[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[El Grillo]

T85:

So on the topic of founding cities as you can afford them, Plemo just founded 5 cities over the past two turns, up to 13. He hooked up stone and furs in the process, bringing his (presumably) 0% gold rate to +12gpt. This is about as loud as you can get in announcing "I'm about to build the Hanging Gardens!" It's a pretty terrifying move from him, I can see why some PB88 lurkers see him as one of the stronger players in their forum and have him among the favorites in that game. I can only assume that they have him as the prohibitive favorite in this one, and I for one would agree with that assessment

I have to admit I'm fascinated by how he expects to pay for this economically, and if he intends on just killing someone with classical units. Construction is roughly a 14t tech for me, assuming he has a 50% higher tech spend rate his expenses and gold saving rate should be significantly worse. I don't have him down as having teched HBR, so the strongest units he can field are AGG Axes. Those are still scary, but are also slow to marshal from across your territory and slow to make progress in an attack.

Well, we just have to try and catch up as best we can. We founded two cities this turn as planned, Wildcat Canyon on the gold hill and Olympic Forest in the southern wheat-copper spot. I plan to further emphasize new Settlers in light of the abundant trade routes and Plemo's lead, so we're finishing one from Springer Mtn at eoT85, whipping one from Tuolumne Meadow T86, and most likely whipping another out of Tuolumne Meadow after it builds some garrison Warriors for the new cities and grows to size 6. That's on top of the two cities being chopped out, which will bring us to 13 as well in 10-15t. That's a full whip cycle behind Plemo, but it's the best I can see us reasonably doing. We're going to have to push our advantages hard and expand westward into Ramk and vanrober more aggressively than I would like if we want to have any chance of all to compete, but that carries its share of risks as well.

Scouting:

We made contact with Lazteuq who has been competitive in city count and has the highest-pop city in the world at size 7. Only making 19gpt on 8 cities is a bit dodgy, but I assume he has some cheap Libraries and Great Scientists to help on that front.

Demos:

I may need to squeeze in Hunting for ivory, but otherwise it's straight to Construction. On the bright side of things, we get our Great Prophet next turn.

Graphs:

Aside from Plemo's settling spree, vanrober founded city #5 on T84 and superdeath founded city #8 on T84.

[El Grillo]

T86:



No surprises, Plemo lands the Hanging Gardens for 13 cities, which is basically 50% of my total population. Terrifying, though I'm sure he's feeling great. Ball's in his court and he's in the driver's seat: if he wants to turn that into Axes and come take my capital, he can probably force the issue. More likely he eats Ramk with that army, or he grows tall for a bit, gets Construction, and then shows us one of these Axe/Catapult attacks the Germans value so highly. Game on, and I'll do what I can to catch up, but he's going to have to blunder pretty uncharacteristically to throw this lead.

Scouting:

We've seen Lazteuq's borders from the east with our scouting WC, confirming the relative cramped quarters in the north. We're not too far away from circumnavigating the E-W direction, so perhaps we can somehow factor that into our plans. We're a fair bit away from completing it in the N-S direction though.

Demos:

More whips to settle more cities bring us squarely to average food, while Plemo is well on his way to doubling the average.

Graphs:

Gira got the Stonehenge Prophet and I'm guessing the other PHI player made a Great Scientist as well.

[El Grillo]

T87:

We have contact with every player in the game now. Mjmd had a Spear way up in superdeath's territory. Vanrober also offered Open Borders after declining them twice earlier, and I accepted them. Our chances in this game absolutely rely on vanrober staying friendly so I can expand in his direction but not need to keep a large garrison facing him. Could be tricky, but we'll need to pull off more tricks than that.

Scouting:

We've confirmed the E-W dimensions of the map and the extent of Lazteuq's borders. Not shown, there's an island in the central sea between GKC and Ramk that they seem to be contesting. Our sentry WC is in a bit of a sticky spot after fighting the barb Axe and is now in range of Plemo's W2 Axe, but hopefully we'll be able to play the next turn earlier.

Demos:

Demos look crummy with recent whips and three recently founded cities, plus two more Settlers en route and one more in production. Upon reflection, that's probably pushing the limits on how much we can expand at this point before consolidating a bit and growing the cities taller. I'm certainly learning a lot from this game on that front, not knowing when and how to properly manage the snowball from T50-T100 is where I lack the most experience as a MP player. So the forest chops from the new cities that would have gone to even more Settlers will be put into Granaries and some Workboats to support the consolidation, since the Workers will need more time than I had originally allotted to improve tiles. Some more roads in the south would definitely help too. Our Prophet still needs two turns to get up to Humboldt Forest, and in a future war I want at least two routes up to the north, one along the river valley and one along the coast.

Graphs:

I'm putting EP into superdeath next.

This is a pretty fragile time, where our investments are still dozens of turns in the future from maturing vs a neighbor who made better choices that yielded more immediate returns. So let's hope our deterrence strategy pays off, Plemo doesn't decide to come against us immediately, and we can get into later eras where we'll have more land and toys to play with. Some kind of dogpile would obviously help, but we've seen again and again in these AI diplo PB games how hard those can be to pull off. One optimistic scenario in my mind would be if Plemo attacks Ramk some time in the future with an Axe-heavy Axe/Catapult stack that I could hit outside Ramk's cities with WCs using our Open Borders, but that'll require a LOT of things to happen in the right way at the right time for us.

[Suite]

You have a religion with a shrine soon and pulled off a successful rush into flood plain territory and managed to oracle currency: You have absolutely zero problems regarding GNP here. How many workers do you have currently?

