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

[regoarrarr]

If so, I think it's working

[scooter]

So i think that big picture, we don't want to spend any chops on the clam city. The one alternative would be if we put moai there, but long term that city is only going to be good for bringing in commerce and right now we need hammers. So i think those chops are better spent getting the granary up at the next city and chopping out more settlers so we can get the entire island settled ASAP.

I do like Noble's suggestion of slow building a work boat out of JJ after its lighthouse completes. That will speed up growth at least a few turns.

This is probably the way to go, yeah.

[scooter]

Played the turn. A bit too tired to report, but it was a simple turn.

1) Whipped settler at Culvers as planned. Warrior next there while it grows (should grow reasonably fast, 10F surplus).
2) Moved 2 more of the workers towards the south, covered by Impi of course. We really need to repair the road network in addition to chopping the southeast.
3) Moved galleys forward and loaded up the 1-moving axes.

[scooter]

Took a couple pictures earlier, and I logged in to take a few more. Something odd I noticed earlier:



FG is still at size 4 and has been for a few turns. He hasn't double-whipped... Demos confirm that he hasn't completed any military units for a few turns so the real question is - what is he building and why hasn't he whipped it yet? Any military unit he could build could be double-whipped after just 1 turn's production. Maybe because he has no granary?



This is all I can figure - he's setting up to single whip a few times. Risky though with us coming any turn now (for all he knows) - surely he'd want to pile in as much military as possible while he waits. Who knows. Demos:



We've moved up to 7th in GNP, likely leap-frogging Xenu as he whips himself silly. We'll break 100 next turn for the first time all game when Currency comes in . So we are likely trailing the Big Five + Azza, which is surprisingly good. As for soldiers - India had 72k then they grew to sz4, giving them 1k in soldiers. So they've built nothing new.

The negative Imports/Exports is our biggest advantage. Yes we're giving out way more income than we're receiving (though that will shift seriously when CUrrency comes in), the reason is because our routes are so valuable to civs on the main continent that they happily sign OB with us (plus we're wayyyy behind). Kinda nice.

Anyways, I logged back in to take a picture of our south settler, and AS I'm in the game, this happens.



Quite the funny moment for me to see it happen while I was in game. Noble asked me if Xenu was getting iron anywhere. Survey says yes.



Hopefully that sufficiently stalemates things for awhile. Would be fun to snipe one of Xenu's gorgeous southern cities, but I'm not sure how wise it is to piss off Aggressive Vikings given our status as island nation. Here's a picture of our southern settler on the move:



1) Note the humorous chat message from Xenu.
2) We renamed Clam City to Five Guys. Though it's named after the delicious hamburger chain, it also is an accurate description of the total residential population of the tiny island.
3) The DQ worker down there is on a forest ready to start chopping next turn so we can get an instant chop into the granary at the new city.
4) City is settled T134, and DQ borders pop EoT134, so we have just 1 turn to work a 2/1/0 tile, then we can use the Crabs . DQ has another crab down there in the south (just below the interface), so it'll be in good shape too.
5) Sid's has a half-complete settler in the queue, but we really need the warriors complete so we can use the Impis in the assault on FG. After Culvers complete its warrior, I think it should put in a turn of wealth/research while growing to sz4, then start another settler since it'll still be pretty happy-constrained. After India is dead and the silver is in our borders, we should be free to grow quite a bit more.

[pindicator]

Hey, looks like xenu is taking a page from our book and invading another when at war from a first

As for the warriors, i think the two we are making are enough - we should only need 8 units to take the city and we have those plus some already. Or at least we can only send 8 at a time Anyway, i'm going a round-about way of saying that we should be good after these two warriors fimish, and then complete another pair of settlers. After we take FG there are 3 spots on Atlantis and at least two more island spots i want to settle. Now that xenu is hurting we shouldn't have competition for grabbing them

[scooter]

Couple things on unit composition with invading FG:

1) We can't ferry over 8 right away. We only have 4 galleys, and we really need that C1 galley to be empty in case he takes a shot with his galley and gets lucky.
2) I'm thinking we ferry over 6 first and bombard down the cultural defense with our cats while we go back and pick up more. Good chance they have 4 units now, so by the time we get everything over there, they might very well have 6 defenders (we'll only have 6 hitters). So I think 8 units is the bare minimum. If we can squeak over 9 or 10, we should.

[NobleHelium]

Turn rolled, I took a look. xenu has a galley 2NE of Dominos. We should have built another cottage for that city...it's going to run out of tiles before TGIF pops borders.

[scooter]

Ok, popped in and played. I did NOT hit end turn yet so Pindicator, if you want to pop in and take a look, go for it. I loaded up our Medic Impi so that our C1 galley could heal 1T quicker.



I was thinking about how to solve NH's comment about Dominos growing too fast. Let's swap the archer build



Let's build it in Dominos instead. Next turn we'll whip the archer from Dominos, so it won't grow onto unimproved tiles. TGIF can just start on the Lighthouse now and can always finish the other archer later. The two units on TGIF really need to head towards the galleys next turn, so this seems like the best way to cover it. We'll have to keep an eye on Xenu's galley of course, but he cannot hit Dominos this turn, and he can't even see it's empty.

Also, 100bpt!!! Hooray for Currency . We could actually 2T Iron Working right now, but given that we don't plan on settling the iron just yet, I stuck with our path towards Monarchy. If we want to change we still can - as I said - turn not ended. Demos:



India still didn't whip or complete any more military. I'm hoping they're building us a granary or something . Maybe they're building a settler? No clue.

[scooter]

Ok, chatted with NH. Few things.

1) Changed our route to Monarchy to be Poly-Mono-Monarchy. It's more expensive (and we have Med half-completed), but since we'll be revolting to HR, I think it makes a lot of sense to combine that with an OR revolt. We've got Hindu everywhere, and we've got a lot of infra that needs building, so it's worth it.
2) We checked, and India has 36h in the box at FG. So they're not building an archer/axe/etc. Could be a cat or a boat. Or he could be building a settler .

Also, I ended turn.

[pindicator]

How far out are our next two settlers?

I'm thinking that if they are soon then we do the iron working anyway and settle the clam/iron spot along with the northeast jungled pig. I'll jump in here in a second and see what the timing looks out to be. Overall i think we're trying to spread horizontally right now as fast as possible, and IW opens up two more cities for us to grab. Monarchy lets us grow vertically after we've done this. And having every city get 10c right away, there's no reason we can't spam settlers and workers out, except for defense.

As for the attack, the longer Nakor goes without whipping the more i think he has checked out. One big wave should do it, especially since he can't have more than 4 defenders in FG. I really don't think the impi we have in the south will be a part of it, but it's still good to get those warriors in while we can so we free up the impi for cities that border other players.

Agree with the archer up on Domino's; we can overflow into a granary and double whip that when we reach size 4.