[SPOILERS] scooter Reruns Bluey

[scooter]

Turn pace has been blazing lately. I've been working through my plan to rejoin the game. The plan basically boils down to "use PHI and IMP" which is very clever and outside the box. The problem is it's difficult to plan too far down the road when I don't know what various neighbors will do. As a result, I've saved an absolute mountain of gold, and it's almost time to start spending.





Very cool barbarian spawn.





Commodore sniped the barbarian jungle city. I toyed with making a run at it myself and/or trying to snipe it, but ultimately it was just not going to be defensible for me. This made Commodore the first to 10 cities. I wonder who will get to 11 first, he said awkwardly foreshadowing.





Fittingly named as we are at Easter weekend, this city I've wanted to settle for ages, but I didn't feel like I could defend it adequately.





Very next turn, settled this on the other side. The placement of this city caused me enormous consternation. First off, there's a food desert between this rice and the original capital which made dotmapping a nightmare. Originally my plan was to settle this on the hill east of here and steal the Deer, but the raze caused my capital to move, and now I cannot afford to gimp that particular city.


I then revised this plan to settle on the hill 1S of the Rice, thinking it was ultra defensive and provided me with the safest possible Viking border to deal with the eternal Mongolian war. However, the game has shifted enough that I felt I had to give myself two cities up here. 1N would have been better in a number of ways, but I just generally want to be as far south as possible. So I settled with this.




If you would like to have a quick cry, here's where this city got its name.





On a lighter note, I also have been working towards this attack. Razed it. I wanted to prevent Thoth from walking into 6 free population. I have no idea why he's neglected it so long, honestly. I guess for Yuris reasons, but he has a good sized standing army just chilling northwest of here. In any case, I was OK burning 3 units on 108g plus denial.






That leaves the northwest looking like this. The highlighted coastal tile will be very important to defend to prevent boatings. Having a hill adjacent isn't ideal, but also if Thoth wants to trek by land with 1-movers, he's welcome to do so. Something tells me that will not be his preferred strategy. I'd like to pair this city with Green Dot and establish this as my border.

[scooter]

Double report because today has just been so fast, and it's hard to keep up!





Someone didn't appreciate my raze . Sure man, I'm your obstacle in this game. If you wanna two front, I'm game.





My long running project has finally come to completion. It makes me a little sad that it's only just now happening. My original plan in this game after the Bureau/Artist play was Great Library next. The basic idea was to get my UB done early (which I did in my former capital) to let passive GPP buildup, then add a Forge, run an Engineer for 100% GE, then rush Great Library early. Then the plan was to let my GL city along with UB and PHI quietly crank out Scientists in the background that would let me bulb my way to Astro while IMP let me expand and generally not worry about teching. Sadly, neighbors got in the way. Better late than never, I suppose.


Anyway, with the settled Engineer, this will make for very strong GPP output in the upcoming turns. My gold saving is a bit of a hedge right now as it depends a little bit on whether I get an Engineer or Scientist next, but I'm about to turn on tech and pop some great people while scrapping with Thoth. Should be fun.

[scooter]

Pindicator I think is just about there.





I assume the rest know? It looks like Commodore is gearing up to attack him. Thoth meanwhile seems to have no idea.





Because he's still trying to choke my front city here. It was my mistake to place it 1S of the forest hill, so whatever. I thought I could chop it before he got there, but no dice. However, he's remained at war with me dedicating well over a dozen units to choking me instead of, I dunno, finishing off Yuris? Also he needs Astro ASAP, but he's spent probably close to 100g in unit supply in my territory over the last 8-9 turns. It's totally bizarre. It makes me wonder if he has no idea Pindicator is about to have Astro.


As you can see from this picture here, I'm threatening to flip the fight and move into his territory. I'm curious how he responds. He knows it's coming of course, but now his 5 units outside Onesies are stranded. If they move onto flatland, they'll get massacred. They aren't an impressive group - it's an elite Zerk, a pair of longbows, a catapult, and an Explorer. I think there's a good chance he's going to evacuate by Galley, but that would free even more units up for me to go on the offensive here.


I don't think I can take Pike by any means, but I do think I can be a massive headache for him. Honestly though, I don't know what play is for him here. Instead of finishing Yuris, settling his massive backlines to get double digit cities, or rushing to Astro, he's fumbling the bag harder than Ippei Mizuhara. Hate seeing Vikings wasted like this.





Popped end of turn. I was waiting to see whether this was a Scientist or Engineer before deciding on the next path. I'm going to figure this out today. I have setup Camping to be able to spawn a GP in 10T if I don't Golden Age, and Creek could get one out right after that easily. So what I can do here is wait another 10T and then triple bulb my way down Astro with a trio of Scientists, and in the meantime use my cash stockpile to fill in the missing beakers.


However, that's a little slow. So I have to look into a second option which is a Golden Age. I could use that Golden Age to just straight up tech Astro right now - it would complete during the Golden Age. That's one option. Another is to do the traditional thing and churn out a bunch of Great People. I haven't done the math on that yet though. So that's my job today/tonight - figure out which path to commit to - what gets me Astro under the best circumstances. I'm hoping I can get there before Thoth and have a window against him. We'll see.

[scooter]

Let's see how committed Thoth is to this choke/fight.





Sure doesn't look super prepared. He can definitely defend this city, but it will require him giving up this defensive cover he's using I think. He could have a bunch in the fog, but considering there was enough fighting on the Yuris front this turn to spawn a GG, I don't think there's a ton in this area.





Alternatively he could make it worth my while to go home. I did give him a chance to kill/delete two workers for free, but I'm fine with that hammer exchange, because it would result in him losing units and/or getting off my hill.

[T-hawk]

Your tech is stopped just short of Paper, is that on purpose? Have you put together a tech plan yet?

