[spoilers] Off balance, missed the bus

[DaveV]

Turn 45 started out with a bad event:



I paid the 25 gold protection money.

Two barb warriors showed up at the same time; the northern one is messing up my worker micro. One of the problems of playing Kurios is that you have to defend a larger than normal amount of territory.

[shallow_thought]

One of the features of FFH is that worker micro doesn't typically survive contact with the enemy. And one of the other features is that the world is your enemy .

[DaveV]

And one of the other features is that the world is your enemy .

A lucky enemy, at that. One of the barb warriors won at 12% odds attacking across a river, so I had to counterattack at less than overwhelming odds to keep him from promoting:



I won, and now have two warriors at 4/5 XP. Bad management of my warriors, I guess.



Mackoti is in God King and Religion, and is cranking out an obscene number of hammers. He's also putting culture into his pink dot city of DealuNegru.

[DaveV]

I settled my third city and popped my world spell. Exhibit one on why it's a bad idea to settle up on the Kurios:



I obviously still don't understand how culture bombs work. I expected to get 50 culture in my 4th ring and either 250 or 1200 in the third ring. But it's showing me at 63% culture on a tile in my third ring where mack has 8 culture, so I have 14? In any case, I probably have permanent control of that gems tile unless he wants to burn a great sage for his own culture bomb.

In the south, I went for a decent city right now instead of a theoretically better city some distant time in the future:

[DaveV]

I'm way behind on my reporting, partially because I've been squeezing in the turns at awkward times and partially because I didn't want anyone to steal my toys. I present:



I tried to hide the build in my screenshots, but a keen-eyed reader can see the thumbnail in the first picture of the previous post.

Now I have the three strongest units on the board. Not enough to wipe out another player, but it gives me a pretty good sense of security. Also, the free sentry promotion should help with exploration.

I popped a great sage a couple turns ago, and used him for a golden age. I had been waiting a few turns to revolt into God King, and it helped speed up the Pact of the Nilhorn. I plan to switch to Nationality and Apprenticeship on the last turn of the GA, since you can do two free switches if you swap on the first and last turns.

[DaveV]

Mack popped his world spell at five cities. One of the five warriors hunkered down in his border city is now clutching a golden hammer.

[DaveV]

Current garrison in mack's pink dot city:



So, hunters? Faster than golems, anyway. At five strength with a hammer, they have 12% odds against my unpromoted giants, less than 4% against the guy who trained up to C1 against the barbs. No defensive bonus, so they should be fairly easy to kill in his city if it comes to that.

[DaveV]

Yet again, mack has amazing combat luck:



Edit: fixed the odds.

[Amicalola]

  Any idea what the plan is now?

[naufragar]

Are those numbers on the right the odds? Hunters should get decent odds against hill giants.