[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[HitAnyKey]

So I'm thinking I want to try to make a dot-map type thing with the BFCs using the below image. But I'm trying to think of the quickest and easiest way to do it. How do you all do it? I started to try to do it in MS Paint, but it didn't seem like it was going to be easy or come out looking well.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

There is a tool that will do a good job with a city dot and drawing in the BFC. Look for it in the general discussion forum.

[Old Harry]

First thing is to use alt-F when you're taking overviews so that you can stitch them together.

Second thing is a decent free art package - I like Paint.net - as it's pretty simple, but lets you use layers and add more complex functions if you want them.

Third is that its easier with resource bubbles.

[MindyMcCready]

Cool. Tips from the pros.

Some small stuff and then some blabbing about the Axe rush.

Also, Commodore is now putting EPs into us pretty heftily.

Somewhat concerning. If he's got BW and copper,...you are considered a soft target.

While our capital is virtually impentrable due to whipping/culture/copper any new cities will be vulnerable until growth + roads so we should be try to have a scout in front of the (future) cities where possible.

The Warrior from your T23 picture (3N Sleepy):
-I think that you want to be standing on the forest 2N1E of Sleepy and move to 3N2E when the time comes. If you move 4N1E you'll have 2 locations from which the bear could kill you.

FISHING TECH:
Sorry I didn't have time to help you with any SIMs over the weekend. Choosing Fishing means that gold city really should come before the blocking corn city. That copper has really sped up city and worker times so we're feeling the tech constraint more than before so I don't think that we'll regret getting the gold and fishing commerce online sooner. Those expansive copper hammers will get WBs out very quick.

One thing that you'll want to do that I did not prioritize in my SIMs is to chop that forest SE of the capital. That will save 1T of travel if we go for that PH-Corn city as #4.

On the Axe Rush,...below are some of my thoughts. Summary is that it looks likely to succeed but we may have a better option.
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Some interesting things from that picture. The first is that Grimace also has copper, but it looks like he'll need roads before he can hook it up.

This tight of a map means that Grimace should have gone Meditation >> Mining >> BW so we'll have until about T33 until he even knows that the copper is there. Add a few turns for him to mine it plus road it (meaning that he'll need WHEEL afterwards) and we'll likely have until T40 to pull off an assault of Axe vs Warriors.

I did a quick SIM on your earlier sandbox placing copper on a hill NNE of Sleepy. When mined the copper was not hooked despite the lake which I thought would be the case. This is a pivotal assumption and will need checking and double checking. If confirmed that Grimace will need Wheel, the success of the assault would be as close to a sure thing as anything ever is in a game of CIV. So we do have the option of nabbing a culture pumping religious capital. To do that we'd have to get out 2 axes by T29 most likely at the latest - 9 turns to march and 2T for the assault.

Some things that could delay the assault:
-Grimace planting a city in the line of our axes.
-Those darn bears could damage our axe enough to delay.
-Seeing our other neighbours power go up.

Still, this remains a possibility.

Other considerations:

1. While nabbing a capital would be a winning move in a SP game,...half of the city locations around us are capital quality due to resources so it's not the same level of win.

2. How will our neighbours react to this? They shouldn't/wouldn't have an immediate militarily reaction, I think, due to prisoner's dilema, distance, and the fact that we'd shortly have 40% culture while sitting on a hill with tech equivalency. They would, however, handily beat us to swords/HA/catapults. I don't think that the first two are sufficient to overcome our defensive advantage unless they caught us napping and/or committed their entire economy. But,...catapults would be able to hurt us cost effectively. To prevent that, we would be forced to pursue military techs for the forseeable future largely bypassing our UB advantage.

So this move would likely make us the Civ to beat while we're sitting at a tech disadvantage due to maintenance costs.

2. The other opportunity costs would be expanding to our West since we'd be focussed on connecting and consolodating our two regions. The west is a big unknown right now and leaves us vulnerable to getting cramped on that side.

