[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[scooter]

Poked around during lunch. First off, I definitely think we need to at least farm over this village:



That'll mean +1F on the corn instantly. It'll also allow us to farm over the grassland 1E of there. I think that in addition to lighthousing will give us enough food to make it a useful city, but until we do that it kinda sucks. The commerce we'll make back by be able to grow to useful sizes will be totally worth losing the village IMO.

Anyway, here's a few random shots of our empire status as well as global happenings for the lurkers.



Plako dropped off a chariot to scout. That's fun. Red Wings is about to birth our PP scientist which is exciting:



Mackoti declared on Old Harry again:



That happens every dozen turns or so and is quickly followed by a peace deal . I think they are using enforced 10T NAPs or something due to their tight border? I dunno. No evidence they've actually fought each other. Plako lifted a city off Dhalphir again. Dhalphir has been whipping a lot, though, so hopefully he can slow Plako down. Lewwyn still has taken just one city off Azza:



Here's why we're not super inclined to pile on, in addition to the standard reason of not angering Lewwyn:



It would make for a very awkward border. What do we do, take Clara/Rory and have a 6 city front with Lewwyn? Not so enthused about that idea, especially since the very act of taking those cities would make an avoidable war far more likely. As is, I like this border. It's very spacious and natural between us. Bakon/Gators is a little tight, but that's it. We did take top spot on the food charts as expected:



Fun times.

[Zed-F]

First off, I definitely think we need to at least farm over this village.

That's what I had been thinking, but didn't want to suggest. Farming just that one village does a lot of good things.

Understood that you're not keen on piling on Azza (at least the mainland). What did you think of ASM's suggestion of hitting Lewger's back later, once he's fully embroiled in an Azza war? Obviously timing is open to a lot of questions, but the same is true for a potential war against TBS you have posited previously. Do you think the latter is a more likely possibility, and if so what makes that the case?

[pindicator]

Did mackoti bulb PP to completion or did he just switch techs? Either way, looks like he's heading to Astro

[pindicator]

Also, i agree with farming the village

[Cyneheard]

Did mackoti bulb PP to completion or did he just switch techs? Either way, looks like he's heading to Astro

Isn't that be an easy in-game F4 check?

[pindicator]

Did mackoti bulb PP to completion or did he just switch techs? Either way, looks like he's heading to Astro

Isn't that be an easy in-game F4 check?

But who wants to wait four more hours for me to get home?

[NobleHelium]

Yes yes, farm the village. I also take being scouted as a sign that I should be proposing a map trade. Although he can't see our islands with that chariot so meh.

[pindicator]

Mackoti did indeed bulb Printing Press and then 1-turn Calendar. We'd know what he was teching now, except he's putting EP points into us and we're no longer at tech visibility. (We decided to just put 100% into him.)



And dtay is finally going to tech Iron Working!

[Ceiliazul]

what does it mean when your settling plan matches the blue circles for a region? <shudder>

[scooter]

what does it mean when your settling plan matches the blue circles for a region? <shudder>

It means we're noobs. Fire everyone.

(warning, wall of text incoming)
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So I was talking a tad with pindicator last night about this, but I'm getting kinda paranoid. We'd like to figure out what mackoti plans to do in order to win. In the short-term, he's won a few economic races now (and I believe he's the one with the monster GNP), but he has fewer cities than us, and longterm I think we can make up the difference. Again, I'm so glad dtay got Lib + Taj or else this would be way more difficult if mackoti won those races too.

Anyway, I think if I'm in mackoti's shoes, I'd be using my short-term advantage to try to improve my position somehow, or else I would be in serious danger of losing my lead. How can he do this?

1) Lift some cities off neighbors. Suttree is a nice target. Then he hopes that's enough to keep pace with us.
2) Use current econ advantage to beeline some techs. Communism maybe for the spy and the civic. Possibly a rifling beeline so that he can for sure run over neighbors. Maybe headed towards Cavs so he can try to conquer as much of his continent as possible before people can get rifles.
3) Try to damage us.

Normally #3 isn't a game you want to be playing in a game with over a dozen other players, but in this case the two of us are so far ahead that it's not the craziest idea ever. We're not quite into a zero-sum game with mackoti because Plako is very much in this if his war continues to be a success, but we're close to it. Mackoti is clearly beelining Astro right now (and he'll beat us there), and he'll have a very narrow window of naval superiority before we own the seas with our extra movement. It's possible he could try to use that window to come over and harass our coastline, which could be a real problem since many of those cities are lightly defended at the moment.

On the other hand, he only has a few coastal cities on our side. He definitely has a few, but once we get our new cities up and running, we'll have a significant edge in naval production on this coast. So he may not want to start a skirmish in a battle that will cost him more than us when he's got softer targets on his continent. It could very well be that he's getting Astro because he's afraid we'll try to Zerk him as soon as we have it, and he wants to have defenses in place. In fact, that's the most likely reason for the Astro beeline, but I don't want us to overlook the possibility of him coming to damage us.

Overall, I'm not sure. All I know is we definitely need to go there right after we bulb PP. And honestly, I'm kinda tempted to delay PP until after Astro. I don't think it's a crazy decision. Actually, as I'm typing, here's a thought. Let's figure out the following:

1) How much PP is delayed if we do Astro first
2) How much commerce we would lose (just count up the village/towns * answer to #1 basically hah)
3) How much it costs to upgrade galley -> galleon

#3 is if we do PP first, we may then want to upgrade a couple galleys to galleons so that we have something in the water instantly to make up for the delay. Or at least have the flexibility to do so.

Ok, that's my stream of consciousness post. Any thoughts from pindicator and/or those of you who are unspoiled?