[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

[Lewwyn]

Jesus.

[Lewwyn]

WTF EVENTS WTF.

[Bigger]

yeah, we're 2 for 2. although this one is more brutal than the one harry ran into earlier.

[Bigger]

commodore triple whipped this turn. could be he's getting libraries in many of his cities, but war seems more likely. hopefully will be able to discern who with at some point.

Serdoa didn't have a score increase for the first time in forever . He did whip though.

[Lewwyn]

I don't think I'm grabbing this turn, think you can grab it Bigger?

Move the archer onto the pigs + 1 worker from the hill and 1 worker from the grassland, have the last worker on the hill mine. Other workers road, finish cottage for aenid and such. City tiles I think you've got. Make sure Aenid is max growth. I want to get it to pop 4 for a 2 pop whip.

[waterbat]

i can play it too with those instructions - although not sure about the exact city tiles if they need switched.

Jester hasnt ended turn yet - so we arent last.

NM: bigger's logged in now... for an hour.

HIDE YO WIFE HIDE YO KIDS

[Bigger]

i can play it too with those instructions - although not sure about the exact city tiles if they need switched.

Jester hasnt ended turn yet - so we arent last.

NM: bigger's logged in now... for an hour.

HIDE YO WIFE HIDE YO KIDS

im writing a report right now

[Bigger]

ok, so there are some interesting stuff to report here. Longish report .

First, the nitty gritty.
Lots of stuff going on in this pic so I zoomed out a bit:

First, you can see from the event log that Serdoa revolted to Organized Religion and Representation. Feeling a bit better about our earlyish monotheism detour, who knows how many turns we beat him to Judaism by.
Second, I moved the workers as instructed. the archer moved to the hill first, observed the area is free of barbs, so the 2 workers followed while the third started on a mine. I cancelled his orders afterwards just in case. To the east, 2 road segments were completed - now we need only one more to complete the road from math to the odyssey. I think the eastern most one should build that road while the other one moves one north to complete another riverside cottage for gilgamesh. it will be size 8 next turn, and when its not building settlers or workers it will give up the grains to the iliad so it will be able to work extra tiles.
Third - the chariots. as I said earlier, sniping any azza warriors is now out of the question, since he has them protected by a praet AND a horse archer. I left on in place on the hill for maximum vision of the south (and just out of range of the horse archer). the other I had to move back in our borders, I noticed we were paying a maintenence for "supply." So I moved him onto the road network. From this spot achilleus can reach Math in 1 turn (with a half movement left) if a barb shows up, back to the hill in 1 turn, or back to odysseus in 1 turn. seemed smart.
Math expands its borders next turn and we'll have two workers to start the pig pasture. we need to make sure the road 1 north of it is completed before they are finished, even if the mine isn't, so they can return to the city faster once they finish pasturing and roading the pigs (we won't work that mine until size 4 probably anyway).

a little to the east:

moved one north and started a cottage with the lone worker over here. I made sure to cancel his action so he can run away if azza declares war. when the cottage is done, we need to road that tile and the corn - so we can shuffle units between the aeneid and the odyssey out of range of azza's chariots.
I wasn't exactly sure what to do with the galley here. I moved him 1SE. loading him up and moving him one more wouldnt speed up landing near the barb city, and would just give us 3 supply for no reason, and this way we can put off making a decision for a turn. I moved the axe to the cows, since it isn't roaded yet, so we could load him on the galley along with a chariot if we wish. (I think we should)

Originally I wanted send a chariot for scouting first, then come back with troops to invade the barb city. but now I'm a little concerned we'll get beat to it if we don't rush. I'll get to that later in the report though.

here's what I did with the aeneid:

working the mine instead of the cottage will complete the archer this turn. but that does us no good - we need food and commerce more than hammers, and Lewwyn already put a turn into the axe so we can 2 pop whip it immediately when we grow to size 4. we also have a turn into the walls, and we can one pop that if we need too, so if azza invades we can get an archer, an axe, and walls in 3 turns here.

here's what I did with odysseus:

moving him east would have gotten us south faster, but moving him SE got us a bigger peek into serdoa's big wonder city here. seemed worth it for the vision - it might be awhile before we got that vision if we passed on it here.

ok, here's where things get interesting. we suddenly have a trade connection with azza:


no, neither of us built a road to connect our empires, its a sea connection. its possible the new junk city did it, but I think there's something else here.

