{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[OT4E]

Wow! Plako got jack-pot!

[Dreylin]

So the turn rolled before I turned in for the night.

Barb outside plako's house is more interested in us than in him; Dolly moved off to finish defogging the peninsula to the W. WB found another clam off the second island - these will be really good spots for us and we should prioritise. dtay showed us a Chariot last turn outside his Cap; A- got the message and turned back around; he'll find somewhere to stand sentry and wait until we need him again.

First Chop into Bodmin completed; I ran the numbers and it comes up 4h short of the lib when the second chop comes in. So it's grabbed the Sheep back and working that for the next 4t will solve that issue (either that or a bare plains...) Los Millares grows slower as a result, but is still doing well.

Second Settler will come out of 54 at the end of the turn. I have Workers putting down the FP Farm it needs and then they will move to chop out the next Settler - should be complete 4t after the city is founded.

I queued up a Granary in 54 after the Settler; we put 1t in and then could 2pop whip and overflow into another Worker? We are struggling to keep up with Worker turns and 54 is sharing out a lot of improved tiles at the moment.

Samarkand's whip overflowed into a Worker who will join the fun in 3t. The Spear headed out towards the Sentry/City spot.

Questions:
1) do we want to switch order and found the Southern Corn city next instead of the Horse spot?
2) we want WB1 to carry on going North and look down the next island chain, right?
3) Can we use secret whip overflow tricks to accelerate the Forge and leave us 4 forests to go into Colossus?

[OT4E]

1) yes, agreed
2) yes go ahead
3) growing to 4 takes 12 turns. I think that the best is to chop 3 forests into forge, whip it and chop others into Colossus. For overflow we can whip something small like another WB.

[Dreylin]

Given 3, should I switch production to a WB now so that it's nearly complete when we want to overflow?

[OT4E]

Keep in the mind that slaving workboat cant give us more than 22 hammers of overflow. So completing it for more than 18/30 hammers is pointless.

[Dreylin]

Keep in the mind that slaving workboat cant give us more than 22 hammers of overflow. So completing it for more than 18/30 hammers is pointless.

Good point. I'll switch to WB and build it to that level then return to the Granary. Plan is therefore:

T0 - Metal Casting discovered, switch to Forge, 3 chops into Forge
T1 - 1pop whip Forge
T2 - overflow into Colossus
T3 - whip WB from (18/30h)
T4 - 3 chops into Colossus

Still leaves us quite a few hammers short. We need to check whether the timing works out to be able to do this:

T0 - Metal Casting discovered, switch to Forge, 2 chops into Forge, need 10h from production
T1 - 2pop whip Forge
T2 - overflow into Colossus
T3 - whip WB from (18/30h)
T4 - 4 chops into Colossus - completes.

If we grow to size4 on t1, then we need some overflow production to make the 10h. If we're size4 by t0 then we don't have a problem making the 10h needed to enable the 2pop whip. Timing between the Forge and Colossus chops is perfect and we can easily plan to have the Workers in place by then. The key will be growing to size4 in time and configuring with the arrival of Metal Casting.

[OT4E]

Isnt it possible to use overflow to save one chop from forge?
T-(-1) - whip WB
T-0 - overflow of 22 hammers + 8 hammers of base production + 2 chops into forge
T-1 - whip forge
T-2 - chop Colossus
or
T-0 - overflow of 22 +8 hammers +3 chops into forge
T-1 - chop Colossus

[Dreylin]

I think we only have 6 forests available to the city, and we'd need 5 to 1t the Colossus with only chops.

Need to confirm 100% in-game, but I think we do have 7 forests available to Maryland. However one of those is shared with 54 and we'd put a hold on using that to save for the proposed HG build. If we agree to use that we can achieve the first scenario. The second requires 8 forests which we just don't have available.

We'll need to do some Worker dancing and pre-chopping to get the timing right, but I can start to look at pre-planning that. The key will be to get the right timing for Metal Casting, which is jumping around a lot at the moment with the new cities going out.

[OT4E]

May be your scenarios are better. I doubt it is good idea to involve over 4 workers into chopping and "dance" between forests. Stepping in and out of the forest produces the most of garbaged worker turns. And whipping WB after forge is only reasonable at 9/30 and will create only 17 base hammers.

[Dreylin]

Well, assuming that Gavagai took Metal Casting with The Oracle, we'll be 7-8t behind him at that point. He's IND and has cheap Forges and we can assume he also has Copper, so we're already relying on him thinking he doesn't need to rush the Wonder. So do we think that 2-3 additional turns will make a difference?

My suspicion is that if he's gone MC then he'll have it before we get started, but if that's not the case then maybe we'll be able to get it. So reverting to my plan v2 and re-running the numbers, this should be doable:

T0 - Metal Casting discovered, switch to Forge, 2 chops into Forge, need 10h from production
T1 - 2pop whip Forge
T2 - overflow into Colossus [~4h +5h turn production]
T3 - whip WB from (~9/30h) [overflow ~17h]
T4 - 4 chops into Colossus [(120+~28)*1.75=259h] - completes.

4 Workers is still a lot, as you say but should be doable. Also the timing between the 2 sets of chops means that we don't need to do any pre-chopping of the forests.

Caveat is that it assumes size4, which I'm not certain we'll have by then. If not we have to revert to the 3chop / 4chop case and use the extra forest from 54 - are you OK with doing that?