[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

Spacetyrantxenu was logged in too, Civstats shows dtay has maintained turn split with him longer than with Pindi so unless you have more info it could be xenu...

Ah, good spot. Then it's probably xenu, I already got excited

[TheHumanHydra]

If we can afford to wait for knights then hopefully we can punch a route through Azza, make peace with him and pile into Mardoc before coming back to finish Azza off. I really want to capture the Buddhist shrine and I've been having daydreams about signing OBs with Azza and wiping out Mardoc's stack in Azza's land before moving on to eat Mardoc and create an Azza sandwich... Fintourist rightly thinks this is nonsense .

Didn't Hydra try this in Pbem46?

I don't recall trying anything like that ... I did use OH's borders to attack Serdoa, but I didn't plan to sandwich OH or hit him on the back-swing ...

[Fintourist]

Minor update:
- It seems CH had impi + archer on his galley. He unloaded the impi on our continent, but the archer returned to his own continent. Works for us..
- He accepted the suggested horse trade. Friendship!
- I also checked the F4 screen and it shows that pindicator is now indeed in war against dtay! (I did not even remember that we were able to see that without having met dtay). F4 screen also shows that both Cyneheard and pindicator have already declared once to each other in this game. Pindicator is playing quite an active/aggressive game.. Or maybe he is just trying to get that positive event that is triggered by signing peace?

[retep]

I said Krill first but then I doubt Close enough.
If I'm reading the tracker right I think it should be WilliamLP who build GW.
Pindicator probably declared to cyneheard for the enforced peace.
Also I calling right now that the rivel best at tile lands is Krill.

If we can afford to wait for knights then hopefully we can punch a route through Azza, make peace with him and pile into Mardoc before coming back to finish Azza off. I really want to capture the Buddhist shrine and I've been having daydreams about signing OBs with Azza and wiping out Mardoc's stack in Azza's land before moving on to eat Mardoc and create an Azza sandwich... Fintourist rightly thinks this is nonsense .

Didn't Hydra try this in Pbem46?

I don't recall trying anything like that ... I did use OH's borders to attack Serdoa, but I didn't plan to sandwich OH or hit him on the back-swing ...

Sorry Hydra it had been awhile since I read it, but the plan to make you post work

[TheHumanHydra]

lol Good plan. I wanted to post something re: attacking Mardoc & Azza but I don't know what to think ...

[Fintourist]

Turn 101




Our 15th city, Ophelia, was founded. 1 turn later than my stated target was, shouldn't have went for such an impractical city..

Ophelia may look pretty weak at the first glance, but eventually it will be a fine city thanks to all those lighthouse-powered FIN lake tiles. Obviously the main reason for settling the city was blocking Cheater Hater off our continent, which might have been even successful. I'm counting on him being busy with Whosit and not spending his time on dreaming about naval invasion (we have some units in defensive positions anyways though).

We are probably not in an enormous rush to settle our Southern tundra, but I think we still try to reach 20 cities by T120/125. Faster expansion would of course be easy to organize, but thanks to Calendar luxury resources (and incoming HR happiness and Golden Age) our core cities also want to grow instead of whipping/producing settlers.

Domestically we turned research on and more and more cities are gradually becoming productive, this turn we 1-pop-whipped two granaries and two work boats (1 for scouting, 1 for Kirby).

In the west we will annoyingly lose 4 tiles to Azza:




Dig up will take its first ring tiles back and Hello Joe's madrassa has finally beaten our library and those mountain+hill tiles in its 2nd ring will change hands. This is not a huge problem though as Azza is still busy with Mardoc.

Based on the above power graph Azza has caused some losses for Mardoc as well although Mardoc's successes have brought him a GG:




Note also that we got another Hindu spread (Jelly Bean does not really benefit from culture though) and pindicator built Temple of Artemis (maybe partly for a shrine chance). He is the first of our neighbors to actually build a wonder, I don't know if many have tried..

Aaaand we are back to 2nd place in food as whoever is leading (dtay, BGN, joey, TBS, Oxy?) took a decent leap forward. Well our crop yield will be around 220 next turn as well thanks to several cities growing. Note also that our trade route stat is positive, which made me check the F4 screen (Pindi, Cyneheard and CH have exactly 30 cities combined so they just cover our trade routes) and it revealed that pindicator and Azza now have OBs. That means extra 12 commerce per turn to Azza, nothing more dramatic.

PS. thanks for GW analysis retep, and keep you macro guesses/wisdom coming!

[Old Harry]

Hey! We're now fogbusting every tile on our mainland! I wonder if that means anything bad for Azza and Mardoc?

What order do you want to settle the other five tundra cities? 1-2-4-3-5? I don't think we should settle 5 until we've got rid of CH's culture on the crab, we wanna play nice and friendly with him. So we could settle on the Marble to save some worker turns or wait for third ring culture in Ophelia to get marble for our epics.


Is it worth offering Azza OBs to prop him up (although his Pindi OBs probably cover all his cities) and allow us to see what sort of state the fighting is at - is Mardoc about to crush him or is it a stalemate? Otherwise it looks like we need to make another intercontinental contact before settling our next city. Is the Scout moving SE-NE-? next turn?

We're not making the cash out of the ICTRs that we did in PB13 - perhaps future contacts can give us a bit of tribute to help them out?

