[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[Krill]

T86

This is where things get a bit more interesting.




Take it. gives us 6gpt more.





Plako is scouting. He has power level similar to us, but he must have settlers out now. We need to settle the next city east of Cuddlefish ASAP to hold that land and make sure we get the silks. I think we will want a city 66 of Plakos settler. We can't quite get a galley from WH to that tile in 2 turns though, so the soonest we could settle on that tile is T96, running the settler from RC over there using the second galley. If I were to whip the settler in WH, I could settle 1 turn sooner...but we couldn't send the galley to the south, so that is not acceptable.

tl;dr: I think Plako might get the rest of the island, and we are probably going to have to fight him.





And now Ruff is over here popping huts that don't have barbs guarding them...There seems to be more land to the south, so we need to prioritise here. And it's Ruff, he isn't as scary as Plako. Plus Plako gave us OB so want to keep him sweet, and Ruff is a long term potential target, so keeping him off the islands seems like a good starting point for that kind of aggression.





We have 28 pop points right now, we grow 5 pop points eot. We seem to be catchup up with dtay nicely.





OTOH, if Whosit doesn't declare on someone shortly we might have to get HBR we have no way to kill stacks with our current units. And we are starting to look like a better target than CH IMO.





Our GNP goes up to #3 at 100%, but that's because Writing gives us a slightly larger boost than other techs. We have enough gold (over 250 saved) to start research into Writing on T88, and I think we can finish Maths with 1 turn breakeven on eot T93. Our break even at that point would likely be around 30bpt, but with Mids that shouldn't be a problem...

Really, I'm just praying Whosit declares on CH in the next 4 turns. If he doesn't then I'm not sure we can commit to Maths in good faith.

[novice]

I'd rather push Ruff into a corner than plako. Can't settle the north island more aggressively than we can defend, either.

We should get a unit to scout plako's lands when we can.

[Krill]

Building units is nigh impossible. We're spread thin everywhere. We are so long in MFG and we're still putting 7hpt into Mids. This is the proper slave economy, everything has to come from slaves but we're putting those into settlers because have too much food and too few mined hills.

That's why KM has to become a hammer city and I'm going to keep 1 worker there to get it set up ASAP. Beyond that, we are likely to have to change the worker MM for FR to delay the forest chops if Whosit doesn't make a move, so we can delay maths slightly, widening up the window of potentially researching HBR. I am willing to cede the rest of north island to Plako if we have to, but I'm going to keep up with the moves as if we aren't; the settler from RC can go to GE instead if Plako settles there. Or to the south island.

[Krill]

Worker micro is a bitch. I keep on adjusting it because of Whosit being a huge Damocles sword, and now Plako's archer disappeared, so I had to move the tiles we road at Cuddlefish so he can't boat the city out of the FoW. Note Plako just settled a city on his coast. It means we would likely have to settle a city NE of GE to take hte rest of hte island, but that could actually work. Due to the delay in the galley going south, we can take the bowman in OT and use that to guard the settler going over there.. The settler we build in OT can be finished with whip overflow T93 or so and be used to defend the next bunch of settlers to the south island. We would still need to send either the chariot, or the the bowman in FR, to scout first.




I'm delaying the chops at FR a turn, to get 2 more cottages down. It shouldn't affect Mids, but means Ec can steal the wheat from OT.




I screwed up and we lost graphs on Whosit and CH this turn, so I adjusted the EP to them. We might still get research vision on dtay T89, if not then we get it T90.

Also, I'm praying for something to eat Ruffs scout. If he gets a map of us II'd be insanely pissed off.

[novice]

Looks like wetbandit lost two cities to Qgqqqqq.

[Krill]

...This game is weird...

[Krill]

T88: The Turn of the War Declaration

Whosit declared on and took a CH city.

We are good to go with settler spam...

[novice]

That is awesome. And amazingly, Cheater Hater lost 7 score points.

[Krill]

So yeah, 7 point loss by CH means a fairly useful city got captured. Not an opportunistic war IMO.

The T88 turn report is done in a slightly different order. I also changed my mind on some MM right at the end so the demographics is slightly out.




Whosit retreated teh spear from OP last turn, which is why I was slightly less concerned when I played it. You just don't retreat a spear from the front line city when it can be "doublemoved" by chariots against the person you plan to attack. With the war dec on CH, I will move the spear built in FP to between RC and DS. That releases the bowman between those cities to go and join the settler RC is building on the galley from WH.





