Gaspar, Lewwyn, et al go full Sartre

[Lewwyn]

I logged back in to check and realized we hadn't set Ys build order. I set it to granary for now. I'm thinking maybe we grow to 4 and whip it. Spear? Worker?

[Gaspar]

I logged back in to check and realized we hadn't set Ys build order. I set it to granary for now. I'm thinking maybe we grow to 4 and whip it. Spear? Worker?

Granary is fine. We really need some military though.

[Lewwyn]

So TBS's power has been spiking like crazy. I think he might have Keshiks. But I've been watching the Civstats and I think TBS is next to Oxy and they are playing a turn split. I don't know if they are at war, but oxy is playing every turn after him and seems to be unhappy about playing last. Like he's forced into it.

[NobleHelium]

Paused for dtay with 1:44 on clock. Hopefully there's no diplo window conflicts, but I was hoping to avoid a possible reload.

Really sorry everyone, I just forgot about this last night. No excuse at all, and given this is the 2nd time I'm going to be rather more vigilant about not continuing to slow this game down.

Number of times people mean this when they say it: zero. And now apparently he can't even play double turns.

[Gaspar]

t73 was the turn of many contacts. We met 2 players this turn and rekindled our relationship with a 3rd.

First off, TBS rolled up towards our chariot with a chariot of his own. We were on the grass hill indicated by the arrow last turn and TBS showed up on the tile indicated by the sign. We saw the barb city last turn. We retreated because 1. Our Chariot is damaged and 2. We have semi-exposed workers by Atlantis. We have a 2nd chariot en route to the area as well a plan to get a spear in Atlantis. We definitely need a few more spears on the border cities.




We ran into Oxy over by the borders of Ys. That's significantly more inconvenient because we really don't have any units in the area. El Dorado will move to building units next turn and Cockaigne has a chariot that will finish next EOT but its quite handy that he retreated. I don't know how close he is but he is on 7 cities, same as us and TBS.




We also met Commodore this turn but it happened while Lewwyn and Commodore were logged in at the same time and Lewwyn was unable to see where we met him. We did not have contact at the beginning of turn. Commodore is on only 5 cities, probably due to Oracle and no doubt working on Colossus. dtay is on 6, and he just built GLH this turn. I think one way or another we're going to be forced into the mackoti game plan this game - there just isn't the terrain to build too many cottage cities. I think the cap and the NE city by sheep will be the main cottage cities. The second gold city and Moai should produce a good bit of commerce as well, but you can't survive on precious metal tile yields forever. I forsee many wealth builds in our future.

Speaking of which, we have enough gold to tech Sailing in 2t, but we're going to save a little while longer before plowing through. There's a Library completing in El Dorado this turn and the cap will complete one shortly as well. We might actually wait until we're in the ballpark for enough gold to complete Math as well and just power through the techs at once. Given our military struggles, having gold on hand to upgrade warriors seems a decent idea anyway.

Here's a generic overview shot. You can see the settler en route to 2nd gold. I'm hopeful that our prioritizing of getting the 3 metals mines hooked and being worked early will pay off. MC will be such a good tech for us, even with Forges being pricey I imagine we'll build them in most cities.




It appears our neighbors are getting along better with each other than we are with our neighbors:




Demos as a whole, not that great. Our play has been pretty sloppy the last 10t or so, but I think we're still in with a shout.

[Gaspar]

t74

Logged in to poke around and the turn presents us with an interesting tactical puzzle.




You see seven boxes on the above screenshot, representing all the relevant units in the area.

White: Tile containing our damaged C1 chariot and TBS's healthy green chariot. TBS obviously double-moved to get there ahead of us moving but he also obviously didn't know what he was heading into.

Blue: Contains our two workers on the Flood Plains. The cottage is complete and both have movement.

Green: Atlantis MP warrior, full health and holding a promo.

Magenta: Barb warrior, full health. Almost assuredly heading to the pigs next turn if we let it.

Red: Eden MP warrior, green, full health.

Orange: Settler for the new gold site, currently planned for SE of the crabs.

Yellow: Healthy 1xp chariot.

So basically we need to deal with the barb warrior, cover our workers in such a way that would stop TBS from taking a shot at them and hopefully encourage him to move along so we can plant the city safely. I think the answer is we have the Yellow chariot attack the barb warrior and retreat the blue chariot to the worker tile. I think we have the workers road in place and move the warrior from green to the tile as well. This way even if TBS takes a shot at our damaged chariot and wins, barring fantastic combat luck we can clean him up with the warrior next turn. Even if he gets fantastic luck he doesn't get the workers and we could conceivably retreat all units OR cash upgrade the warrior to a spear which we have enough gold for.

Additionally, this turn we work the PHM at Atlantis over the FP cottage which means the spear in Atlantis would be 1-pop whippable next turn if we need another unit. Now - this leaves the question of next turn. The most likely outcome is that he moves to the tile either S or SE of the crabs. The problem is we want to workers out of borders next turn to finish the last road to the city tile. The turn following the settler moves to the city tile. I don't really think there's any way we're going to have enough presence in the area for this to be totally safe, so we might be whipping that spear regardless of bad combat luck.

I think the bottom line here is we have to stop pushing the boundaries with our settlers/workers and start building units to cover them/serve as city garrisons first rather than the reverse which we've been doing because it works better with whip cycles. I think pretty much every new city needs a spear to go with its settler.

Anyway, I didn't actually execute any of this because I figured I'd wait for Lewwyn to weigh in, but that's the situation.

[Lewwyn]

We send the axe in Shangri La to deal with the barb warrior, cover workers with chariot and warrior, send the healthy chariot towards Atlantis. Atlantis grows to 4 and we 2 pop whip the spear to overflow into the granary. (Or another axe/spear if you are feeling vulnerable).

My guess is TBS doesn't want to attack us. He double moved thinking there would be no war. War is not on his mind.

[Gaspar]

I logged in quick and killed the barb warrior. Commodore's contact was a scout, Oxy's chariot has taken some damage and is holding promo and is visible. I left signs in case they move them this turn before we play for real. (We should probably let TBS play before us.) Its t75 so I'll try and do something semi-big-picture-ish this turn.

[NobleHelium]

Commodore's contact was from which direction?

[Gaspar]

Commodore's contact was from which direction?

Southwest.