[SPOILERS] scooter's AW lunacy - De Gaulle of Native Americans

[scooter]

T11 gets attacked by bears

And survives:



I had 97.1% odds which is about what I was guessing. I cut it a bit closer than I'd like, but I got the XP. Time to head home. I did notice Cyneheard is now in Slavery:



Dazed also grew to size 2:



So he's off and rolling. Krill still at size 1. Demos:



Rival worst power went up by 1K, which I guess is Dazed getting a warrior? Not sure - I should just check Cyneheard's power info in the banter thread because he basically gave everyone's away because he didn't remember Hunting = scout start. Anyways, not too much happening still which is great. The longer we go without seeing units show up at my borders the better. Once BW is in I'm safe, and I'll just have to hope that no annoying units slow my Henge quest down.

[pindicator]

The usual. Juggling which tiles to work is a nightmare, but I've tried several variations of this and I always end up ending Henge at roughly the same time. I could swap from Furs to Wheat and grow in 3T instead of 4T, but it's just not worth it - I'd miss out on 2h/turn for 3T (because the 2h from furs gives me the 1h bonus but the 1h from the Wheat does not, so it's a 2h difference). That can't be made up by an extra turn at size4, let alone the 1 commerce I'd be missing out on. So I'm going with this configuration. I could also ditch the cows and work the other forest hill, but that results in me ending at the same turn or MAYBE 1T sooner at the cost of a whole city size. Considering I'll want to do some whipping down after this is in, again, not worth it. This is probably terribly boring, but in case someone is curious how I'm going about this, here's my thought process.

Here's at least one person who appreciates details some may dismiss as rote. I'm enjoying the unorthodox start and looking forward to the post-Henge plans as well. You say there'll be whipping, so it sounds like you already have an idea of what you'll be doing.

[scooter]

Here's at least one person who appreciates details some may dismiss as rote. I'm enjoying the unorthodox start and looking forward to the post-Henge plans as well. You say there'll be whipping, so it sounds like you already have an idea of what you'll be doing.

Thanks! Glad to know I'm not just talking to myself on some of the more minute things. And yes I have plans. Basically I'm thinking:

T19: Henge completes EOT (I'm in slavery already). cap size 5
T20: 1T into worker
T21: Double-whip worker - capital 5 -> 3
T22: Overflow into Dog, capital regrow to size 4
T23: 1T into worker
T24: double-whip worker - capital 4 -> 2
T25: finish Dog, then probably barracks/dog/granary/etc after that while growing

And from there I'd boost military while growing and then probably get a 3rd worker before settler. After settler it'll be Pyramids time and I'm hoping to save almost all my forests for that.

As for the unorthodox start - yeah I figured if there was ever a time to finish Stonehenge before a worker OR settler, this'll be it. Though even that's pretty debatable, I think this will prove to be an interesting experiment. Nice thing is after Henge finishes, I'll have a big capital to whip out a couple workers, and then I can grow my capital to quite a large size because my happy cap will be +2 on everyone else from Chm + Henge, and I'll have a Prophet on the way.

Anyways, the plan will be more tuned with time, but this opening is interesting and definitely unusual. We'll see what happens.

[regoarrarr]

You get 1K power for every 2 pop you have. So growing from 1->2 pop = 1K in soldier count

[scooter]

You get 1K power for every 2 pop you have. So growing from 1->2 pop = 1K in soldier count

Ah cool, thanks. I knew there was a correlation between pop and power, but I wasn't sure what it was.

[scooter]

T12 gets back to the homeland to heal

Ok yes absolutely nothing happened this turn and I'm only putting up pictures because I don't know why.



If he comes near I may attack him... Actually no I probably won't - I'm so wounded that I may only get like 70ish odds on him which is NOT worth it even slightly. I'd probably only take the shot if I got 95%+ odds and even then I'd have to think about it. Anyways:



Krill still hasn't grown. Only thing I can assume is he's gone worker-worker to start... Which would make some degree of sense though I don't understand why he wouldn't have just researched fishing out of the gate for a WB because a 5F tile that you cannot pillage is uber here. But what do I know. Demos:



All the usuals.

