[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits and The Black Sword - Baguettes and Circuses

[The Black Sword]

Hmm, the wheat/sheep site seems to be the best option now. But it doesn't really need a border pop too much. If Mack just got a tech, I'd be pretty confident about winning Hinduism.

We should consider if we should settle somewhere else first that does need a border pop and rush wheat/sheep next, but there aren't any options really:

-We can't use the fishing sites, because we'd have to get fishing and Poly.
-Workers are way out of position for northern copper/wheat, and we're still could use a bit of information to dotmap the area.

Settling on the plains hill does get 3 resources in the third ring, to limit the need for border pops elsewhere.

I think I like wheat/sheep too much though, I'd probably go ahead with that and go for Poly anyway. Roading the forest and the city tile(NE of wheat), we can get wheat connected T30(turn later than the ph), but we grow to size 2 on T31(same as ph) and we have the sheep immediately improved.

If 3rd ring borders got the horse in our culture, would a pasture connect it due to the water?

[SevenSpirits]

t26

All right, I went ahead with moving one worker onto the plains forest (I think I'd rather have a road there than the grass forest and you didn't mention it) with the other worker half-roading the wheat. Tech set to polytheism on the grounds that we can afford the whiff, as you said. I did check in your correctly sized sandbox and found that the new city location (being 1 tile further away) costs us 3g instead of 2g on the initial two turns when we are still finishing polytheism. Because of this and the fact that we'll work the 3/0/0 sheep instead of 2/1/1 wheat,* the brute force strategy of putting max slider into poly falls short by one beaker. It looks though like we can just save 6g next turn, while producing nominally 9+1 beakers that become 12 in the tech, and that will work out fine. If there's a better way even that that, where we could end up with an extra gold or a point of overflow out of poly, I didn't see it.

* Hm, I guess I'm not actually sure if we want to work the sheep or wheat, maybe it depends on the future. But saving 6g is probably still best.


I do believe the horse would be connected in that scenario.

I moved our scout such that it can loop around south with the warrior instead of trying to take on the lion that now guards the mountain pass.



Demos

[The Black Sword]

Sounds good. Regarding the tech, I was thinking we work the wheat on the turn we found the city, giving us 20cpt. We could turn tech down to 70%, giving us 6g to cover the costs and 14+1b -> 18b into Poly. I'm not sure if that works out better. We might want to spend the 2nd turn working the sheep since we make 8fpt at size 2 and need 33f to get to size 4.

[The Black Sword]

Hmm, actually, wheat -> sheep, then improved resources gets us to size 3 with 1/17 and 11h. If we work a grass forest and put 2 chops in by that time frame we would get 9/17 and 40/40 into a gran.

[SevenSpirits]

OK, yeah. I don't know if you had this in mind but we can go 2/1/1, 3/0/0, wheat, wheat + chop for a total of 20h and 15f. Then whip granary and +5, +5, +5 to size 2, then 1t each to size 3 and 4, and that only requires a 2f tile at size 3.

Actually, wait, that plan is tied with whipping 3->2 in terms of food, and the 3->2 plan has extra commerce. In this case we are whipping 2t later so the hammer from the 2/1/1 tile is not needed. (But it's OK, we don't need the food from the 3/0/0 either.)

Edit: oh, missed your last post. Two chops is also an option and it looks better than I expected. Not sure what I favor right now. I think the second chop gets us a turn ahead, though generates 6 fewer hammers than the whip. And of course costs a forest and 3 worker turns. And it looks like it will require us to bring in the third worker to get the chops done on time.

[SevenSpirits]

t27

A lion shows up, but it's too late to stop us from settling the city, at which point our culture will protect us. So I started sending one of the warriors south, since he was already on the way there.



+6 points for yuri and ichabod. 15k pop gain is growth from 2 (6) to 3 (21), and it's a capital. Total rival power went up 3k.

The tech has to be yuri because ichabod got one last turn. Therefore, the capital growing from 2 to 3 is ichabod.

What I wrote last turn:

So: the player who had 3/2 pop grew to 4/2. (That also accounts for the +1k power.) I would guess that's Yuris, though I don't have a previous idea of how much pop our rivals have, just based on score and him having the other 2h start.
Probably Ichabod planted a new city and founded buddhism in it. Ichabod must now have odd pop because the power gain is already accounted for above. So he should be at 3/1.
And either Mackoti or Dreylin both whipped their capital 3->2 and also founded a new city. (The other of them was already at 2/1.)

This doesn't quite make sense - I said that Ichabod must have odd pop and then said he should be at 3/1 which is even pop. So Ichabod was 2/1 last turn and 3/1 this turn. Meanwhile we must have had one of Mackoti/Dreylin at 3/1 last turn while the other whipped 3/2 and founded a city, ending at 2/1.

The 2k power gain was by someone other than Ichabod (who is rival worst power at 14k) and Yuri (who is rival best at 29k). So a warrior by Mackoti or Dreylin, and Yuri got a 0-power tech.

[The Black Sword]

The 3 -> 2 whip plan sounds the best to me, we can probably find a better use for those 3 worker turns. I was trying to get to size 4 ASAP, but I didn't realise whipping was only a turn behind. Lesson so far seems to be don't chop; whip!

[The Black Sword]

I was thinking about planning ahead a bit, but that's hard to do without knowing about the location of city 3. I'd like to finish defogging the west before making that decision though. That will happen at the start of T31. Seems the only thing up in the air until then is the (2) moves for worker number 3. Our options are chopping that forest for city 2, cottaging the dyes or roading NE of the capital in preparation for a new city. The dyes seems to be the most flexible option. That means we'd have to grow to 8 before whipping if we're settling in the north, to let the workers get back in time.

[The Black Sword]

I settled the new city, called it Bombix. Worked the wheat and put the tech to 70%. Our warrior in the south ran into a Lion, but he should be fine on the forest. I figured we wanted to keep 3rd warrior close to home in case a barb warrior showed up, so I fortified him in Bombix for the moment. I imagine landing Hinduism should free him up.



Demos:

Capital sizes 4/4/3/2.

[SevenSpirits]

Got some religion.

Went with your suggestion to cottage the dyes. It seems good to me.







Capitals 4/4/3/3.

Edit: Looking at the screenshot it seems I failed to select the 3/0/0 tile in B. I sent a corrected save on with a note that I'd prefer he used that one if possible.