[Fintourist]

Hey! We're now fogbusting every tile on our mainland! I wonder if that means anything bad for Azza and Mardoc?

Hopefully! Although are we fogbusting the marble tile? We don't have vision on it and we won't always have a unit in 2 tiles distance, only our borders. Is that enough? (well we could keep axe there on the deer tile S of Ophelia)

What order do you want to settle the other five tundra cities? 1-2-4-3-5? I don't think we should settle 5 until we've got rid of CH's culture on the crab, we wanna play nice and friendly with him. So we could settle on the Marble to save some worker turns or wait for third ring culture in Ophelia to get marble for our epics.

Yeah, agree on marble, probably we just settle on it once we want to build epics or other marble-boosted wonders.

I think "2" could be the first one. Izzy has already started a work boat that I'm planning to use there so that we can hook up crabs instantly. The settler that is currently being built in our Moai city can run down there. After that maybe "4"? Simply because it has 2 food resources in the first ring and work boat can again be built in advance. I think founding of "1" could be timed with our Golden Age so that the city can work a caste artist for the first 3 turns and then get sheep immediately improved.

Is it worth offering Azza OBs to prop him up (although his Pindi OBs probably cover all his cities) and allow us to see what sort of state the fighting is at - is Mardoc about to crush him or is it a stalemate?

Maybe a stalemate now? No cities have been changing hands at the very least, but Mardoc has a higher power so maybe he is close to conquering a new one. Anyways, things look pretty bright for us, Azza is down to 6 cities and Mardoc is not expanding especially fast himself. Our production advantage is about to get fairly big and if we play our cards right we should be able to take Azza out pretty fast.

OBs don't bring anything to Azza, we would get 2 intercontinental trade routes for our island city (although I'm not 100 % sure that our cities are wise enough to use them ) So yeah, would offering OBs be a friendly thing now or would Azza just think that we want more info for a possible attack? Or would he put sentries inside our land? I'm trusting here on your people skills!

Otherwise it looks like we need to make another intercontinental contact before settling our next city. Is the Scout moving SE-NE-? next turn?

Would SE-SE be okay? I would like to get a vision of CH's capital. After that I promise that we will be scouting more effectively via roads and should make contact with Whosit in 3/4 turns (our galley revealed the borders of the city Whosit took from CH too).

We're not making the cash out of the ICTRs that we did in PB13 - perhaps future contacts can give us a bit of tribute to help them out?

Yeah, pindi has Alpha so it might be difficult to squeeze anything out of him. Cyneheard and CH could pay something, but truth is that this time we don't any extra contacts and are king of depending on them giving us OBs ourselves. And I'm trying to gain here some friendliness points for the future so that we can conquer our own continent with safe back-lines..

Due to map trading our future contacts might not accept OBs unless we pay a little ourselves. They need to scout us before they get any extra commerce.. We'll see how that will work out..

[Old Harry]

Hopefully! Although are we fogbusting the marble tile? We don't have vision on it and we won't always have a unit in 2 tiles distance, only our borders. Is that enough? (well we could keep axe there on the deer tile S of Ophelia)

I'm sure that's enough.

I think "2" could be the first one. Izzy has already started a work boat that I'm planning to use there so that we can hook up crabs instantly. The settler that is currently being built in our Moai city can run down there. After that maybe "4"? Simply because it has 2 food resources in the first ring and work boat can again be built in advance. I think founding of "1" could be timed with our Golden Age so that the city can work a caste artist for the first 3 turns and then get sheep immediately improved.

That all sounds good to me.

OBs don't bring anything to Azza, we would get 2 intercontinental trade routes for our island city (although I'm not 100 % sure that our cities are wise enough to use them ) So yeah, would offering OBs be a friendly thing now or would Azza just think that we want more info for a possible attack? Or would he put sentries inside our land? I'm trusting here on your people skills!

Um. I don't have any. Retep? THH?

Seriously Retep's analysis that Azza gets his blinkers on and goes all-in against a blood-enemy would work in our favour if true. If he does put sentries in our land then we'll just have to close borders and ask for cash like we'll be doing with other people. Perhaps it won't look suspicious to him or perhaps he'll give us some money . I doubt he'll have enough units spare or inclination to effectively scout us either way, so I'm in favour...

Otherwise it looks like we need to make another intercontinental contact before settling our next city. Is the Scout moving SE-NE-? next turn?

Would SE-SE be okay? I would like to get a vision of CH's capital. After that I promise that we will be scouting more effectively via roads and should make contact with Whosit in 3/4 turns (our galley revealed the borders of the city Whosit took from CH too).

I suppose so. The galley can't reveal Whosit next turn? Is it heading NW?

Due to map trading our future contacts might not accept OBs unless we pay a little ourselves. They need to scout us before they get any extra commerce.. We'll see how that will work out..

Ah, forgot about that. Could OB trade routes work if they have a route to Azza or CH?

I'm off on my holls tomorrow, hope I'll be able to cover whatever turns are needed in PB13, but there will be no sandbox help here for a little while...

[TheHumanHydra]

I think in 46 Azza scouted me but did not post sentries. If you don't want to look suspicious (though I'm not sure you'd be willing to do this), you could offer open borders with payment (ie. us paying him), ostensibly for the right to use his trade routes or whatever, then cancel when you start to prepare to attack; it'll seem like you just don't want to pay anymore, not due to any ... other motivations.