[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[The Black Sword]

One note - I'm pretty sure that SoZ only gives +2XP in the city that it's built - not all cities

You're right, guess I just thought it was the Form of the Titan brought in from FFH. That's not as good as I thought, and pretty expensive at 200h. Still, we have to assume he's put his Heroic Epic in the same city and that we'll still see a fair number of triple promoted units.

EDIT: When to get Construction? Well if we're getting longbows soon, we probably won't be attacking out, so we could delay it.

Heh, that was the questions, Feudalism, construction or none. I agree, no point in getting both. Dtay is currently picking up Monarchy, we are 3 turns from Currency and then a fair few turns of gold saving before we have to make a decision anyway.

I traded maps with Pindicator, which I figured would be pretty good since he got circum-nav and he shouldn't be competing for the island anyway. That filled out our own continent:



So, we have a third superpower in Yuri-mack to the south and mostly-harmless in the south-east, about our level. Yuri-mack have quite possibly the best spot on the map:


The plains oasis deserves a , the city of plainfood deserves . Some of their city names seem to be anagrams of RBers, but I couldn't figure them all out.

Some pics from our Empire:

Newly founded Captain Trips:


Peregrine is almost ready to soar:


I want to grow Fortunato and Popinjay, but neither have much food, and they're running out of whip anger soon.


So, we can put 2t into the worker here and then single whip it. The plains forest is essentially a 1/3 tile and then we'll have cottages online to grow on.


That allows us give Popinjay some decent food for once. Going to 1 pop whip the archer next turn and then grow.

I had a look around at the next options for settlers. New Tachyon can whip the next one in ~9t, I think we'll be able to chop one out in Popinjay around that timeframe as well, though I have to firm up the plan. I was thinking of picking up the 2 south spots on the island, corn/Ivory/silk and crab/whale. They both could use immediate border pops for the Ivory and whale, so that's 2 missionaries, a WB, the military(4 units?) to defend them and at least 2 workers. A second boat would greatly improve travelling speed too. That sounds a bit ambitious from the other cities, I'll have to do some calculations.

[Jowy]

TBH I'm feeling Monarchy -> Feudalism next. I know, you already convinced me once to delay them longer, but that SoZ build by Dtay makes me anxious.

[The Black Sword]

One defense we have btw, is that our front cities suck. Dtay'd have to get Jetboy or Sleeper for attacking us to be worth his time. I'm just afraid of repeating the mistake of going HBR I guess, while his best military unit remains axes and his power is so low I feel safe enough.

He is currently researching CoL in 5 turns, we can get Currency in 2, then 3 turns saving is probably necessary to reach either Feudalism or Civil Service and we can make a decision after seeing his next tech.

Losing this tile is quite annoying btw:

But winning it back looks too expensive to me, 12t till his border pops again due to Barracks and Hindu spread.

Our 2 settlers ready to spring into action next turn:


And another possible city location revealed by Pindicator:


Old Tourist(I really should have come up with that before for Old Harry/Fintourist ) only have 1 port in the sea, suttree is pretty weak, so we should keep an eye on it.

Commodore offered another map trade, but I can't really see what extra land he could reveal for us, so I declined.

[The Black Sword]

Still saving gold, dtay finishes CoL next turn. His power graph is increasing a bit, nothing major though. With the techs he's gone for recently, Monarchy, CoL, Monotheism, it looks like he's going for CoL and a golden age as well.

Whipped in the capital's market:

It will regrow immediately to size 8 before working specialists. I estimate the GP would come out around T132.

I can steal Peregrine's fish because it's about to whip a worker:


There's some nice flexibility between those 3 cities thanks to the shared food. We're rather short on workers atm, scrambling to get everything done, so I could only get out one of the two settlers for the south. The corn spot is the plan, not to let suttree get any ideas.Overview:



Ferrying across a HA and an archer to the island this turn to join the chariot as a garrison. Chopping out a missionary in Popinjay to follow them, but chopping there has to be balanced with getting it and Bagabond good tiles to work. I guess we'll get out the next settler from the next Popinjay whip.

Sleeper is building a 2t worker because it needs to slow down growth a bit before resuming work on the brracks/stable/HAs.

I reckon Hiram is our NE city btw, with unshareable fish, grass sheep, oasis and a few farmable grassland too. For the first golden age though, we can get the Scientist out in New Tachyon and the Merchant from Peregrine. They can give their food tiles to the capital so they won't be wasted if we need to starve them. A scientist in New Tachyon can make an academy in Jetboy on the turn he's born and the Merchant on Peregrine can move quickly to the other side of the island and the continent.


