[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Good question, when do we want to attack? IMO, I would like to get a couple more cities settled, research Foreign Trade and then out to Political Philosophy. My next builds will be a settler in each city while I research FT. Then my capital can build a bunch of boats. I think we should attack someone soon, since we both have early bonuses and strong starting UUs. Roland/Suboptimal might be a good first attack target. Suboptimal does get the ability to faith buy boats, so we don't want him to get too developed and develop a huge faith economy. I am pretty sure he was the 1st pantheon and took Earth Goddess, so he does have a decent faith income already. Might be good to nip the bud early. I will have to run the numbers but an attack in the T60s-T70s might be do-able. What do you think? 

Turn 40-Vikings
Not much going on this turn. I have my boat by China turn around and head south and will follow their island east. I figure suboptimal is probably in that direction, since I met his boat farther east. I also am pretty sure we are in the northern hemisphere since I have jungle down by me, so I don't want to sail my ship to far north, just to run into some ice and have to turn around anyways and back track a bunch. If we want to go for an early war, we will need to know where suboptimal is located and the sooner we find that out the better. My eastern boat sails northeast around what looks to be a bigger island. He will continue in hopes of finding passage east. 

Here is my homeland...
   

I switched off of Irrigation this turn and probably over-researched it a little. I will have the boost next turn when I farm the rice tile.  Slinger and warrior get closer to the barb camp. Research plan is to head towards Shipbuilding to be able to sail the ocean. Might have to hard research Wheel, since it looks like I won't be able to get a resource mined in time for the boost. Also, I need to find the barb scout so I can get 3 barbs killed for Bronze Working.

Edit to add: It would be nice to see if anybody is west of us and where they are located before we launch any attack and see who is the easier target.

[ljubljana]

Turn 41 - Phoenicia



The first Bireme emerges, giving a ton of ES, and I restart work on the warrior, following the logic that I'm more likely to get screwed by a barb camp in the next 5-10 turns than I am to miss the GA threshold due to a 3-turn delay on the second Bireme. The trader starts moving, and the builder moves into position to make the plains farm next turn. Looks like there's a nice-looking spot just across the water from the capital, which is awesome, though maybe a city-state will show up there to ruin my fun - I should remember to check settlervision up here next turn.

I also send you horses, and belatedly realize that I should just gift you my mercury also to fix your amenities situation. My cities are at +2 and +1, so I'm not using it, and this frees you to improve a better tile with your last builder charge than those sad-sack pearls. By the time I can get any cities up to positive happiness thresholds (when I hook up the marble), I'll have a second mercury anyways.

Internationally, Kaiser has a third city, the first player to do so, and also has a holy site up for what looks like the third religion. Picking Japan just to get beat by two other civs has to hurt, but them's the breaks, I guess. Russia has a second Lavra, of course, so they'll be very fast with the second one - I wonder how they plan to abuse Work Ethic . I sure hope they get it and not Japan with their Meiji-powered holy sites...

[ljubljana]

With respect to the war timing, I guess there is one awkward thing, which is that, due to the layout of the tech tree, I'm not sure we can get both Shipbuilding and a tech for good military units (swords or horses) before t70. Could we pull off an attack with just spears and boats? I guess that could work, but I feel like spears are not very impressed with even the high-20s defense strength that their cities will have, let alone walls. We could also wait however much longer it takes to hit Iron Working (wherever it is), but there's no way sub's going to dawdle on swords/walls until past t80. I think my next builds need to be double Cothon, double settler, and perhaps also the GP for the TR yields and free beakers, but then I can crank boats as well for a while. I wonder if I should briefly divert from the PoliPhil path at some point to go get Agoge...

I'm now realizing that I should have screenshot the tech tree this turn, oops. Math is after Writing, and I also eureka'd currency this turn but didn't notice where it was - I'll get that info to you next turn.

[ljubljana]

Maybe the answer to the military unit problem is that instead of (or in addition to?) attacking a player, we should go on a CS-eating spree. Our UUs don't help with that due to the cliffs, but we're probably going to beat everyone else to Quadriremes, and a few of those plus a couple of spears should easily be enough to take out a CS, and the CSs this game don't look anywhere near as gimped terrain-wise as I was expecting. And, actually, I guess our UUs do help a little in that we'd be better able to protect the attack force we use to do that from other players trying to stop us.

...wait, or do cliffs not block naval attacks with melee ships? If they don't, we should absolutely build wolfpacks of 3-4 UU ships and start steamrolling them ASAP, maybe even before the settler push. If that's the case, I'm probably going to swap off this dumb warrior and onto a third Bireme even at the cost of delaying the Cothon a turn - I bet 3 of those are plenty to eat a CS this early.

Edit: Not going to quadruple-post just for this, but if you need the Wheel eureka'd, I should be able to get you that pretty quickly (~10t) - I'm doing Mining right after CN and the Wheel after that, and the mercury's right there next to Linear A to mine for my eureka.

[ljubljana]

Turn 42 - Phoenicia



Unsure about whether I should get a bireme + warrior before the Cothon or two biremes to go eat Mitla (for instance), I drop a turn into the second bireme to keep my options open. The exploring bireme immediately runs into an ocean barrier, and will mostly turn north to look for a way around without straying too far from possible CS targets. EE next turn for Pingala 1, and to reveal the civic between it and PP, which I'll probably sink a few turns into while I wait for the SW inspiration to come in.



