[spoilers] Commodore: Worse than Toku, it's Giggles of Siam!

[Commodore]

If the sons of Krill die to an impi I'm going to be very disappointed.

faugh.

He already got "Thoth's Company" butchered.

And I'm his ded lurker.

Don't get your hopes up mate.

Hey, gimmie an hour's free time and I'll write a good story about the dead King Thoth and the new kind of warfare that followed.

[Commodore]

Scooter keeps offering a worthless cease fire, I keep rolling my eyes. Worthless thing, that, might as well have some honesty.


I really ought to thank Scooter, his DoW means I can hook the ivory without him being able to see them on our diplo screen, it'd be a bit less subtle if we had to DoW him.

[Commodore]

So I think my initial instinct about Scooter's passivity is correct. Those two C1 impi are nowhere to be seen, so I am for the moment unharried. I need to push an archer to the forest hill choke north of the Long Salt Lake. I'm loving Hidden Valley's chokiness here. We need a northern choke city either 1W or 1S of the desert hill.


City #4 is down now, at least. Verdant is going to be nice, three more turns until its clams are online, and then it gets the pigs in time to work them at size two, it's going to rocket up with this great food bonus. This city is our investment in the future outside of war, frankly. At the ivory happy cap of five it can work pigs, clams, riverside cottage, and two scientists for an Academy.


Scooter, at least, got the worker theme, chatting me to let me know I'd given him the itch to play Advance Wars again. Next turn we hook Verdant Acres up to the trade network, and then Andy heads over to work pigs and then chop/cottage the riverside up there. With us having to get iron working anyway, we need to prepare to go north for the gems, so Grit will stick around adding a bit more cottage land (improved happy cap) and then to be able to join the next worker (Max) to road up to iron/the salt lake choke.


Meanwhile, let's trust archers a bit, and watch the graphs for a multiplicity of axes in Zululand.

[Commodore]

Wow, so Thoth? That potentially friendly guy northish of us? He knows a warmonger himself.

[Thoth]

I'm not sure if I'm reading that correctly....

but it looks like Azza played his turn....and then got a city razed by Lewwyn

[Commodore]

Yep. Lewwyn's score didn't rise at the same time, so it was a size-1 autoraze, meaning probably Azza's most recent city plant. Hard to say for sure, but knowing Lewwyn, Azza might have planted too close and gotten charioted for his troubles. I certainly hope Lewwyn doesn't eat Azza at this early juncture; that would be one hell of a snowball boost. I might be wrong, but I believe Stonehenge is Lewwyn, too, good play in Team Spam.

No wonder the lurker thread has been active.

[Commodore]

Hahahah. Why can't I get the easily killed neighbors?


That's another autoraze, with a side of whipping something. Plako vs. Lewwyn vs. Serdoa vs. CFC/Nakor in the final showdown, you heard it here first folks (Serdoa is the Oracle, so he's probably Buddhism as well).

[Commodore]

Active as the last turns have been in the wider world, locally not much is going on. We finished the cottage for Hidden Valley and the workers are now in position to start hooking up the ivory next turn. A healthy set of archers leaves me feeling fairly secure on this front, for what it's worth. No sign of chokers, looks like it's a cold war at the moment.


With all the hot wars going around, I'm kind of surprised to be third in power still; that's just archers man. My new spate of cities means commensurate rises in MFG and CY, tanking in GNP. Considering this is an eleven-player game though these are pretty decent demos. I'm curious to see if Plako and Lewwyn start climbing as they conquer or if those were just opportunistic razes. Azza, at least, has every reason in the world to chase IW now, I'll look for a power bump from that.


The incoming happy will be very very nice, allowing my wonderfully fecund cities to grow a little. The capital will swap to grow to size six soon, and Tranquil Meadow will be able to ignore the whip unhappy the turn it grows. I'll prep a worker or settler here to get whipped the turn IW comes in, might as well muddy the power jump a little bit.


Sorry folks. You want action this turn, look elsewhere, I'm sure there is some.

[Thoth]

I'm not convinced that whipping TM is a good idea.

Working both corn and horses we produce 15 fh/t here. Good enough for a worker every 4t. If we're whipping we'll get slightly better production, but it costs us the use of a riverside cottage.

With IW on the horizon, a gems city in the near future is feasable. Combine that with the ivory and whales happy and an offshore city and we'll be rocking along with 7 free happy in every city.

[Commodore]

I'm not convinced that whipping TM is a good idea.

Working both corn and horses we produce 15 fh/t here. Good enough for a worker every 4t. If we're whipping we'll get slightly better production, but it costs us the use of a riverside cottage.

I think I agree with this one. IW will be obvious if they're either checking tile yields or closely C&Ding, and if they aren't, a whip won't make much difference. Having agreed, I've directed Andy down to build another riverside cottage for the river cities to share; sadly, this is the reason why I still don't like Pro in Krillmod. Cheap granaries are nice, but we ain't whipping nearly as often as in vanilla. Give us back Drill 1 and castles!

With IW on the horizon, a gems city in the near future is feasable. Combine that with the ivory and whales happy and an offshore city and we'll be rocking along with 7 free happy in every city.

Indeed. Ivory online will be sweeeet, and I think Sailing is our next tech. Scooter's next? Mathematics. Thanks for the EP help, Azza.


Until we get either CoL or Currency online, we need to think about making each new city now pay for itself. The Greenways with gems are easy; 2/1/6 tiles make that break-even pretty easy. The island city will also be easy, natch. However, the north-of-salt-lake choke city and Coldspring Way are both going to be a touch more costly, with notably less quick return. Which is why all cities much contribute; a pair of Hidden Valley river cottages will help, as will more in the core.

Long-term, there are three (non-exclusive) ways to get some good GNP going: Super-bureaucap, Representation, and cottage cheese/fishing villages. Representation is out, although we have nearish stone and the 'mids have yet to fall, even if we could do it 250 hammers is a huge "kill us" sign to the Zulu. As great as a lot of these close spots are in the short term, we're woefully under-landed for the nearer cities to spam cottages (now the jungle north does have potential). We're going to want to focus on getting the capital really really rolling then; size eight with the near-term luxuries needs to be without the four shared riverside cottages Tranquil Meadows works, then once we get to HR/Bureau we can rocket up to 12-13 citizen funneling through an academy. Nothing less will get us through those RBmod-inflated late techs.