[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[ljubljana]

@aetryn um........ ohhhh boy here we go with the most embarrassing question of this let's play so far:

there are snowy trees?

Turn Zululand - ljubljana

well, we're having a stressy depressy IRL day today, so all i have for you guys might be some screenshots (and my everlasting love and appreciation, duh)



a warrior! we are very lucky that it is not 1SE of where it is, as i was careless and left our scout in theoretically-snipable position (although into river + forest hill it wouldn't be a guaranteed win for them). but of course i'll have to be significantly more cautious about pushing further north knowing that they've chosen the early warriors route...

and yes, the southern borders of what i hope is GT's capital. if it is, mjmd's proposed 14-tile distance between capitals is a significant underestimate, and the true mean value may be more like 19. but it could be a second city with the capital closer in the northeast fog, in which case, well, at least they're not settling toward us. you would think it's probably the capital though as it's at a very similar latitude to us, just made a warrior (probably too soon for a second city to finish one), and that southern wheat looks suspiciously like one of our own suspect first-ring plant options

wide-angle view:



no food within a million miles of the western ivory cluster.... so our options are to farm this over extensively or steal the capital's wheat. i naturally prefer option 3 of deprioritize this city site. right now it's looking highly likely that eastern cow city and wheat/copper city will have to be our first two plants in some order, which would make the dreaded early mysticism research an unfortunate reality. but hopefully the third scout about to be born will inform this further, and the scout by takakeisho will divert north for a minute too, or at least for long enough to reveal the northern first-ring tiles

we are 5-6 turns away from getting demos on them, which i think will be in time to inform our choice of second city site... i would like to do cows first for the growth curve acceleration of the river hookup (and also to delay mysticism) but that may be too heavy a lift in terms of copper delay. hopefully the coming horse info will help in some way. it isn't a phenomenal tile, being cleanly worse than a plains cow even on grass, but if GT does come for us you'd think it'd be with mostly axes which chariots counter (in theory....whether they still will do that if their stack has 2-3 spears in it too, i am less sure lol)

[williams482]

For rush defense, protective archers with a barracks on a hill are going to give axemen a lot of trouble and archery is a pretty cheap tech. Even without copper, a rush could choke us but could not conquer us as long as we see it coming and pivot our research appropriately.

Obviously we don't want archery any more than we want mysticism right now, but we have options to defend ourselves even if we can't get metals hooked up quickly.

[ljubljana]

yeahhhh although as you've mentioned it would be a major setback to the growth curve, and also other than the cap we don't have too many plausible hill cities around pre-mysticism. well, at any rate i feel confident that settler is the correct next build. unless maaaaybe a third worker could be but seems excessive compared to 4 commerce from the trade hookup; if we don't do cow city second perhaps worker (and indeed maybe swapping research to wheel) makes more sense

scout3 has its movement boosted by the incoming forest chop and will head asap (2t) for the forest hill by the north copper

idk, sometime in the near future when i'm less depressed i will rouse myself to additional sims or spreadsheets or something. including but not limited to the following

a. settler next, then worker - worker - settler and send the next city to wheat copper. i consider this the default plan as i think it's likely to have the strongest growth curve, the question is how late the copper hookup is

b. settler next, send him to the wheat/copper site but keep everything else constant in our plan

c. b but swap research to wheel now

d. c but do a third worker before the settler

e. b but grow to size 4 for the cow as soon as AH is in

[williams482]

Sorry to hear you're not doing well. Hang in there.

[ljubljana]

a) notes:

- save forest 1E and 2N of capital so we can chop and then road next turn when wheel comes in



copper city founded turn 44 with mysticism almost ready (did it after wheel but before pottery). not sure where the next settler from the capital goes, probably south for now... or we COULD still found ivory city and steal the wheat, which is really depressing and doesn't claim much useful territory but is at least defensible and good short-term



contrast with our other openings is marked.... we JUST finished the monument in the north city this turn, for a very late copper hookup of t60 + worker labor (so effectively turn 62ish), and instead of 3 granaries about to complete we have one monument because we had to research mysticism. i think this plan is too crappy to be the plan....if we did use it i think we have to at LEAST move the city north next to the copper (and therefore with no food!) so we don't delay the hookup into the t60 range

next i'm going to do option f., that i haven't mentioned yet, which is the above plan but without mysticism research, and with our third city instead being what i will call the Depressing Garbage Copper City (DGCC) southwest of the southern copper, next to the flood plain. that city is really bad! but it doesn't need mysticism right away, hits +4 food while working the copper, and can be a springboard for settling towards the gold



i think i erred in the micro significantly, but i'm definitely liking this better than the early-mysticism mess.... the first two cities have granaries done, the third can either slow-build it with the copper or do that halfway and then whip after growing with the FP. and yes, copper hookup on turn 50, which is still nasty and late but it's kinda what we've got for now if we want the nice fun snowball accelerating cow city

[ljubljana]

if we want a faster copper hookup, perhaps by making the eminently crappy FP/copper city our second city, looks like we need wheel before AH and to build roughly the following road:



but this barely accelerates the copper (turn 46 vs turn 50) while eating what seems like a pretty major slowdown on total growth curve....



well, ok, maybe this isn't too bad. capital still finishes the granary t50, floodplain city can whip it in 3t and overflow into the monument. ohandalso, with two workers having prioritized the road down here, we're in position to claim the double gold region as early as our fourth city



economy's way behind the no-copper t60 setup earlier that had us working reams of riverside cottages at this point. but it's not terrible and the gold should go some way towards catching us up of course

[ljubljana]

operation G: literally just bumrush the gold lmao

assets as of t28: size 3 capital on all improved tiles, 3 scouts, ag + mining + hunting + BW + partial AH research

tech: switch to wheel - finish AH - pottery - mysticism
capital builds: (scout) - worker - worker - worker - settler -  settler (yep, FIVE workers before the second city settler)

turn 40 second city (LOL) but turn 42 copper hookup (hmmm not bad)
third city founded (at the gold!) turn 48
granary timings are not great BUT we can pull a trick by pre-choppng third-ring forests at the capital starting a few turns BEFORE the borders expand to claim them...
city 4 founded (northern wheat) turn 51
cap granary t53
working gold tile t54
second city granary t55
gold city monument t56
turn 60 situation:






thoughts/feelings? every city has a granary except gold city that had to do the monument first - it will combination chop + whip one when the borders expand

[ljubljana]

addendum: note the pretty strong capital we get by not blowing all its food resources on other cities. that, combined with wanting to delay the first GA for serfdom (wow is this the serfdomest map ever or what), plus the degree to which the capitals are pretty much the only good land around lol, to me suggests a fast academy play. could whip a library really quickly (like, turn 62 quickly) and could get the GS out in time to bootstrap currency i think

but: also not totally sober so this could be an insane thought lol (OR an ~inspired~ thought who knows) thank you for reading my blog

[ljubljana]

with precise play that requires switching to wheel this turn and does the chops and roads in a pretty specific order it is possible to achieve the following timings:

second city t40



copper hookup t41



gold city t47, with an impi or axeman out next turn to defend it as necessary

western scout would have to turn back south pretty much asap if we wanna try this i think

[williams482]

A t40 second city seems rough, but this "bumrush gold" plan actually looks pretty viable? It's ambitious, but we're the Zulus and are well equipped to be ambitious. With the local terrain so poor, grabbing the only actual good spot we've seen so far does seem pretty worthwhile.

I do wish we could have scouted out the area around the northeastern copper, because a first ring food resource would make that a much more promising target.