[SPOILER] Nicolae Karpathia Khan of France

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Awww, you're telling me he had a 2/2 tile to begin with? This explains so damn much, why he had a starting yield of 7 without needing to disrupt late game development by settling on a food resource. Luckily, there's little chance he settled on copper, and whether or not his worker moves to the left could tell me whatever other resources are around. It's now going to be a pain preventing Sareln from growing, I can't cover both his deer and pigs forever.

Hmm, let's see, I'll sit on the plains hill for a while, prevent him from improving a tile until his other warrior pops out and can cover it. It may take even longer, depending on how cautious he wants to be, and how many warriors he wants to cover his worker with. I for one am not risking my warrior. I'd imagine once his 2nd warrior pops, he'd move his current warrior 9, and have his 2nd warrior be able to make a good exchange.

The question now is, should I choke the hill pigs or the forest deer? Forest deer is not as good a tile as hill pigs, but it's a hella more survivable. How many units would a reasonable player commit to an agg hill warrior or an agg forest warrior? 3? 4?

I'm going to spend the downtime thinking long and hard about what to do with my warrior. Alas, positive-sum interactions between players is banned, so zero and neg-sums it is.

And how nice! We finally have a happiness resource! Shame it's only wine, but I was planning on going the monk path after writing anyway. Those 2 tentative city sites are getting better and better! Also, it's nice that putting "Emphasise Hammers" on the governor made me automatically decide to work the plains hill forest, which is good, as I was worried I'd forget and fuck up my build micro. In less that 4 turns, I'm going to have a bitchin' set of improved tiles! Also, I'm going to need to find a way of denying scouting to the hills northeast of my capital, I don't want ANYONE gaining visibility on my city tiles.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Production spying on their city tile tells me Sareln has 4H invested into something, likely a warrior. That hopefully tells me that no warrior is getting producted next turn, but the turn after. But jesus, so many of my predictions have been completely off the mark, which is rather discouraging. I'm also confused where Sareln got an extra hammer from. He gets his border pop at end of T2, so he must have been working a 3Y tile before then, which means he's been get 4FH/turn. After that, he's graduated to a 4Y tile, meaning 5FH/turn, but that would only give him 3 overflow. He's been working 3H/turn since the worker popped, which would have given a warrior on T12, not T11. Which does not make sense. Unless Sareln has *another* 4Y tile in his 1st ring. I need to find this tile.

I need more information. I think it's safe to walk 1, as no warrior will appear and double-team me next turn (famous last words!). I really should have stepped on the pigs a turn ago, that would have given me alot of information. Now, I can't guarantee that I'll even make it back to the pigs. My calculations tell me moving 1 will give me vision of the tile 4 of the clams, which is kinda weak. The turn after, I have a difficult choice, move 2 onto hill to get valuable vision, or move back to block Sareln off from the pigs. Unfortunately, there's a good chance Sareln will have read that I'm more after information and harassment than a killing blow, and that I'm not going to take risks, so he may even move his warrior out of the city next turn and let the one in the queue finish. This would deny me scouting and my strategic advantage.

Let's see, on T13, his queue will be 7/10, and I will be 6 of Aksum. His 2nd warrior will complete on end of T14, just in time to intercept my warrior. I need a long hard think about this.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Huh, more tiles than I realised. Also noticed a grass hill silks, which is again an edit. Hopefully I can account for his warrior and his horse tile. The way he moved, I now think horse is 4 of Aksum. Chariots are extremely dangerous, one can reach me in 6-7 turns. Give him 6hpt, and he can build one in 3-4 turns depending on overflow. Give him between 3-6 turns to research wheel, depending on when he started. Why is this important? Because Sareln is not working that 2/2 deer! This tells me he's not prioritising hammers, but is instead prioritising commerce, to get from 9bpt to 10bpt, to shave the wheel from a 7t build to a 6t research. The only tile that he'd conceivably work is a 2/1/1 river grass horse. This makes it more and more important to move my warrior 1, to deny building of the pasture. I've already fucked up Sareln's growth, pushing it back a good half-dozen turns, best to cash in and not allow him to take it back from me. Not only that, but my horses won't be ready for a long time as well. In fact, by my calculations, they'll be hooked up when my *settler* is finished. Okay, so I'm settling my 1st city to the east, will start it on a worker for the 1st build, and chopfarm the forest corn to get it out in a reasonable timeframe. My cap will build a chariot immediately after, I'd say a 2-3t build, thanks to the overflow from the settler. I'll be conservative with him, use him to deny scouting. Hopefully I can even ambush his chariot, let him eat my warrior when it's been fortified on a defensive tile, and then counterattack with my chariot.

