[Spoilers] All rho21s lead to Rome

[rho21]

Turn 21

Score tracking
Nothing much to report.

Doing stuff
My warrior in the south has 16 health left. I had though I could retreat a square and promote without getting shot, but that's not the case due to the river. Accordingly I remain in place and promote to Tortoise. Shouldn't take much damage at 11v33.

In the north, my warrior finally gets a good view of all the land directly north of Cannae. One pretty reasonable coastal site I've marked here.

[rho21]

Turn 22

Score tracking
Nothing to report. My military strength (now counted at 64) is still second behind the Aztecs.

Doing stuff
Pottery complete, on towards Bronze Working next, due in 10 if I can land the boost.

The settler is due to complete on the same turn as Cannae grows. Does anyone know which order these happen in? I'll have to give it a test.

In the south, this is getting silly. Another barbarian horseman has appeared. My warrior retreats over the river. Meanwhile my slinger is approaching to assist the warrior in assaulting the camp and hopefully pick up a kill.

Red dot marks the new horse.

[RFS-81]

The settler is due to complete on the same turn as Cannae grows. Does anyone know which order these happen in? I'll have to give it a test.

No idea. Naively I'd expect it to go

1) Get all yields
2) Check for pop growth and production completion

and in that case it wouldn't make any difference. To make a difference, it had to go like

1) Get food yields
2) Check for pop growth, if yes place another citizen on the map
3) Get production yields, including the new citizen
4) ...

or the reverse. That seems a bit silly to me. Then again, MOO1 does something very similar, so who knows.


Also, I may have overlooked it, but where do you plan to send your settler?

[rho21]

It matters a lot whether it decides to grow population then reduce it or vice versa, as the cost to grow population from 2 to 3 is 24, while from 3 to 4 it's 33.

Thankfully it's quick to run up a game and test it.
Turn before: 30.5/33
Expected interturn: 3
Turn after: 8.7/33, with one of the locations I had a citizen locked now unlocked.

The expectation was 30.5 + 3 - 24 = 9.5 overflow. So somehow I've lost 0.8 from the expected amount. If it had removed a citizen before getting the food yields, that would have cost far more than 0.8, as would growing first before the yield.

I really have no idea how it's arrived at that number, but the good news is that it doesn't cost enough to be worth delaying growth by a turn unless you can gain extra at the same time. That isn't the case with the tiles I have at Cannae, so I can just let it finish naturally.

I haven't made a firm decision on where the settler's going, but the spot next to the lake to the south of Cannae was my first inclination. I'll do an overview of settling sites next turn.

[rho21]

Turn 23

So the big news of the turn is that the Aztecs have appeared. One eagle warrior, to be precise, which looks as though it arrived from the direction of the eastern city states. *Sigh*, why is it always the Aztecs? To be fair, they're probably wondering why they had to draw Rome, currently second in strength, as their neighbour.

Score tracking
The Aztecs have 84 strength (to my 66), almost certainly 3 undamaged eagle warriors. They are producing 4.1 and 1.9 per turn, plus 1, likely from running god-king.
Elsewhere, Germany is first to a second city. Very impressive, but presumably they built a settler ahead of a builder which might cost them down the line.

Doing stuff
So in the south, another barbarian horseman has spawned at the camp, positioned so I can't do much useful with my slinger. Anyway, I'd need to retreat to stay away from the eagle warrior. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Aztecs attempt to snipe any unit I leave vulnerable.

Here's how I leave things. Note the warrior fortified in the SW. It should be fine for at least a little while thanks to tortoise promotion.
Note also that the horseman by the camp can make it through to attack my slinger if it wants. I can always retreat it safely over the river though.

[Garath]

Where can you safely escort your settler now, with all those barbarians in the south and the aztec scouting the east?

[rho21]

Turn 24

Score tracking
Aztec, Brazil and Germany all finished a second tech, meaning all my opponents have that many now.
The Aztecs also built a slinger, meanwhile Brazil was second to founding a second city, also growing a population at the same time.
Greece finished a second civic.

Doing stuff
Ugh, these barbarians.

First up, the northern camp has spotted Cannae with its scout (which should have trouble getting home past my warrior). It has also produced a warrior. My warrior fortifies in place (across a river, on a forested hill), where it should have no trouble containing the camp for now. I'm probably going to need to build a unit or two to send up here to help out clearing it.

