[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Let's talk about our land. The way I see it, we have 3 cores right now. The Core, Island Core, and Na Core. (please don't boo me for the horrible joke)


First off though, I was greeted by this news:



Not surprising, but we can breathe easier about being able to builder through the next 20 turns or so. So let's get to the cities.

The Core



Here's our original group of cities, humming along. I'll make a few stray comments.

Trailblazers: I think we're going to go forge after this settler. We were going to go military, buuuuut Lewwyn just handed us a free ticket to build infrastructure, so thank you very much. Oxford is going here. This is halfway because of excellent base commerce, but the clincher is the more lucrative trade routes TB can get, which is currently funneling in a lot of commerce.

Red Wings: generating our scientist for the Printing Press bulb.

Orioles: Next is a few longbows, then a few catapults, then probably Zerks indefinitely. Someday we'll slot in a forge, but I don't think it's needed just yet. At least, not as much as military.

Tigers: Our best non-academied commerce city. We debated putting Oxford here since it has more raw commerce potential, but TB wins out for reasons stated above.

Bulldogs/Pirates: General commerce/hammer cities respectively. Pirates definitely needs to produce strong hammers for our western ship production later in the game.

Bills: just sort of a city that exists. It establishes our northern border, claims incense, and does literally nothing else whatsoever. We'll just sit and build missionaries out of it forever. You know, once we get a Confu missionary into it.


Island Core



Valiants: this has been our worker/settler pump for this whole island core for awhile now. The current settler will settle the "c" SE-S-S of Valiants. Probably. Cow/horse is not out of the question, that's currently in discussion.

Boilermakers: I <3 this city. Also, we swapped this to a forge after I took this picture. It'll go back to being the island military pump after that, most likely.

Lions: Northern - name is hidden by a sign - but this will prob use the hammers to build National Epic, then go heavy on specialists with the abundance of food? Maybe-probably-whoknows. That's the tentative plan.

Packers/Wolverines/Seahawks: nothing special. Just farms, mines, workshops. I don't think we'll build any cottages at these spots. Packers could be a decent naval pump later in the game.


Na Core



Lot more uncertainty here with individual cities, but we don't need to make any decisions quickly because so many of them are missing some basic infrastructure. Granted, they mostly have granaries (praise be RNG), but it'll take some time. Generally, we're leaving cottages Nakor built, but we probably won't add many more. The remaining jungle needs some serious worker attention. We just need more workers in general. I won't comment every city, but here's a few stray comments.

Expos: This guy has an academy and multiple TOWNS. Going to be one of our better science cities once we get it up to speed, though it is a little hamstrung by how much coast it has.

Sonics: A monster that has 11 population ready to come out of revolt.

Horse/Pig/Copper/Stone: Sorry, can't remember the name, and it's covered by resource icon. Anyway, monster production city. Maybe Ironworks here later? Farm everything that can be farmed (like that pointless cottage NW of the city that we actually should pillage right now), then mine and workshop all that we have enough food to support. I think we should farm over that hamlet that Nets is using too and give it to this city. But maybe that's too aggressive of me. I just love this city.

Browns: We're farming over a couple cottages so we can chain irrigation into this city for the rice. I imagine we'll just farm up and then work coast and specialists. Always gonna be a bit of a stub city.

Others: Nothing special determined yet. Just getting them functional is the goal right now.


Future Settlement

Here's Pac South:



We're gonna squeeze 3 cities onto this probably. May as well, we're FIN. So if you've been counting the "c" signs, we have room for 7 more peaceful city plants if we don't lose this island. That'll get us to 32 cities. We'll have to re-evaluate once all those are planted, but we did hit the conqueror's plateau, so we may as well keep planting cities. As long as we can, you know, defend and improve them which is questionable right now.

I think that covers things pretty well. Any questions?

[Atlarge]

Any plans to join the Azza/Lewwyn blood feud and on which side?

[Zed-F]

Not surprising, but we can breathe easier about being able to builder through the next 20 turns or so.