Is that fucked up, that I'm being so aggressive yet I'm planning on farmer's gambiting at the same time, or what?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Oh that's right, Ethiopia isn't creative this time, so border pop at end of T+5.

Production spying tells me his warrior build has gone up to 7/10. So he is working a 0/3/0 tile. In addition, his worker has not moved! This tells me his horse is not 4 of the capital! After all, he could have simply put a single worker turn into a pasture, and run back to safety anytime! This is good, it tells me I can feel safe settle back and choke the pigs. He's not dislodging a fortified hill 3.1 str warrior with 2 str warriors any time soon (though he has an excel spreadsheet to calculate how many warriors give X% odds!). If I was to move south, I would expect Sareln to move out a warrior to cover the pigs, so that the worker can improve it in safety.

The 2nd warrior hasn't revealed much. I now have a bit of a dilemma, I want to move southeast to find my eastern rival, but I also want to defog the coast just in case there are seafoods to block off. Decisions, decisions.

I haven't been keeping a close eye on score, but it seems that GE researched another tech. My score comes from my 2 population, and AH, and fishing.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Told ya warrior was going to pop. Good thing I got out in time, 2 warriors have decent odds against 1 agg warrior on flatland. Moved onto hill pigs, and confirmed there were no horses. Rename my warrior for shits and giggles.

Moved east warrior-scout, nothing fascinating, decided to move my putative 1st city to a more defensive spot.

C&D time!

GE and Sareln built a warrior, bringing them up to 14k and 10k respectively. Ioan got 1k from pop and 2k god knows what, either mining or AH. Ioan's grown to size 2, and he's obviously on 10F, which means he's on his 2/2 city tile, 3/1 forest food, and an improved 5/? tile. His score grew on T9, he settled on T2. That implies he went AH, as it's 95b and he got 12bpt from palace, city, free beaker and pre-reqs. So, he probably got grass sheep, but what else has he been researching?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Oh my, what a boring set of turns punctuated by a rude shock.

I made the decision to change from a settler to a worker after the workboat. The rationale was that it would save some turns via roading. In fact, going 2nd worker before settler would only cost me a single turn to settle that forest corn city, and I'd gain 7 worker turns on a road (unnecessary for trade routes, but useful for defense).



Not much to report on the western front, Sareln's warriors arrived on schedule. I've badly stunted his growth, and I'd expect his warriors to move on me soon. I'll withdraw when I get then chance. I mean, I could have fortified on the deer forest, but then I wouldn't get city visibility. I could have fortified on the plains hill forest, but that would have been rendered irrelevant by warrior guards. I expect Sareln to move on me with 3 warriors either within 3 turns. The more "safe" he plays and the more warriors he invests, the better, every turn spent on building warriors is a turn not spent on workers or settlers. However, that could turn out to have some benefits to him...



WHAT? Barbarians are on? Totally failed to notice that, its surprising what you won't see when you're not in the mood to see that. I have base 2.7 v 2 odds against that Panther, Prince difficulty adds a few more bonuses.

