things look rather grim.
THH connected marble this turn. If he puts a bit of effort into MoM, chopping it out at his capital, he'll beat us. I don't know if it was impossible to make it work out from the beginning, or if it was my little errors during the execution, but I expect us 80% to fail. We'll try anyways of course, gold is also good.
Next turn we revolt into Rep while we don't have marble yet (settler unloading), but two settlers and a fresh worker moving. Can we already chop and get the hammers the turn after the revolt, with the marble multiplier? I think I'll sim this before i do it. Barrow will whip the granary, then grow straight to size four without monument detour. We'll just chop the forest out of borders and will have to get the missing hammers from tiles, which should be possible.
Actually, we've got a ton of happiness incoming; +3 from rep, +2 from calendar resources and +1 from that furs. The only problem will be to find the balance between city growing and building settlers.
To lift the depression a little:
Now grow tall and strong!
I'm considering a barracks here next. A library would also make sense because of all that coast, but it's not super necessary and I'd like a strong unit producer.
Pfeffi has one more turn of work to do on the settler before it can 1pop-whip (don't want to 2pop, because we want to get that city tall). After that, I'm really considering to start ToA. I think that with PHI, Rep and Cothon, that wonder is really helpful (we're nearly doubling its base effect). Do we want a hindu shrine btw? If yes, that's the way to go. The alternative would be military, which we don't need super urgently, or a market, which is 17 hammers less, also good.
IMPORTANT: What do we tech next?
My current thinking is to get CoL and Monotheism, start a golden age with caste and OR + hindu/confu, and finish it with bureaucracy. The trouble is I don't see how we can get out a GP in time (shame on me, PHI!). It's just that right now we want to grow those cities, and not work specialists... I'll do a little more guesstimates later, but I think we can fit in another research project
Candidates are, in order of costs:
- Archer + HBR: Gets us great units for mobile defense or even an attack plan
- Metal Casting: Forges can't come too early, triremes are good, maybe even critical if THH has them and we don't
- IW + Compass: Obvious. Cothons are huge and cheap, but it's all those beakers for just one building, + the ability to cut down jungles which right now means one banana, mayber two or three later
Considering his many cities, THH's borders are not really far expanded on the mainland: