[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

Logged in to unpause, we're still at war but there has been no movement from Suttree, except that he pillaged the pasture

Currently the plan is to add two bowmen to the jungle, making that an axe and four bowmen. Then move the spear and bowman into Hastings so we have spear, bow and warrior there. The worker roads this turn and next allowing a bowman to check what he has on his jungle next turn.

We could sacrifice a bowman to pillage the road now that the pasture has gone, but that seems a high price... If only we had some 2-movers!

Alternatively we could shuffle our little stack into his territory to see if we can cause more trouble and get him to accept peace...

[TheHumanHydra]

Nah, I wouldn't risk the units, not at this stage of the game. Let's cause trouble later, when we have knights ... lots and lots of knights.

[Old Harry]

Turn 95

We meet Jowy/TheBlackSword, who only have five cities (like wot I thought for once) I declined this offer, but if we're going to swap maps Ichabod and Jowy might be good partners...


Jowy's chariot discovers the battle site. We have a spear, bowman and warrior in Hastings and we have four bowmen and an axe covering the roading worker. We can get a peek at suttree's stack next turn, then the turn after we can start roading for city J. The settler completes in Agincourt this turn, J and J?? can be settled t99 while J? would be t100. J?? will be a slow start, J is less secure and J? is a turn later. Which do we want?


This is the relationship between Jowy and dtay. dtay has no war weariness, so perhaps his has worn off... I was hoping there was no Marble or stone on this map, meaning we'd have a chance at the MOM, but it looks like there is. We should probably concentrate on teching fast instead...


Yossarian has spotted Jowy's borders, which you probably can't see on here. He'll check just how close our borders are likely to get over the next few turns. We'll have graphs on Slowcheetah next turn so I'll put our EPs on Jowy rather than Ichabandit next.


In the west Rowain uncovers silk and Lunch uncovers a spear.


Lunch runs away and discovers a fish. Am I right in thinking barbs can't appear on the north east tip of this island now? If so I'll send Mardoc out to fog bust too.


Jetboy is Jowy's capital.


After we get Calender we're getting Animal Husbandry, then we could go to
- Code of Laws (courthouses and Caste System)
- Horseback Riding (horse archers)
- Aesthetics (the Statue of Zeus)
- Metal Casting (forges and triremes)
- Construction (catapults and war elephants)
I'd like to get Philosophy (800 beakers) early for Taoism since Divine Right (1200 beakers) isn't that useful and Theology (500 beakers) is a lot of techs away. We could go via Aesthetics and Drama (600 beakers) or Code of Laws (350 beakers).


Demos

I've ended turn.

[Fintourist]

Very nice reporting & playing Harry! And exciting times! I'm back in Finland again and will have a possibility to log in and comment on everything in couple of hours so let's not rush too much with T96!

[Old Harry]

Glad you're back, there are a couple of talking points this turn:
I complete the road to see what was on the danger tile. So what to do over here? I see three options:
- Pillage this road, sacrificing a bowman
- Retreat back to the jungle and plan to road the forest J with an axe, spear and bowman to guard
- Retreat back to the jungle and plan to road the grass west of J with at least a spear for protection
It really depends where we want to put city J. What do you think? I've moved the other worker too far away to help out this turn, but he can get back here in a couple of turns.



And dtay has a sentry chariot which will be able to see into Endor if he moves SW next turn, so I think we need to direct this chop into a spear or bowman rather than a worker

[Fintourist]

Couple of general comments before going into micro

• Just stating the obvious: Jowy's/TBS' chariot means that he most definitely knows about the valuable corn+rice+rivers area. We can't afford to delay our own settling at all!
  
• I hate producing so much units early, but taking control of this area would be a major long-term win and appropriate investment is justified. In order to manage that we are not allowed to make any mistakes during the next 10 turns..
  
• Do we have enough bowman in the area so that we can move one of them (this or next turn) to north maybe onto the tile E of Jowy's Chariot? (first to original J location)
  
• I do not like the suggested spot NW of original J, because it leaves both food resources into 2nd ring. However, if it is tactically much easier and we think that the situation is so tense that we can't improve the food resources yet anyway, I'm willing to consider it.
  
