[SPOILER] Lincoln of Ethiopia -- Sareln

[Sareln]

Beginning of turn.

Darn. Nicolae's odds are at 20% then I'm pretty sure. Whelp, here goes!

[Sareln]

Darn. Nicolae's odds are at 20% then I'm pretty sure. Whelp, here goes!

I guess he didn't like 20%

His warrior retreats back to the forested hill adjacent to both pigs and deer. Dunno what he's thinking though.

At end of turn, my 2nd warrior finishes and the immediate danger is past. Continue on teching BW.

Yay for not being dead quite yet.

[Sareln]

The early turns are slow, even with a choke.

Nicolae fortifies his warrior on my pigs, so I send my worker out to improve my deer. I build a total of 3 warriors and move them in a ways such that on the last turn, I had 1 warrior directly south of Nicolae's on the flat land, and 2 warriors on a forested hill, also adjacent.

It would be about 90% odds to kill his warrior with my 3 (trading 2 for 1 in the process), but I figured those odds were good enough.

Nicolae decided we were done, so on his turn he pulled his warrior out and proposed a cease fire. I accepted and moved warriors to occupy the high grounds.

Bronzeworking has come in and I have revolted to slavery. I started research on archery, but with the end of the choke, I probably should have switched to agriculture. I will do that next turn.

Copper is way out of range to my right, but my scouting to my left is no good, so I need to take at least one warrior and push him out that way to scout that. The capital is currently working on a 2nd worker, and my own worker is chopping a grassland-river forest to speed that up.

[Sareln]

Scouting left, I find copper very close to my capital. This solidifies my 2nd city site (settle for copper). Now I just need to see if there's enough food there to make a decent city of it. Right now it only has a plains/forest/deer.

I find Nicolae's borders as well. He really did manage to just beeline straight at me didn't he?

[Sareln]

So last we met Nicolae had decided to retreat and offer peace, which I took. As the rest of the exploration phase has gone forward, it seems that Nicolae has made a habit of trying to kill other people's scouts when he can get away with it. In a CTON, I don't think this is quite the right move, since you just end up annoying the other folks. With no other kind of conversation going on, that ends up being what people remember about you - will take any small advantage he can get when presented the opportunity. Since he's the only one who has been doing that (I've met and waved at other folks scouts, and we've all oscillated into and out of war with Nicolae near as I can tell) I think he may end up paying a price later on for it. We'll see, just my line of thought there. Anywho, back to updating!



This was the turn that Nicolae had offered peace. I decided to take it, and planned on using my warriors to scout. One of those warriors would die near Nicolae's land due to a Chariot. Was a useful piece of information to know. As I started to scout other people's lands, I realized that everyone else had either had horses in their BFG (Nicolae) or had been able to settle their 2nd city for horses. My own horse location is rather sparse, so my 2nd city was settled for copper instead. I ended up having to whip up 2 spears and show one to Nicolae to discourage any chariot schenanigans.

Horses in Nicolae's BFG

Here you can see my workers prepping for a settler out to the copper location. It had a goodly amount of food, copper, and a ton of hills. I hope to eventually turn that location into my military pump. My workers ended up chopping a forest into the settler and it finished relatively quickly. I have been consistently one city behind the leader in city count throughout this game due to the choke, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up/pass them with good use of the whip and my forest chops.

You may not be able to see it in the screenshot below, but there is also a source of clams and pigs available to that city. Total resources are a Grassland/Forest/Furs, Plains/Hill/Deer, Grassland/Hill/Pigs, Clams.



I needed to get a sentry net up, so I built a number of early scouts and warriors to get a feel for the lay of the land. I don't think I wasted too much time on this, and hopefully it will pay off. I did end up netting the circumnavigation bonus, but that's a post-factos justification. The real reason for the scout and warrior spam was to get more map info. In the initial phases of the game, I feel very uncomfortable with a lack of map knowledge.



Since Gondar was founded primarily for production (though the 4 commerce from the fur tile gave me a nice boost early on), the next city I founded really needed to have commerce in mind. My capital is running in a sort of hybrid mode right now, but it has so much food that eventually I hope to make it a specialist farm. If the pyramids stay open long enough, I'll definitely look into chopping them. I chose a site to the north, towards Nicolae as my 3rd city location. I've got two spears on hand, and I'm making sure that Nicolae sees at least one, so he doesn't get too antsy with the chariots. I'll also be able to build a workboat out of the capital to get the fish hooked up relatively quickly. I've gotten granaries into both Gondor and Aksum at this point, so they're growing like weeds. I try to whip on a fairly regular schedule.