[scooter]

T13-25 catchup time

Ok so we've done some fun blitzing this weekend! This game has been really fun so far, and the map is perfect. Lots of aggression with starting units going on which has been really exciting. Anyways, I've executed my plan and got Henge EOT19, and we'll see if I can catch up now as I'm obviously badly behind economically. I'll easily be last to my second city... However, Krill said he got -6(!!!) maintenance on his first city so uh... I'll be teching much faster. So there's that. Anyways, here we go:



Tried to set a trap for Dazed's scout. Didn't work as he didn't come by my archer. Sad. EOT14 and I found copper:



Nice place for it. In the BFC but challenging to hook.



Moved my archer to protect from Cyneheard. He left soon after that though so it didn't matter.



Revolted to slavery as planned.



Henge completed! But Dazed showed up with a roided-up archer. Yep that CG3 archer has TWO promotions available. Yikes. Could get nasty. In the capital:



Nice happy cap. Not so nice tile improvements. Time to recover from this. Anyways, tried to trap Dazed:



Or at least encourage him to go west. Border popped nice and early courtesy of Henge:



The border pop is one of the side bonuses of Henge . And yes that's now a Skirmisher looking to join the party. Sigh. Whipped the worker:





Well this got annoying. Trying to chase Dazed away. All this meant I had to go fix the copper first rather than my food which slowed me down even more. Overflow into Dog:



And that was good enough to chase everyone away:



Wheel splash-screen:



More importantly, Krill about to settle:



Can't do a thing about that with CG3 skirms. Dazed then just settled a city a couple turns later:



Argh. All these guys are settling right in my face. Not cool.

And that's basically where I'm at. Trying to catch up and I'm badly behind right now due to Henge. I think I'll be ok though - I really think rushing out a second settler is a mistake here because the maintenance is so brutal. We'll see.

[scooter]

Also, we had a group chat going on the whole time we blitzed today. I gave Krill a hard time about his new city spot calling it because I'll be popping Henge borders AGAIN so it's going to be really vulnerable. He said he has a plan for that. That means he's rushing CoL, running Caste, and popping out a GA. Yay. Good news is that's probably quite a ways away (especially as his slider is probably 60% right now already), but I need to be prepared for that. That'll be brutal.

[Commodore]

Practice what you preach! Ctr-R!

Seriously, thanks for the update. So, was the 'henge worth it? Also, if you were planning on the fishlake, are these aggressive settles worrying you?

[scooter]

Practice what you preach! Ctr-R!

Man I knew I missed it on a few turns, but I didn't realize I missed it on ALL of them. I hurried most of the turns, but yeah, sorry about that.

Seriously, thanks for the update. So, was the 'henge worth it? Also, if you were planning on the fishlake, are these aggressive settles worrying you?

Hard to say. I'd say in a vacuum it's definitely worth it, it's more a question of whether it was worth going 20T without a single worker. All logic points to "no" being the answer, but then again all logic points to rushing out a settler quickly, and I'm not sure Krill and Dazed were so bright on that choice. I'm making 12bpt on no commerce tiles other than a crab, and I'm willing to bet both of them are under 10 right now. The normal food snowball isn't as big a deal here honestly. It's more about getting the best land, and I'm not so sure their land choices is that much better than my lake choice. The only caveat is my lake site is SO far away, but that's part of the beauty of Henge is I'm about to get 4th ring tiles in about 10T. Also my great prophet will help for production and will keep me pretty near 100% science with the gold despite a second city. If I manage to get Pyramids like I should (I've chopped 0 forests so far and I'll deforest bigtime for Mids), I may very well blow past everyone in tech. I hope anyways. So it'd just be a matter of defending myself which could actually be quite difficult, but that's part of the fun I suppose. My biggest fear is Krill culture bombing me which he broadcasted to me he was going to do. CoL is forever away unless he oracles it which he may consider. Funny thing is it may be easy to steal that from him, but I don't want to sidetrack myself too bad from Pyramids. We'll see. More on wonders in a minute - need to upload a picture.