• Roading that jungle tile was a very good move! I could see us settling the original J, keeping at least spear+bowman in Hastings and City J and our zone defense force on that jungle tile
  
• Our power spike looks very promising. Let's hope that suttree notices that too and he realizes that wasted hammers are the only thing that is to be gained here..
  
• The eastern J could be OK/stronger. That defense bonus is nice, but it makes shuffling units between cities a bit more difficult + it needs that extra road which must be built (probably on the "original J" tile). If we are going for that site I most definitely want to have a sentry bowman in the area making sure that the 1-turn delay is not going to cost us the area.
  
• Things look fine in our core area. In which city are we going to whip our next settler and where will it go? Towards m_h could be an option. If there is seafood (or some other food resources) SW of France that might be a possibility too. 10 cities won't be enough!
  
• I like the fog-busting activities in our island. Let's still be conservative enough so that we don't lose a city if some kind of a galley+warrior pair appears (unlikely, but possible). (I also believe that it is not possible for barb to spawn in the NE corner of the island. Not 100 % sure though)
  
• When will Dunkirk stop building wealth? We might need more units.. (this is not a suggestion, just something to think about)
  

About this turn:

• Let's not pillage that road at least yet. Or hmm.. That would be a bold move and very useful if we can get a way with it, but on the other hand that could be too expensive... My current vote is same as Hydra's.
  
• I'm assuming that the tile assignments haven't been done yet (at least Cannae + BoP could use some switches)
  
• Building wealth this turn in Endor could be an option? Forest chop hammers would be preseved and we could produce a spear next turn if needed, right? Dtay might just be friendly and move the chariot towards SE or something. He's been friendly so far, which makes me want to keep only low defenses as possible in north, but obviously we do not want to give him an opportunistic "chariot vs warrior" city raze possibility.
  

And yes, most importantly:
We need to decide whether we are going for eastern or western J spot. If it's the eastern J, roading the western forest J is a must, but it has the downside that there won't be a defensive tile for our zone defence team (where er can reach both cities in 1 turn). It also signals earlier to Jowy/TBS that we are going to settle the area. We already have settler on it's way so losing a settler race is probably not the problem. It would just give them more time to plan something similar to what we did for suttree. Harry+Hydra, have you strong opinions about this topic?

TBS played so I'm going to check now what he did..

EDIT: Yurimack blocked me off..

[Fintourist]

TBS Chariot moved onto the corn tile, should not affect anything yet.

How is it possible that m_h has only 4 cities??? I'm eyeing south more and more as the next expansion direction.. Those two fog-busting bowmen are kind of nicely heading there already.

Btw, I forgot to comment: Agree! Getting Taoism from Philosophy would be awesome! It remains to be seen whether we can do that or have to focus on techs such as Construction/Guilds etc.

[Old Harry]

- Do we have enough bowman in the area so that we can move one of them (this or next turn) to north maybe onto the tile E of Jowy's Chariot? (first to original J location)

We have six, there are three axes visible, so it depends what we want to do, but probably yes.

- I do not like the suggested spot NW of original J, because it leaves both food resources into 2nd ring. However, if it is tactically much easier and we think that the situation is so tense that we can't improve the food resources yet anyway, I'm willing to consider it.

Yep, it also invalidates a plains hill plant I'd like to the north. Yossarian needs to uncover Jowy/TBS borders to let us know how close they are so far.

- Roading that jungle tile was a very good move! I could see us settling the original J, keeping at least spear+bowman in Hastings and City J and our zone defense force on that jungle tile
- Our power spike looks very promising. Let's hope that suttree notices that too and he realizes that wasted hammers are the only thing that is to be gained here..
- The eastern J could be OK/stronger. That defense bonus is nice, but it makes shuffling units between cities a bit more difficult + it needs that extra road which must be built (probably on the "original J" tile). If we are going for that site I most definitely want to have a sentry bowman in the area making sure that the 1-turn delay is not going to cost us the area.

An unpromoted bowman defends with 80% odds vs CI or CRI axes and 70 % vs CI chariots on flat ground, so J can go on the flat ground without being a massive risk at this point in the game. In fact we should probably use the spears and axes for zone defense and bowmen for city defense as the higher base strength makes better use of the jungle and forest bonus.

