[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

Logged in quickly, Cheater Hater accepted OBs I hope he realizes what an enormous favor we are doing for him and becomes our best friend... For some reason we got routes to only 7 of his 9 cities, maybe he has not connected two of them?

So, that gave us +14 gpt and we will get another +6 gpt if Cyneheard accepts as well.. +39 gpt that we had at the start of the turn is pretty much our commerce low point so these OBs probably don't provide us quite a 50 % boost for our effective tech rate, but that's not far either..

Because we won't give him them?

I think he wrote something about not knowing where we are, which was kind of weird..

Btw, overflow tactics that you mentioned in the last post sound excellent.

[Fintourist]

End of turn 87:

1. Cyneheard accepted OBs as well
2. If we turn tech on we are the GNP-leaders (apart from lurker civ)
3. Azza emptied Hello Joe (only warrior in the city, spear+axe disappeared..)

[Old Harry]

1. Excellent.
2. Wahay!
3. Promising... Is there a spike on his power? Also have we got some hammers in units on our borders?

I had a look in again. We're at 50% break-even! We only know six other civs but I thought it'd be good to know how we compare on techs with some GNP analysis:

We have one pre-req for:
HBR 6t GNP=96
Med 2t GNP=95
Poly 2t GNP=95
IW 5t GNP=94
Aest 7t GNP=93
Cale 8t GNP=93
MC 7t GNP=93

So I guess that none of them have Aesthetics, Calendar or Metal Casting, someone has Iron working, two have Meditation and Polytheism and three have HBR...

We have 2 pre-reqs for:
Currency 8t GNP=106
Masonry 2t GNP=111

So probably no-one has Currency and four or five have Masonry (on their way to construction?)

Oh, and here's that map stitch I promised. I've put letters on our cities and X's where I think there are enemy cities in the fog. Do Mardoc and Azza only have five cities each?

[retep]

Well regarding Azza. I tell you what I think about him.
Azza normally pinkdot others civ, this goes counter with a raze city. Azza really don't post much but reading other people reports in games where he had been involved you can realized that he keep doing the same thing because he hopes that the next time his neighbour won't raze his city.
So is not like he is going to completely trow his game immediately but if he has two neighbours, he will focus go against the one that attacking first. You can even see that in this very game. He is leaving his border with you pretty light because at this point he cares more about fighthing Mardoc than keep being competitive.

Of course that is just my opinion, so who knows

Also do you guys have any clever ideas about how to exploit your UB?

[Fintourist]

Quick comments here, I will play the actual T88 in the evening (although I logged in quickly and checked that everything looked ok):

1. Thanks OH for the analysis, pindicator is the one with Iron Working, but I wonder who are the ones with HBR. Pindi, Cyneheard and Barry? :P Nobody indeed has Currency yet (based on diplo screens)

2. Thanks for the stitch! Azza currently has 7 cities, I think the remaining two cities were settled towards Mardoc, one possibly replaced the city that was razed earlier (name is the same).. Mardoc is at 6 cities, I have no real idea of where those cities are, but I guess it's safe to assume that there is not much empty space between Azza & Mardoc anymore.

3. I think you asked earlier about Azzas power. No spikes visible, we are currently 5th in soldier points and (clearly, well at least a bit) ahead of him

4. I hope that retep's read on Azza is correct. That is certainly possible. In PBEM45 & PBEM46 where me, OH & THH have played against Azza the pattern was a bit different, so let's not celebrate too early..

5. How do we utilize our UB (Sacrificial Altar)? Basically by getting CoL fairly early, build SAs everywhere and whip like madmen... I guess the key things are:
- realizing that SA reduces the whip cooldown of existing whips so you can whip a bit more already before the building is actually completed
- Doing a lot more 1-pop whips than you would otherwise do
- Playing around with overflow, "amount-of-pop-needed-to-whip-limits" and queues --> One needs to combine more expensive and cheaper builds so that you get everything into 1/2-pop whipping range and maximize your production in food-rich cities.