Tech tree screenshot. Looks like IW is most likely after Archery, of which we've at least both researched some of the prerequisites (and you have the Archery eureka, and can in theory provide it to me by getting the tech if needed). If we hit the 1/3 chance of it ending up on the bottom of the tree, though, it could be pretty hard to get to.

[Woden]

Unsure about whether I should get a bireme + warrior before the Cothon or two biremes to go eat Mitla (for instance), I drop a turn into the second bireme to keep my options open. The exploring bireme immediately runs into an ocean barrier, and will mostly turn north to look for a way around without straying too far from possible CS targets. EE next turn for Pingala 1, and to reveal the civic between it and PP, which I'll probably sink a few turns into while I wait for the SW inspiration to come in.

We don't want to take out Mitla too soon, it would hurt our research. Better to wait until it builds it district and maybe even until it builds a Harbor.  Regardless, I don't think it matter much unless the barbs show up. Also, probably should move your warrior into the city to heal faster. 

For Governors, if you are worried about making a Golden Age, Amani might be a good 1st Governor. You can send her around and get Suzerain of all you have 1 envoy into and get the era points. I am not too worried about getting it. We are bound to meet a few other players and you will get 4 points for the Cothon, but is an option. 

As for my turn...

Turn 41-Vikings
Not much going on. Builder farmed the rice, boosting Irrigation, and I switch research back to it. Both Irrigation and Early Empire finish next turn and builder at the capital will finish. Eastern boat continues along the bigger island, finding nothing and nothing is on settler vision. He will continue northeast to find a path to continue east.

[Woden]

Turn 42-Vikings
Start of with...
   

And...
   

I take out Urban Planning and go for Colonization. Plan is to build some settlers before more ships. Let's see what is between Early Empire and Political Philosophy...
   

Defensive Tactics...ouch. Probably not going to get that boost and not sure if we want to declare on anybody before we have PP finished. Don't need to start a war and then have the opponent get to PP first.  I was going to research this civic next but decided I would like to get the ship production card first, so I slot Foreign Trade and then will go after DT. 

I checked to see how long before the new era...
   

I suspect it will be closer to 19 turns, rather than 10 turns. Nineteen turns would be right at T60, which is typical, could be a turn or 2 earlier but I don't think much earlier. Builder at the capital finishes and it starts on a settler.  Builder sails to the pearls and then will hook up the bananas. Afterwards, the plan is to have him head over to hook up the bananas when I settle my 3rd city. 

Out east...
   

Haven't found any new life but this is a rather large island. I would if somebody is on the northern coast or if it is completely open. Might make a nice outpost area. It is a new continent and might be good way to get more luxuries for a larger empire or prolonged wars.

[ljubljana]

Turn 43 - Phoenicia



Finish EE, then start in on SW to the boost, after which I'll hit DT. Governor promotion just goes into Pingala in the capital, as is standard - I don't think I'm scared enough of missing the GA to pass up a free 1.5 clefs and about half that in beakers from Pingala 1. With SW, I will probably take the culture promotion and then grind out DT, which will give the science promotion without having to pause the settler push for an early GP (though I may do this anyways for the TR buffs). Either way, I'm confident I can get DT quickly enough to boost it for you, so that at least only one of us will have to hard-research it...

Exploring bireme confirms that we're in the northern hemisphere, possibly the far northern hemisphere, by sighting tundra, if that wasn't obvious already. What I'm wondering now is where everyone else is...it looks like the circumnavigation route is quite long, enough so that it's possible the other teams are W of us and E of suboptimal/roland...but then the southern hemisphere would just be empty, which seems weird. The other option, and I think this is a little more likely, is that the other teams are to the S of our two teams, and everyone has a medium-sized area of "backlines" islands as well, with sub/roland's to the east where your longboat is currently exploring and ours presumably to the west. That'd also be pretty weird, but I'm not sure what other possible configurations are plausible if the pairwise inter-team distances are roughly the same as our distance from sub/roland...

[Woden]

Turn 43-Vikings
Start turn off with finishing...
   

I start Wheel, due in 5 unboosted, and will switch to Archery after a couple of turns. My eastern most longboat continues east, finding nothing of interest. My other longboat comes across Crater Lake...
   

At least we know China/Indonesia doesn't have one of the more powerful natural wonders. 

My warrior heals this turn and my slinger is 2 tiles away from the camp. Best guess is that the barb spearman will come out of the camp towards my slinger, letting me take it next turn with the warrior. Then I can kill the spear in a couple of turns. No idea where the scout went. 

Monument finishes at my second city and it will start a settler. Builder hooks up the pearls.

[ljubljana]

Turn 44 - Phoenicia



Not much to report - builder pastures the horse, and another builder pops but has nothing to do yet with Mining still undiscovered. Linear A can actually build more than half of another Bireme between now and Cothon time, so I get started on that, since it seems like an efficient enough place to sink the hammers while the ship policy is in place. The exploring bireme is not really finding a way around to the north, so I think it'll have to start backtracking to the south next turn, unless you think there's more of a reason to keep poking around up here.