Slowcheetah tries hunting for tuna

[spacetyrantxenu]

Any thoughts about mid to long term goals? Musings about your neighbors? Can you post a wide view of your empire and surrounding area?

[slowcheetah]

Wow, quite coincidental that I put a comment about questions on the same day Xenu's curiosity about everyone in the game got the better of him.

Lets start with my mid term plans.

Wonder wise I'd really like the pyramids, however, I have yet to see sign of any stone or marble and without them the 'mids are ridiculously expensive at 500 hammers. Ideally I'd like to build them quite late (T90-100), but I'm going to have to play it by ear. I'll begin building them regardless of what happens I think because the failgold would certainly be useful, but I'm certainly not counting on the wonder. My most likely competition for them is Azza (Cre/Ind) and 2metra (Spi/Ind), Nakor (Exp/Ind) has already built stonehenge and probably just wants to expand.

I'm not building the oracle unless it's looking to fall really late and I can one-turn it. I'd rather expand.

As you can probably tell I'm not too interested in wonders, the land around is good and I think in this field if I can grab enough land then I stand a chance regardless of wonders.

Here's my land as a whole:








My next city will be going on the C longer term sign near the jungled pig. This will immediately boost the empire via the ivory happiness and I want to chop in a monument quickly in order to grab the horses for chariot exploration, the gems for even more happiness and the rice for the city itself.

The city after that will found at the gold, double wheat site to the south. I could've settled there sooner, however I want to get culture up and running quickly in the horse city so I can have chariots online.

6th city, I'm not sure yet I need to pop out a scouting workboat to see if that copper is actually on an island. If so I may go sailing in the near future and settle my 6th city there. Otherwise the jungled rice/gems to the north looks promising.

Techpath is dependant on how much I'm crashing my economy/ how much I need currency. It'll probably be fairly bogstandard though. IW->Sailing->Masonry->Writing->Maths-> Currency

I don't really have any longterm plans. I don't know for certain who my neighbours are and everyone is packed pretty closely at the minute (from the people I know BaII may be falling behind). Disappointingly for lurkers my only plan is probably to avoid war for as long as possible :P

[slowcheetah]

I clicked off avoid growth thinking that it was no longer necessary, because I was building the worker. Guess I've learnt some more about mechanics. There's also a barb warrior pictured near my next city site, I'm sending a guy down from city 3 to deal with him.





Found some pink borders. I'm not going to meet them yet. I want my scouting warrior to keep an eye on the gold site.

[slowcheetah]

Picture update. New job= little time at present.








Warrior killed off Southern Barb warrior.
Western Barb Warrior is being annoying (he's in the fogged jungle).
Should have built a granary before a monument in Utrecht.

[slowcheetah]

So what's going on in Pitboss 17? Well my opponents are currently beating me in the economy game. Azza built a super early pyramids and still has the same number of cities (3) as myself. Zanth is Fin/Org has had 4 cities for a while now and founded hinduism. Nakor built stonehenge and has 4 cities. Unless they had substantially better land than me I think I've played a fairly poor early game. Partially due to a lack of sandboxing the capital (though I feel my macro there has been fine), partially due to bad decisions with second city builds/ maybe I should have prioritised the plains hill more.

The worst of my second city decisions was chopping in a monument. I chould have chopped the granary and then whipped the monument in later. Sure I can gain access to the sheep tile a little bit sooner, but most of my workers are too busy for a really quick hook and I probably would have saved more food with a granary already in place. It would have allowed me to grow up Utrecht faster so I could whip in a settler for city 5 down by the gold. Oh well. Gotta play from where you are.




Anyway to the current turn (nothing much had really happened previously aside from some dancing with barbs).

My settler has finally been produced and is on the way, he's standing on the Plains hill forest labelled 1t, along with an axeman and a worker. Two workers and a warrior are standing in the trees 1W of that. The warrior will move to between the horses and ivory this turn, I just hadn't done that when I took this picture. Next turn the two workers will road the ivory, allowing the axeman to guard them. Then the warrior will move to the C longer term site and the settler will join him. Barb movements could change that (i.e. I get a chance to kill one of the pests), but unless both barb warriors move inconveniently all of my units should be covered barring extremely bad luck.







