[PB59 Suite and civac] Chaos at home

[civac2]

Surrounding territory is extremely rich.








We changed our initial micro a bit. As mentioned before we will whip a worker next turn. 




With the overflow and chop a third worker will finish two turns later. Then the workers triple-chop the settler. We also only built a single warrior beforehand. We had initially planned to go for two warriors.

The scout stays close to fogbust and assist the settling of the new cities. This may be mistake.

Copper appeared where we intended to plant the third city. This city will likely go on the plains hill 1 SE of it. Can't share the deer there but the capital can make good use of the deer too.

[civac2]

Eridu was founded in turn 35. Slow but not horrendously slow.




Due to building so many food hammer units our demos are abysmal. Things are improving though.

So far no sign of (non-plant) life except for assorted oversized cats. My pitboss paranoia already conjures up images of scouts spotting our borders without making contact and chariot rushes. Our fledgling empire is defended by one warrior. He does have C1 though.

[civac2]

We settled Kish in turn 45.




AT's scout found us and the culture of Kish gave us vision of Elkad's border. So far, we have avoided making contact with Elkad. Of course, there is a possibility he sees us the same way we see him.

Eridu is building our first vulture and we have 4, soon 5 warriors. Our period of vulnerability is nearly over.

Demos have improved markedly. We are 7th in food (though with a significant distance to #1) and first in production.

[civac2]

We founded Lagash and Ur in turn 54. EXP is starting to be useful. Both new cities got a chop into their granaries on founding and will already be able to take advantage of them on growth to size 2.




We decided to contact Elkad with a warrior. Yet more fertile land was discovered to the southeast.




Demos are worse than I had hoped. Food is almost exactly average, production is tied for first and GNP is the worst in the game by a substantial margin.

[civac2]

We founded Nibru



Bad Tibira (partly obscured by the bear marker)



and Zimbir



in the last 4 turns.

Nibru is meant as staging point to colonise the fur island. It would have been better one tile to the west in the short term. It this position it is a better long term city and can share tiles of Ur and Eridu. Bad-Tibira picks up Gold, wet Rice and some flood plains. Zimbir grows cottages for the capital which had too much food anyway.



One strong and one decent city can be founded in the south. The island with the clams is interesting once we close in on Currency.

Demos:



This is a fairly typical snapshot. We have been first in production quite often and last in gnp almost always. Food we were second on a bunch of turns (the previous turn for example) but the food leader keeps outpacing us by 10-15. Suite thinks it's TBS. My money is on mackoti.

[civac2]

I will try to be a bit more thorough this time. Let me know if there is anything you want to know about.

Only mildly interesting thing that has happened so far is AT declaring war on us to free his scout. We have since returned the favor to let our scouting work boat pass through.



AT is situated to the south west of us.



The pigs will be the site of the next city (just to the south of them). Another one is planned north east of the corn but no exact turn number set. I first need to figure out where to get another settler from.

Middle and western parts of the empire:






Two further cities will be founded on the islands, one to claim the fish and one to claim the fur + clams.

Elkad is situated to the east of our empire. So far there was little contact with him.



The jungle border between us is fairly far north. There is room for a decent city here but one that is commercially weak. So it will be delayed.

Finances:



Looking much better now. We were down to +7 gpt on some turns. The gold helped and a good amount of cottages finished. Island trade routes will be available in 3 turns.

Demo:



TBS/mackoti really opened up a lead. This is not good. There are also other people ahead of us now. Next cities are 2 and 3 turns away.

Graphs:

Both AT and Elkad are expanding fairly slowly which is a promising sign for the future.

Cities

Uruk



Should grow now but will pop-3 whip one more settler because I don't know where else to aquire one.

Eridu



The second city has to give away its wheat most of the time. Thus it's not as productive as it was initially.

Kish



Future production city. Will also whip another settler. After growth back to 4.

Lagash



Commerce city. Looks pretty good already.

