[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

Hmm, I'm not really as sold on 3 as I seem to have made out, I just prefer it to 2 if we are settling up on Azza

Ha! Well, soon we need to decide which border city we choose (if any)!

Suttree is a good call here THH, is settling up on Azza going to make him give up the game and turtle? We want him to fold when (if) we attack, if we let him settle the city does he concentrate on infrastructure, if we poach the site perhaps he'll focus on units instead? If we do claim it we can hit his copper city pretty fast and perhaps prevent a reaction. Probably important to find out if he has any other metal lying around.

Yeah, somehow I feel that if we pressure Azza, both revenge mentality and passive co-existence are real options. I really can't decide how to assess him..

Azza is on four cities already, so he hasn't screwed up his start. He has metal, so we're going to need Catapults, Knights or an overwhelming force to make headway, what about going back to our original plan, boating Cheater Hater's capital? Might even be intercontinental trade routes in it for us...

You totally made me check, but Azza "only" has 3 cities. I'm still confident that we can gain an edge towards him in the expansion phase, but you are probably correct that he is unlikely to be so weak that he just folds for a small 2-mover stack..

Anyway in more useful thoughts can you bring the western scout up Azza's border to see if he's got a coastal city yet or any other Copper available? Cheers!

Yeah, let's rotate towards Azza, his capital might be coastal, but I'm not especially good in reading river graphics.

[Fintourist]

Turn 50

First 50 turns are now done! And we celebrated that by founding our 4th city, Daisy!




- Finally we settle a city that can actually share food resources in an useful way. This turn Daisy needs to still work a weak tile, but next 2 turns it will get wet corn and then switch to its own pig pasture (due to granary optimization in BS).
- So it's granary time! Finally! Next turn we whip our first one in Butterscotch and Alfie will get one soon as well
- 5th worker will be finished in Cornelius next turn
- IIRC Turn 54 is the turn when we need to decide, which front city we choose towards Azza, if any. Azza has now 3rd ring borders in his capital so he now sees those pigs between us - Interestingly, as you might have already realized, the fact that Azza has 3rd ring borders means that he has not spent a turn revolting into slavery (I'm not sure if I've commented on that earlier)
--> If we have actually settled on horses, I'm extremely tempted to try a quick chariot rush..
- I wonder how many teams currently have 4+ cities, we should be fairly competitive. At least compared to our scoreleaders Brick+Mardoc, who still have only 2 cities.

After our settler double-whip we spent couple of turns more or less as a tied food leader, but thanks to our new city that category looks nice again:

[Fintourist]

Turns 51-52

Main domestic events:
- Finished granary in Butterscotch EOT51
- Built our 5th worker in Corenelius EOT51
- Finished Animal Husbandry EOT51...

... so where are our horses...!




+ We will have horses
- They are not in too practical spots. Probably we'll grab them with the 2nd ring of our Cheater Hater coastal border city --> I guess chariot rush ideas are pretty much on hold for now

On the positive side, as far as we know Azza does not have horses inside his borders either:




In the west our scout is trying to reach Azza's western borders, but has been forced to dodge lions and Azza warrior:




I haven't been too active in monitoring score changes, but I found this from couple of turns ago:



It looks to me as if HitAnyKey razed a city from Jowy. I'm not 100 % sure, because I'm not quite sure reg how the civstats replacement functions, just 99 % sure... Anyways, no idea if there are other conflicts going on, but at least there is something to watch for the lurkers. Let's hope HAK and Jowy are our northern neighbors...

[Old Harry]

Your own score updates when you log out, but I've no idea how it behaves when you change someone else's score. If you're right that's nice work by HAK but he's probably sabotaged both his and Jowy's game now! I can't remember what his NACOR rating was but I wouldn't want to start next to Jowy unless I was AGG...

Those horses are in annoying spots. I guess our choices are:
- 1 settle for the stone and crab with horse second ring
- 2 settle for the sheep, with sheep, maybe crab and horse second ring
I'd rather not let CH know we're here just yet, so that the option of a surprise galley attack on his capital remains open, but option 2 is a far better city and it doesn't totally ruin the surprise...

I played through a version to T90 going AH->HBR->Archery->Maths and ended up with 15 5XP HA and a couple of Axes, Spears and chariots poised to crash into Azza, but the economy was so totally destroyed that I think we need Currency first, then we can use wealth builds to get to HBR or Construction, so Writing->Maths->Currency next or do you want Sailing? We were also hurting for happy, so I have my fingers crossed that the southern tundra has metals and islands for the commerce boost (sounds like the sort of thing Commodore would do doesn't it?) Getting a galley down there will be a pain though.

Azza has another source of marble that he can contest with Brickadoc - interesting, I wonder if that means we can take marble island?

[Fintourist]

Your own score updates when you log out, but I've no idea how it behaves when you change someone else's score. If you're right that's nice work by HAK but he's probably sabotaged both his and Jowy's game now! I can't remember what his NACOR rating was but I wouldn't want to start next to Jowy unless I was AGG...

