Posts: 10,033
Threads: 82
Joined: May 2012
Not too worried about a axe rush. If anything, maybe he's being defensive in case we came for him, which is good if it keeps him back.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Posts: 2,998
Threads: 49
Joined: Mar 2004
I agree we probably don't need to worry about an axe rush. However, I did sim out an approximate opening based on what we know of Yuris's position. If we don't interfere with him, we can probably expect Yuris to be able to start building Cataphracts around the T80 time frame or thereabouts. If he focuses strictly on a land battle, he can ignore a lot of techs that we've been picking up, such as Sailing, Masonry, religion, and so forth. He might have trouble churning out a ton of Phracts because he doesn't really have a lot of happy for whipping, nor a lot of cities if he ignores overseas prospects, but we would likely expect him to have a decent amount of ancient units in support.
This kind of attack seems pretty much a 'let's wreck both our games' kind of gambit given how hard it might be for him to follow up an initial shock wave with reinforcements, but what else is he going to do? We'll easily out-scale him over the long run, so I don't see that he has a lot of other choice.
I haven't simmed out an approximate eta to WEs on our part. A project for another day, perhaps.
Posts: 15,139
Threads: 111
Joined: Apr 2007
T80 Cataphracts sounds about right. I feel like I could definitely have Elephants by then. He still hasn't settled a 3rd city, but he did 2-pop whip recently, so I'd bet that's a settler.
Got eyes on the edge of what I assume is his Copper city.
Meanwhile, I was faced with my first beelines-before-backtrack scouting plan, and the north island appeared to end, so I went south. I've since realized that this was a mistake.
Re-checking north of here and there appears to be a northern path west. Oh well. Not the end of the world, again I think I have a big head start here. I did just realize too if I see another player sending scouting work boats my way, I could just kill the work boats.
Future city Tom just got even better. This will be super nice, especially as a naval pump. Just work FIN coast while growing and whip a boat every 10 turns. Sounds good to me.
Chops are already in because workers have other stuff to do, so GLH in end of T46. Somewhat risky to possibly get chops converted into failgold, but I'll be absolutely stunned if anyone can match this date. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if 10T later would have been enough, but I needed to be certain. Needed another worker, so Kendall is pushing that out. The workers between Logan and Shiv are done chopping, so they're going to get some roads up to connect cities, and then one of them will split off and help the southern worker connect Copper faster, while the other is going to get a cottage for Roman to grow onto (after it 1-pop whips the Granary anyway) and then help with Yellow Dot aka Connor. Yellow doesn't look shiny, but plains hill + wet Wheat + forest abundance + 3 lighthouseable lakes means it actually has quite a lot going for it. It'll be a faster starter than some of the others which helps offset it's lack of tile sharing. It also gives us another east coast port, and given how large the land mass east of us looks through the fog, that may prove important.
Demos look shiny. You'll note I'm a touch behind in Food, though clearly leading in overall foodhammers and GNP. However, I'm almost positive what's really going on here is Oxy and I are pulling away. He appears to be the 49 food player, but you'll notice that the worldwide average is 32 and rival worst is 17. I think the Rival Worst is Yuris with 17. With the rival average we can work out that Luddite and Cairo average 24.5 between them, and the absolute highest either of them could be is 31. Luddite just picked up his 3rd city, so it seems likely he's in 3rd. So here's a plausible Food list.
Oxy: 49
scooter: 45
Luddite: 28
Cairo: 21
Yuris: 17
I don't know if this is totally accurate, but it's probably pretty close and illustrates the gap opening up between those who went with an eco tech vs those who opted for a military tech.
Posts: 15,139
Threads: 111
Joined: Apr 2007
Oh one more thing. Cairo being so far behind is still weird. Unless of course he's built a Musketeer. One player is already up to 42k soldiers, and it's definitely not Yuris or me. Musketeers are worth 9k, and top soldiers is 14k ahead of me, so it's totally plausible. In fact, I'd bet he has one. Cairo frequently is last to play and plays double turns, so he's definitely not at war yet, but will keep an eye out for that changing. If he would send some at Oxy that would be amazing.
