[SPOILERS - El Grillo PB54] Staying home and stargazing

[El Grillo]

T79:

I shouldn't play turns this early in the morning, but here we are.



Poor naufragar lost his capital, and scooter elected to keep it (from the Top Cities & Wonders screen) and Stonehenge. From what I can puzzle out from the diplo modifiers, naufragar managed to sneak a city raze of his own, but was overpowered by scooter. I was at one point tempted to send him our copper when it was clear that scooter had pillaged naufragar's, but our own lateness to hooking copper and unresolved tension with Mjmd/Ruff made me hesitate.



It seems Ruff is content with this partition of the contested island. It's interesting that the peaks give visibility into our city tiles here, which hopefully will act as a deterrent. I'd really like to hold onto the plains hill to get vision into Pre-symptomatic as well, but that could be dicey since I think his cheap Monument will finish first.

Our exploring Workboat found a clam to pair with the copper in the northeast (you can just barely see it in the screenshot) so our Galley and Settler will be headed there. Our next Settler will probably go ahead and found the jungled rice/gems site while we tech Iron Working so we can hook up a second luxury. We do finish hooking the ivory in two turns, but we have several cities awkwardly delaying growth so they don't grow into unhappiness. Subsequent Settlers can fill in that peninsula, and we can keep looking for islands as well.



Gira at full spend with a Library and Academy and CRE culture certainly out-GNPs us, but I'm not so sure if he out-researches us by much. Still an impressive achievement. Geopolitically, it looks like we have scooter and Miguelito poised to dominate their continents, with ours being less clear but Mjmd and superdeath having set each other back. Those two seem content to build and expand for now, but I wouldn't be surprised if tensions sparked again once they're both out of land.

[El Grillo]

T80:

Naufragar took back his capital so I sent him a gift of copper to support his continued meager existence. No telling if it helps or not, and it might anger scooter, but we were never going to be long-term friends anyway.

Vanrober is starting to spike in power and has some really large cities, including one at size 8! Incoming whips for a Keshik timing attack? It's the obvious CHA/IMP Mongol play after all for 2-promo Keshiks with only a cheap Ger, and with that continent shaky with the scooter/naufragar war, vanrober could be in a good spot to throw his weight around and pull ahead. It's a good thing we're not his land neighbor, because we'd straight-up die to a dozen Keshiks.

[El Grillo]

T81:




Currency finishes with exact beakers (not quite planned, but I did make sure I would finish a cottage for the capital to grow onto). City 7 gets settled on the clam/copper island next turn, city 8 for wheat/clam T85, and I'll be having the Galley ferry over two Workers for those cities while we produce a few more at home to improve more tiles and begin roading and chopping jungle for city #9. We'll get 4 KTBs on Iron Working next, which will be nice, and then there's a decision to be made between HBR/Construction or Calendar first. I'm thinking it has to be the military techs.

I'm curious if Ruff tries to plant a third city on the southern tip of the contested island, it would be quite slow to set up and be very vulnerable to boating. In other words, I wouldn't mind if he did We hopefully get graphs on Mjmd next turn. Demos are not terrible considering how little pop we've whipped down to... if you ignore Miguelito almost doubling our food. EPs will be going into him next, so I can feel better when I see he's rival worst GNP or something.

[El Grillo]

T82:



We researched Currency and founded city #7, Comet Approach, which is immediately extremely profitable. More Settlers are queued up to be 2-pop whipped, while the capital will need to be left alone to grow onto mines and build more military.



This is enough to put us at top GNP at 0% tech, and Iron Working takes 2 turns at 100% with us showing ~140 GNP. Being 2nd in food shows what a bizarre world we live in where apparently almost everyone decided to duel or got mauled by barbarians or went for an early wonder, except for Miguelito who just cleanly executed a IMP opening. Hopefully he runs out of land soon and needs to fix his finances.



Vanrober is (soon to be) on the warpath! Meanwhile, our continent's power graph welcomes everyone who wishes to sit in a circle with us and sing kumbaya. Somewhat surprisingly superdeath seems to have been left worse off than Mjmd from the early aggression, as the HRE is still on 4 cities while IMP India has bounced back to 6. 15-20 more turns of peace between us would be lovely, and hopefully vanrober goes for Ruff and draw his attention away from the contested island

[El Grillo]

T83:



Mjmd threw a spanner into the works by playing T82-83 back to back with 1 turn remaining on our enforced peace treaty, moving an Axe into our W2 Warrior's tile. Of course, he couldn't have known about my Settler in the area, but I do need to adapt. While I could stick with my original plan, it would be much riskier and involve spending 80 gold to upgrade the Warrior into an Axe the turn the city was founded, then hoping Mjmd wouldn't take the 20% shot at the hill city. Unlike with Ruff earlier, my read on Mjmd is that he would strongly consider it. Thankfully, we have an alternative: the Warrior I brought over to Comet Approach found another clam and some forests, which means there's another decent city to be founded there. The Workboat headed east can make it to the new location without delays, and this way I only need to ferry over one Worker for the two cities on that island, with the Settler heading up the west coast of the peninsula to board the Galley in a few turns.