Brick has made contact with Serdoa AND Azza. Serdoa doesnt surprise me, as I believe they are both Island empires, and Serdoa stretches east towards Brick. I'm a little perplexed and concerned, though, at how he made contact with azza - azza's empire is setup on the western part of the continent, and he hasn't yet built a new city since the junk city.
anyway, of note: azza only has the gold for happy, plenty of health like us, copper but only one source of Iron (even though he had a praet while we controlled the Iron at Beowulf) and NO horses. So... the horses and Iron must have been a temporary gift/trade from some third party we have met yet?

Serdoa is gifting stone to Brick:




ok, I get this. Serdoa used the stone + IND trait to quickly build the pyramids, and now its basically a token gift to show he wants to be friends (although maybe Brick uses it for walls if he's in a war). He can always cancel the stone if he ever needs it. And why wouldnt Serdoa want to be friends with EVERYONE for a long time?

This confuses me though:


Azza has a -1 towards Brick - "you have traded with my worst enemy," which I presume is us, our sheep for sheep deal.
Brick, however, has a +4 relations with Azza for trade, which means Azza gave Brick a lopsided deal. Now they didn't trade any cities (hehe), they aren't trading resources and that wouldnt trigger that anyway, neither has currency or paper and technology trading is banned anyway. The only thing that could trigger this, then, is map trading. Now Azza could have, for some strange reason, just gifted his map to Brick for nothing, but 1. why would azza do that 2. I really think the reason we have a trade connection with Azza now is that Brick traded maps with him, which means azza has vision on the aeneid coast, and got trade with us just as Brick did.

so after thinking about it for a bit, I think this happenned.
1. Brick met Serdoa first. they traded maps. the trade was fairly even, not triggering a positive diplo bonus for either.
2. azza traded maps with serdoa, giving him bricks maps
3. azza traded with Brick, which really didn't benefit azza much at this point but would have given brick more maps.

well thats kind of convulted. I suppose you could skip one, if Serdoa scouted out Bricks lands.

Anyway the good news is trading maps with Brick should give us good maps on Serdoa and Azza, or at least Azza.
It also means Azza probably has vision on whatever Serdoa and Brick scouted in the eastern peninsula, and may have a chariot up there to investigate the barb city (hence meeting Brick), which is why I think we need to move on capturing the barb city before azza can - and to cut him off from from that area.

here's the demos at 0% science:

we're actually at 95 GNP now at 100% science - pretty big swing there.

[Bigger]

we're only waiting on cfcjester to play, but I need a nap so I won't be able to wait on him to take pics after the roll.


Lewwyn, for at least the next 10 turns or so I think we need to make an effort to let azza finish his turn before we play ours. I don't THINk Azza will be coming after us anymore, but if he does, i'd like to be able to react on the same turn. 2nd half is better for the defender, i think.

[Bigger]

ok my plans for tonight were cancelled, so I cancelled the nap .

Jester is logged in now, I'll take some more pics when the turn rolls.

anyway, here's where I was getting: I would love to take back Beowulf, and a couple of azza's cities to boot. probably we could do this in 30 turns by founding 1 more city and just pumping out a crapload of axes and horse archers, especially if we beelined construction. But I'm not sure that would be the best solution long term. Brick knows about the eastern peninsula. Serdoa has at least scouted 1/3 of it, and may know more by now. and if azza has traded maps with either of them he knows about it too - and I think there's a good chance he's found the barb city.

So I think we should keep a healthy military to keep azza in check (shouldnt be hard once math is up and running, with gilgamesh to supplement it as needed), and expand as long as we have land to do so. it will be much easier to invade azza once we have 2x the cities + construction, macemen and/or knights.

So I think we should load the axe and chariot on the galley. we can unload on a hill next to the barb city in 2 turns and capture it in 3 or 4, depending on defenders. that city will actually block the eastern continent without the need to found the worthless jungle city for awhile. we could come back for a couple of archers, since we have more than we'll need once the axemen start coming in, and once they get in our new city the chariot can go off to finish exploring the east. once we get a worker over there the city won't take too long to start producing its own units, although we may want to ferry more over there in the beginning.

for researching, I was thinking math-currency-alphabet. the latter for trade routes with Brick, which I think he would accept (he needs the help, frankly, I don't think his economy is strong). although I wouldnt mind slotting in Calender first - we may still have an outside chance at MoM, and we will have 2 calender resources (spices in the iliad plus silk in the barb city).

after the barb city, we should found the sheep/horse city at home, of course, then the copper/seafood city, maybe the western gold city and one or two more in the east to solidfy that area. as long as we have currency by then I think we'll be ok.

what do you think?