[no players] Lurkers' paradise for PBEM3

[Ituralde]

Also, the mystery modifier to production is Urban Planning, duh

That's the explanation for the mystery production, but that's one whole hammer. The verdict is still out, whether God of the Forge is bugged though.

[Singaboy]

Interesting to see some early game aggression (or shadow fighting) between Arabia and Japan with America hanging around too.

[Alhambram]

Looking at settler plans of Kaiser and Ichabod, there might be bad blood between them quite fast resulting in war.
(I need to add that Kaiser is taking risky move: he need have his reinforcements walk through city state to protect his 2nd city in case of war, what if city state got a lot units walking around, then Kaiser wastes easily 2 or 3 turns to save his 2nd city due one unit per tile rule.)
Similar can happen with suboptimal and Rowain. Bacchus is relative isolated and can do building gambit here.

[Ituralde]

Yeah, with all that jungle and his stepwells he should get his cities to a high population in no time. Stay isolated until he gets Varus and he should have a good position in this game.

[oledavy]

Looking at settler plans of Kaiser and Ichabod, there might be bad blood between them quite fast resulting in war.
(I need to add that Kaiser is taking risky move: he need have his reinforcements walk through city state to protect his 2nd city in case of war, what if city state got a lot units walking around, then Kaiser wastes easily 2 or 3 turns to save his 2nd city due one unit per tile rule.)
Similar can happen with suboptimal and Rowain. Bacchus is relative isolated and can do building gambit here.

I think this is likely to end poorly for Kaiser - especially as Ichabod has GotF. Besides being distant from his capital, the city is on the flatland, and will be difficult to hold against a determined assault. I think he might be better off aiming for the "C4" location in the jungle to the northwest. While you do have to tiptoe around the barb camp, that's an amazing city with a 3/2 banana tile in the first ring. 

Still, maybe Ichabod will just accept the city as a fait accompli. Stranger things have happened.

[Azoth]

No matter how Ichabod responds, it seems like a poor play. The city is nine tiles away from his capital, with a city-state in between! Now maybe that sort of pink-dot is worthwhile if the land is amazing (like the Iron/Kilmanjaro spot in PBEM 2), but the city has no visible resources in the first ring, just four flat plains, one plains forest, and one plains hill. It does have Horses in second ring, but the city will still struggle to grow much beyond size 2 in the early game.

[Ituralde]

I think Kaiser is surprisingly unconcerned about the Barbarians to his East. That's two Horsemen, one Horse Archer already on the map very close to his capital. Then there's another camp north west, which could start spawning units and interfere with unit transfer and his trader between the pink dot he is about to settle close to Ichabod, knowing that it might spark conflict with another player.

Very bold moves, it will be interesting to see him pull it off!

[oledavy]

On the other end of the continent, I think Bacchus is set up to do very well for himself here. He has perhaps the best start, was isolated to begin with, and with everyone looking elsewhere at the moment is set to just farm for awhile. 

Rowain's decision to settle on the central continent instead of the eastern one may end up being very impactful indeed.

[Singaboy]

So, do we expect to see a very early war fought with warriors here? I would think that one should be able to defend the capital with warriors against warriors, even if it's America you face due to the fact that you can heal far more efficiently. The only harm Rowain can really cause is to pillage and that can be rectified easily afterwards no even wasting a worker charge.

What does the rest think?

Ok, I checked again and suboptimal didn't switch his research towards archers. That might be a mistake on his side. Slingers are crap, but archers are really powerful against warriors.

[oledavy]

So, do we expect to see a very early war fought with warriors here? I would think that one should be able to defend the capital with warriors against warriors, even if it's America you face due to the fact that you can heal far more efficiently. The only harm Rowain can really cause is to pillage and that can be rectified easily afterwards no even wasting a worker charge.

What does the rest think?

Ok, I checked again and suboptimal didn't switch his research towards archers. That might be a mistake on his side. Slingers are crap, but archers are really powerful against warriors.

I think he's overreacting at present. Rowain only has 2 warriors in the area and by all indicators, is not sending more. At this point, military is so cheap and it takes so long to move to an opponent's capital that all Suboptimal really needs to do is cram out another warrior or two and he'll be completely invasion proof. 

That being said, I think its safe to say at this point that he's not getting the contested area between him and Rowain. Chalk it up to America's UA and Rowain proactively taking command of the situation to guarantee himself that beautiful contested river valley. 

What's important right now is for Suboptimal to process the threat, realize that he can't get his desired second city, change his plans accordingly, and build a couple more warriors. If he does that he should be fine. Rowain is in a much dicier geopolitical situation long-term compared to Suboptimal.