I added a bunch of signs after taking this shot, but it makes it completely unreadable. I can't move the bowman out of Cf bnecause plako may have a galley just in the FoW that is checking Cf every turn to see if it is empty, and to raze it. But once borders pop eot T89 then we can move the bowman out...just not more than 1 tile away from the city for the same reason, unless we put a turn into a bowman in Cf. And then we have the warrior dropped off on T90, which makes all that chatter superfluous; the warrior will uncover more in 3 turns than anything from Cf would do in the next 10.

So the bowman moved out of OT this turn. I finally made the decision to follow through with using it to explore the south continent like I wanted originally. With the release of the bowman from the dtay border we can afford that.





Wut?

Whosit is fogbusting/killing barbs for us. And fuck me that's a HE unit.





I have not started research this turn. I want to get research visibility on dtay to make sure he isn't doing HBR, and then we can get Maths. We will still research it eot T94, for chops T95. Writing eot T90 with a bunch of overflow, and then at least 3 turns of 100% research for Maths might even get it eot T93, but we don't need it. The main chops at FR do not land until T95, the one that would will be on the spice which we can wait a turn roading anyway, and it's the spice; we need a road on it later.





14 fpt from 1st place and we're only fourth. This is a tight game by some players. Our power sucks, but the power grpah shows that the difference between dtay, Whosit and ourselves is like 15K soldiers max and I think less than 10K. MFG still sucks though, but that would mainly show up in a lower power level so I'm not that concerned right now. If dtay is getting HBR, then at that point I might starting getting antsy.





So, um, after playing 99% of the turn, I decided to change the MM at WH. I was never entirely happy with any of it, but next turn we whip the galley at size 6 for 2 pop, and then T90 we finish the workboat. We waste some food growing to size 6, but we do spend a little bit longer at size 4 so that will make up for it food wise, and the work boat comes out 2 turns earlier to improve the clam at Cf. Although that isn't as effective as it seems because we would give up working the improved stone, we can quickly grow to size 3 and then get the granary without a whip, and that frees up the workers to road the tile 6 of Cf, so we can unload the settler in Cf T93 and get it to a defensive city site quicker (due to forest positions). And making that road would delay teh chop for hte granary enough that working the stone is not that efficient compared to the clam.

Or so I figured anyway. But we would have a little more commerce so fuck it, close enough. We can grow Cf T93 with this MM. The real drawback is the galley comes out early, but we can use the galley as a potential evacuation route for the stone workers if Plako makes a move in this area. We do not have a spare unit to drop on Plakos island though, if we had then I would have no qualms with whipping the galley at all.

Actually, we can! I'm going to risk it and shuffle the bowman from RC over, moving the bowman in DS to WH and sending the warrior to scout. I'll keep the bowman in WH and then just dump the settler underneath the warrior on the island if we try to settle the island. In fact I can even go one better. Here is what WH looks like after I logged in again:





Whipped the galley this turn. The work boat still finishes eot T90, grow eot T88 to size 4, eot T90 to size 5 and then have to suck up some unhappiness whilst building the settler.





The galley will move 66 next turn, T89, and the bowman will move onto the rice. T90, move the warrior into the galley, and move the galley to stated tile whilst the bowman moves into WH to act as MP. T91 unload the warrior, move the galley back and T92 the galley is on the necessary staging tile to carry the settler from RC to the island. And then we can go and try to find Plako's neighbours by following the coast.





Ec has stolen the wheat from OT, and will grow every 2 turns until size 6. So eot T88, 90, 92, 94. The workers will keep up with the tile improvements until size 6, at which point we're actually going to be working every single cottage down at OT, Ec and TtL (unless I slave some of the cities, but there really is not much leeway here. We do need to get a few more workers out...)

[Krill]

Note with dropping off the warrior onto Plako's island we are going to enter his borders. He might not like that, and he did move his archer away from our borders, so he seems to be trying to convey a very passive attitude to ourselves. Dumping that warrior could very easily change that. But we can have a settler on that silk with movement points on T95...and by dumping that warrior on Plako's continent we will be able to see him shuttling over a settler himself and readjust accordingly.