I've been simming settling the eastern site and there isn't an elegant way to do it, so I'm not dead set against the flat ground. This is a very rough save stack.

- Let's not pillage that road at least yet. Or hmm.. That would be a bold move and very useful if we can get a way with it, but on the other hand that could be too expensive... My current vote is same as Hydra's.

I think pillaging the road lets us be a lot more flexible in settling J. A CI bow has a decent (25%) chance of killing one of Suttree's units too. We can't assume Suttree doesn't have another two workers to rebuild the road, so it doesn't solve all our problems, but once Hastings borders pop we get visibility over a huge area thanks to the peak.

Btw, I forgot to comment: Agree! Getting Taoism from Philosophy would be awesome! It remains to be seen whether we can do that or have to focus on techs such as Construction/Guilds etc.

We can get Code of Laws on t104 (maybe earlier, depending on wealth builds) and pop the borders of G, H, I and J on t107 with Caste artists. For that reason I think we shouldn't build any more barracks, and should use our existing barracks cities for making units.

- Things look fine in our core area. In which city are we going to whip our next settler and where will it go? Towards m_h could be an option. If there is seafood (or some other food resources) SW of France that might be a possibility too. 10 cities won't be enough!

BoP? France should maybe build a settler instead of growing onto coast - there are silks to hook up! Although happy isn't going to be a problem for us for a little while I think.

How is it possible that m_h has only 4 cities??? I'm eyeing south more and more as the next expansion direction.. Those two fog-busting bowmen are kind of nicely heading there already.

If m_h is expanding so slowly the 9 forest city could be an option (might even not be a frontline city!) and we could build the Statue of Zeus... 6XP agg units

When will Dunkirk stop building wealth? We might need more units.. (this is not a suggestion, just something to think about)

Depends if we want something quick after Calendar?

- I'm assuming that the tile assignments haven't been done yet (at least Cannae + BoP could use some switches)
- Building wealth this turn in Endor could be an option? Forest chop hammers would be preseved and we could produce a spear next turn if needed, right? Dtay might just be friendly and move the chariot towards SE or something. He's been friendly so far, which makes me want to keep only low defenses as possible in north, but obviously we do not want to give him an opportunistic "chariot vs warrior" city raze possibility.

- Correct
- Good idea!

I'll jump in and do the basics now, and wait to see what you think about the complicated stuff...

[TheHumanHydra]

[*]I do not like the suggested spot NW of original J, because it leaves both food resources into 2nd ring.

Yeah, that was the one in my post above.

However, if it is tactically much easier and we think that the situation is so tense that we can't improve the food resources yet anyway, I'm willing to consider it.

But that's an interesting point that should be considered, because I think that location is a dream besides that one (paramount) point.

I don't know, I'm no good at this, I just feel that the western J is too exposed and the eastern J too isolated and kinda suboptimal because it can't leverage its food to work the river valley that we're trying to settle for. C'mon, guys, why don't you have a religion-founding timed to pop borders in that city the turn you settle it? Micro, people, micro!

[TheHumanHydra]

You replied while I was replying.

An unpromoted bowman defends with 80% odds vs CI or CRI axes and 70 % vs CI chariots on flat ground, so J can go on the flat ground without being a massive risk at this point in the game. In fact we should probably use the spears and axes for zone defense and bowmen for city defense as the higher base strength makes better use of the jungle and forest bonus.

Don't bowmen have three strength? How can they have odds on better-promoted four-strength chariots without a defensive bonus?

- Let's not pillage that road at least yet. Or hmm.. That would be a bold move and very useful if we can get a way with it, but on the other hand that could be too expensive... My current vote is same as Hydra's.

I think pillaging the road lets us be a lot more flexible in settling J. A CI bow has a decent (25%) chance of killing one of Suttree's units too. We can't assume Suttree doesn't have another two workers to rebuild the road, so it doesn't solve all our problems, but once Hastings borders pop we get visibility over a huge area thanks to the peak.

I think we'll have to pillage the road (on some turn) for western/eastern J - and our worker operations in the area - to be safe. We kinda need a chariot down here, to be honest (I know, no AH).

Between western and eastern J I prefer western. We'll just have to make sure we have a good strong zone defence, and settle one of the other river valley cities soon (if we feel we may be settled up on from the north).