Meanwhile, we'll slot in a Chariot at home in case Mjmd decides to send his Axe into our borders, and the W2 Warrior will check for more Indian units in case he's trying to pink dot us in the jungle. With tech set to 100%, Iron Working is due in 2T.

[El Grillo]

T84:






Uh, Mjmd, is this the hill you want to die on? He planted his newest city on ~T81 and either wants my intended dot or 1E of it. That's a city 6-7 tiles from my capital and 10+ tiles from his, and I'm not sure how he intends to get away with this either militarily or economically. Also, with his power equal to mine, those three units in the north suggest that his border with superdeath is pretty lightly defended, which on its face appears unwise, except that superdeath seems to have gone into hibernation for the winter. I'm not going to whip anything now impulsively, but you bet we're going to respond to this gambit when we have Construction. I'm also glad I re-routed my Settler instead of going for the upgraded Axe plan, or I wouldn't have seen those Archers.




I meant to do this a couple of turns ago when Currency came in, but better late than never. Here's a dump of trade screens so I can estimate what people are spending/saving.

Miguelito making 19gpt is reassuring, but I'm sure they have some trick up their sleeves. Please don't let it be a Pyramids/Rep/Caste timing, anything but that. I'm already getting PB51 flashbacks to Plemo's REX-snowball-into-Pyramids-recovery from the demos, and these guys built that CY lead without even building Hanging Gardens...

[Charriu]

You can see everybody's gold per turn in the F4 Info screen now.

[El Grillo]

Ah that makes sense, thanks for the tip. I'm also somewhat surprised none of my OB partners has come to haggle for some GPT yet. Not that I really need them with my PRO ICTR, once I settle two more island cities.

[El Grillo]

T85:



We have two easily connected sources of Iron, but then there's this, and now I want the option to whip out some Horse Archers to hit Presymptomatic before he can get more than one Spear into it, while we wait the additional ~6t for Construction to better bully Mjmd out of all that defensive terrain. Disregard the build queues shown, we're getting a second Galley out of Milky Way with the whip overflow from the Worker, and North Star is going to slow-build a 5t Settler.

Over in the east, Mjmd moved his Axe north but can't hit my Settler, and is showing another Fast Worker but no Settler yet. I'm moving a couple of Archers around to get more vision, but don't have a great response to him planting on the hill for the time being.



Elsewhere, superdeath built the Colossus, so he presumably has a bunch of coastal/island sites with 2/0/4 tiles, and now he'll have the tech rate to get to Classical military, but he's also still on 4 cities. Gira researched Alphabet and looks to be spending at max for ~130 GNP, presumably Currency with both prereqs. A Great General died in the scooter/naufragar war though I'm not sure on whose side, and Cairo captured naufragar's island, so we might be getting our copper back soon.

[El Grillo]

T86:



Ruff nicely anticipated my aggressive thoughts and built Walls to show that he's not overlooking this vulnerability. Granted in an actual fight a Spear or another Archer would be a lot better, but I appreciate the gesture. It definitely makes the prospect of whipping down all my cities back to size 2 look a lot less attractive



Mjmd has a whole bunch of units in this area, 2 Archers, Axes, and Fast Workers. I wasn't able to get eyes on a Settler but surely one is heading up. How we respond really depends on where he plants his city. If it's one of the two eastern dots, I think I just grit my teeth and settle a flatland border city at minimum distance 1N of the gems, and trust my PRO Archers to make up for the difference, at least for the short run. If he settles more aggressively, I honestly don't have a great response right now, I'd probably settle the desert hill in the inland sea and put up a hill city on the peninsula with two promoted Archers.

I've been running some sims and honestly attacking at even a one-era tech advantage with HAs/Cats/BE against fortified hill Archers/Spears isn't looking super appealing because I won't be able to muster enough forces to even out bad rolls. I don't want to end up like Jowy vs Charriu in PB52 where an initially promising-looking attack just ground to a halt. Granted that was against another PRO player and tenacious defender in Charriu, but Mjmd is no slouch either.

Instead, and given I might not be able to claim the gems as soon as I'd hoped, I'm heading to Calendar to press my economic advantages by unlocking +2 happiness from dyes and silk. I have some mainland fillers and crumple-zone cities left to found, as well as some guesses about where there might be more islands, which will remain profitable for quite some time. We'll look to keep growing our cities and extending our tech lead, then fight our neighbors at a more pronounced advantage. With any luck, people won't think about attacking me because I'm a tech away from BE, while instead I'm putting together a plan to swap into HR/Bureaucracy/Caste/OR in our T100s Golden Age (and maybe the Code of Laws religion if we get it). Besides, BEs have a decently long shelf life in a stack thanks to their special ability to pick off Mounted units in the open.