IIRC he replaced Catwalk, which means that we haven't ranked HAK! And yeah, I wonder if anything productive came out of that city raze. Maybe that was an important city raze that totally crippled Jowy and did not cost much to HAK..?

Those horses are in annoying spots. I guess our choices are:
...
- 2 settle for the sheep, with sheep, maybe crab and horse second ring
...

Yeah, I think I like that spot as well. Plains hill W of deer is one further option, but that can't match the above option in quality either.

I played through a version to T90 going AH->HBR->Archery->Maths and ended up with 15 5XP HA and a couple of Axes, Spears and chariots poised to crash into Azza, but the economy was so totally destroyed that I think we need Currency first, then we can use wealth builds to get to HBR or Construction, so Writing->Maths->Currency next or do you want Sailing? We were also hurting for happy, so I have my fingers crossed that the southern tundra has metals and islands for the commerce boost (sounds like the sort of thing Commodore would do doesn't it?) Getting a galley down there will be a pain though.

And that's totally something Commodore would do!

Do you have an updated sandbox? my latest is from T45 or something so I need to update it...

And yeah, we need to try and kill Azza while not crashing our own economy. I think we take Fishing and also cheap Archery next (I would like to get out one archer for our city towards Azza and have a 1-pop whippable defender) and then we probably start with Writing->Maths->Currency path. We need to evaluate when we squeeze in/how much we delay Sailing and HBR, because as you said we probably need whales for happiness and HBR for Anyways, those can be timed based on when we actually get relevant resources inside our borders and how our economy/military situation looks at that point.

Of course we could divert to IW and do an awesome Woody II Jaguar invasion, but I guess we are not living in total jungle this time and just leave our UU unused.. Or do we go for full

Azza has another source of marble that he can contest with Brickadoc - interesting, I wonder if that means we can take marble island?

[Fintourist]

Updated Sandbox

&

Updated Micro Plan

I like the new baseline quite a bit. I think it's better than our previous versions in many ways. If you have time to go through it I'm happy to hear some criticism though! The fact that we are balancing on a thin line has not changed, but minimal defensive capabilities are there so I feel that there exists a decent chance that we can pull it off.

[Old Harry]

Hard as I tried to provide criticism it just wasn't possible... Moving the two workers to the forest at E hurts a bit, but I presume that does good things for the granary whip? It's annoying that settlers E and F take so long in transit, but there's nothing much to be done about that. The only thing I'd be tempted to change is moving the northern warrior NW of the sugar to fog-bust a larger area.

Very nice plan

On HAK-Jowy, I guess the very act of existing next to Jowy can be taken as cassus belli so poaching an early city probably hasn't damaged relations too badly...

On horse cities, I'll see your 1W of deer and raise you S-S-SE of Alfie - no new food, but shares the capital's pigs, has horse first ring and can work 2 grass, 2 plains and 1 hill cottage for the capital. It also provides a stepping stone to the double sheep city, to help prevent overstretch. Double sheep is probably the better bet though.

[Fintourist]

Turns 53-54

Not too much going on domestically, just developing the mighty Azteca empire. In the west:




It looks like Azza's next city goes toward Mardoc. Works for us Azza's "Boo-urns" was whipped this turn so perhaps we will meet a settler next turn.

Note that we got research visibility on Azza, still on his way to AH and not too fast! That's good news, no need to worry about chariots!

In the south our scout found some trouble:




Wolves only have 1 base strength and our scout gets +170 % against them (this is the scout with no XP). 1st battle should be a clear win, but 2nd one might be more tricky.. I haven't calculated our odds of winning two in a row, but I would think that it's reasonable to expect that we survive although there is probably not too much room for bad luck. The bad aspect of this is that even if we win these wolves will be reborn as warriors if that happens let's hope they will appear next to Azza & Mardoc..

Domestic update comes in next turn, but here is some Our current crop yield lead is 6 units so things still look promising. IIRC our Food+MFG is very close to rival best Food + rival best MFG, which is a sign that things are going fine. Although it's probably still a bit too early to really say anything here, in ~10-20 turns demos already tell a bit more.

PS. I chatted with OH reg his recent post, I'm not ignoring him here, just saving you from micro chat

[Old Harry]

Argh! Wolves!

Do you think that's an island south of the horses then?

I like the idea of a demos screen which we aren't bumping along the bottom of, and when fishing comes in our GNP should improve too. Let's see a screenshot of it next turn!

Finally, I think we need the possibility of a trade connection to Brickadoc if we want Buddhism to spread to us - can you get a coastal route uncovered by the time Sailing comes in or will Azza be in the way?

[Ituralde]

The bad aspect of this is that even if we win these wolves will be reborn as warriors

Taken out of context that sound so much more badass than the actual game mechanic. Now I have the picture of Barbarian Zombie Wolf Warriors stuck in my head!