[scooter]

Your tech is stopped just short of Paper, is that on purpose? Have you put together a tech plan yet?

Just short of Paper is not totally important. I thought it was mildly useful to deny other player knowledge that I had it because the tech itself does nothing for me, but ultimately it's not a big deal. I finished it on that turn.


As for tech, I think I'm just going to blast straight through Astro in a Golden Age aided by Wealth/Research builds along with my cash on hand. The hangup is I've decided to stall 1-2 more turns to see how Thoth reacts to this play. Moving in on him is expensive support-wise, and on the chance my stack gets wiped, I'll need to build more units. So I have stalled it by a couple turns.

[scooter]

Time to fire a Golden Age. The basic GP plan. (Don't read too much into tile assignments. I may have changed/shared some around differently after taking these pictures.)





I'll get my first out of here. This will be a pretty balanced blend of Merchant/Scientist/Engineer odds. I chose to run Merchants everywhere initially rather than scientists. I'm raw teching Astro, and the Scientist bulbs are of varying usefulness to me, so I think I'd prefer Trade Missions honestly. For example, let's say one of these cities pop an Engineer. Pairing that with a Trade Mission to tech Nationalism next and then rush Taj is a good fallback plan. So that's why I'm preferring Merchants in these cities.






Planning to pop one in Keepy Uppy the next turn. This one is much more likely to be a Merchant. There will be a decent chance at an Artist here. That would be unfortunate. However, if that dice roll happens, I think I'll pivot to a 2-man GA next and try my luck again.






Finally, this will be an easy one which I'll do third in order to keep things easier for the other two cities - especially Camping. I thought about doing this one first and fourth, but I couldn't quite make it work in time. I mean, I probably could have figured it out, but tbh my effort level is about a 7/10 in this game, so this'll do. (This is the most wingin' it Golden Age I've fired in an RB game in a very long time.)


All of these GP will be super mixed dice rolls. As a result, I'm going to have to be really flexible. There's a world where I get, say, a Scientist and a pair of Merchants, and I elect to go double trade + Edu bulb into a Liberalism push, for example. Engineer + Merchants probably means Taj. Artist probably means 2-man GA right away. There's also definitely a world where I use 2 and bank a third for a slightly later 2-man, which is probably the most likely plan. Basically my tech is putrid for several reasons, so I need to convert my GPP -> beakers or else I basically won't get any teching done.






I pivoted with Thoth. I forced him to pile defenders into Pike, which was never going to fall. However, it gave me a chance to take control of the northern half of the forest, isolating a few units of his south of here. He does have Engineering so I'm vaguely nervous about a counter-attack, but he's so heavy on Longbows that it seems unlikely. I'm hoping to use this to kill off what's left of the choking units so I can get Onesies developed and the general area controlled (aka chopped). I'll have Galleons onto the seas in 10T, and I'm betting he won't, so we'll see what opportunities open up then.






My thoroughly mediocre but still very alive empire. The main issue is the very poor population. I've essentially been at war in one form or another for 70T, so most of my cities have 3-5 unhappy faces from over-whipping. Fortunately, this is an extremely luxury-rich map, and the Forge quest gave me an excuse to build them, so happiness is not an actual issue for me.





Gotta snap a quick shot of that GNP. It's been right down there with Yuris for ages, so even with the GA + Wealth/Research, gotta enjoy my 5 minutes in the sun. Overall though my position in this game is very clear. Fortunately, the entire world is at war, so who knows what'll happen next? My plan it to be a perpetual thorn in Thoth's side until he kills me or makes it worth my while to peace out. If I do get to a state of peace again, opportunism will be the general plan. I don't expect it anytime soon though, honestly. Generally speaking the plan is to try to help Pindicator win - or specifically, make Commodore/Thoth lose - unless a real path to winning opens up to me. It's hard to picture that now, but this game is so bloody that things can swing quickly.

[scooter]

Played turn earlier today but neglected to take pictures. The upshot is I lost more or less my entire stack in Thoth's land. Unfortunate, but not a huge shock. I don't really expect Onesies to fall, but we'll see. Either way, forcing him to burn hundreds of hammers and gold on me while the rest of the world gets Astro is on-paper fine with me. The catch here is the Pindicator and Commodore continue to fight, or at least dance around each other, rather than pressing their window on Vikings. This war is totally futile - it's very obvious neither will make gains. Thoth is nowhere near a clinching position, but crucially that's only because he's taking forever to get Astro. If he's allowed to consolidate his gains and get Astro while these two waste each other's time, he'll walk. If they peace out and bother him at sea right now, he'll likely fold. The whole reason I thought the Boudica pick was stupid was I thought there's no way the world would allow him to get to Astro. But we're seemingly pushing our luck here.


So I've got to get them to knock it off and harass Thoth. I sent them both requests asking them to declare on Thoth and stop trading with Thoth. I'm sure they'll both blame the other for their situations, but I figured it's worth a shot.

[scooter]

It's time for Great People Roulette! Spin number one.





An Engineer. Not quite my preferred Merchant, but I am more than OK with it, especially if I get a Merchant elsewhere. Spin number two:






A Merchant! The most flexible of my options.






Quick shot yesterday of Astro's Eve. Sadly only Keepy Uppy's Galley would complete instantly, but the others will be right behind.





Another development - they decided to decline initially and burn some hammers on each other first, but they came around on peace. This either means we're about to see World War Thoth, or Commodore is going to backstab me in a manner that will see me actively throw the game to Thoth. The latter seems unlikely, but certainly possible. SPIN NUMBER 3.






Alright. I have Astro, an Engineer, and a pair of Merchants. Feel free to take your guesses at the grand plan here.

[Krill]

Die.