[SPOILERS] Team BASTARD settles on deer.

[Mardoc]

Man, being RBMod Protective is awesome, though. Granary + Walls is 55 hammers - basically one chop and one whip. I think I can manage to set that up in the ~5 turns we'll have between settling the northern city and potential war, even.

Then add a pair of Pro archers at another 50 hammers and we're looking at something that's really hard to shift. +170% Str, I think, for Pro archer on a city on a hill with walls - 8.1 equiv Str? With a first strike as well, and before any fortification bonus. 50 hammers of archer could stand off, what, 120 hammers of axes?

I wonder where else we can put up an instant stronghold like that?

[Mardoc]

How the heck did he do that? AND WHY IS HE STILL SKIPPING THE PLAINS HILL OPTION?!?

He must have had a settler ready to go somewhere else and diverted it. Well, I'm not prepared to try to break through 2 spears and an axe, so I guess he'll get the site for now. Our newborn settler...probably the Fish/Ivory site. I find the southern Crabs/Sheep tempting too but it would require more workers. Probably once they've had a chance to get built and caught up on our current tasks, we can afford to head south with our settlers.

Still wanna kill Azza, still think we've got to wait at least until cats before we can consider it.

Edit: Argh, shoulda pillaged the farm. Or the road to Azza's core. Or both.

[Mardoc]

I think this pretty well covers the news of the turn. 2 new cities in our lands...one of them Arabian and stupidly placed . Although, on reflection, maybe they both could stand to be done better, maybe Yellow should have gone 1NW to also claim the clams

This time, Azza brought spears, so we can't casually raze it; we'll need an actual plan.



Here's what I hope to be the focus of the next few turns, getting a lot of nice cities set up in the south. Some time soon we need to redo the dotmap down here to incorporate Icecrab peninsula; it might mean reshuffling some of the western cities too. And...it's about time we got some more scouts headed east/southeast, so we can grow after we fill the south but before we kill Azza.

[Mardoc]

Just in case we need a reminder as to *why* this is a pink dot and Arabia delenda est. That's at least a full city's worth of room he leapfrogged.

OTOH, that ought to be very handy when the war comes around, the stretch. I'm sure the city costs a fair bit in maintenance, too, although he's got the advantage of a ridiculously huge map to offset that.

Other news: Not much. Haven't spent any time fussing over dotmap, cities are mostly pumping military and walls at the moment which while required is not happy. I'm actually kinda thinking our next city ought to go on the island west of FC; it would require a galley which we ought to build anyway, and a workboat, and then no outside investment - particularly no worker turns. And it would really pump up our GNP, both through trade and by working lots of Fin coast.

The main downside to that is that I don't expect it to produce much beyond cash. No help in fighting Arabia, no workers or settlers for grabbing more land. Maybe wait a bit longer, therefore.

[Commodore]

Looks like he's resettled flatland, at least.

[Mardoc]

Looks like he's resettled flatland, at least.

Yeah, that's a nice bonus. If he doesn't respect us, we ought to be able to manage the eventual war a lot more easily than if he did.

Anyway, today's turn was fairly bland. Got a barb warrior showing up to the south. Since we've been pumping some insurance military, I expect it to be just 2 XP on an axe pretty soon. Other than that, just progress enough on military that I think we'll be able to swap back to expansion soon. The Power graph looks like Azza's not pumping military hard, anyway, even if he is ahead of us at the moment.

[Mardoc]

First thought at southern dotmap.

[Mardoc]

Two more turns of peace treaty means it's time for the walls to go up:



Depending on what Azza does, we're either adding a round of more military, or flipping back to settling parties.

[Mardoc]

Looks like we'll be getting at least a bit of peace. It's always hard to know cause and effect; was the investment in soldiers wasted, because Azza didn't keep building his own army? Or was the investment in soldiers the reason he didn't?

Anyway, I'm swapping over to worker/settler production for now. Will keep an eye on Azza's power, but we need to tech more before we can kill him, and more cities will help with that.

[Mardoc]

Played this morning. Power graph looks about the same, Azzan troops are still within Arabian borders despite the end of our peace treaty. So the only military actions I'm continuing are the walls in Troubleshooter and the research of Construction. We can stop what I've seen, and the power graph implies there's not a lot more than is seen.

Borders popped up near Azza's Pinkie, revealing its current garrison to be 2 axes, 2 spears. Pretty sure that 4 axes, 2 cats would clear that out, but I'm also pretty sure we should wait for a) the south to be settled and b) a free settler so we don't just repeat this dance again. I suspect that Azza has very light garrisons near FinHarry, maybe that's what needs to happen to break loose an opportunity for us.

We've got Ivory now, which helps all our happy caps. Doesn't unlock elephants until we finish Construction and also pick up HBR, but it's still nice.

Friend Computer is working on a galley/settler pair, to settle the island just offshore then go scouting for Buddhism targets. It's probably not the best city site we have - that's the crab/sheep to the south - but it doesn't require any worker support. I keep tossing workers in the city queues, but we're still running short on them. It'll be easier to run short now that we've enough happiness for all cities to perform three-pop whips, too: gotta keep an eye on that instinct to push settlers we can't support.