Suggests the answer is, not yet, wait and see. Too many infra/defense needs first, but they might be in a position to re-evaluate in 10+ turns after they see how Lewger is doing on the attack.

My question is, you say more workers are needed, but I don't see any such builds. Where are they coming from?
Also, are you still thinking of getting Notre Dame, and if so where?

[scooter]

Not surprising, but we can breathe easier about being able to builder through the next 20 turns or so.

Suggests the answer is, not yet, wait and see. Too many infra/defense needs first, but they might be in a position to re-evaluate in 10+ turns after they see how Lewger is doing on the attack.

Yep, definitely no warring for awhile. Early game we juggled multiple wonders and hard expansion, then we juggled building an army without whips while continuing expansion, so our infrastructure is pretty terrible for T150. For example we have about 6 courthouses for 25 cities, which is pretty bad for an ORG leader.

My question is, you say more workers are needed, but I don't see any such builds. Where are they coming from?

I think that's just a general refrain we like to echo pretty often. Our worker situation really isn't THAT bad, mainly because we captured several from Nakor. They're just very scattered at the moment. We've got 25 or so, and a lot of our cities don't need improving. So we're ok. Could always use a few more, but it's not our biggest need I don't think.

Also, are you still thinking of getting Notre Dame, and if so where?

Probably a better question for pindicator. I'm not feeling the big need for more happiness like I think he is, so I'd like to see where he wants to put it. It would be pretty easy to build though since we have stone (it is stone for ND right? Whatever, we have marble too), and not many people are even able to build it right now.

[NobleHelium]

Build it either at a city with existing wonders, your NE city, or Gators or the city covered by the pig icon.

[pindicator]

Good questions

Notre Dame isn't as big a priority as infrastructure. And with Lewwyn being the only other person with Engineering, i'm okay with not building it for a little while longer.

Workers.... That's more difficult. If we didn't have so many infra needs i'd say we should build a round of them in many cities and get it out of our way. Instead i think we need to pick and choose which cities have their infra delayed to pump out workers. Valiants held that honor before and it may get it again. But we really need somewhere closer to the Na Core.

Now my question: where do we get six unis up for an Oxford build?

[NobleHelium]

Never mind what about I said the NE city, I forgot that's on an island haha.

[pindicator]

Would it be crazy to want to build Chichen Itza?
Not right now, of course

[scooter]

Turn 152

Not very eventful at all. Workers were mostly doing things, so I continued doing those things. I started longbows in Orioles (2T) and Bills.



Tempting. But pass. So a few things here:



1) Yep, that's a bare settler/missionary pair by Black Sword. Want a free worker? We can't hit it this turn because that Zerk loaded this turn, but we may be able to grab it next turn if we want.

2) That galley 2 tiles away also has a Zerk on it. We could chain it onto this one next turn.

3) I kinda want to use this galley and 2 Zerks to probe Mackoti a bit and see if we can find a soft spot. We may be able to catch him off guard with some luck (lol like that will happen). Anyway, the issue is that Black Sword is kinda in the way here. We can't sign OB with him, so we may as well declare to get through. But that makes me wonder if we shouldn't just nab the worker.

Any thoughts on what to do here? This is for next turn, not this one, but still. I don't see Black Sword as a friend. In fact, I see his island holdings to be an attractive target at some point. Moving on, we got another city out of revolt this turn:



This is the one I was suggesting as a possible Ironworks location later. Pop the borders this turn, then it needs a granary and then probably a Courthouse. The fact that it's already got a forge and plenty of hammer tiles means this one should be productive very quickly. I think this could be a solid place to build a few MP units and/or cats, by the way. Even if we want to go Granary-Barracks-unit-unit-unit-Courthouse, I'd be OK with that. Expos is no longer running artists, and this city should grow quickly:



I did not end turn, but everything is basically done. It was a pretty simple turn, really.

[Ceiliazul]

wow, colts is an incredible city. you should almost name it grasshammer as a foil for Mack's crazy capital.