In retrospect, we should have planned the sequential conversion for earlier than T60 given the unique game settings, but eh we're almost there anyway, so I'm sure it'll be fine.
Posts: 2,998
Threads: 49
Joined: Mar 2004
Yeah agree that Oxy is our main rival and it makes sense that he’d have great food given start 1. It looks like we are reaching the point where IMP/EXP outscales Bureau for pure settler/worker applications, but hopefully he will have a bit harder time addressing the economic side of things. If our hammer-oriented limitations (outside the capital) keep even with his economy-related limitations to expansion, I think we can be more than happy, especially considering we also have to fend off Yuris and we have no idea what his military situation is or whether anyone is able to slow him down.
Posts: 10,033
Threads: 82
Joined: May 2012
Slightly surprised he's so high, to be honest. I would have thought you'd keep the lead for another 20ish turns - I guess GLH and workbost-wonder have something to do with it?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
July 25th, 2023, 16:34
(This post was last modified: July 25th, 2023, 16:51 by Zed-F.)
Posts: 2,998
Threads: 49
Joined: Mar 2004
In the test I did I had an extra city down, but I hadn’t yet settled copper city because of lack of workers. Here we have 1 less city but have gotten a couple workers out a little sooner; hopefully we can get cities 5 & 6 out in fairly rapid succession.
With 2 seafood at Tom it might be a higher priority than silk city, given it should be a much faster starting city if we have the boats; of course this depends on where horse is.
Posts: 15,139
Threads: 111
Joined: Apr 2007
(July 25th, 2023, 16:09)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Slightly surprised he's so high, to be honest. I would have thought you'd keep the lead for another 20ish turns - I guess GLH and workbost-wonder have something to do with it?
Vanilla BtS Joao of Inca with the most insane capital I've ever seen is pretty turbo. Would expect him to surpass, which so far he hasn't really. If I can come out of the early game even with him on expansion with two mid-to-late-game traits to his none, a mid-to-late game civ, and the best wonder in the game on this map, I'll be doing cartwheels. He will get Kremlin, sure, but he's got to find a way to tech. Either way, the neighbor impacts for both of us will mean a lot more.
(Side note: part of why landing GLH is so crucial is denying it to him.)
Posts: 15,139
Threads: 111
Joined: Apr 2007
I about had a heart attack.
Quote:07/25/2023 23:28:02 45 oxy finished turn
07/25/2023 23:26:50 45 Mr. Cairo score increased to 203 (+42)
07/25/2023 23:26:50 45 scooter score increased to 213 (+6)
07/25/2023 23:26:50 45 - a new turn has begun. It is now 2200 BC
07/25/2023 23:21:36 44 oxy logged in
42 point gain at turn roll? That's an extremely high number for the stage of the game we're in. 20 represents a large end of turn points gain right now. That almost has to be a wonder right? And then it made me nervous. Cairo has had a suspiciously slow start expansion-wise. I just assumed that meant Musketeer, but what if it meant GLH rush? I was wondering how that would even be possible as I couldn't see how someone else could finish it so fast. So I logged in quickly.
Whew. And we got some great news too. First, horses in an excellent location. I did notice that plains tile was suspiciously not forested or jungled like all the other nearby tiles and wondered if that meant horse or iron. I was also eying the tile 1E of the Stone for the same reason. Second, Hinduism got a second free spread which was tremendously lucky. But what this also means is Judaism is very likely to be founded in Shiv and score us a free border pop there, and that's the city that needs it the most.
Also while typing this, two things have occurred to me.
1) Cairo's point spike is probably land-related because he's the only Creative player in the game and likely got another border pop 20T ago.
2) I should check to see if I can see Byzantine Horse or not.
Posts: 2,998
Threads: 49
Joined: Mar 2004
I was thinking about (1) so I’m glad you brought it up, I agree it’s far and away the most likely answer.
Great to see horse in a convenient location; clearly city 5 will go there. So now we know where horse is, where should city 6 go? Silk city, Tom fishing village, or island city for ICTRs and expanding our influence? I don’t know that we know of any 2-seafood islands yet, though.
|