[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

I think we would prefer to be Buddhist as conquering this continent and Mardoc's Buddhist holy city seems more likely than getting pindicator's Hindu holy city, but I'm still not complaining. Kirby does not need a border pop too bad, but it will be nice to have a bit more vision of the area and start putting culture on all those coastal tiles.

- yeah Buddhism would be more use but the more religions we get the more monasteries we can build in Alfie! Do you want to use OR or build a Monastery for missionaries? Buddhism has a few more turns to spread to us .

Obviously my screenshot failed, but we got an event We got +8 food in Nina thanks to our deers. Of course that's a fairly minor event, but hey, that +8 food speeds up Nina's growth curve by 2 turns. Nice, nice, nice...

Mardoc seems to be giving Azza rough time (WW = 60).

:Party::Party::Party::Party: - I'd fear that Mardoc rolls Azza up and gets Longbows and Pikes before we can hit him and capture the shrine (has he built it yet?) but only one city changing hands so far is a good sign...

We currently have 3 scouts, I think we use one for fogbusting, one goes to scout Cheater Hater and I think one could go north to scout pindi/barry/cyneheard continent?

Sounds good. We'll need another Galley for that as I think the CH galley should go east to meet Whosit and whoever is on the continent north of him, right?

What buildings have I missed?

Probably no buildings, but maybe couple of knights? Nevermind, I'm sold on grass hill cottages

But what about unit costs? As long as there is infrastructure to build I don't think Alfie should build units - bureaucap is just too important to delay

EDIT: I like the idea of NE in Kirby

I dunno where we want the Heroic Epic yet. Maybe Daisy, but it's got a bunch of commerce tiles to work. Hazelnut will be a good production city... or perhaps we'll capture a good city? The Hermitage might be handy in Gertie to try and keep control of our fish... The Forbidden Palace and Ironworks can probably go in () captured capitals. If we're warring a lot Mt. Rushmore would be useful too. Would the National Park be good in one of the southern tundra cities? How much do Forest preserves encourage forest growth?

[Old Harry]

Since you're going next construction->HBR (right?), what will determine whether you want to attack with cats and HA or knights?

Actually Construction might get delayed until we've got the Civic techs we need for our golden age (monarchy, Monotheism and Civil Service by the end of the GA). We'll build up a force of 2-3 Chariots (for sentry and medic duty) and more Horse Archers. Then if Azza starts losing cities properly try and snipe his three border cities in one go, then aim for his capital.

If we can afford to wait for knights then hopefully we can punch a route through Azza, make peace with him and pile into Mardoc before coming back to finish Azza off. I really want to capture the Buddhist shrine and I've been having daydreams about signing OBs with Azza and wiping out Mardoc's stack in Azza's land before moving on to eat Mardoc and create an Azza sandwich... Fintourist rightly thinks this is nonsense .

Of course our current economic path and trying to do everything perfectly will probably mean we end up starting our warring too late and getting crushed by Mardoc's catapult horde...

[Fintourist]

- yeah Buddhism would be more use but the more religions we get the more monasteries we can build in Alfie! Do you want to use OR or build a Monastery for missionaries? Buddhism has a few more turns to spread to us .

If we get a random spread e.g. in Alfie then monastery sounds awesome. Probably we need to rely on OR though..

Sounds good. We'll need another Galley for that as I think the CH galley should go east to meet Whosit and whoever is on the continent north of him, right?

Actually I think we could use the same galley. Our CH scout could prioritize the northern coast of the continent, south is probably tundra anyways. Meanwhile our galley could transport the scout to northern continent and then continue to NE through pindi/barry waters. WB scout will head NW through Cyneheard's waters..

But what about unit costs?

I dunno where we want the Heroic Epic yet. Maybe Daisy, but it's got a bunch of commerce tiles to work. Hazelnut will be a good production city... or perhaps we'll capture a good city? The Hermitage might be handy in Gertie to try and keep control of our fish... The Forbidden Palace and Ironworks can probably go in () captured capitals. If we're warring a lot Mt. Rushmore would be useful too. Would the National Park be good in one of the southern tundra cities? How much do Forest preserves encourage forest growth?

According to quick googling forest preserves multiply the chance by 8. The chance grows still only from small to small..

Of course our current economic path and trying to do everything perfectly will probably mean we end up starting our warring too late and getting crushed by Mardoc's catapult horde...

That's a valid worry, but I'm still hoping that warring with Azza is costly for Mardoc as well and once we get that far we are working with both a production and tech advantage (and let's try to start the war with a brutal first strike..). It's true that we could capitalize on Azza's weak position already, but I'm willing to bet that his eastern border will be lightly defended still in 20 turns. Even if Azza and Mardoc sign peace Azza's troops most certainly will stay in defensive positions there..

[Old Harry]

Sounds good. We'll need another Galley for that as I think the CH galley should go east to meet Whosit and whoever is on the continent north of him, right?

Actually I think we could use the same galley. Our CH scout could prioritize the northern coast of the continent, south is probably tundra anyways. Meanwhile our galley could transport the scout to northern continent and then continue to NE through pindi/barry waters. WB scout will head NW through Cyneheard's waters..

If Retep is right about the 3-5-3 formation the CH scout will make all his contacts very quick, perhaps he then spends time mapping CH and Whosit for conquest?