3. That lake 4N1E of Motley Crue.
-We met Retep on T6 coming from north of that body of water and Master Commodre on T7 also north. Master Commodore was facing N-NW but it still seems unlikely that he came from his capital, bypassed Grimace's capital while dodging around that late and ended up there by T7. So I would say that this is near confirmation of your earlier assumption of 2 northern-eastern and 1 eastern neighbour. This is probably not news to you. :LOL:

4. The Southern Pass.
As soon as Grimace plants virtually any city south-west of his capital,...the existance of that southern passage will be unknown to the other players. Our little secret will be a huge strategic advantage given the tightness of the other 3 players in that area. We need to make sure that no one is ever permitted to scout that once OB are possible.

It's easy to imagine our 3 E/NE neighbours coming to blows over that land. It's also easy to imagine Grimace drawing the short straw as the target for land expansion ambitions. That military threat or action will draw Grimace's resources to the north. It's fun to imagine a sweep into Grimace's capital while he's busy up north.

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As I mentioned, with Fishing I think that we should plant for Gold as City #3. I'd love to land that corn city for the strategic element of forcing Grimace onto flatlands but we're struggling with tech too much and we have productive alternatives to the corn city.

[HitAnyKey]

The Warrior from your T23 picture (3N Sleepy):
-I think that you want to be standing on the forest 2N1E of Sleepy and move to 3N2E when the time comes. If you move 4N1E you'll have 2 locations from which the bear could kill you.

Before I spend time replying to the rest, wanted to give a quick reply on this one. The reason the Warrior is where he is right now was to get actual visibiity on that NW corner grass tile to see the Bear when he is there. Previously I only knew he was coming down from there due to the direction it was facing when it would be on the hill 1S of the Sheep.
The last couple turns, I have not seen the bear at all. So I'm actually a little concerned as to where the bear has gone and where it will be on T29 when the Settler moves into position. Also, the plan is to move the Settler/Warrior/Scout all onto that PH on T29. If the bear is next to that tile, it would attack and kill the Warrior but because of the Scout also being there the Settler would live to make the city on T30.
If I move the Warrior to that tile 2N2E on T28 (which is what I'm guessing you were thinking) then if the Bear is there, then it might kill the warrior with the settler then not able to move into position on T29, hence delaying us. I don't see any reason for the Warrior to move onto that tile, since that just risks him dying before the settler can get in position.

[HitAnyKey]

Some interesting things from that picture. The first is that Grimace also has copper, but it looks like he'll need roads before he can hook it up.

This tight of a map means that Grimace should have gone Meditation >> Mining >> BW so we'll have until about T33 until he even knows that the copper is there. Add a few turns for him to mine it plus road it (meaning that he'll need WHEEL afterwards) and we'll likely have until T40 to pull off an assault of Axe vs Warriors.

I did a quick SIM on your earlier sandbox placing copper on a hill NNE of Sleepy. When mined the copper was not hooked despite the lake which I thought would be the case. This is a pivotal assumption and will need checking and double checking. If confirmed that Grimace will need Wheel, the success of the assault would be as close to a sure thing as anything ever is in a game of CIV. So we do have the option of nabbing a culture pumping religious capital. To do that we'd have to get out 2 axes by T29 most likely at the latest - 9 turns to march and 2T for the assault.

So I just build a quick SIM changing the layout around our city so that our copper would be on a hill with a lake layout like Grimace has. Unless something is different in the way I created the sim vs what things will go like in the real game, I have confirmed that he needs Wheel to get access to the copper. Even getting Fishing (thinking it might be possible that would give the trade along the coast within his BFC) didn't help. So after he gets his BW (which I have a feeling everyone else went for first (if they had Mining) or researching right now (if they had to research Mining)), he will need to spend time researching Wheel before he can make Axemen defenders.
At some point later I'll make a more detailed plan of doing our current planned expansion while also building and sending the necessary invasion force. See what turn we could get 2 Axemen over there without hurting our current plan too badly. And I'll do all SIMs with doing the Gold city first. I agree that one makes the most sense both for timing speed and economy.