Our demos are catching up with the average, but the top guys are still far ahead. GNP went up to 5th with tech on IIRC.

[The Black Sword]

I've been thinking a bit about a golden age. One thing we need to do is grow our cities as large as possible in preparation. Assuming we hold off on the whip to grow beforehand we have base happy 4,+1 Ivory, +1 gold(traded for Ivory) +1 religion that's 7. We also have the Ivory and Whales in the south that probably won't quite be in our borders in time. However, we're revolting to Caste for the GA so we can pop their borders on the first turn with artists if necessary. Perhaps we should get a temporary happy loan from someone before the GA to get our cities to size 8, and be within 1 turn of growing to size 9 which we'll be at for most of the GA. I'm going to start going through the cities and making a plan to grow them for T132.

Another thing that's very useful for a GA is the Moai city. There are a few people with stone that we could buy to try get that built in time. The best option I think is New Tachyon:


It has the 2 4-hammer tiles and we can chop that third ring forest. Quick check seems like we could complete Moai on the first turn of the GA. I put the 2 hammers into it this turn. It's going to whip the settler next, we should probably get the stone in time for that overflow.

The other options are Peregrine and Sleeper. Peregrine has a harder time getting the hammers though. Sleeper could easily get the Moai built in time but it has a bunch of other non-coast tiles that are good. Most of New Tachyon's land tiles should eventually go to Jetboy.

If we're building the Moai there, then it won't be running specialists, so, probably run Scientists in Peregrine and I'll see if one of the other island cities can get up to speed in time.

2 other things to keep in mind; we can use Caste to pop borders during the GA in cities that don't get a religion spread. In particular, the final fish city on the island should probably timed for this. And a few workshops might be useful, 1/4 tiles during a Caste GA, that's not bad.

Tech is the other question. Dtay has now set research on CS himself. It looks to me that a CoL -> CS run will take 15t(T131), which times nicely with the GP ETA. That's very rough though, since our GNP will improve a lot as we grow our cities IMO. I'd err on the side of us getting it earlier rather than later. I'm inclined to do that since we're still up 1 military tech (HBR) on dtay. Additionally, most of our hammers comes from the whip atm. We're going to be growing in preparation for the GA and hammers will be hard to come by I think(with the exception of Sleeper). Even if we got access to new military units, I'm not sure how many we could get out. I'm also becoming less convinced about the usefulness of Feudalism. I'd prefer to be running Bureau/Caste rather than Vassalage/Serfdom during the GA. I'm not sure we can afford to give up slavery to run Serfdom once the GA is complete. So, all Feudalism gives is Longbows. They are nice, but I think I'd prefer to go Construction for Cats and War Elephants. That's a lot cheaper and gives us more options than just sitting defensively in our cities if we're attacked. So, I'd be ok with Construction -> CoL -> CS. We still have another turn or 2 of gold saving, what do you think Jowy?
(You want Feudalism don't you? )

Final thought today on civ vision rules:


I thought this chariot would be able to see into New Xerxes. Oh well, at least it means he can't see into Bagabond either.

[Jowy]

I would build the Moai in Peregrine, that city is all about the water tiles. New Tachyon can crank out some military instead
Fine, get Construction.. Just be sure to build units. Longbows could just sit in a city, but if we're attacking out we will need enough catapults to get them low and enough attackers to clean them up.

[Ceiliazul]

I thought this chariot would be able to see into New Xerxes. Oh well, at least it means he can't see into Bagabond either.

if begabond is on a hill, you are mistaken. only sentry units can see 3t, while two tiles from/to a hill is normal.

[The Black Sword]

if begabond is on a hill, you are mistaken. only sentry units can see 3t, while two tiles from/to a hill is normal.

That is true of course. I was thinking about the gold hill, but his borders now include the 2 flatland tiles which can see into Bagabond. I'm still a bit unsure about sentry, if the chariot had that promo, would he be able to see into New Xerxes?

I've went through some cities for golden age preparation, need to complete the set, but it doesn't look great IMO. In particular, none of the island cities can get up to speed in time to run specialists. The only cities that could do so are Sleeper, Jetboy, Peregrine or New Tachyon. Sleeper has a bunch of nice hammer tiles and a forge though, Jetboy will be a bureau capital and one of the other 2 will be a Moai. In comparison, the island cities are growing onto LH coast mostly, so they would be very well suited for specialists. So, I've been considering pushing the GA back a bit, maybe have Captain trips steal Kid Dinosaur's sheep to grow quicker. That would give us more time to research, there's no point getting to bureau before the GA, so Feudalism is back on the table I think. The 150b saved on CS is very nice. It's coming to the stage where we need to make a decision and turn research back on(should have already done it, if the next tech was construction), I need to finish looking at the cities.

