[SPOILERS] Emperor K, Cornflakes, what could go wrong?

[Emperor K]

Turn (4)

Well good news is we met Kumasi!

Quest is to build an encampment. Thought I took more pics but it is only this one. Continue on green path as discussed I am still thinking. Going to cut it early and go for the hills tile. Don't want our builder to be stuck so would rather have the warrior home sooner, while still be able to scout north of lake.

[Cornflakes]

One of the better Cultural CS With the Suzerain ability can almost single-handedly make up the early/mid game culture as long as we are building commercial hubs to gain additional trade routes. Tough luck on the quest though. Almost makes me want to switch things up and slip in an early encampment. It's positioned in a good production-rich location though   so also tempting to eat it.

Movement NE onto the hills looks good.

[Emperor K]

Alright that is the plan. We can consider working in an encampment, if we don't want to take the city, not sure getting envoy's there will mean much if we want that as part of our Empire.

[Cornflakes]

Slow afternoon so I was looking back at the screenshots. Curiously, the mountain tile 3SE of the capital is not red on the settler lens. While pondering why this might be, I noticed that there is a river visible on tile bleed to the southeast of that mountain. It seems we will not we wanting for freshwater locations in any direction.

Any thoughts on the specific direction for the scout movement once it completes? I could see a case made for any of NE, E, SE. NE will reveal the most number of tiles immediately, the those tile will eventually get revealed anyway by the warrior. E reveals a few tile on the south and north sides of the river, and has an opportunity to move 2 tiles on the following turn if the tiles NE or E of the stone are flatland. SE splits the fog-gazed river and the one we're on, and we could follow whichever looks promising, but could get stuck moving slowly crossing the rivers a couple of times. I think any of the 3 are valid options.

Also some more thoughts on Kumasi: It will be a while before we get to 3 envoys there unless we build an Encampment. We would much rather build Campus and Holy Site (and even Commercial Hubs) early on rather than Encampments. Utilizing the suzerain bonus requires sending our trade routes international to CS rather than internally for roads and food/production. Another problem with relying on it for culture is that other teams will target it with envoys. Ideally we would like our envoys to go into religious CS since we are planning to build many HS. If we land God of the Open Sky, it has a sheep pasture immediately improved plus a monument (probably 2-3 turns repair) for 3 which more than makes up for what we lose from its 1-envoy yield. It also has a mountain adjacency tile 1st ring for a potential campus or HS location. There is an eligible Pyramids tile 2nd ring so we don't have to worry about sending our 2nd or 3rd settler to a sub-optimal location just to claim a desert tile. The 2nd ring hill banana would be acquired by culture about 6 turns after we capture, and the AI will surely mine the PH to the SW for at least 4 excellent tiles. As size 4 it would yield 11/turn.

In my last duel vs. TheArchduke, my early capture of the CS (after founding 1 other city) really catapulted me off to a strong start. Whether we take out Kumasi or another nearby CS yet unmet, I think we should definitely plan for an early CS conquest. 3 archers + 2 warriors should be ample for an early CS conquest. We will have early craftsmanship eureka for Agoge, and the barb camp will pay for 1 slinger > archer upgrade. The remaining gold to upgrade two additional slingers can be easily generated by the time we are ready (even accounting for the 50 we'll spend early to buy the campus tile). We can even pursue construction of the campus at the same time by utilizing agoge-boosted chop overflow into the campus.

Example build order for capital: Scout > Builder > Slinger (w/o Agoge) > Settler > Builder (plantation Silk > Chop > Chop) > Slinger (Agoge chop / overflow into Campus) > Slinger (Agoge chop / overflow into Campus) > Warrior. The last warrior could also come as the 1st build out of the 2nd city. I think this build order out of our capital can accomplish this by T35 including completion of the campus. 5 turns to move and 5 turns to maneuver & capture gives us 3rd city by T45 (complete with a couple citizens and improved tiles already and a monument in need of slight repair). If instead we opted to build our 3rd city from a settler we'd still need at least some of the military anyway to protect us from barbs.

