[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Well if the turn rolls at all this weekend then I'll be doing the report - so the battling blocks will return...

[Old Harry]

Something from having a poke around just now - Azza's capital is on a delta, so I think it's coastal, meaning he's the favourite for settling marble island first.


I don't know if he has Sailing yet. Also bear in mind the extra culture Azza will get from Madrassas once he has writing.

Further C&D:
Azza: Washington (EXP/CHA) of (Arabia Myst/Agri/Camel Archer/Madrassa)
T6 - 35 - got a tech from a hut (Mining)
T11 - 41 - researched a tech (Fishing - coastal start (not Med, Poly or Masonry)
T17 - 42 - grew cap to size 2
T18 - Warrior
T20 - 45 - 3 points for land and grew cap to size 3
T23 - Warrior
T25 - 50 - 5 points for land
T28 - 56 - researched a tech (BW)
T34 - 62 - tech (Hunting - possibly Masonry/Med/Poly + Warrior, but I doubt it)
T35 - 63 - Settled city 2
T42 - 70 - tech (Wheel) & pop
T45 - 71 - pop

T46 - 77 - tech (sailing, masonry, meditation or poly?)
T47 - 79 - Settled city 3
T49 - 80 - pop
T52 - 86 - tech (Pottery)
T54 - 85 - whip
T55 - 90 - Land points for city 2
T55 - 89 - whip
T57 - 90 - pop
T57 - 91 - Settled city 4
T60 - 99 - tech (Animal Husbandry)
T60 - 96 - whip
T61 - 97 - pop

Do any of those look wrong? Having research visibility makes this so much easier...

[Old Harry]

Azza hasn't played yet, so I don't want to double-move him. Well, I do want to double-move him because then our Axe could be in Cornelius by the time he got there, but I don't want to double-move him because whether we whip the archer depends on if he declares, but I do want to double-move him because if we're first in turn order when he declares the axe allows us to whip next turn, but I don't want to double move him if he can't log in due to Steam shenanigans. What to do?

Anyway, with the power graph I can check on that C&D


C&D:
Azza: Washington (EXP/CHA) of (Arabia Myst/Agri/Camel Archer/Madrassa)
T6 - 35 - got a tech from a hut (Mining)
T11 - 41 - researched a tech (Fishing - coastal start (not Med, Poly or Masonry)
T17 - 42 - grew cap to size 2
T18 - Warrior
T20 - 45 - 3 points for land and grew cap to size 3
T23 - Warrior
T25 - 50 - 5 points for land
T28 - 56 - researched a tech (BW)
T34 - 62 - tech (Hunting - or possibly Sailing or Masonry/Med/Poly + Warrior, but I doubt it)
T35 - 63 - Settled city 2
T42 - 70 - tech (Wheel) & pop
T45 - 71 - pop

T46 - 77 - tech (sailing - or possibly masonry, meditation or poly)
T47 - 79 - Settled city 3
T49 - 80 - pop
T52 - 86 - tech (Pottery)
T54 - 85 - whip
T55 - 90->89 - Land points for city 2 - whip
T57 - 90->91 - pop + Settled city 4
T58 - 91 - Axe
T59 - 91 - Axe
T60 - 99-96 - tech (Animal Husbandry) - whip
T61 - 97 - pop + Spear

You could think he responded to our settling up on him and getting archery by whipping two axes, but I think he just built them normally and has also just built a spear. Looks like a reasonable defense - If I was him I'd have an axe+spear pair on his Brickadoc frontier and on our border too, sucks to be stuck between us... We should keep a close eye on the power graph from here on.

[Old Harry]

Turn 64

Two things - is this the first non-animal barb we've seen?


And Azza's axe moved non-threateningly. I showed him ours as a courtesy, but I'm sure the warrior on the hill with our zone defence archer would have told him, wherever our axe went...

[Fintourist]

Thanks! Back in Finland and alive! I'll comment your awesome analysis in couple of hours!

[Fintourist]

Turn 65

Thanks OH! Again, awesome analysis on Azza!

