[SPOILER] Smegbeth heads to the terrace for a prawn cocktail and beer

[novice]

It's tundra fur? That means the fur chop takes longer, too. But also that you'll spend less time working it.

[Krill]

I traded maps with Brick. Those city borders are the full BFC for one of Plakos cities that is 5 tiles from his capital. I can get a city settled on T63 on that sign. If I can get that, then Plako has no further routes to expand towards us on this section of the map. Cities would not overlap any tiles. Also gets horse and ivory, the fish can be given to a city on the northern peninsula.





I moved the fur city to the other side of the fur. This is so that the cities up the northern peninsula don't get pushed too far north; I'm going to try and cede that area to Thoth and settle south for more land.

The three forests in a vertical line are hte reason for asking about which forest to chop. The northern forest needs to be chopped into the 4 tile island city for a terrace. That leaves the fur tile and hte plains hill forest to chop for a terrace in the fur city. Either the fur is camped with a forest and the plains hill is chopped and replaced with a windmill, or the fur is chopped and the plains hill forest can be lumbermilled, providing a bit of food to an otherwise food poor area of the map. I'm currently prefering the chopped fur tile TBH. Irrigate the few tiles that can be, grow to size 5-6 and then stagnate and build workers and shit.

The other advantage of settling on the western side of the fur is that the city acts as a canal. it is possible to get a workboat out of BM after the settler from overflow and use that to transport a settler over to the ivory for slightly better trade routes. If the city is settled to the east, then the work boat has to be built there. And as work boats are now foodhammer units it really screws the growth curve up.





Still figuring out the dot map over here, but that western city is fairly important to put a bit of stress on CH's expansion routes. CH is my preferred target to eat with knights, so expand towards everyone else, then kill CH is the order of hte day. But I still need to prep CH for the knight rush by not giving him an easily defensible border.





Yeah, this is hte aggressive border. The dye/crab city is very far forward, but if you look at the routes that Thoth can threaten me from, that fronty city stops almost all attacks at me from the south. Along with not pushing into hte north against him, if I could get this city then I would feel very comfortable in defending against him, even whilst focusing on eating CH.

[novice]

Right, you have souped up lumbermills. Chopping the furs makes sense then.

[Krill]

Bah, fuck Plako. He settled on the plains hill for the pig ivory and horse and it makes it a bitch to get both ivory and horses now.

But I can have Machinery in 15 turns, IW takes 4 turns...GNP is 50% higher than second place. Whipping that settler from RD is more interesting right now...

[Krill]

OK, so I have settlers coming out on eot T61 (triple whip SB), T63 (double whip BM), T67 (double whip SB) and T70 (double whip BM). And I just played T60. I also have the second GS pair finishing eot T70 and so could figure out a whip for a further settler from RD.

I'm not sure how much I like the idea of 4 workers for 8 settlers though, what with needing to hook up food and chop a single forest.

Oh wait. All the city sites I'm about to plant only have a single land food resource anyway. Some don't even have that.

[Krill]

Only iron nearby is to the SE that I have no intention of settling for a while.




This is the one; pretty much have to settle in this location for the fish.





I'm now reconsidering just how crucial this city site is going to be. Unfortunately, it's really far from the capital, but I don't really see many other options if I want to be able to defend my southern border. I need to have a city around this iron, and there is literally no food between the lack crab and that crab in the east, 7 tiles between them with nothing. Thoth will be able to plant a city for crab inner ring so I need to find a way to stop him doing that.





This just pisses me off. Horse, ivory, iron and pig in a single city.

[Krill]

This turn pace is just stupid. I played the turn in the afternoon before taking my sister to a friends house.

I cam home, ate, fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. Woke up. Oh look there's a new turn. Internet fucks around for 10 minutes. Play it. Stumble off to bed.

Wake up 4 hours later. Check phone. Wait, I'm the last person to play the turn. Did I forget to hit enter? No, new turn. Play that, and the next one because no worries about double moves. Go to make coffee.

Come back half an hour later and half the players have already played the new turn.

We seem to be averaging 3-4 turns per day. We've just played T64. This is a test game, it doesn't need to be played to the conclusion, T150 would be the best I hoped for prior to the game start.

We'll hit T150 by the end of the month if this pace keeps up.

[Krill]

Other things that I've noticed:

Thoth has IW, his jungle gems are hooked. So he is rocking 2 religions (he founded Judaism and Hinduism), gold and gems. He has more happy than me until I hook the ivory and the furs, at that point it's about equal. But he seems to have similar tech position as I do now that I have IW but I'm down on the religious path. I have a handful of beakers put into MC but really, not much there.

No one seems to be going for Oracle. Which sucks. I lack the hammers to go for it. Not enough forests to chop, no good production city. I'd probably have gone for something like Oracle>Machinery. I get the feeling that frankly anyone could do this and get a huge beaker lead out of it, and I don't really see a way to stop it.

CH is starting to fall behind pretty badly. I need to keep focus on killing him and taking his land, but frankly I might not even need to do much to get that. Thoth is the main opponent and his tech rate seems decent, so I still think getting a good border against Thoth is the correct first move, just the map is making that much more difficult than usual.

My tech path at the moment is to head towards Monarchy. I doubt I can get Feudalism before my gold runs out; Monarchy via all the prior religious tech and then revolt into OR and HR is probably the right move, unless I can get Feud down to a 6-7 turn tech for Vassalage. But PRO longbows are critical to protecting far flung cities even against swords.

[Krill]

Game mechanics question. If I plant a city on the sign south of the he capital with no new roads does that city get trade routes if I don't have sailing. I think not but I'm not certain.

[novice]

Coast in your culture provides trade routes before sailing. So if you can control the crabs tile 4S of your capital you will get a trade connection by ship via Star Bug. I don't see any of your cities grabbing that tile though.