, it wouldn't make us feel any better because he has a rational reason to believe that he's entitled to this land we would strictly feel that our capital is threaten.

I ask you to consider all the games that you've lurked and come up with an example where a 5-tiles from capital plant is gracefully accepted.

Anyway, I've made my point, you've heard it and understand where I'm coming from so I'm good with that.

Because math solves everything: There are 3674 land tiles in this game. That is 204 per person. That's the philosophy of securing the border first and then backfilling later.

Well that helps a bit. You'd probably have to modify that for the N/S poles, and some % of tundra and islands.

If we see that the only copper is W of us we'd have to grab it ASAP I think, and abort this whole idea for now.

Ok. I think that makes sense.

I did scout one more tile this turn:

Oh,...that looks promising. If this land ends and there's no 'Team Orange' I think I would be like-minded about your city.

Couldn't you see him trying to settle X, Y, Z here (or something similar) quickly? That land is at equal distance between us, so it seems much more likely he'd grab that than try to overlap us to his east where he's at a disadvantage by being farther away.

I don't really see him doing that. If you're willing to forgo that land, why would he want it? That 'X' location has absolutely no food. 1N of the wheat or 2N of the wheat (sheep) would be far better cities which would invalidate that 'X'. Cities 'Y' and 'Z' are strong cities but these are much worse defensively than the blue squares that I proposed that he might take. If we cracked city 'X' then his 'Y' and 'Z' are isolated and easy pickings for us.

Possibly he could plant 1N of wheat then follow up by planting 3N of that location right on the silver. That would give him decent blocking cities with food to concentrate his troops and allow him to develop the rest of the area in relative safely. I don't think that we should allow that, of course - we need a city west of our capita.

And I know you've said you think blood is inevitable here.

Yeah, I'm a broken record.

[WilliamLP]

Check this out:




Nobody has even scouted this land yet! We somehow get another hut and the chances that there's a player close by to the east are virtually 0. I'll literally be on the floor rolling around if we pop another tech.

The settler is en Route to the new city. Unfortunately it takes four moves to move and settle because of all that dense forest.

The worker will put 1 turn into mining that plains hill. It's not very valuable but we have 1 worker turn completely for free and it might as well do something. Otherwise he finishes the gold mine 2 turns before we need it at size 2, and 2 turns before BW finishes, with nothing else to do. This way he moves to a forest after the mine, and can immediately start chopping.

[MindyMcCready]

That's,....surprising.

Tech would be awesome. Don't want to jinx the tech, but even a map could be very valuable if it shows us that eastern region.

Your blocking city is looking more attractive.

On second look, that looks like a small lake, but still.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah. It's not fresh water though so if it's a lake it's >9 tiles.

[MindyMcCready]

So,....that warrior you're building,....

It could get to FAB city on T36 which is about the time that FAB city would be able to whip, Also, retep will likely have just finished his settler.

Our capital should be safe with those hill. I'd like to see you send him in the direction of FAB city while looking for opportunities with the power graph. 2 warriors could do some serious pillaging damage and really set him back. Plus it would be FUN!

[WilliamLP]

Plus it would be FUN!

Heh, maybe. Certainly we don't need to be that vigilant about the capital itself right now because its radius and vision are so good. And we also have the immediate area fully scouted out, so sending the new warrior south to fab city seems like the right idea.

I don't know about spending a lot of resources for an ancient war, but it's certainly worth it to make Retep prove that he can defend his actions, e.g. he shouldn't be allowed to keep cities under-defended or leave workers and settlers in strike range.

If we can actually get a couple of sites down on that river with the second gold site, oh man we'd be in great economic shape. And then if we can chop the Oracle and use the GP points for an early shrine too, well we could beat most of anyone to Construction for sure. With RBMod, if we have river commerce cities, we aren't even at a disadvantage to FIN leaders, since they don't get their bonus on a river anymore.

[WilliamLP]

And the hut is...




Gold or a tech would be much better obviously, but Exp gives us a free W2 unit, so it's far from useless! It's good for scouting or surprise worker steals from out of vision, heh.

I didn't take a screenshot, but retep's scout appeared 1S of the quechua guarding the fab city. He might guess what's up but it will be settled the turn after next.

I didn't take the 78% shot to kill his scout in a forest.

Graphs on Bacchus:






Bacchus is inflated by being CRE, we're more inflated by having a holy city.






This shows how good our start is since we have a gap on food and on production at the same time.




Both of them have bronze and are building a settler off a single warrior.

[MindyMcCready]

I love WIIs!!!!

So, just to state the obvious, and I'm sure that you're going to anyway but please promote the WII right away. Obviously for travel speed but also those bears are nasty and we'll need both promos to survive. I'm sure this was unnecessary to say and all,...but due diligence and all that.

Onto marginally more useful information:

So Baccus looks to have had a workboat start. The early production is 5H so plains hill start + plains hill,...wait what tile gets him 3H unimproved? I guess the +1H for an expansive workboat build shows up here?

He built a warrior early he grew to Size2 the turn that we got the corn improved. Our W2 warrior probably doesn't have any workers to nab.

[WilliamLP]

Yeah, W2 is good for the extra scouting movement too. I don't see promoting to anything else - walking back home and giving him Cover or Medic 1 or something seems a little extreme.

It does seem true about Bacchus starting with a WB - his growth to size 2 was earlier than ours. A plains hill start plus a plains hill forest is 5H. The EXP bonus hammers don't show up in the graphs (which is inconsistent with GNP, where bonuses do show up).

It's useful to know he's on a coast somewhere. I'm guessing he might be SW of Retep?

[WilliamLP]

Where do you want to scout next? I'm probably thinking SE->SE .