[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[scooter]

You against it? To me - fun is whatever gives us the best chance to win. The only reason I'm considering it is because I get the feeling we ARE at war in Commodore's head given that attempt at a plant. I don't think Commodore has any intention whatsoever of letting us have prolonged peace. Do you see any gain in holding back and letting those two units get away? If yes, I'm all ears and totally willing to change my mind.

I can probably get tomorrow's turn.

[pindicator]

Well, there goes the neighborhood...

Turn played. I hope you lurkers are happy with what you've done

[Gaspar]

(Have not lurked any other threads.)

You made the right call. There is only ever one outcome of being Commodore's neighbor.

[scooter]

Okay, report time. Here's the deal. We went over this a million times, but we decided to try to hit the chariot/warrior. I really don't think trying to hit his backlines is plausible here, so the option is really whether or not we let the chariot live. Pindicator was pretty hesitant, and I was a little bit too, but we felt like we had to. However, we don't want total war. Here's the goals:

1) Whack the chariot. He declared war when he tried to plant on that hill with a giant flag with a middle finger on it. That was kind of offensive plant since I think even the greenest player in this game would have punished that plant. Does he think we just started playing civ yesterday? Anyways, he's fortunate he didn't actually get to plant it since he got to save the settler and get out of there, but we need to show there's consequences for trying to bully us. Not to mention he threatened our cities with a chariot.

2) We concluded Commodore is going to fight us eventually. He gets tunnel vision, and he's set on hitting us. The funny thing is I wasn't actually convinced of this until he tried that plant. One of the mistakes he really made was to show his hand too early. He wouldn't do that if he had even an ounce of intent to play normally, so I guess we should thank him for warning us.

3) #1 and #2 aside, he's not going to drop expansion and just build military and hit us now. He might be way too aggressive for his own good, but he's not going to throw away his game. As you'll see in a minute here, despite any outcomes of this skirmish, he and virtually everyone else is still ahead of us in just about every metric. He's still in great shape with a ton of land to expand into, and he knows this. His plan was never to kill us now, it was to wait until the age of Impis is over and then hit us sometime later. If he can get his hands on ivory, it'll be Ballistaphants. If not, maybe Knights or something. Either way, it's coming, and whacking the chariot won't affect that. He's not going to throw away his game to spite us over an opportunistic chariot pop, especially not when he was trying to be opportunistic himself. All things considered, he got extremely lucky here. He didn't lose the settler or a city, and he got an archer into Hidden Valley.

4) If we win the first 72% attack, we get 3xp. Just farm 2 more off a random barb warrior and we've got a second promo which is what makes Impis such a pain.

So let's go for it:



Win! The second cleanup:



I was kind of surprised we got 2xp out of this 99.1% attack, but we did. Cool. Anyways, offer cease fire:



I'm not stupid, I know what Commodore will do with a peace treaty. I trust him zero. So cease fire it is. I could have covered our Impi, but realistically he can't hit it unless he has a chariot, and I want to back away to show our plan:



It's simple. We just use a couple impis (an axe will come sometime soon), and we try to contain his east border. He can have Hidden Valley, and we won't threaten it, so long as that is his eastern border with us. He'll probably want to hit us in a few eras, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

FWIW, there are 9 other players in this game, and I would not have popped that chariot with a single one of them. However, neither of us trust Commodore even slightly to change his mind.

Lesson kids: When you have (basically) Sury and a lot of land (and great land for your first couple cities), don't waste time antagonizing a good team for no gain whatsoever. Also, play to win please.

Domestic update coming next.

[scooter]

Alright, here's our general domestic plan. Next plant:



After about a half hour of debate, we decided this will be our Moai city. It will start with a Lighthouse so that it can start Moai the turn that stone is hooked. It's a quick-starting city, so that's the main draw for us. Next will likely be these two:



We thought about putting Moai up here, but it'll be a much slower build in a more exposed spot, so it's just not worth it. Besides, for much of the game Moai will be constrained by happy rather than number of water tiles available (and this only has 2-3 more than the corn spot), so this'll just be our stone plant. Then we'll want that crab spot. We still aren't 100% decided on the crab location, but the hill is just a bit too dangerous. It competes culturally with (CRE) Hidden Valley, and it's close enough that he could hit it blind, and Commodore loves stuff like that. So I'd rather not tempt him. He can fort into the Great Salt Lake so we'll need to be careful, but we can too. We'll also plant something down here:



We're going to defog this now with our Impi... Sheep, grassland, and FIN coast is all worthwhile, so we'll plant something down here. Tundra hill is the obvious bet, but it'll depend on if there's anything else down there. I'll laugh if there's ivory . Demos show why things aren't too pretty:



Message to Commodore: See, this is proof you won anyways, You got a city plant, and you forced us to whip two military units which made our already-sucky expansion even worse. Your chances of winning are probably better than ours just based on the land situation alone, so use that.

Anyways, the power graph since Noble asked for it:



Not very useful since it doesn't reflect the kills. Commodore should see soon that we aren't spending EPs and see that we met someone. Speaking of Azza, we can't give him horses since they aren't hooked. Duh. I guess we can do that next with our east warrior that just finished roading the forest. We can change our mind on the Azza gift if we'd like, but it'd still be nice to hook that horse.

And that's it. Lurkers, any questions? I have one question too for you all.

[scooter]

Look at the bright side, if Commodore kills us or something, we'll get to be out in time to watch the late-game Plako vs Serdoa vs Lewwyn showdown. You know, in the late game, which is the sane time to make a move on a good team when you are equally good and have nice land.

[NobleHelium]

Ivory does not spawn in the tundra scooter.

[scooter]

BUT THESE DO

[NobleHelium]

Yeah but Commodore's aggressive ancestors killed them off. Those bastards.

[GreyWolf]

And that's it. Lurkers, any questions? I have one question too for you all.

Your and Commodore's threads are the most entertaining here for now