[SPOILERS] scooter, pindicator, and Huayna Capac try some fast Zulu cuisine

[novice]

So what gives?

Barb city, barb galley, or a blockade.

[NobleHelium]

Barb galleys definitely don't block it unless said galley is blockading.

[scooter]

Ok, new turn is up. We should probably talk through a minor thing or two tonight. I did do the WC whip as planned:



Also, we have a visitor!



Went ahead and offered map swap:



I imagine he'll accept, as it'll open up OB for trade routes. One new development:



Why hello. It's too bad the barbarians are terrrrrible at dotmapping. Seriously, what is with that placement? That makes Commodore's plan for his 3rd city look like a great idea. Anyways, maybe we can make some cash off that. I think we should move the Impi onto the hill just to glance inside it, then bounce back and cover the worker as it completes the chop.

Anyways, we'll have to think about what to do here. Just out of the picture we have our Impi + 3 worker stack, all of which no longer need to be up there. I think the Impi should probably join the gold hill (it's really too bad his 2 axes will get to heal). I gave the chariot shock and then let it sit there so it can finish healing. I think the chop should go ahead and finish the Ikhanda, then we can move onto finishing that Impi and then back to axes.

We should talk about:

1) How soon to do a Construction push by building research everywhere
2) What do do with our 3 workers. At minimum I think we want to road that forest that's still in McDonalds BFC so we have an emergency chop available.
3) If we want to squeak out a couple workers/settlers while Commodore gives us a breather (and before we can build cats). Probably not, but there are a lot of forests up north that could turn into Catapults.

I haven't really done anything besides the whip.

[pindicator]

When I saw you logged in last night I half-expected to find our GG dead to a 3% attack.

Instead it turns out Commodore got 5xp on an axe for his bat-shit luck, and now we have a Shock Axe camping out on a forest tile (a forest that happened to grow on that tile the turn he wanted to move there no less) outside our territory.

Anyway, if he brings more units then we need more units too and we have zero in reserve. I'd love to get a guerilla archer or two on that hill, for instance. Not saying we should ignore development, but we can't underestimate how much stuff he's going to bring. That's kind of how we lost Subway

[scooter]

Alright, turn played, worker stuff set, so let's talk interesting things. I've been throwing this idea around in chat for awhile, and I propose this:



Galley next. Why? Because kill Commodore that's why.



I think an axe/impi pair would lovely on this hill right? Anyways, we figure this city is empty basically all the time. So maybe we'll get lucky. Beats sitting here and waiting for the elephants right? Right. Also, holy axes Batman.



Yeah, well Commodore won't be settling sheep anytime soon that's for sure. Let's hope the Kushans night life is really awesome for barbarians and they decide not to visit us or something. I mean, there's no reason to leave a city on the beach right?



Er. Ok. Barb axes incoming.

[scooter]

Ok, master plan is thusly:



We are literally 1h away from being able to whip the galley next turn. We could do something silly like work plains over fish, but I don't think it's worth slowing down Zaxby's growth just to speed this thing up by a turn. Also, I offered this to Serdoa:



Want trade routes Serdoa? It's a package deal. Plus his WB is stuck at our borders anyways, so it's his chance to keep passing through.

[scooter]

Ok, so I popped in game to see if Serdoa had accepted our map/OB deal. He had not. However, he was apparently logged into the game when I logged in and tried to make contact with me. He offered straight-up OB again, but that just doesn't work. We get no routes out of that or any benefit at all. So I countered again with OB + map (map from both of us), and he accepted! Yes, sweet trade routes:



$3 routes at that. I only had about 3 minutes so I quickly snapped shots of random things of interest. First, Serdoa's homeland:



Excellent capital but rough surrounding - to his south and west is just all jungle. He's wisely taken to the seas, and later in the game when he finally gets IW and Serfdom to slog through that jungle mess, he'll do quite well. He's just east of Azza and Lewwyn:



Normally this is the part where I'd start prognosticating on what this all means for our future, but we have no future, so I'm just sorta looking around and going "hm interesting" . More noteworthy is this:



Man, if we didn't have Mr Angry Bird to our west, conquesting these guys in the mid-game after they've SimCity'd us some nice cities would be pretty tempting. Also, Portugal led by Xenu:



After glancing around, I 100% agree with Powers That Be that this is a super interesting map. It's too bad those same powers rigged the game to put Commodore + elephants next to us. :P

[pindicator]

I noticed comm is bringing up more axes. I strongly advise more units on that hill...

[scooter]

Yeah I see it too. Going to need to figure this all out tonight.

[pindicator]

Yeah I see it too. Going to need to figure this all out tonight.

I may not be in, am joining some friends for pub quiz tonight.