Azza's movements were non-aggressive this turn, cottages are coming up, 7th worker and 7th city soonish too:




Demos are nice as well even though we are only tied food leaders. I expect us to lose some ground during the next 30 turns as our cities 5-8 will be all pretty slow starters, but if things go as we hope ~T120 we could be in good shape...

Something from having a poke around just now - Azza's capital is on a delta, so I think it's coastal, meaning he's the favourite for settling marble island first.

I don't know if he has Sailing yet. Also bear in mind the extra culture Azza will get from Madrassas once he has writing.

I think his capital is coastal as well. I would be surprised if Azza had Sailing. That marble island is probably too much of a reach unless Azza/Northern neighborn(s) are really slow. It might be easier to get marble in the very SE by blocking Cheater Hater from our continent.

Very good point about annoying Madrassa culture.

Further C&D:
[color=#009400]Azza: Washington (EXP/CHA) of (Arabia Myst/Agri/Camel Archer/Madrassa)
Do any of those look wrong? Having research visibility makes this so much easier...

Made sense! It's difficult to be exact because civstats replacement shows only the net score change of the turn (e.g. settling of city 5 was not shown because of simultaneous whip)

You could think he responded to our settling up on him and getting archery by whipping two axes, but I think he just built them normally and has also just built a spear. Looks like a reasonable defense - If I was him I'd have an axe+spear pair on his Brickadoc frontier and on our border too, sucks to be stuck between us... We should keep a close eye on the power graph from here on.

Agreed That spear + pop might have been axe + whip too. Somehow I remember thinking something like that, but not sure.. Anyways, I'm sure that your guesses/interpretations are very much accurate.

Two things - is this the first non-animal barb we've seen?

which is kind of surprising, I've been expecting more..

Our scout actually spotted a second one in the very south this turn. Let's keep moving our scouts only 1 tile at a time now and try to keep them alive. There are still some tiles that would be nice to cover before they become pure unit costs (and of course later with possible OBs they are useful again..)

[Old Harry]

Yeah, I wanna know how the rest of the land down in the south looks. Don't let that scout die!

Looking at your sandbox turns 68-70 I think you're right that the Moai city is the next best site, but I wasn't sure about the two Library builds - they're only going to be worth a couple of extra beakers per turn and I don't think B & C have enough food and happy to justify running specialists. We might be better off part-building Axes and Spears for a possible war. Cornelius could use the Library for the culture, which is important vs a Madrassa eventually, but I'd like us to beat up Azza before that becomes an issue .

[Old Harry]

I don't think you need to worry about playing after Azza - unless there is another axe on the power graph - I think he's just scouting us and double-moving isn't an issue.

Are you thinking the Sheep/Horse/Crabs site would be the next city after the Moai site?

[Fintourist]

Turn 66




- Azza's axe disappeared and warrior is heading back west, fingers crossed for peaceful borders
- Bad news is that Hello Joe now has a monument, which means that Azza will have cultural control over our border area in 10 turns. On the positive side: going monument before granary slows Azza's development and if we want Cornelius can get a library up fairly soon. It's a close case whether Flossie will lose the plains forest SE of the city in 10 turns, depends a bit on our priorities (monument vs. barracks).
- Note the barb south of our capital, I parked our axe as a zone defender for this turn so that Azza sees we are are prepared, next turn it will head towards the barb assuming it won't turn around (thanks to no improvement nearby there might be a chance)
- We are now working 4 cottages, next turn 5, and on T68 it's 6.. So our economy is slowly building, we could 4-turn mathematics from here, but because the tech won't come soon enough for our immediate granary chops and there are no other near-term chops I'm still saving gold (maybe we could get an event, which gives us X % of remaining beakers)

Yeah, I wanna know how the rest of the land down in the south looks. Don't let that scout die!