My scout appears to have hit a dead end. I have proposed Open borders with Yuri, if he accepts I'll cut through his lands to further my exploration. I would have proposed to Azza (we don't have a trade route yet), but neither him nor me have access to the written word.

[slowcheetah]

Here's my empire. It's coming along nicely despite barbarian interference. I've had to kill five or so barb warriors in the last ten or so turns.

[slowcheetah]

More Barbarians. I've got enough military on hand to deal with them easily at this point though. I'm looking to get back in the settling race. Firstly, the gold site will be up shortly as I three whipped the capital this turn. I'm then going to three whip a settler out of my second city which will plant on the iron NE of Amsterdam. There are admittedly stronger overall sites, but the spot can share the fish, and doesn't massively impinge on my already threadbare worker numbers. The Hague is going to try and redress the balance having grown up from a military pump to a worker pump. I also met Jowy this turn, I've switched EP's to him because I have a feeling he might be one of my neighbours (though toroidal wraps do tend to confuse me unless I can see the whole thing).

Rotterdam will be completing a monument with a chop very soon. It will be getting a library soon, however I still feel the monument is worthwhile. Rotterdam with its second ring is awesome. Rotterdam with just a first ring is a pretty underwhelming past size 2.

[slowcheetah]

I'm getting PB12 flashbacks. A wellworked Darius opening (presumably with large sandbox aid) seems to be sending Zanth spiralling ahead of the pack, particularly us early game shmucks. Luckily, EXP will still be extremely powerful for a goodly while, with granaries needing to be juggled into every city's build queue. The midgame also produces diminishing returns to sandboxing so there could well be time to catch up.

So lets have a look around my empire, starting with the newest walking XP bars. I mean, stunningly dangerous barbarian warriors.




Over in the west they are forming an orderly queue for my axeman to slay. To be fair to barbarian brawn my axe had 4.3 health before attacking a warrior on flat open ground this turn. That barb may have died but he dished out more damage than he took.




Over in the southeast, someone else is loitering with intent whilst only wearing a loincloth. He'll have to come to us though. That axe is too valuable to defense to spend his time chasing down wildman perverts.

In this shot you also see some consideration for future city sites. This area is relatively volatile because I'm pretty sure that Furungy (Rome) is the civilisation to the south. A quick city on the C would allow for a pre border pop connection of both food resources, but I think the river site would be more defensible, and possibly allow for a blocker city to be placed later on when we are past Praets militarily. The land doesn't look valuable there so it may remain unsettled for a goodly while.




As you can see this sea is dotted with points of interest. It's in fact so exciting that I've swapped research to sailing. In the short term, costs are starting to rack up and ICT would be extremely valuable in keeping my economy afloat. I'd probably settle on the copper island next (although I'm scouting around for further food resources). I need to come up with a plan for getting a galley and settler out though. The shot also shows marble. I think we all know the importance of marble by now. But its presence plus the location of sugar and spices as nearby happiness resources means that building the MoM is very much in my gameplan. I'm less decided on a run up the aesthetics line, we'll have to see how the game is shaking out.

Here's the rest of my cities and some further exploration shots. I'm setting up the rice/gems city for settling. Tasty commerce there.








I don't know enough about the early wars to know whether they were worth it or not. But given that nobody looks like they are about to be eliminated I doubt they were a particularly good idea.

[slowcheetah]

The good news-
Gold is hooked up.
I have OB with Jowy and am currently wandering through his territory.
There is a stone island in the (surprisingly large) ocean

The bad news-
There is a barbarian axe wandering around in the jungle to my north.
I forgot to take any pictures.
Zanth is still winning.

Fact of the round- I've killed 14 barbarian warriors thus far.

[slowcheetah]

I think we'll start with foreign affairs today. Beginning with flugauto being (possibly unintentionally) annoying.

Here's a couple of turns ago




My borders were about to expand next turn. Ideally I wanted to build another worker with overflow from my previous worker whip. However, I was about to plop three workers on the gems tile, with only an injured axe to protect them. I'm not sure of Flugs' demeanour in these games so I played cautiously and built another axe to prevent a possible low odds worker snipe. Unfortunately, he went away next turn.