The even worse news is that I can see Ioan's borders. Why do the only 2 competent opponents border me! Not only that Ioan moved 3-4 from his starting position towards me. Even worse, there's a giant forest highway all the way towards my proposed 2nd city site! I basically have 2 choices for dotmapping, represented by orientation A and orientation B. Orientation A uses space alot better. Orientation B gives a really secure border city against Ioan. B3 is a reach city that is probably never going to happen. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to put down a city to the south somewhere, which may open up a 2-cty front for Ioan to exploit. I really hope Ioan moves towards the south, I'll really need a few axes 3 of B2 to discourage any Jag shenanigans. Chariots aren't going to cut it. Luckily BW comes in the turn I plan to settle, so if I don't have copper on that exposed plains hill, I can divert. I'm also wondering if I should plant a road on where B1 is, if I do that, I can build my settler and settle it on the exact same turn, which will let me pop my border a turn earlier, and get the corn tile online a turn earlier. Hmmm, it's not like I have an excess of worker labour or anything. City #3 goes on the hill, a really focused sword rush hits on T50 or so and I should have it and an axe or two up by then.



Demos for this turn. Feels good man, #1 in everything that counts. All 3 tiles are improved to 5+ yield. The 3c from horse and fish is damn nice.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Oh my, I believe Sareln's researched bronzeworking. I believe the breakdown is Ioan 9k, GE 14k, and Sareln 21k. After all, he jumped from 11k, and I've been tracking his builds. So 8k from BW, and 2k from another warrior. It's not like any axes are arriving soon, and he still needs to hook up copper. No idea if he has copper in the BFC, he moved, so he'd either need a settler (haha, good luck with a single improved tile) or a 2nd border pop (~T40 or so, not sure about quick speed numbers). In fact, the fact he went BW makes me think he doesn't know where his horses are!

Hmm, just had a thought, I don't know what's on the tile 41 of his cap. Too bad I'm not going to be able to check anytime soon.

Another thought, GE is still size 1. Does he seriously lack tiles to improve and work? Maybe he's doing a hardcore worker-worker-settler build. Shame Sareln's too distracted and Ioan is too far away to call him on it.

He doesn't have copper in the BFC (as he moved, so he either needs a settled

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Hey Lurkers, I have a request. I want someone to keep a running tally of all the predictions I make, so they can wave it in my face in 6months to a year's time. I would really like to know how well I make these kinds deductions. If anyone could do that, I'll name some units after you or something

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Sareln's making his move on schedule with 3 warriors. Decided that discretion is the better part of valour, am retreating, have done as much damage as I could with just my starting warrior. Settler in T25, Chariot on T27, Sareln's warrior will make contact with my borders on T27 at earliest, if I build a road west of my cap, I can instantly snipe out anything there. Sareln's made contact with GE, he switched all his EP towards GE, and I can now see his graphs. I've offered Sareln a ceasefire, I expect him to refuse it, and I'm a tile ahead and can shadow his warriors by sticking to defensive terrain.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Well, Sareln accepted the ceasefire and put 2 warriors on the pigs. Sock on Door is now a sentry, there's a nice jungle hill that will give me a ton of vision and odds on any chariots that try to break my sentry net.

I've also made contact with Ioan, his scout came from the Northeast, meaning he has no contact with GE. Aw, that sucks, gives him the biggest borders in the game. Next turn his scout is going to gain vision on my capital and horses, meaning no chance of a chariot rush. Plus the jungle makes it difficult to 2-move through it without Woodsman II (which Ioan has easy access to). I still want a pair of chariots out soon, roving around scouting and putting others on the defensive.

Alternatively, if I have copper at my cap as well, that would suggest Ioan doesn't as he moved. That could give me a window of opportunity to hit him before he settles for copper at his old cap or techs IW. Unlikely to work, he'll know about chariots and prepare for it with a scout. Alternatively I just kill his scout and use the opportunity to settle that reach city I've been eyeing, use creative borders and lack of woodland to control the battlefield. God, I so want BW.

Also, Sareln switched to Slavery a turn ago, forgot to mention it, so he may not have horses and the fact I couldn't see a worker a turn ago implies he has copper on a fogged tile in his BFC, and that he's going to mine it. I don't think those tiles are riverside, meaning he's going to need to tech the wheel as well, which should slow him down a bit.