[Emperor K]

First up the turn reports, then I will comment on your post.

Turn (5)

Rankings and score

Seems we were not the only ones to take a lesser growth route.

Nice spices showed up.

[Emperor K]

Turn (6)

Ok so the barb scout I think has made it to the camp.

Exclamation mark is not longer visible, and I got the message that barbs were spotted near Cairo a turn or two ago. I am thinking that we should take the short way home just to be safe, we can scout later. Also with planned Kumasi integration I think it will be best to have that camp gone ASAP.

So I did however scout a bit more, we can kill the scout some other time.

Fresh water and a 4, 2 spice tile. That may end up being the best spot for a second city. If not we really want a city in that area.

Score and Rankings.

Same old.

[Emperor K]

I like the plan of attack on a CS, and right now Kumasi looks to be the best target.

I like the build order, except for the two chops. I am not sure it is worth it to chop our river side forests yet. Those are good 2/2 tiles and with mills become 2/4. That is just to good for a city that has excellent production. If anything I would rather chop into oracle or something.

Other than that I like the plan, and we do have a forest SW that can be chopped if need be. I think the production in the capital is really strong with out chops so we may not need them.

As far as the scout, I was leaning on head SE at first, just to see if we can get some info, (natural wonder, CS borders) then head north, all while slowly moving east. With planned warrior returning hme on the slightly quicker route it will be a little while until we can scout the north. Barb horse will put our builder in Jeopardy or destroy the horse improvement.

[Emperor K]

Turn (7)

Alright nervous about getting warrior home before he gets jumped by horse.

I should be around the capital at turn 10, allowing for better positioning, builder protection and possibly River help.

Just to keep you updated I snagged the continent view.

Nothing new, just thought I would show it. I think there may be a new continent in the east unless those tiles don't show white until discovered.
Also I decided to just pay the mov to cross the river and stay north of it. May save us some movement further down the line.

Inside the capital

Hopefully tile picker will switch to the horse but we may end up with a second rice instead. Not ideal. We can however save builder charge #3 for either the horse or stone as one of those will be next.

Rankings and Score

Nothing alarming. Just we went production, others went growth. Hopefully we get a CS advantage with our scouting. Any other info you would like? I plan to give you a copy of tomorrows save as you requested. Did you want at the beginning or end of the turn?

As for our long / short term plans, I still like your build order. I will purchase the tile for the campus (ment to this turn). Think about the chops, not sure the value is there like I said. I would rather spend a couple turns on a campus while on the war path saving chops for wonders and such since those take a long time to build, even with cards.

[Emperor K]

With the switch to God King next turn, lets start talking pantheons. I see your a fan of god of the open sky, any thoughts on the +2 one? We now have 5 tiles that can benefit from it. It also will be a long time before Kumasi gets added to the Arabian empire, so I think we will have a good amount of with a couple of monuments down the line.

There are other pantheons to consider as well. If we do go oracle route and don't build a Holy site in the capital we can still make use of Divine Spark for lots of Great Scientist points as well as a theater district in the capital to also get Artists locked in.

The oracle may also put us in a good position for a Great Merchant, but I think Germany will get that, unless we can faith purchase. The more I think about it the more I like the Oracle over the pyramids. One thing it also has going for it is we have a city with the production to actually build the wonder in a timely fashion.

[Emperor K]

Just looking over the screenshot, the capital will not need an Aqueduct for a long time. Like you said earlier, we can farm the two rice, and pasture the cows later down the line.

Then we can harvest both rice and if we are really hurting for housing just put the Aqueduct on the rice tile. All of this is going towards using the Grasslands Hill (4) of our capital for the Oracle.

Well now that I sound Like an Oracle fan boy, it just seems to be the wonder that the capital can build. Pyraminds while awesome, the only city that can build it would be Kumasi. The other location on our western river just does not have the to get it done in a timely manor.