Flug also has a (probably empty) galley out. He's second in turn order (no move yet this turn), and his likely scouting direction is towards the warrior guarded Hague. I have an axe around maastricht but he was too far away from the roads to get back to the hague as a guard. Consequently, I need to build another guard for protection. Unfortunately, given what I've seen of the map so far and my trade screens (close copper observed, both zanth and 2metra have copper and not horses), I'm going to have to build yet another axe, as a chariot seems less likely at this point. Thankfully (?), there are lots of barbs around so the axes are at least coming in handy. However, with only one spear in my empire my axe:spear ratio is poor, and I'm not exactly wild about building more units.




There are two examples of caution in my recent turns. Here's an example of recklessness. I sent my injured 3 promo axe SE to fogbust and alleviate pressure on the gems/rice area. I figured he could heal on the tile he's guarding as the jungle plus his promos would be fine against warriors and there weren't that many axes around. Look what sprang at him out of the fog. I'll be able to clean up the deadly duo with my fresh recruit, but I'm hopeful that Heroic Joe can earn his title and become one of the few to have a monument erected in his honour whilst he's still living.




As you can see I have lots of contacts at this point in the game. In fact I've met everyone except Sian and Furungy. There are only four people I've got actual interactions with though. All Open Border agreements. For Catwalk and Jowy the OB reasoning is simple (and rather one sided), they have no scouts near me and Wolfbait the wanderer wants to get through their lands.




Here's what I know of their empires. I believe Jowy declared war on Yuri earlier, he seems to have rather gimped his empire to do it though. There are a lot of mines, a lot of roads and an unhooked silver resource, very little commerce. He only recently has five cities and if they are all of a similar build then he's probably going to remain near the back of the pack. Catwalk on the other hand has one more city than me in total count (which, I think probably says a lot about my bad opening considering he's Elizabeth), however his distaste for workers seems to have continued. He's presumably founded mother-in-law to raise his happycap quickly by founding directly on the ivory, but hasn't roaded to the city so it's doing nothing for his empire as a whole at this point. He also seems to have the plan of culturally competing for the silver. Which looks virtually impossible for him to hook up, as he'd need to galley there, even if he got cultural control all Jowy would have to do is pull the mine down to prevent him having it. Another possibility is that Catwalk is going to attack Jowy soon and wants control of the plains hill NW of the wheat. But that won't happen for ages and since Jowy currently has a lot of power I don't think pissing him off is the wisest idea. Anyway both will probably remain open borders for the forseeable future.




I also have open borders with Zanth and 2metra. Lets talk about 2metra first because it's less depressing. Well less depressing for me. My workboat scout got me sight on metra a turn or so ago, it looks like he could be my main competition for the stone and marble resources present in the eastern ocean. This is particularly likely because I think he was the one who accidently built the GLH, ICTR's are obviously very valuable if that's your strategy. I still think I'm going to found on the copper island first, because the marble and stone are foodless wastes and building Moai on copper island would give me a better long term chance of controlling the ocean.




I have trade routes with Zanth because I made a greedy I want all the money I can get call and he was the first person I had them available with. I will be cancelling them as soon as possible because the guy is winning hard. In an empire development sidenote, I found a new city next turn for the cows/wheat. I was going to plant on the c (defensive) sign when I thought that Agg praets were my neighbour, however considering Zanth is winning I doubt he's planning on going aggressive so I may as well found the better city because when he does decide to try and kill me unit composition will be more important than geography, at least relative to now when geography of cultureless city sites provides a lot of the defense bonus. He does have a scout in my land which is kind of annoying.









Empire wide I've got granaries everywhere aside from one completing in Nij, and a new city on the way next turn. My capital will complete a library this turn, which I'll use to complete Maths. I'm going to follow that up with currency because their is still a lot of very nice land available and with my expanding ICTR's and international trade routes another route to every city will be very strong. Settlerwise I'm going to three whip another out of Utrecht soon, complete a galley and send them to colonise the ocean.




Demographics are middling, although I did whip hard in the last few turns.