You have a good point that the LBs are cheaper too, Jowy. 1-2 LBs and an archer in a front city, and we threaten to upgrade/whip and have 4 LBs before any attack. That's probably a bit easier than getting a critical mass of cats. I was thinking about the pros and cons of the two and I figured an attack with axes, elephants and cats would be very hard for dtay to counter without researching at least 2 new techs(need more than 1-2 scrambled cats to make a difference). But, he's agg, with SoZ and HE up and more pop/production, hard to see how it would be more profitable for us than settling the rest of our sites. If the aim was to hurt dtay though, I think it's a very good time. It seems clear that he's building up for a GA, he doesn't want to be whipping away pop into troops and defenses. Here's the power graph:



Other graphs, since we just got Commodore's:




As for Peregrine vs New Tachyon:



They actually have the same no. of water tiles, but New Tachyon has less unshared land tiles. Tbh, I feel either is just as good, except New Tachyon has the necessary production to finish the Moai in time. If we push the GA back a bit though, then it might be possible in Peregrine as well.

Some other things; here's what the turn split debate in the tech thread is about:


Seems, like yuri-mack is going to be some super-power in the south. I wish they shared a direct border with dtay. Old Tourist have a very unenviable geographic position.


and a suttree galley in the south where our next city is planned. Can't get the chariot out of range if there's a spear on board ... I do have a HA and archer making their way down already though. HA will be 1N of copper EOT, and if there is a settler on board, there can be only 1 military unit. If not, I don't see any reason to kill our chariot.

[The Black Sword]

Called it. Nice to see he adopted Hinduism though, he does have Buddhism spread in his capital. From his point of view, he probably has high hopes of finishing us off later and would like a better shrine. Still, we'll take it!

You can also see his Sentry chariot in the picture, who's been on the same spot for the last few turns. I'm pretty sure he's peeking into Popinjay each turn.

South of New Xerxes is a stack of 2 spears, 1 axe, 1 chariot guarding a farming worker. We have 1 axe and 2 archers in each city, a chariot and a spear in between them.


Not sure what suttree's galley is up to, but I guess he doesn't have a spear on it since our chariot lives. I retreated the chariot to the forest and continued bringing the HA and archer south.

Overview:

As you can see, I turned research on to Monarchy, going for Feudalism -> CoL -> CS. The plan is to get Captain Trips up as the 2nd GP farm, though this will require retarding Kid Dinosaurs growth a bit.

-Since Jetboy doesn't need to run the specialists for a bit, I'm working the mines to get out the Library instead.

-Really should make a decision on the Moai, with the extra time, I think Peregrine can finish it. Also, who to get Stone off, Commodore or Pindicooter. Nakor would be ideal, but his is unhooked. If we do get, stone, is walls worth it in Bagabond and Popinjay?

-Next turn 2 chops go into a settler in Popinjay, the turn after it will be 1 pop whipped. The WB for the city is already on the way south and the Missionary comes out of Fortunato in 4t.

[The Black Sword]

Quick update.


M_h is really getting rolled over in the south. Suttree's galley has headed south east, so maybe just scouting. I'm slightly worried about him killing the WB coming down for the crabs when it gets there. It'd be a pretty petty move at that stage though.



Cancelled our free marble to dtay and offered it to Commodore for stone. If he comes back asking for gpt, then we need to delay the deal a bit, until we can put full production into Moai. Pindicooter is the other option, they already have marble.



Finally getting some double promoted HA together. Might take a chariot with Sentry for one. Also, it's probably a good idea to offer Old Tourist some gpt for silver in 3t when this city grows, we can make some use out of that happiness elsewhere too. I set Peregrine to Moai and New Tachyon to a Library, since it will be getting our GS. It needs to get up to size 11.



The whales settler is coming out. We can do the same procedure, double chop+single whip for another settler here too. Probably the final fish spot on the island? It would probably spend 10t working a ph mine to complete the granary just as the border pops. The city sharing Sleeper's clam is nice too, would get settled a lot quicker and grown faster too. Not sure here.

The final forest, on the grass hill can be hit by 1 movers by dtay from the fog. I think we'd need Longbows covering our workers to chop it.

Overview pics from T121:




Really seem to be falling behind in the demos now, but we still have the best city in the world!