I won't! I don't take any risks whatsoever! (although there will be some moves that simply won't be 100 % certain)

Looking at your sandbox turns 68-70 I think you're right that the Moai city is the next best site,

Yeah, I think that's the best place because:
a) fairly easy to setup for our workers
b) probably requires absolutely no/very little military
c) I want to start building cultural control over that water area
d) it will eventually be a quality city
e) it can steal D's pigs --> D will steal B's corn --> B's corn won't get wasted as B will be happiness-constrained regarding growth

but I wasn't sure about the two Library builds - they're only going to be worth a couple of extra beakers per turn and I don't think B & C have enough food and happy to justify running specialists. We might be better off part-building Axes and Spears for a possible war. Cornelius could use the Library for the culture, which is important vs a Madrassa eventually, but I'd like us to beat up Azza before that becomes an issue .

Yeah, that's a very fair point. I sandboxed quite a bit ahead and I would really like us to get some more military, after all we are settling in a fairly aggressively and non-compact way. Need to think about military vs. culture in Cornelius. And yeah, we really want happiness, Sailing for Whales can't arrive quickly enough and Calendar will be a key tech as we have spices, sugar and at that time maybe also silk inside our borders.

I don't think you need to worry about playing after Azza - unless there is another axe on the power graph - I think he's just scouting us and double-moving isn't an issue.

Yeah, this turn I waited him to play just because I happened to have time for that and it also made me feela tiny bit safer about protecting our worker with an archer. I guess starting from next turn I just start assuming that there is no war coming and I don't need to play after him.

Are you thinking the Sheep/Horse/Crabs site would be the next city after the Moai site?

Yep, how do you feel about that? It starts slow, but with aforementioned resources + plains cow it will eventually be a quality city. I mostly want to get it settled before Cheater Hater starts to think that he has an unsettled island to his west. When we claim the spot with an archer in the city that hopefully makes him think that ancient naval war won't be worth it and leaves our continent to us without a fight. Our dot-map will be fairly awkward in the very SE so let's see what in the end happens. I'm speculating here as well that "no map trading" + "no scouting" + "no diplo" could be beneficial for us and we might get away with a bold dot-map..

[Fintourist]

Turn 67

Well, I was one of the first to log in this time, but I'll probably end the turn, do military moves and whip the settler for our 7th city in the morning (if Azza has not played by then, so be it).

Meanwhile let's show some overview pics for a change:




1. I'm starting to lean more and more towards retep's guess/wisdom and say that we are on a 3-player continent. It's still very much possible that there is something west of Brick+Mardoc, but yeah, this might well be a "squeeze-Azza-Continent"
2. That said I think our position is very decent or at least has some potential. I'm still dreaming of winning settling races in multiple directions:
a. Pushing west first towards Azza has obviously been a good call here if we can avoid an early war.
b. If we can get still those 2 cities in the north, one of them tagged with "Moai" I'm satisfied. The challenge here is not only Azza, who we have kind of blocked. I'm actually more worried that we find a creative neighbor who will contest all the sea food there..
c. In the east in my dreams we get the whole coast. The extreme SE is a lot closer to Cheater Hater, but I'm hoping that he will be busy with expanding east and thanks to map trading it's possible that he will never (way too late) find out that it would be pretty reasonable from him to get couple of cities on our continent.
d. That looks very very much like an island SW of us and SE of Azza. Actually I think that is technically now confirmed as well. I'm hoping that we get to settle the most SW "C" sign before Azza and can jump into island from there.
e. Best case scenario is that we get 20 cities here peacefully which would be a ridiculous improvement from PB13, where there were significantly more land tiles per player, but we were out of land despite being first civ to 15 cities. And even that required warfare with 2 neighbors (m_h south, suttree east) and clashing borders with the other 2 (Ichabod west, dtay north). However, I guess it has to be expected that someone will try to ruin our sand castle sooner rather than later..




Some observations:
1. It seems we have gems, Azza gold and Mardoc silver. So in order to get all metals we need to conquer our continent. I guess Commodore has prepared us a clear game plan
2. Thanks to our sugar city we should have 6 luxury resources, we did not really steal Azza's happiness, he has 6 as well, but so far I only see silver for Mardoc. There is surely something in the fog, but I imagine that he will put Buddhism happiness into good use this game
3. Azza has a stone resource next to his gold so I hope that he won't contest our stone+crabs city (I still probably want it to be our 9th/10th city.