[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

Alright, looks good!

Sounds like we are set for settlers for all the cities we had planned short term, but we might need to come up with some new thoughts on city locations soon because we're out of identified sites to settle (except the desert pig site that's hard to secure and doesn't grab any new resources anyway, so is low priority), while the capital continues to want to work on food-hammer things like more settlers/workers to wait out whip unhappy so we can grow another size while building perhaps a (cheap) temple or maybe some military. Hopefully one of our exploring work boats can start finding some new spots closer to home than Luddite's or Oxy's shores, but they went so far afield it might take them a while yet to get into good position for that. I suppose we'll likely need a second galley for our west sometime in the not too distant future, if we want to keep going with the island expansion.

My general plan with the capital is to build a worker next to wait out the unhappiness (and because I need one), and then grow on a War Elephant build. I'm trying to get some mines completed too in order to have a better hammer config option for when this happens. A SPI temple to unlock size 9 too is definitely roughly in the mental queue and could potentially go before the Elephant.


Also, I elected not to complete HBR this turn, and instead started on Currency. The thinking is I should not complete HBR until either the turn before I want to build an Elephant OR immediately after Yuris does. The upsides for waiting as long as possible boil down to 1) preserving known-tech-bonus vision so I know when Yuris finishes it, and 2) denying known-tech-bonus to him while teching it. I don't know exactly when I'll finish it, but probably fairly soon. But I'm content to sit 10b away from it for now.

[Zed-F]

Building WE before barracks at the cap implies you don't intend to build a lot of WE out of the cap, correct? This makes sense if the cap is focused on expansion while staying at the happy cap, and the kids are focused on whipping out defenses.

[scooter]

Building WE before barracks at the cap implies you don't intend to build a lot of WE out of the cap, correct? This makes sense if the cap is focused on expansion while staying at the happy cap, and the kids are focused on whipping out defenses.

It implies I wrote the post without really thinking too hard.

[Zed-F]

We’re about to settle cities 7, 8, and 9… is Oxy up to 6? I still don’t think we’ve seen much from him recently.

[scooter]

We’re about to settle cities 7, 8, and 9… is Oxy up to 6? I still don’t think we’ve seen much from him recently.

To my shock, no. Oxy hasn't settled a city in 12 turns now. Given that his soldier count is hilariously small, he's not building units either, so I'm sort of surprised. I would expect a similar burst from him soon, but then again I said that like 9 days ago, and nothing happened.

[Zed-F]

Maybe he’s trying to go tall to take advantage of Mids? Spending hammers on buildings instead of settlers? That seems like a hilariously wrong-footed strategy to me and a good reason why Joao + Mids is so much more awkward a combination than just getting GLH would have been for him. Joao wants to go wide as fast as possible, but Mids (assuming Representation) are only useful for cities that grow tall. He really needed to wait longer to grab it, and get a bunch more cities before committing to it.

[scooter]

Maybe he’s trying to go tall to take advantage of Mids? Spending hammers on buildings instead of settlers? That seems like a hilariously wrong-footed strategy to me and a good reason why Joao + Mids is so much more awkward a combination than just getting GLH would have been for him. Joao wants to go wide as fast as possible, but Mids (assuming Representation) are only useful for cities that grow tall. He really needed to wait longer to grab it, and get a bunch more cities before committing to it.

I would bet my life he wanted GLH because yeah it's perfect for him. That's why I built it so early. Anyway, I also may be underestimating worker labor required. I'm skating by with too-few workers because I have lighthouse FIN lakes to cheat with. I dunno, just guessing at reasons. It's also possible he made a run at Oracle and I beat him. Oracling Metal Casting and building Colossus might make a lot of sense for him too, so maybe he invested resources down that path and got burned. He also built Pyramids, which even with Stone is quite expensive for him, so yeah it's possible his hammers have gone towards wonders, and the only one he landed was really expensive.


ALSO, keep in mind he could be building Kremlin right now, I guess. That would be a bit weird to me, but it's possible. (Would make much more sense for the Pyramids Engineer to rush it.)

[Zed-F]

Cairo, ya killing me man, is the horse gamble gonna work or not?

For Oxy, if he wants Colossus, I think a straight-to-metal casting would make more sense than gambling on getting Oracle via Priesthood without religion; albeit we have a perspective he doesn’t. But Colossus also fights against Mids, do you want food going into specialists or coast? For us, Colossus is not entirely necessary, but it at least fits well with what we are doing already, and denial value is also useful. MoM is great and we want it, but are we really wanting a GA right away? We might not get a lot of immediate value from building it.

[Zed-F]

Speak of the devil, and Oxy founds a couple cities.

[scooter]

Well, the bad news is he did kill my Chariot with the Axe at 70% odds. The good news?





There was no second unit. Burned Nicaea. Slight bummer the Chariot didn't survive because then I could have pillaged the horses. I decided to check with the scout to see if there was as unit behind.





And immediately realized this was a silly mistake because now it meant both units were dead. Oh well. Chariot + Warrior + Scout is still a good price to pay for a dead city. On pure hammer exchange it's 100h vs 60h, but on game impact it's far more, as it slows his 4th city way down and slows down Cataphracts. Plus I can replace my hammers much easier than he can. I'll be at 9 cities before he gets back to 4, let alone has the replacement city fully online. I took a peek at the capital (3 workers in it) before deleting both units to deny XP. Realistically, I can't come deny him resettlement as it'll take awhile to get there, and he won't screw up the same way twice. However, the delay to his plan lets me zoom ahead further. This was a huge success even with a slightly higher price tag than planned. I don't see how he can touch me with Cataphracts now.





A small village attached to the powerhouse city that is a sneaky bet to one day exceed said city? I know who that sounds like. Borrowed the Sheep for one turn, then next turn nets the Fish. I think I'll let it otherwise be self-sufficient, likely whipping its own WB before going Granary-Lighthouse. Obviously would be nice to have both WBs built for it, but other cities need WBs too. Speaking of other cities, quick domestic whip-around.





This city settles next turn. Work boat will be a tad later than planned due to some priority shifts, but it'll come. Accepting name suggestions for this one. There is one name that won't work here though.





Because I need Greg to be in fairly close proximity to Tom. Shiv will pop out a WB for this city.





I 1T'd a Warrior in Connor last turn and did the same in Shiv/Roman this turn. I wasn't planning to do that, but I realized I need to take the Copper back from Luddite as soon as next turn, so I decided to squeeze out some cheap MP before I do that. There is a chance Yuris just sends everything at me now. I should be prepared if that happens. I've got a few units around, and the holy city + Oracle frontlines means I'll have plenty of warning. I'm chopping forests on the front now, and those can be dumped into units when needed. Not really worried at the moment. Today I'm going to give some thought to the What's Next.





Oxy's double city T62 bumped him back even with me in the demos after falling behind a bit, but this is still a game where two players are running away from the field. Cairo's lack of sustained success against Luddite is really striking. After he burned that one city there's been basically no progress. In fact, I think they have the same number of cities. I wonder if my Copper gift made a difference?