Ur



Part of the Eridu-Ur-Nibru triangle that is a bit short on viable tiles. In particular food resources. Will whip two workers pop 1 to get around that.

Nibru



Staging point for colonization of the western islands. Should have been founded one tile to the west to make use of the fish immediatly. I didn't have a work boat at hand at the time and the capital was the only city which could have even made one. At least in the long term the city will be better at its current spot. This could be part of the reason we fell behind a bit on crop yield.

Bad-Tibira



Another future commerce city with 4 flood plains and gold.

Zimbir



Helper city for the capital. May have to whip a scouting workboat so it will need some time to grow into its cottages.

[civac2]

After a long time of knowing only AT und Elkad a bunch of strange new enemies appeared.



Mjmd and Charriu found us with workboats and



we spotted Miguelito's scout in the south. Miguelito is probably on the far side of Elkad. They have put an enormous amount of EP into each other.



We founded the aforementined island cities and a city near the pigs in the south. Up to 11 cities now. Economy ist still fine.



We will found more cities on the island west of the capital, the island west of Miguelito's scout and at the corn in the south (east of pigs). They should cost 8-9 gold each which is barely sustainable. A fifteenth city fits east of the capital. This one will probalbly be delayed after we have Math.

[civac2]

*Dusts off thread*

When discussing strategy, Suite insisted that in a game this large it is necessary to conquer more land early while I initially wanted to tech for a while. Suite won the argument. Due to the new and improved AGG trait our choice fell on an orthodox cat/axe attack on either AT or Elkad, our land neighbors. Orthodox at civforum.de at least, less so here. We also decided that due to the lay of the land (see below) AT was the better target and that we were going to try to soften him up in advance with a sea-based raid.

We prepared a total of five galleys manned by nine vultures and one chariot. Three of the vultures and one chariot had barracks training.

The small eastern group aimed at the farflung outpost Lockjaw.



The western group attacked AT's nortwest coast.



As you can see, we could hit both areas from staging point inside our territory, the eastern group even from a point that was not visible to AT. In the first turn of the war, we landed 2 vultures west of Lockjaw, capturing a worker, and moved the western group into the position in the screenshot where it could flank both northwestern coastal cities.

On the second turn of the war, we destroyed all three cities losing two vultures, killing three axes, two warriors and a chariot.




We could also reach AT's undefended island city with one galley on the next turn. 



I also burnt it to the ground which made Suite rather unhappy.

We regrouped the remaining units of the western group threatening the canal city of Uppercut.



Reinforcements have been gathered in Ur (city below the stone bubble). Two vultures and two galleys are still operating off AT's west coast tying down defenders.

Uppercut, likewise, will be burned to the ground and then a moderate force of around 15 units will advance into ATs core area. Hopefully, we will be able to take and keep the cities there. The resistance has been light enough that holding on to the initial cities may have been possible.

Civilian matters have been comparably pedestrian. We have met Mjmd, Charriu, Donovan Zoi and Miguelito/Rusten. Donovan Zoi is situated to the north (and south ) of us.



He graciously agreed to open borders . We also managed to secure an open borders deal with Elkad which allows us to monitor his territory for backstab attempts. Moreover, people have finally  started to settle island cities and provide us with 3 yield trade routes.

Miguelito/Rusten did not open borders. They are sitting due southeast of us.



They are one of the teams I'd rather not have so close.

[Lewwyn]

I also burnt it to the ground which made Suite rather unhappy.

Yeah from what I've seen here you probably could have kept and held it with little difficulty. C'est la vie. Great use of AGG! Are you getting settlers ready?

[civac2]

Not yet. I want to secure the area first and also get Currency. Currency should be done in 7ish turns. We will probably have to 3pop whip some settlers in commerce cities. The productive cities are making units, the offshore and coastal whipping posts mostly aren't ready yet and several of the commerce cities are growing too fast anyway. But this needs to be managed properly so that it does not delay Currency.