According to quick googling forest preserves multiply the chance by 8. The chance grows still only from small to small..

About 1% chance per turn - over how many turns does that rise to 50%? Anyway Ophelia could get six free specialists or the Horse/Sheep city could get more if we didn't just use up all the trees making Knights...


Here is the spreadsheet for anyone who can't be arsed to click the link. The commerce is based on towns, the hammers is pre-workshops, the ranges of food are if the city steals food from its neighbours but works all the sensible tiles:

[retep]

Do you really need construction? I said skip it. I will also said skip HBR but maybe that is a bit too much

If we can afford to wait for knights then hopefully we can punch a route through Azza, make peace with him and pile into Mardoc before coming back to finish Azza off. I really want to capture the Buddhist shrine and I've been having daydreams about signing OBs with Azza and wiping out Mardoc's stack in Azza's land before moving on to eat Mardoc and create an Azza sandwich... Fintourist rightly thinks this is nonsense .

Didn't Hydra try this in Pbem46?

Azza and Mardoc keep fighting I knew it!

[Fintourist]

If Retep is right about the 3-5-3 formation the CH scout will make all his contacts very quick, perhaps he then spends time mapping CH and Whosit for conquest?

Yeah, that is a decent back-up plan

About 1% chance per turn - over how many turns does that rise to 50%? Anyway Ophelia could get six free specialists or the Horse/Sheep city could get more if we didn't just use up all the trees making Knights...

~70 turns. Of course a tile surrounded by multiple forest preserves is likely to get one more quickly. NP comes available so late that it almost does not matter at all, but sure, let's remember the option when we consider chopping at those 2 tundra cities.

Here is the spreadsheet...

@retep: Yep, there is no enormous rush to Construction. We want it fairly soon though as building cats will be nice - they won't obsolete for a good while. I think we want HBR almost immediately because:
a) we are going to lose the control of the western mountain/hill tiles and in order to counter that we want stables in Daisy --> sentry chariot that can keep the vision of Hello Joe
b) we want to start gathering a smallish opportunistic HA force that can take couple of Azza's border cities in the near future (if he does not improve his defenses and remains busy with Mardoc)

[Fintourist]

Turn 100

Situation in the east became a bit interesting:




Is that a settling party? Is CH trying to raze Hazelnut? Is that a scouting galley? I considered moving our own galley to protect our crabs but in the end decided against it and was more trusting. CH has a conflict with Whosit and he must understand that he benefits a lot from our trade routes. Our own galley is technically also in a threatening position (CH's worker) and I decided to send this:




This serves a dual purpose. First of all, it is supposed to be a sign of friendship. Second, if CH accepts it will hide our horse resource from our trading screen. So if Azza has not checked our trading screen during the last two or three turns he might think that we don't have horses connected and does not build more spears for his border cities...

In order to celebrate the round turn 100, we took once again the food lead:




If we turn tech on we make 275 beakers and also grab the GNP lead (despite having only 20 % pre-req bonus to CoL). Rival best in land area is quite impressive. I counted quickly and after we have settled all our tundra and run out of peaceful expansion room we should have ~200 land tiles. Well above the average, but still nowhere close to having enough if we want to be competitive long term (and as said, decent chunk of that is low-quality tundra).

I thought a bit more about our tech path and the immediate future could look like this:
- CoL EOT 102
- HBR EOT 104/5
- CS EOT 112/3
We launch our GA on ~T113, revolt into Bureaucracy and Caste, birth a second GS for an academy, back fill religious techs for HR & OR, grab MC+Construction and head to Guilds. Something like that?

Global events:
- Pyramids fell EOT99, retep was once again quite close! Based on score I think it was Krill + Novice (not 100 % sure though).
- Great Wall already fell couple of turns ago (did not bothered with score analysis, sorry! But it was nobody we have met)
- It seems pindicator is playing quite aggressive, he razed a city from dtay! We should get pindicator's graphs next turn (or in 2 turns). That's a power graph that I'm interested in seeing..
- Another score leader, BGN razed a city from wetbandit.

[Old Harry]

I'm going to assume CH isn't an idiot - it must be a scout . If you're hiding our horses from Azza you're going to need to shuffle that sentry chariot around a lot...

Tech path sounds good - seven extra turns of Bureau trumps OR/HR and gives more time for other religions to arrive before we start building missionaries. Delaying the extra HR happy will be a shame, but we shouldn't be growing in a golden age anyway... We'll need to choose our religion at the end of the GA too.

Does Pindicator's attack on dtay mean there are more than three civs on the northern continent, or has he taken to the water?

[Fintourist]

I'm going to assume CH isn't an idiot - it must be a scout . If you're hiding our horses from Azza you're going to need to shuffle that sentry chariot around a lot...

True...

Does Pindicator's attack on dtay mean there are more than three civs on the northern continent, or has he taken to the water?

Could be both (although based on the quick glance from pindicator's miss-posted turn report I don't remember seeing dtay there but luckily I did not stare at the report long enough so I'm not sure! ) Maybe dtay wanted a piece of Barryland? Kind of in a same way as I'm staring at those furs N of Butterscotch

[Old Harry]

Spacetyrantxenu was logged in too, Civstats shows dtay has maintained turn split with him longer than with Pindi so unless you have more info it could be xenu...