[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

Way to queue up techs dude. Only newbies do that.

I... actually can't tell if you're joking or not.

[NobleHelium]

I'm mostly not joking. There is a lot of queuing techs going on in the greens games.

[scooter]

I'm mostly not joking. There is a lot of queuing techs going on in the greens games.

I actually don't do it too often, it's mostly useful in online games as it's a valuable time saver. I did it once here when I was trying to measure GNP without it getting distorted by having no tech selected, but other than that I just do it occasionally. I occasionally do it to select techs I don't want to research to screw with people who may have tech visibility on me (save gold on something different is what I mean).

Though I don't think it's a bad thing really.

[scooter]

T92-93 is no longer last in power

This'll do it:



Finish 4 HAs and Feudalism at the same time means I'm up to 3rd:



Kinda sad that I celebrate that as a major achievement.

This is also the last turn I'm required to be in Theocracy. I'm vaguely considering sticking in it for a couple extra turns, but I'd really like to swap back to OR and dump that Abed overflow into finishing the Parthenon next turn (the overflow is gradually getting bigger every turn which is funny to me). After Feudalism I might just 1-turn IW so that I can work those irons. This is a more clear shot of the power dips now that a couple turns have passed:



That was fun. My MFG has blown up as I've started to max out on sizes:



I need to think about where to go from here. I could try to contest the jungle area, or I could just keep pumping military and try to hurt somebody. Either way I need more military so that'll continue for a bit, but I'm debating. People will catch up to me in city sizes over time, so I do need to make the most out of my position.

[scooter]

Ok, I noticed Pindicator is updating his thread, and I'm wondering if he actually did learn something from the image names. The email literally looked like this:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s...dalism.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s/t94_revolt.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s...oy_sci.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s/t95_iw.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s...thenon.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s...oy_sci.JPG
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM34s...onders.JPG

(I will write up the accompanying report pretty soon, so you'll see all those later - no need to actually click on each one)

I pretty frequently play on my laptop, quickly rename the screenshots and drag them into my dropbox, and then copy the public links and send them to myself. It's really fast - the above screenshots probably took me like 45 seconds to rename, deposit into dropbox, and them copy and paste the public links into an email. This lets me write up reports whenever I get a few minutes, even if I'm not at my civ machine. Well apparently I actually sent to the tracker instead of my own email. Oops. I've always been afraid I'd do something like that. Anyways, he doesn't learn too much from the above. He'll see my revolt in the event tracker. He'll see the Parthenon completion too. The "troy_sci" thing doesn't reveal too much of consequence - he'll likely just assume that I'm generating one there which isn't a surprise. IW and Feudalism are potentially spoilery, but he'll see my longbows sooner or later anyways and pretty much everyone has grabbed IW now. So... not too much here that I'm worried about. I'm just hoping he doesn't read too much into one of those names and get paranoid and change his plans based on that.

[scooter]

T94-95 send screenshots to the wrong person

Feudalism in:



It was also time to revolt back into OR so I could finish the Parthenon:



I got about a dozen horse archers during that time in Theocracy though, so I'm happy. Also swapped into Caste because it can be useful, and the amount of production I'm getting in my cities has virtually eliminated the need for slavery for a little while. Next turn IW comes in:



As does the Parthenon:



Unfortunately MoM is down:



MoM would've been really nice, but I chose to head down the bulbing CS route so that's what I had to sacrifice for it. Academy next turn:



I've got a few ideas for what to head to next. In the meantime I want University of Sankore, so that's next.

[Bigger]

3 of the top 5 cities, that's nice!

[scooter]

T96-97 ruins somebody's Saturday

First thiing though, got my Academy in place:



NEATO. Maybe this'll help because Commodore just went all Pyramids spiky-spiky on me:



Shudder. Demos:



Ok, this is significant because look at soldiers. I'm in 3rd. More importantly though, who is in 4th?



AT. His power is also artifically high IMO due to his crossbows. One other thing that's interesting here:



He's not in HR, neither is Pindicator. First off, I think this is REALLY hurting these guys. They could have easily gotten to Monarchy by now. Second though, I've seen lots of units from AT at his border sites, AND he has no real motivation to stock units in his capital. There's also a narrow window in which he does not yet have Engineering so he's not likely to be able to reinforce the capital easily. Let's see if we can't get some SERIOUS funding for my research.



12 horse archers, all well promoted. By the way, I feel really bad for picking on AT here. If you look, this is the perfect tile for being able to move within 2 tile of his capital without being seen. I actually wanted to target Pindicator and not AT and spent a couple turns trying to plan something, but visibility was going to wreck it and give him an extra turn warning. AT I can hit without warning, so I went with that. So I move in and:



Ruh roh. He can't reinforce from cities, so it'll all come down to if he has something like crossbows in the fog south of VultureLand. If he stocks enough units in, no harm, I'll just take my ball and go home. Maybe pressure VultureMe a little while I'm at it.

So fingers crossed on this. Also, Commodore did me a favor and got me visibility into stonetown:



Thanks buddy.

[scooter]

T98 LEEERROOOOYYY

So AT did indeed get lucky to kick things off:



Killed my GG at 22.5% odds then snipe off another HA at 68.5% odds. However, do NOT feel pity on me. He's only got 3 units here and one is a wounded HA, so this is an easy raze. So I promote my first HA to shock and go to try to damage his spear at 3% odds and... I WIN!!! Ridiculous. That's going to save me a HA. If that's not enough, I send in my next one at 24.3% odds and I manage a withdraw, though that HA is dead next turn anyways so it doesn't matter TOO much. Anyways:



Yes please.



That's a bunch of beakers towards Liberalism right there. Now, my dilemma:



What do I do about these 4 horse archers? He's got units everywhere. The one on the hill is obviously dead, so forget about that. The three on the plains though are what I had to think about. Do I promote my unused 6 horse archers and try to cover them? The main problem is the 4 unit stack I'm hovering over - 3 cats and a crossbow. He could pound the stack with cats and then he has 2 xbows and a spear in range, along with any HAs in the fog that might also be in range. So that doesn't really do anything to cover them at all. Let's try pressuring him into letting some survive instead:



Ok. VultureMe only has a Spear + Archer in it. That's really weak. By putting my HAs on that floodplains, I can road it next turn and hit VultureMe with my 6 HAs. If he chooses to hit my stack with those units you saw, that's a bunch of units that can't go into VultureMe. I also moved forward a catapult (covered by Spear as only a HA could really hit it) so that if he only puts like 1-2 more units in the city, he could actually be in real trouble. I also squeezed out a 1 turn chariot:



I'm not in Slavery so I couldn't whip a HA, but I was able to 1T a chariot, and this chariot can also be part of the attack. So I have a cat, 6 HAs, a Chariot, and a Spear inrange of VultureMe next turn, so he'll really need to pull back I think (unless he has extra HAs which is possible). If I take this, I'd vaguely consider keeping it.

[NobleHelium]

Those signs are a little out of date...