[El Grillo]

You're right, it's not a matter of GNP since we can just build Wealth now while the cities grow onto more cottages, but rather that if I keep whipping Settlers I won't have enough population in reserve to respond to an emergency, and I'm already starting to get a bit stretched on garrison and fogbusting units. We have 8 Workers at present, and will be adding more now that our second wave of cities have finished their Granaries.

[El Grillo]

T88:

We founded city #9, Victoria Peak in the south to pick up the wet corn, with two prepped chops finishing the Granary next turn. The Settler en route to the pig/ivory coastal site will found in 2 turns, and the Settler headed to claim silver and clam in the deep south in 3, with the Workboat on its way.

I realize I haven't posted anything like a domestic overview recently, so here's a simple stitch:



As I've said, I whipped very low to emphasize this many Settlers in quick succession, leaving us with the second-highest city count, but probably the lowest pop count in the game. We have lots of strong tiles to grow onto and 3 luxuries plus CHA and Buddhism to grow tall with, with a Shrine (Great Prophet highlighted, will build next turn) and Wealth to keep the lights on. What we need is time at peace to do the growing, and ideally another round of Workers to help the process along.

Maybe it's just paranoia, but I don't know if Plemo is going to give us that time. I don't know what he's plotting in his thread with a burst of recent activity, but I recognize the names of people who are also commenting in his PB88 thread, and there's been an uptick in activity in their RBPB51 lurker thread too. If Plemo wants to come take a peek over here with a stack of Axes, he's my guest to do so, but I'll do everything I can to defend and subsequently be a thorn in his side for the rest of the game. Maybe someday I'll have a strong enough deterrence stack to safely clear the rough terrain to the north and settle those hill cities, but while I still have land to the west to claim, settling north of the capital without a real defensive capability just feels hopeless and counterproductive.

Demos:

Graphs:

8 more pop whipped by Plemo on T87

[El Grillo]

T89:

Upon this we pin half of our hopes of salvation...


I'm still kind of annoyed we lost the coin-flip that led Humboldt Forest to be the holy city instead of Springer Mtn. Aside from the delayed border pop at Springer Mtn, we would've built the shrine four turns earlier, the GPP would contribute meaningfully, and almost as importantly it would remove another strategic target from Plemo's consideration. This city is the only one on flatland in the area, though the cultural defenses do help of course.

Scouting:

Lazteuq had a killer second city site thanks to CRE, double wet corn! This might be one of the best non-capital sites I've seen all game.

Demos:

8t to Construction, give or take. I'm going to set up the new southern cities for production to start building WCs, and the plan is to whip Catapults out of Point Reyes. Some of the forests near the start may end up chopped into Catapults as well. Or Workers, I haven't made up my mind yet.

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T90:



Well I wasn't quite expecting this city plant from Ramk, and I'd be tempted to raze it with the C2 Shock WC I have 3 turns away, but that would be a strategic catastrophe since it would lock me out of three civs' worth of foreign trade routes (I think?) and potentially escalate uncomfortably with Plemo in the background. I guess that leaves me settling the marked X at minimum distance from the capital, since a city on the plains hill creates a fork risk and would still need culture to improve the rice. I also need a city to claim the rest of the floodplains to the south, because I want Ramk expanding to his west toward vanrober, less so to the south.

Scouting:

We founded our 10th city, Lake Tahoe to claim the desert coastal pig/ivory/crab spot. First impression of southeast island is pretty bleak.

Demos:

Food situation is improving, but MFG and Power remain grim. Will finally start working some mines soon, but I'll definitely need to double-whip some more Axes before my southern production cities come online.

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T91:

Two passive spreads, yay. Another benefit of the exploration efforts and having Open Borders with literally everyone but Plemo.


We founded city #11, Mount Diablo, and the last for this round of Settlers. Not the quickest starter, but Silver will be good to have and two lighthouse lakes make it passable.

Scouting:

There's a barb city in the wilderness between us and vanrober, and hopefully it's still defended by Warriors and not Archers. Not sure if I can keep a city that far away, but we'll have to see what the land looks like and if it has trained any Workers.

Demos:

Food continues to catch up, and I'm whipping another pair of Axes instead of a Worker as a concession to Plemo's frightening increase in Power. My thinking on defensive tactics is that I'll mostly be using Axes to fortify in cities to stack defensive bonuses, since they're going to be hard to use effectively on offense against AGG Axes unless there's collateral in the picture, in which case I'd still prefer to use a WC as a hitter instead and preserve my Axes' fortification bonuses.

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T92:

Scouting:

The barb city in the south is defended by 3 Warriors and won't grow for ages working a 1f tile, so I'm just going to let my nearby Axe farm it for experience and raze it afterward, while the WC keeps scouting. We've official completed E-W circumnavigation, and I'm pretty tempted to chop out another Workboat dedicated to try N-S circumnavigation, if that's even possible pre-Astronomy (though I would be willing to bet that it is). We should reveal one of Mjmd's cities next turn and get diplo screen resource visibility. The Workboat has time to scout out the island a bit and then head back to connect Point Reyes' crabs.

Demos:

Whipping for Axes hurts but is a necessary preparation. At least that's what I keep mumbling to myself when I can't fall asleep I'm also still steeling myself for the turn where Plemo builds Pyramids too, that's definitely going to hurt...

Graphs:

We'll have graphs on superdeath soon. EDIT: I logged in again to double-check some numbers and we're #2 in CY after Lazteuq whipped away 6 population. Still far behind Plemo, but it's an improvement with room for more improvement.