[SPOILERS] Cornflakes vs. TheArchduke

[Cornflakes]

My "well laid" plans hit a speed bump - not realizing that chops required Mining, I queued up Irrigation. Now I can't place the HS on the forest as intended. Oh well, I'll put a couple of turns into a builder, then maybe finish the builder / maybe start the HS. Probably will just finish the builder. I'll then buy the Wheat and plains hill with double NW adjacency, farm the wheat for the Irrigation eureka, mine the PH because it's an awesome tile, and then plantation the Citrus for the amenity.

Revised build order is now Builder > Warrior (start as soon as Craftsmanship is in, probably 1-2 turns left on the builder) > finish builder > slinger > probably 1-2 more military units then settler.

Out east I see city state borders poking out of the fog this turn. They look faintly pink, but I think they belong to a religions city state since TheArchduke came from this direction, has definitely met one of those, and definitely has not met a cultural city state. I'll meet it, then hurry back to the capital. TheArchduke built a slinger. So his opening is Scout > [something] > slinger. The mystery build is most likely a builder for the eureka.

[Cornflakes]

And I verified that the crabs does not actually have cultural borders around it. What I was actually seeing in the screenshot is an artifact of the settler overlay combined with the break between fogged and un-fogged tiles. Clearly there was no culture present when I loaded up the next save. The city state turned out to be Militaristic, met already by TheArchduke, quest and easier one the eureka triggered by clearing a barb camp

[Cornflakes]

Turn 33:
Had a couple of days where turn windows lined up well   When there's only a warrior move and maybe a tech swap it's easy to sneak in extra turns quick, won't be as easy one we get further along but it's been nice so far!

Foreign Trade completed, lined up the following civics:

   

Build order will be finish current slinger > builder > finish holy site (3 turns remaining). The slinger first because TheArchduke has built up some military, and I want the option to complete archery with the ability for a couple of emergency upgrades if needed. With Ilkum policy since it will save me about 15 hammers on the builder vs. 10 hammers from Urban Planning over this time period. The first builder I used to chop the forest into almost completed slinger, dumping the overflow into the Holy Site leaving it a 3 turns remaining. The tile expansion did in fact pick up the useless natural wonder tile, so I bought the wheat and hill and improved both with the remaining builder charges.

   

Barb horse should attack either slinger or warrior, and then slinger will finish it off for the eureka. I'll then swap off Archery with 1T remaining.

You can see TheArchduke's city off to the east. I think that is a poor strategic location. I can put 3 archers on the west side of the lake where they can't be hit by melee units. Put a heavy chariot on the north flank to bust through and raze the city. Obviously I can't see all the tiles, but it looks like in it's own right the location is week with almost no production potential. It does pick up 2 luxuries though so maybe that was his purpose.

I have both Bronze Working and The Wheel withing 1 turn of completion after the eureka. This horse will be the 2nd barb kill, and then I'll send slinger + warrior north to the camp to get the 3rd kill, or that southern scout if it gets within range. Hopefully Iron will pop up within easy reach for The Wheel eureka, if not I'll just hard research it. I'll clear that barb camp for the eureka and head for the +50% cavalry card. My plan is to build heavy chariots for later upgrade to Mamluks.

Early encampment + walls will make the capital near impregnable. I'm debating putting the encampment 1NE of where shown. This would give it command of a few more tiles but also expose it more. In it's current location it only has 2 melee fronts. A sturdy defender to the NE, clear the jungle to the east, archer inside and another archer on the hill behind and 3 units could hold the east against an entire army!

[Cornflakes]

Turn rolled around while I was typing this. Barb horse attacked slinger, putting horse barely into red. Looked like I had about coinflip odds of killing horse with slinger, but scout in the south had approached so I took the sure shot at the scout. Earned a promotion in the process. Archery left neatly as a sliver short of complete. Warrior finished off the horse for the Bronze Working eureka, and BW finishes end of turn to reveal iron.

Slinger will be just shy of completing this turn. I did the math, and Agoge-boosted overflow should make the HS a 2 turn build. I'll slip that in before the builder to start the countdown to Pantheon.

[Cornflakes]

T38:

   

In the west my assault on the barb camp will begin next turn. This will net met the eureka for Military Tradition, and fulfill the quest for Valletta granting +2 cogs to unit production. Out east, TheArchduke is probing forward. I have a warrior fortified on the exposed mine. My warrior + slinger were trying to bait him to attack the warrior. My warrior is 1 combat from a promotion. I was hoping that he would attack my warrior with his slinger + warrior, I would then sidestep my warrior, bring up the slinger to attack his slinger, and the finish off the slinger with my warrior. It would be able to withstand one more attack from his warrior, and then promote heal and might then be able to take out his warrior.

His power ticked up again so I'm completing another slinger before going builder > settler.

