[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

You're researching Meditation on turn 25, do you really think you'll get beat to it?
You aren't playing vs ai here :>.

There's a lot of techs necessary to research here (Fishing, Agri, Mining, BW, Wheel, Hunting, etc) and I'm the only one that starts with Mysticism. Also, teching here is going slower than you'd normally expect with Emperor + Toroidal + Tiny. Neither one has fallen yet I know that much. I do think there's a high risk that I miss it, but it's not quite as ridiculous as you may think if I get it.

[Merovech]

No, no, I'm pretty sure he means "of course you're going to get it!!!" This is early for it to fall in such a game, no?

[Bigger]

No, no, I'm pretty sure he means "of course you're going to get it!!!" This is early for it to fall in such a game, no?

Yes, of course you'll get it. Your pic said you had 4 turns to go, and its only turn 25. I don't get why you are so worried about getting beat.

[scooter]

T26-27 likes fast workers

Poking around with Pindicator - just trying to keep him honest really:



Top priority is keeping this archer alive, so I'm trying not to take too many chances here. Also got a chop to finish a 2nd worker:



Warrior decayed this turn, so the plan is to go ahead and finish it, then finish the barracks. I may build a 3rd worker to kill time while I wait for the horse to be hooked, then I'll build a couple chariots. Hooking copper will need to happen very soon as Holkans are a very real concern. Hooking up tons of resources around Troy only does so much when Holkans could just come in and pillage. Thankfully my archer should give me tons of warning on that front. Demos at this point:



Don't mean much given whipping/settling is all out of sync, but I hadn't dumped it in awhile (ever?) so why not. T27 then came in this morning, and I decided not to walk into a death trap:



Well defended by him to not let me get onto that hill. Those warriors probably would kill me, so yeah, not doing that. Overview:



I'm having fun managing the fast workers. The one worker came from the chop location, so I could move twice and still road onto the wheat. Same deal with the other worker coming from the capital - move twice and still connect horse. It's just so useful.

The pig is actually the more important resource to hook here since the corn is dry (5/1/1 pig vs 5/0/0 corn), so that will probably come first. The closer worker will move 1W of Troy and road for 1T, then onto the pigs the following turn and improve it. Then it'll get corn. If Pindicator sends Holkans, I'll want to park one archer on the pig hill and the other in the city. The trailing worker will probably just continue hooking the horse.

You may see I'm sacrificing a hammer the next couple turns by working the lake instead of copper for an additional +1 commerce. Figured if it makes the difference between Buddhism and no Buddhism then it's worth it. Still no religions have dropped. Thanks a lot for the jinx efforts guys, greatly appreciated.

[scooter]

T28 gets a scare

Pindicator has a settler. Guessing he'll go in a similar spot to where I went given his lack of units coming my direction.



My scare though came here:



Well then, I got lucky? Someone picked Hindu. I picked Buddhism because it's cheaper and I knew beakers would be kind of tight here early on so I figured it was risk minimization. Anyways, who did it. Well, it's not Pindicator since I have visibility on his capital. Checking last turn's screenshots, AT's score went up 6 and Commodore's didn't move, so AT it is. He also was first to settle a city, just a hair ahead of me. Interesting that AT and I seem to be playing vaguely similar games here and we're the two who have actually played this scenario out. Or at least, we're prioritizing settler + religion in a similar way. Anyways, demos:



DAT GNP.

I joined the ranks of the size 5 capitals, which combined with the existence of a second city put me at the top of the population charts. Yay? For now though I'm going to try an experiment in not dying.

[scooter]

T29 in aaaand.... Buddhism has yet to fall. I was 1 commerce short of landing Buddhism, BUT I finished the horse at Troy this turn just in time to swap to it and pick up the extra commerce:



That extra 0.8b made the difference. Sure enough, end turn and I rejoice:





That extra culture is a big deal. That was SO annoying to deal with when Dazed pulled that stunt on me in 34V. This should give me a nice buffer. Converted to Buddhism since I'm SPI.

[Bigger]

Told you .