[MindyMcCready]

for wanting to do this!!! It's probably a terrible way to win the game. :LOL:

We'll chat tomorrow but our neighbours are likely to gain more from us taking out Grimace than we are. Maintenance costs will likely force us to halt expansion while Master Commodore and Retep gain the majority of Grimace's land unchallenged.

The real question that any sims need to answer is: can we afford to own this city and continue to expand at a pace greater or equal to our neighbours? I don't have a great sense of this since my SP games are at a higher level/maintance costs than Monarch. Suffice it to say that at those higher levels economic stagnation would result. While the AI may not be able to take effective advantage of that, I have little doubt that MP players (especially Commodore and DTay) can and will especially as we try to straddle our defenses both sides of that mountain-lake barrier.

If Grimace were a more effective player then we would probably be wise to take him out regardless of what benefit our neighbours gain since he could effectively contain us. But with him being a squishy (or at least making squishy early game decisions) he's going to be targetted and that should make breaking through south side an easier job depending on where our cities land. And we might have a hell of a surprise for anyone that is persectuing an effective war into his interior. That northern choke point should keep us out of the 3-way fighting and give our northern neighbours a false sense of security regarding our ambitious in the area.

In the meantime, we settle our West, grab our north island, gently wedge into Grimace's south, land our UB and patiently wait to take advantage of our secret southern route. Grimace hasn't seen our capital so he's unlikely to be rushing to settle any disputed locations.

I'll try to run a SIM of a successful war tonight (pre-T40 I think) and see how much that puts us behind and whether we can afford to own that city without causing early bankruptcy. We probably only have a couple of turns to decide.

And realistically needing 9 turns of travel + 2 turns of war and having that finished by T40,...our first settler was coming out on T28 even with the copper. So we'd have to delay our first settler to make this happen. That's a very large opportunity cost.

Finally, if we remain undetected by Grimace a Chariot rush remains a possibility and one with a lower opportunity cost.

[HitAnyKey]

Yeah, a lot of those are my concerns as well. And early war (and possibly even worse if we actually succeed in taking that city) could destroy us. I haven't looked at enough of the other PB games to see how many times someone was able to do an early rush like this, take a city this far away, and still come out on par with their neighbors. If anyone knows of how many times this has actually succeed, and maybe point me to someone's thread who attempted such, I might be more inclined to try it. But our early plans were for quick expansion. We'd have to almost abandon that in order to rush out those Axes. And I have no intention of delaying that first settler...first of all, we get it in 2 turns. If anything it's the 2nd settler that would get delayed, causing a delay in settling the Gold city. And we're going to also need that city to fund this war both for the commerce and the happy resource to offset whipping any Axes we might want to whip.

[MindyMcCready]

You know,....all this rationality is very painful for me since the power graph shows that Grimace still doesn't have a warrior. We might only need 1 axe + existing warrior. Has his EPs changed?

Maybe right after the 1st settler and we revolt we could consider whipping an axe or catching a chop.

All this stuff shouldn't be cost-effective but if he makes it near zero cost we will have to think about it. :LOL:

[HitAnyKey]

Here is the power graph as of this turn. I'd say he definitely has at least one warrior. He's had 3 total power increases. I assume one of them is Mining. One of them would then be a warrior. Not sure what the other one would be. Maybe another warrior?


EDIT: Oh, I just redid part the beginning of my sim to watch my own power increases. That first small increase would be his Pop increase. The next one likely is him getting Mining, and then the next one would be him getting a Warrior (or the reverse).


And I don't think his EPs have changed. Pretty sure he's still putting 2 per turn into us.

Anyway, next turn we get our Settler, our chop goes into the WB, and we have to choose our next tech. I'm 99% sure that our best option is doing Wheel next, but feel free to SIM out any other options to see if I should start something other than Wheel. I do know we are going to want to re-check for the tech after Wheel to determine which is better, Agri or Pottery. I'm leaning towards Agri because that then gives the bonus towards Pottery.