T40:

   

Unfortunately TheArchduke withdrew without engaging in a skirmish. I held the position. Barb camp cleared this turn out west. I've swapped tiles to sync growth with builder completion. I should be getting a few cogs overflow. I'm debating at this time whether to continue builder > settler, but I think it would be more advantageous to finish Iron Working, upgrade to archers + 1 Sword, and capture his city. With the science lead right now I anticipate he will have archers but not the Sword, and attacking across the lake should give me enough advantage to easily take out his city. To this end, I'm thinking slip a slinger in to have 3 archers on the attack. Upgrade would cost 215g total I believe, which I will have by the time the slinger completes in 6 turns.

The warrior + slinger in the west will move east to take out the other barb camp, and then escort the settler.

[Cornflakes]

T46 and following: Wherein things start going downhill

   

TheArchduke's power takes a large swing upwards. He only has 1 horse, no iron connected, no encampment. Seems like he's upgrading to archers, and I anticipate an immanent attack. Slingers are upgraded to archers, builder out to connect iron to upgrade one warrior in 2 turns and the other 3-4 turns later. Should be able to easily repel an invasion due to the choke point to the east, right? Unfortunately as you can see in the bottom of the screenshot above, a barbarian camp spawned in a terrible location. This shouldn't be too big a deal though, except that it is spawning horsemen apparently using the horses under my capital! Thus at a time I expect immanent invasion, I have barb horses to deal with, and on top of that I will not be able to connect the iron to upgrade my warriors 

I was not at all expecting that camp to spawn horses. I thought for sure since the closest horse was under my capital, within my culture, and already connected that the barb camp wouldn't have access to them   

   

Sure enough, the war horns sound in the north, with a 2-pronged attack, while at the same time the barbs pile on from the south. Barb spear even left the camp, so I'm definitely not getting that iron connected any time soon.

   

I think to this point I have lost 2 archers + 1 warrior and killed 2 archers. I used a builder charge to chop a forest into 1.5 archers. After the current warrior completes I'll build 1 more 2-turn warrior, then chop a Heavy Chariot once I get the +50% production card in place in 4 turns. Hopefully the 1 barb horses throw themselves at TheArchduke's warrior

[Cornflakes]

I've come to the conclusion that a 1-city "Tall" start is probably not the best. I still think Monument first rather than builder is viable especially on a start like this with nothing for a builder to do early. But the granary cogs haven't brought much return on investment and I would have been much better served putting those cogs into a settler. For this particular start I think Monument > Warrior > Settler > Builder > Slinger would have been a better play.

Also in the above I failed to mention my pantheon was founded about T50. As planned I chose the belief granting +1 faith based on tile appeal of Charming or better (>=2).

[Cornflakes]

This is probably my last turn: 

   

Yep, not going to survive that. Closing thoughts on where things when wrong and how I might have righted the ship coming soon.

[Cornflakes]

So what went wrong:

1) as mentioned above, the granary build was a mistake. Tall to size 6 requires a granary, but the granary has far too little return on investment as compared to an early settler.

2) When TheArchduke did begin his assault, I tried pushing him back too far east. I had that narrow gap in the east between the natural wonder and the mountain which I had previously commented on regarding defensive strength (especially with an encampment to the east). But when he attacked I got caught up and tried to meet him in the open field around the rice tiles. Since he outnumbered me 2:1 at the time this was a losing battle. Had I remained behind that pass I think I could have held him off since 1 UPT rules would have meant that the forces he could bring to bear would have been about equal to mine

3) The barb spawn in the south by my iron was a bit unlucky. But still, had I restrained myself and held forces west of the mountain pass I'm pretty sure I would have been able to escort the builder to mine the iron. By pushing out east I had already lost a couple of units by this time. Plus archers in my the tile surrounding my capital would have been able to take out a barb unit camped on the iron. Ultimately I think my biggest mistake was #2 pushing out to aggressively when outnumbered, resulting in loss of precious units, and snowballing into the inability to connect iron for the planned warrior > swordsman upgrades

4) My pantheon choice was a mistake at the time. Given a better position, I think that it is a strong pantheon. But I failed to adapt to the in-game situation. At the time my pantheon choice came up, I was already hard pressed to defend myself. My army in the field was virtually defeated by that time. As a last-ditch effort I should have taken the +25% military pantheon.

Overall I really enjoyed this! And our play windows surprisingly lined up very well so most days we were able to get in 4+ turns, and several times we got in 7! Thanks for playing TheArchduke!

[Cornflakes]

Sullla, having read your thoughts in the lurker thread I have to agree with you regarding early monument being bad as compared to builder. And early warrior bad as compared to scout.

Reconsidering, I think this start should have had scout > settler > builder (send builder to 2nd city since there's not much to do around at the first city). 2nd city placed where noted above, southwest of the northern citrus. Buy the 2nd ring natural wonder boosted wheat for the 2nd city, buy and mine the NW boosted hill 2nd ring for the 2nd city, and plantation one of the citrus (having obtained the irrigation eureka from the wheat).