In the SW, my warrior is in a spot of bother:

It has 39 health left, enough for it to survive one more turn, but probably not much longer. I can't begin to get it any help though. It does have a safe tile it can run away to, but the barbs would just chase it down and leave it in a worse position. Perhaps there's a chance of it surviving if I swap in the policy for +5 against barbarians in a couple of turns. That would be a bit painful from a production perspective though.

Near the camp, the horse has chased my slinger and rolled almost maximum damage, leaving the slinger on 37 health.
My warrior attacks the horse for 38 damage (suffering 31 in the process). My slinger took too much damage to have a shot at the kill, so retreats to safety over the river. Hopefully the horse will chase it, at which point warrior + slinger should get the kill.

The settler is finished at Cannae, which starts on a warrior (due in 3) for more support against the barbarians.
It shouldn't be a problem to get the settler to the intended city site: good sight lines and plenty of rough terrain on the way. Certainly I can't send it in any other direction right now.

[Garath]

Man, I know there's a tradition of "Rome versus the Barbarians" around here. But it's supposed to be Epic Four, not a random PBEM where you happen to be playing Rome!

[rho21]

Let's look at city sites around and about, obviously all still open to debate.

The North

In the NW, the best site in isolation would be inland, but that would preclude a city on the small lake. I'm also going to want a reasonable number of coastal cities, and this looks like a strong producer down the road.

The city site in the NE is more in question. I'm not convinced it's great to leave those elephants in the third ring, particularly if they're my only source. So maybe the coastal tile next to the elephants instead. This is less annoying for the Romans than many other civs, as building an aqueduct is something you want to do everywhere anyway.


The East

Not much changed here since the last time I was talking about it, except the likely presence of Aztecs off to the east. Of course this potentially changes my gameplan significantly anyway: if the Aztecs are planning to annex some city states quickly, I'm not going to be able to wait to conquer them all with legions. Maybe the silver lining of all these barbarians will be nicely promoted units to help with early conquests (and with defending new cities in this direction).


The South

Here you can see my planned city site on the tiny lake (and why that barbarian horse can't get anywhere near threatening it). A bit further east, the planned city site here has been moved onto the lake for better use of hills.

With a couple of rivers further to the south, there's definitely room for another 4 cities down there. I've not marked them out yet though due to a lack of scouting (thanks barbarians).

[rho21]

Turn 25

Score tracking
The Aztecs have declared war on Mohenjo-Daro. I imagine they're stealing a builder or attempting to use their unit capture power.
Russia joined me on 3 techs; Greece grew a third population.
All the unit damage I've been taking is enough to knock me down to 4th in military power, with 38.

Barbarians gonna barbarian
In the north, the barbarian spear attacked my warrior which was fortified, across a river, on forested hills. I have no idea why it did that, the attack must have been at about 25 v 44. Anyway, the spear has about 20 health left while my warrior has 96, including the healing it's done.

The warrior attacks the spear back and clears the camp for the boosts to Military Tradition and Bronze Working. It has 71 health left and almost has a promotion; it should earn one when it gets attacked by the camp's warrior.

Further south, the horse that attacked the slinger last turn attacked the warrior this turn. Sadly I can't kill it with the slinger; nor can I move the slinger into position to attack without it dying. So I kill it with the warrior which is left on 21 health and will need to retreat home for repairs. Hopefully the camp won't spawn yet another horseman to ride my warrior down before it can escape.

Lastly, the far south west. My warrior has 22 health left and is facing a horse archer with 58 health and a horse with ~15 health.

So, will it survive if it stays put, fortified? The horse archer would attack at 11 v 34, doing 10 to 14 damage. Then the horse would attack at 12 v 28, doing 12 to 19 damage. But that attack would kill the horse. In that situation one of the two units will survive on 1 health, but I'm not sure it's defined clearly which one. If it's the one that ends up the least dead, that would certainly be my warrior which would then heal up to 11 health. That's all assuming the horse archer attacks first; if it doesn't I doubt there's a way my warrior survives.

Still, there's not much other option. The best I can get otherwise is a couple of turns' worth of scouting information.