My scouting pays off with the circumnavigation bonus, speeding up my workboat towards my 3rd city. I decided to chop a stele into that city, since it'll pop borders in 4 turns and I can then push my sentry a bit further out. Nicolae has certainly buffed up on power (I can see his graphs) so I need to be cautious about presenting too much temptation. I'm starting in on a barracks in Gondor and then purely units from there until forges for the most part. I'm working towards mathematics to increase the value of my chops. There are enough forests around Gondor to make a good chop attempt at the pyramids.



Here's an overview of the land around my capital. The double-rice city really wants Ironworking to clear out the jungled rice, but should serve as a passable site of coastal commerce and specialists. The horsegrab marker will grab plains/corn, horses and some seafood as well, but will be a pretty dry city, all things considered.

I'm building the Stele in Aksum for the bonus happy (it's near happycap) and because I plan to whip first a settler and then a library in fairly rapid succession. I've found that it takes about 4 turns for Aksum to grow from size 4 to size 7, so constant whipping with riverside cottages to work while growing should keep the capital nicely productive.

[Sareln]

The Current Turn:

[Sareln]

I've teched to writing, and have taken the opportunity to sign open borders with the other two players who aren't Nicolae. I'll try to be not too annoying with my scouts while trying to find a way home. Now that I know where everyone is on the map, the information that is most important to me is about my own area, not other people's.

[Sareln]

Finished Teching Masonry. Threw down 4th City at the double rice location. I need more workers. The axes are for defense. I saw a number of Axes in Chinese land, and don't want to present too much of a target.

Tech path after masonry is going to be Ironworking to clear jungles, and then currency -> CoL.

[Sareln]

Nicolae and are about to get into a border conflict over the Stone near Lalibela. I really wish I had horse-based units to deal with his axes (chariots), but hey, my horses are in the Tundra and I'm still waiting for the border pop to grab them!

Now that the obligatory map whinging is out of the way, let's talk about what I'm actually doing about it.

Gondor and Aksum are on military builds, the double-rice semi-jungled city in the north is just taking up space, but the extra trade route from currency makes it less of a loss. Nicolae threw down a city near the stone and has pop-rushed both a library and a monument in that city, so he's winning the current culture race 5 to 3.75 (+25% culture from Stele). I'm teching construction, because I plan to push Nicolae rather soon. He's rabbitted out to 8 or 9 cities at this point while the rest of us are in the 6 range, and I think that he's overextended, even with his power rating. He's in truce with both myself and whoever is playing Ashoka of Aztec (I believe Ioan, too lazy to check right now) due to recent border flareups, but there will be a moment where we're both able to attack him. I'm thinking that if I mange to push Nicoale and hit him for one or two cities, that'll hopefully trigger Ioan to come over their border as well. If not, well, then I can just sit back and hold the chokepoints.

My GNP is tops with the academy in the capital. I run 100% research at ~90 beakers, but it costs me a 100% gold turn to do so. Next best is Nicolae with about ~60 BPT. With currency I hope to slip in a market in the capital at some point to make this slightly less painful.

Before Nicolae and I go to war though (I'm planning on a window of about 10 more turns, or turn 85 for those of you lurkers) I plan to chop to completion the following stone-based wonders:

Great Wall in Lalibela - Secure my cultural control over that border, changing the cultural balance form 5 - 3.75 to 5 - 6.25. I still have a head start on culture in the cities and hopefully I'll beat him to 3rd ring. 100 hammers, 3 forests in range, can be done completely with forest chops with enough overflow for walls to secure the border. My workers are here right now prepping for this.

Hanging Gardens in Aksum - More population to whip into Catapults when Construction finishes in 3 - 4 turns. The capital will triple pop-rush the required acqueduct giving almost a full pop point's worth of production towards the gardens multiplied by stone to 40 hammers. That leaves 80 hammers (discounting the stone bonus) and there are 3 other forests to chop in range.

Pyramids in Gondor - Representation so that I can run scientist specialists everywhere and secure my tech advantage by whipping libraries and running scientists rather than waiting on cottages to mature. Alternatively I can use it to run hereditary rule w/out researching Monarchy, but I think the representation plan is stronger. This is going in my production city. I'm hoping I'll be able to whip in other cities to keep unit production going while I partially slow-build this wonder and then chop to completion to the tune of about 200 hammers from 5 nearby forests. all the forests are already roaded, and 2 of them are completely pre-chopped. I have one worker doing pre-chops around here while the city continues to pump military.

This wonder based plan may be too ambitious, but since I'm putting so much effort towards securing this stone, I want to be able to use it. Early pyramids with my philosophical trait would be amazing, and I'm hoping that the IND Civ (piloted by GingerEagle) has neglected it to try and grab more cities.

[Sareln]

I'm hoping that Nicolae and others are now analyzing furiously why I built the great wall, though Nicolae is probably the most likely to hit upon the right reason - for the culture, only. Everything else is just bonus (Will run 2 scientists for a total of 16 gpp/turn and hope for a scientist. Dunno what good a great spy would be at this point... need to check the ban rules)