SevenSpirits duels Ichabod!

[SevenSpirits]

I guess this thread is now "SevenSpirits goes warrior first."

[SevenSpirits]

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.

[SevenSpirits]

Game is starting quite poorly, obviously. I decided to go warrior first because it only delays the worker starting on hooking the cow by 1t. (Well, it delays it by 2t if I'm willing to research hunting instead of agriculture, but I wasn't - I want to get BW and settle copper for axeman as soon as possible, and I'm very likely to need agriculture (and other techs) for reasonable development, while hunting can afford to wait.

If I were to go worker first and agriculture-AH, then the worker would sink 3t into a FP farm before heading over to the cow. That FP farm isn't that great - I'll be wanting to cottage those tiles, not farm them. All I really gain is a 1t headstart on the two pastures, but this is more than made up for IMO by getting the extra yield from being at size 2 sooner plus getting the second scouting warrior out 8t sooner.

Meanwhile, Ichabod settled on t0, on a plains hill working a 1/2 forest for the EXP bonus. 7t worker for him, and of course he has the necessary food tech being Zulu. He researched Mining-BW, which implies to me he's hoping to gain advantage from early Impis. I'm following him to BW now with AH done, but unfortunately for me, my warrior hasn't found his culture yet. Finding him a turn or two ago as I expected would have allowed 1t earlier BW. But apparently he's not completely opposite me, and I got unlucky in the approach I chose.

[SevenSpirits]

As I am about to finish BW, here is what we know:



We've found Ichabod. Seems he improved a dry grass corn/wheat and then started chopping. He's just completed The Wheel.



The land we've traversed along the way:



Finally - shameless plug - the Fast Workers have a new album out, which includes their recent hit single Purple Hats:

[SevenSpirits]

Got in one more turn after all.


The results exceeded expectations.




I'm glad I decided to grow to size 3. Sheep worker will go to mine that immediately. However, the worker I moved to the grass forest hill will probably just chop instead of mining it as I had planned to do.

[SevenSpirits]

Shaping up into a fun game with a good turn pace. Here is t27. I'm several turns behind on my second city, but 2-3 of those were because I grew to size 3 to work the copper first. I feel like I'm catching up from my starting deficit.

Unluckily, my second city had some pretty bad positioning for a fish tile which I couldn't see until the city was placed. I had explored well pretty much everywhere else around me, looking for a good city near a river, and didn't find one, so I sent the settler this way. But the fish was just on the worst possible tile. Oh well.



So this is pretty interesting. Recall that our capitals are closer in this direction (going west from me) than in the other direction. well, it looks like there's a big lake running N-S between us, with just this fairly small area of land as a way through. It's bad news for me: the area is filled with hills and forests (great for his impis), and Ichabod expanded in this direction, and my own expansion prospects in this direction are seriously lacking in resources. I decided that trying to settle a blocker city out here would be a bad idea, and I'd rather just expand in all directions and defer major fighting as long as possible.

[SevenSpirits]

Ichabod wants to win NOW.




I noticed the impi-shaped power jumps over the last two turns and started on some axes, so I think I'll be fine. I had to interrupt my stonehenge build though, woe is me.

Things are both better and worse than they look. One of the impis is from a city with an Ikhanda, but the other one isn't. My capital has a granary, but I'm not yet in slavery.

The main question here is how much of a drag can impi harassment be. Thankfully, it's just impis for the moment, so axes are all I need.

I moved my warrior to check that there were indeed impis heading my way, because I was worried about the outside chance that he had horses at his capital and was sneakily building chariots.

[SevenSpirits]

Ichabod, moving in here was a mistake.




Even just glancing at demographics, you can see I have more power than you. A careful look would reveal that I built an axe last turn, and 2 axes the turn before. You know I only have 2 cities, so I built at least one axe in my capital, and that axe has had enough time to reach your impis on this tile. You've seen my warrior seeing your impis, so you even know I've had several turns warning if you didn't think I was watching the demos, so of course I will have workers available and the axe in the right position.




Building those two impis already paid off by forcing me to build axes, and it will continue to pay off as your impis can control the land between us with ease, as long as you build a couple non-impis as well. And you can freely run around on safe tiles, park on forest hills, etc, and I have to expend a lot more resources to deal with it than the impis cost you.

[Ichabod]

Seven just conceded, so I'm reading this thread. He thought my main attack was the Impis, but I already had some knights that flanked his Capital from the South.

GG!

[SevenSpirits]

I have 3 axes left over from fighting off the impis. Ichabod has now built 2.

Planting on flatland here is a bad idea.



I axed the questionable city. First I attacked with 2 axes, killing his axe defender, and moved up another of my own. He didn't have reinforcements available so I could straight-up kill it the next turn. I was planning to damage the axe, kill the impi, and then surprise the remaining non-impi defenders with 2 chariots, but this wasn't necessary.

Ichabod offered a concession with this turn's save.



Hey look, IND did something!



I kept pausing the stonehenge build to get axes and then a chariot.


I ended the game without yet having revolted to slavery.