[scooter]

T31 Pindicator status:



Still hasn't built any significant military. Demos:



Doesn't say much. Looks great on the food/mfg front, but that's not as important here as normal. I've made a pretty ideal start with my techs and I've been remembering how powerful the fast worker is. Even in the limited scope in this game, they are seriously like having a 3rd trait. I would rather play a one trait game with fast workers than play with something like PRO, for example.

Anyways, one problem I ran into is everyone is spending EPs on me. I'm behind literally every player in EPs. See the problem is you meet everyone quickly, so with 4 EPs to allocate, 2 go on 1 player, 1 goes on the others. Based on either when I met them or turn order, I'm getting the 2 from everybody, which means keeping graphs is difficult. Anyways, I had none at the beginning of the turn, but at end of turn I was able to pick up Commodore's and Pindicator's based on adjusting my EPs, so I'll do a graph dump. It's not real useful info, so I'll just spoiler it:

One graph I will highlight:



No scary stacks are coming at me yet.

[Bigger]

so everybody met you before they met other players? :O
That sucks.

[scooter]

Okay, I'm kinda flailing at coming up with a longterm plan here. Ever since AT landed Hinduism I've been meaning to give a more meaningful strategy update, but it just hasn't happened until now. However, as soon as I saw that drop, I started to realize it wasn't very realistic. There's a reason AT went for an early religion - he's going for Priesthood next. His leader + civ is pretty much tailor-made for Oracle. IND gives a wonder boost and incentive to build a wonder. Sumeria encourages him to get Priesthood, especially on Emp + Toroid.

I knew this, but I figured I'd make a run for it because if I could tech Priesthood first, my fast workers help make up for the IND gap. However, with AT beating me to a religion by 3ish turns, he'll likely move right onto Priesthood. Grabbing Oracle was a risk anyways, as I currently have Hunting, Archery, and Pottery unresearched - all crucial techs. I mean, I'm about to defend against Pindicator Holkans with my two starting archers and warriors. I don't have copper hooked and I can't build new archers. So... yeah. I can manage that, but it was always risky, so now that I know AT is ahead on Oracle, it's time to abandon that plan. So now what? I need to grab Hunting + Pottery most importantly, but after that where to? Just to plow through my options under the assumption I'm not going after Oracle:

1) Slow tech my way to MC and still try the Engineer thing. This is just too slow I think and should probably be ignored..? Mixed feelings. I think the Engineer would be really useful either way, but it's just such an expensive diversion for so little payoff. Ok no, there's no way to justify this. Skip it. Well, on second thought generating an Engineer for a Machinery bulb and then wrecking all these melee UUs with crossbows would just be delightful. Bleh. I don't know.

2) Masonry for Pyramids. Just build the thing the hard way. AT is hopefully preoccupied with Oracle, so I have a serious advantage that way. I can choke Pindicator if need be. Commodore would be the only major threat, but SPI fast workers have a major advantage over Kublai of Greece. Seriously, just build the dang thing the long way. Major problem here - I don't want a huge target on my back. Can I avoid that? I... don't know really. I feel like the setup just demands that I go for this. If I do though, do I reach for settling a stone city? That would make me a lock to land it, but then I'm stuck with crazy maintenance on a meh-ish city while nicer spots get snapped up. Do I want that? Not especially. Maybe I could just get someone to raze it for me when I'm done .

3) Sailing. HAHAHAHA.

4) Polytheism -> Monotheism. This seems painfully redundant since I did research Meditation and all that, but there's some real value to be had here. First, OR is useful for me as SPI - especailly if I take aim at Pyramids. Second, I might just snag Judaism and get myself another holy city which would be really useful in a culture battle.

5) Writing. This would open up a lot of options. I could rush towards the top of the tree for GL (DO WANT) and Music (ALSO WANT), and this would enable that. It would also enable CoL which would be great for Caste access.

Anyways, I think I NEED to ensure I get either Pyramids or the Music/Great Library combo. If I get either one of those, I can do some really cool things. So I think it'll come down to pursuing one of those routes. In the meantime, I'm going to grab Hunting and Pottery and then see where to go next.