[Old Harry]

Well regarding Azza. I tell you what I think about him.
Azza normally pinkdot others civ, this goes counter with a raze city. Azza really don't post much but reading other people reports in games where he had been involved you can realized that he keep doing the same thing because he hopes that the next time his neighbour won't raze his city.
So is not like he is going to completely trow his game immediately but if he has two neighbours, he will focus go against the one that attacking first. You can even see that in this very game. He is leaving his border with you pretty light because at this point he cares more about fighthing Mardoc than keep being competitive.

Of course that is just my opinion, so who knows

Also do you guys have any clever ideas about how to exploit your UB?

Hope you're right like you were about the map... I worry that he's emptying our border to lull us into a false sense of security.

I dunno about clever UB ideas beyond putting them everywhere (except the capital), whip like crazy and use the EPs to get research visibility on our neighbours.

[Fintourist]

Turn 88




- Azza now has spear + axe in "Dig Up"
- I did some simming and calculating and I think we will barely manage to reach Currency already EOT92.. 3 turns of gold saving (T87-89) will leave us with 1 gold extra for financing 100 % research on turns 90-92, which will barely be enough for finishing Currency. Might need to work some coast instead of new cottages or build research in a city or two, but I think we will manage it. It's all about the snowball...

Hope you're right like you were about the map... I worry that he's emptying our border to lull us into a false sense of security.

That was my first reaction as well.. Well, our army is bigger than Azzas and he knows it.. It's difficult to imagine that we are the target..

5th place in GNP while saving gold is quite nice:




EDIT: Here is the current sandbox in case you want to try something out. It's ~10 beakers behind the game IIRC and obviously does not have OBs.. I'm so sorry that I did not follow the original micro plan and all the work you did for the surroundings in gone...

[Old Harry]

Well now that we've got OBs to sim I'll just have to add in a bunch of foreign cities as well as that land. The map stitch will make it pretty quick...

If we need to build research in cities without barracks we should do it - the hammers going into units at the moment are okay, but they only really pay off when a city needs MP or someone attacks us. Another thing that'll help us is if we can get some more foreign contacts for known-tech-bonus - an exploring workboat or galley on the north coast would be useful.

BTW from his PBEM58 thread ( spoilers ) it sounds like someone is attacking CH in this game. I don't like the idea of suddenly bordering Novice or Plako .

[Fintourist]

Well now that we've got OBs to sim I'll just have to add in a bunch of foreign cities as well as that land. The map stitch will make it pretty quick...

Ha! So can I expect an updated sandbox from you...

If we need to build research in cities without barracks we should do it - the hammers going into units at the moment are okay, but they only really pay off when a city needs MP or someone attacks us. Another thing that'll help us is if we can get some more foreign contacts for known-tech-bonus - an exploring workboat or galley on the north coast would be useful.

We should not really need to build research, maybe for one turn in Daisy on T92 (works nicely), but that's pretty much all unless my calculations are completely off..

And yeah, we absolutely want a WB/galley or two out of our coastal cities for scouting now that we can sail through Cyneheards and CH's land.

BTW from his PBEM58 thread ( spoilers ) it sounds like someone is attacking CH in this game. I don't like the idea of suddenly bordering Novice or Plako .

Based on civstats it's Whosit! Iiiintresting I would be very surprised if Whosit can actually conquer CH at this point. CH's 9 cities (now 8 I guess) mean that there is significant production power. Let's monitor the situation anyways and build some opportunistic galleys if I'm wrong and CH starts going down rapidly. Otherwise it sounds like that we might have a 2nd crippled neighbor alongside Azza, which might become handy one day.. However, I wonder if there is someone out there in a better position to benefit from that conflict, kind of like how we are following the Azza-Mardoc situation. Naval invasions including multiple galleys aren't the most attractive thing on paper, but maybe we wipe Azza and Mardoc with an enormous horde of knights and then use Galleons to conquer Cheater Hater..?

Btw, based on civstats it seems that Q attacked wetbandit and took/razed a city. And apparently LexiSilva is going to replace Q.. That already sounds like a huge amount of Lexi does not strike me as the most competitive newcomer of RB history so I wonder what happens.. Probably someone benefits eventually big time..

[Ceiliazul]

That already sounds like a huge amount of