Sengoku Chevalier: Hiun no Kishi

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Oh, oops, that was supposed to be my warrior being chased.

Well, behold devastated London.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Good news and bad news:



The bad news is our warrior was caught and killed by tbe barb spawn. The scout must have seen Hong Kong or La Venta or something, wretchedly bad luck there. So we have absolutely nothing covering our two cities from barbs and they might pillage our holy site just to piss me off.

Good news is we met La Venta, and we know who our two neighbors are for sure:



The Arno River! So Rome is our western neighbor beyond La Venta and Korea is somewhere down the Imjin, south of Zanzibar.

Once we get our holy site down, I need to a)pasture a horse b)train an archer or two (for La Venta's quest), and c)train up some horsemen to go kill Hong Kong.

Definitely behidn the 8 ball here but the start is not unsalveable, I think. We have until our next tech comes in to decide on placing the holy site on the naked hill to the soutwest, or not. We lose a bit of production by waiting until Animal Husbandry is done, but them's the breaks.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think I'll kick out a second galley from Korutu while I have Maritime Industries active and at least nab Shipbuilding's eureka. Then maybe a pair of archers -> Horsmen for our military.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 33

Good news and bad news. Good news is:





We not only have capital horses, but all of our first 3 cities have horses. Bad news is it invalidates our dotmap. For newbies, you can't place districts atop luxury or strategic resources - so horses spawned on our planned aqueduct. That in turn costs adjacency to the plotted Industrial Zones.

That's fine. We replot the dot map like so:*


Tekisanzu's IZ will move south of the city, which might give better factory coverage anyway. City 3's IZ will still profit from having 2 horse resources, instead of one aqueduct, nearby, so it's not all bad there, either. Finally, the best part is we can relocate our holy site to the former IZ site at Tekisanzu, enabling a rapid build if we swap there. So far, the only thing stopping me is debate between buying the tile or saving for a trader. Any thoughts on this? 

Oh, and we locate Roman borders. Do I introduce myself?



*Forgot to relocate one holy site at city #3. Oh well.

[williams482]

I so deeply detest the decision to make visible resources block district placements. It's such a nuisance without good reason; putting a district on a resource (and losing the bonus tile yields) is exactly one of those things that would be an interesting trade off if the designers gave you a choice. But anyway.

I think the right move is to put the holy site down 1NE of the city, where your campus pin is now? It's a weaker long term spot overall, but it doesn't delay your trader, and it's worth +1 faith out of the gate (instead of the initial zero adjacency on the currently pinned tile). It sucks to lose the campus adjacency, but there are going to be a lot of nice places to put campuses on this map, and your plan was to delay them for a while anyway.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I opt to place it on the hill tile in the second ring. The cost of this decision is the handful of food, culture, and science from our trader, which is delayed 4 turns as a result of the purchase - so 4 of each, basically - as well as the trickle of early adjacency faith.

However, my holy sites won't be powered by adjacency so much as their buildings - both Feed the World and Choral Music require buildings, not adjacency, so the tiny bit of fpt we give up in the early game will be compensated by the later game, assuming we survive that long. 

So, on that note, I pull back from Rome's borders - no need to advertise ourselves quite yet and look tasty for a legion rush - and we keep working on the galley, as the barb galley turns up and sees the tasty looking fishing boats. Seriously bad luck with that spawn - if they'd spawned ANYWHERE else our improvements, so difficult to get up in the first place, wouldn't be pillaged, and we'd be able to use our worker to get a fine horse tile improved. Instead I have to build a galley, AND hold the worker for a few turns so I can repair it. Overall the early game has gone about as bad as it could have! But I don't think the game si settled quite yet. Let's play on and see what we can do.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 37

4 turns since I last reported? Jeez. 

Anyway, we finally get the joyous news of our precious fishing boats being plundered by barbarians:


At least I'll have a pair of galleys in 3-4 turns that can suppress this camp. Then we finish Craftsmanship and swap to Agoge for some warriors, at least a pair more. And we'll be able to repair in 3 turns, too, so overall it's not as bad as it COULD have been. We're slowly dragging ourselves out of our wretched start. 

Abroad, I opt to avoid Roman borders - no sense giving Whosit information he doesn't need - and try to slink around the lake to the south to figure out where Korea is, before heading home. Instead:





Oh. 

Well, let's meet the neighbors.

Rome not only already has horses hooked up, he has two honey luxuries also built, at both his capital and his expansion:

 
Honey is a camp resource that gives +2 food, and +1 gold from the camp, so he's - predictably - got 13 GPT and is growing like a weed. Whosit has built 2 settlers and at least 2 builders to our one of each, and looks like a warrior and a slinger to our single warrior. Plus his free pair of monuments. I'm pretty jealous of that start, but the early game advantages WILL gradually peter out, if we can hold our own until then. I've also got a district, which he doesn't, and soon two galleys, which he won't, so the disparity isn't QUITE as bad as it seems. 

But still pretty bad. 

Now, where are you off to, little guy?



Trying to thread the passes to the east, to Zanzibar country. Gosh, wouldn't it be a shame if a hostile warrior were to - I don't know - just park himself on the only viable tile for you to pass through to the open country beyond? 

Every turn we can slow City #3 is a turn for us to catch up a bit. Although it might piss him off and make us a Legion target, especially given our low military score, I'm not worried about that yet. It's a LONG ASS way for him to walk legions to me, and I'll have plenty of horsemen up. Granted, we'll still probably lose that fight, but so will Rome, and I hope Whosit knows it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 38

We continue to fly through 3-4 turns a day.

It's pantheon time! At 25 faith, you unlock your pantheon - a small, persistent bonus that applies to all of your cities and only your cities, for the rest of the game. I won't bore you with the full list, but if we wanted, we could work out what everyone else has taken using a combination of era score (+1 point when you get a pantheon), the missing items from the list, and a bit of basic logic. Here's what's left:



I waver between God of the Sea - +1 production on our fishing boats, 2 production right away and more to come on further cities - or God of the Open Sky, +1 culture on pastures. In the end I opt for the boosted Culture over production. My goal here is the most rapid beeline possible for Serfdom, at which point I'll immediately chop out Industrial Zones while beelining Industrialization for Factories. That SHOULD give me an absurd amount of production relatively early in the game, then I can choose my victory condition.

Let's see...I nip out and repair the fishing boats, now that the galley ahs gone. By the time the barbs come 'round we'll have our own navy in place to protect our fishermen, so ultimately we lose a miniscule amount of food from the pillage, not bad.


Then next turn I'll plant our first pasture to inspire Horseback Riding and Craftsmanship. 

Meanwhile, Rome has offered a deal:


His extra honey in exchange for passage.

I'll shoot Whosit a PM (unless lurkers want to notify him) that generally pins qualify as diplomacy and so aren't allowed. Anyway, no, no reason to take this in any case. I don't need the luxury, I need the yields! And why should I let him into my country? I won't hold all this terrain up to Zanzibar but at least I can make 'im work for it.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I would post in main thread so others won't use pins. IIRC diplo got banned because people spent hours in it-- a couple of pins wouldn't cause that problem. But no diplo at all is the default and pins are diplo.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Oh, I read whosit's thread and you can set pins to only be seen by one other player. So you would be able to use them as PMs which is not okay. JUST SMAK HIM DOWN!!!

If you couldn't set pins to private it would be a good idea to talk a lot less which would keep the time suck under control, which would make 'pins only' diplo a viable option.