[SPOILERS] Dazed and Whosit walk the line: Darius of Egypt

[Whosit]

That screen shot is wrong. There are no northern clams.

Also, all our plans are kind of screwed now because:




We actually lost two Workers there, half of our current workforce. I am pretty pissed, of course, and a good bit at myself. I had actually opened the save a couple turns ago and saw NC's Warrior lurking at the edge of our territory. I suspected he was going to try to nab our Workers, but I assumed dazed would have seen that and made adequate preparations. Turns out I should have warned him.

Now, it is my assumption that losing 2 Workers at this point in the game is crippling. Our improvements will be behind. Our expansion will be behind because we a) have to rebuild the Workers, and b) have to make troops to defend our territory now. Sigh. As much as I'd like to change our entire strategy to revenge on NC, I'm going to guess that the best long-term goal is to just try to recover as best we can.

Dazed: As you know I will not be around as much the next few days, but I'll try to be available as often as I can, so let's try to discuss what to do before moving on, yeah?

[Serdoa]

That sucks. But:

First thing: Don't build troops just because he attacked you. He has a warrior in your lands, nothing more and I doubt he'll send anything else. I mean honestly, I would kill two of your workers as well if you leave them unguarded but that doesn't mean I would go full-war on you. Anyhow, just hope he doesn't take the approx. 33% shot at the city. I probably would in his shoes because why not. But nothing you can do about that.

Second thing: Probably just follow the plan I outlined first, with the 2 workers from the capital on T45 and T46, not the adjusted one with the added settler. Use them to chop and deforest your capital-area for more settlers and workers. Use the one you moved to the capital to improve your 4th city. The sheep-worker finishes pasture, moves 2S and chops. The new worker from TYG moves 1E and chops.

Should get you some much needed expansion power for now. I'm not certain what else as the worker actions you've done don't correspond to what I described in my last few posts, so I am not sure what you intended to do with them. But I would really just deforest your lands now. Don't pre-build improvements if you do not use them right away except in those cases when your worker can't do anything else.

As for the game itself: I don't think you are out of it yet, but you sure didn't make it easier for yourselves either. Still, with some chop-fueled expansion you should be able to catch back up. Its more or less 1 city you will be behind to the others. But your stronger economy should be able to carry you later on.

[Whosit]

Well, I didn't mean "build troops because I expect a full-scale war" it was more like, "build a War Chariot or two to help screen us in the future, and maybe kill that Warrior if he tries to choke QB." I figured NC would either leave or hang around until he saw backup, but then again, I guess choking doesn't really work once your opponent has more than the capital. Guess we'll see if he takes the shot at our city.

Dazed has been playing the turns, so I'm pretty sure the Workers up north are doing what they were gonna do in our last plans. I thought the last thing you said was that they could do whatever until ~T43 when they had to start chopping. Did I misread that?

[Serdoa]

I didn't mean that as an attack Whosit nor did I want to tell you guys what you have to do with your units. I just can't tell what the workers do or did but as it is obviously not what I laid out as a possibility I can't give a suggestion on how to get the most expansion the fastest. Except for a generic: Chop every forest into settlers and workers.

[Whosit]

Hm... sorry, looking at my last post I have no idea why I chose to bold "our." I can't even remember how I interpreted your question about the workers. Oh well.

Since you're suggesting that we chop chop chop, should we switch to Math so that we get the most out of our chops, or might that come in too late to help? It's probably, like 12 turns including the need to save up cash. Could be less if we got a Library at the capital, but I'm not sure if you'd recommend that at this time.

[dazedroyalty]

First of all, CRAP!

Second of all, the loss of those workers is totally my bad. No excuses at all for that. I knew Nicolae was moving his warrior in aggressive ways and I just had a complete fail while playing the turn. You can be totally pissed at me because I deserve it! The good (?) news is that Nicolae deleted them. He probably could have just kept them since we only had 1 warrior available to attack and that wouldn't have been worth losing the city.

One worker up north is pasturing the sheep. The other just finished building a road to allow the settler to get to it's spot in 1T instead of taking two. I was originally going to propose that we still settle by the seafood because I think it's a much better long term spot, however, with even less worker availability now, I don't think that's a very realistic choice.

I did open the save this morning before work but when I saw the workers were lost, I knew I needed a break before even thinking about the game more. I think we need to get peace ASAP with Nicolae. There's no point to drawing out this conflict because we're pissed. So we seem to agree about that. Later on, if we get a chance to hit him, I'd love to do that. I.e. if we have a spare warchariot in the near future, maybe we can return the favor. But, unless an opportunity presents itself, let's not shape our plans around it. Our goal remains the same: capture as much land as we can as quickly as we can while considering Serdoa's suggestion of making a play for Mids.

[dazedroyalty]

Hm... sorry, looking at my last post I have no idea why I chose to bold "our." I can't even remember how I interpreted your question about the workers. Oh well.

Since you're suggesting that we chop chop chop, should we switch to Math so that we get the most out of our chops, or might that come in too late to help? It's probably, like 12 turns including the need to save up cash. Could be less if we got a Library at the capital, but I'm not sure if you'd recommend that at this time.

I think we should chop asap. Good news is that I have been saving gold because we didn't have a set plan on where to settle city 4. IW would only make sense with our original location. We should have enough to blast through Math now without stopping (not 100% certain on that). I think Math, and chop workers/settlers sounds pretty good to me.

[Serdoa]

Maths seems a good target. If it is not too long away (like say 6 turns or less) you could use your workers now to prepare roads or cottages but in a way that you do have them near a forest so that you can move them in 3 turns before Maths finishes. 2 turns chopping -> Math finishes -> next turn chop finishes with bonus.

[Whosit]

So, I think we should let that sheep pasture finish, but the other Worker should probably move to the closest forest and chop. I also think we should blast through Math now (glad you reduced sci spending because, yeah, IW wouldn't be useful if we moved City 4).

I guess, diplomatically, we just off NC a peace deal and hope he takes it? Since we can't really do much else diplomatically. Uh... I would like use to squeeze out a WC as soon as we reasonably plan, just because it would make me feel more comfortable. And of course we'll want our production city, but that's still #5. Considering what's happened, do we still want to stick with a single military unit at new cities where Workers will be in danger (note, other people can get regular 2-movers)? I know we don't want to waste hammers on extra military. My thought at the moment is to get cheap Warriors for garrison and we'll use one or two WC to cover Workers at our borders.

I would very much like to get a spare WC to case NC's borders as soon as we can, but that will probably have to wait.

Edit: We're 8 turns to math at 100%, but the good news is that we have more than enough spare cash to fund that. Is that too long to, say, make pre-chopping a viable use of our time?

[dazedroyalty]

Let's just take a look at what chops we'd potentially make between now and 8 turns from now. with only 2 workers, the silver lining is that we can't waste too many chops pre-math even if we wanted to.....