Thread of Lost Tales: Bismarck of Japan

[The Black Sword]

I'm thinking that Ichabod's right and the Oracle isn't worth it. Main reasoning:

-Delays Sailing, the best value tech.
-Engineer into Mids is a big selling point of the Oracle. But when the Mids is only 250h and not 500, that's not so valuable.
-Maths path is more a tech for hammers trade which I think is the right move here. Though with 3c IC trade routes I should add Currency to the list of important techs.
-Pretty sure I can turn the saved forests into another wonder later.

If I have time I might try a quick sim of both options but otherwise I'll probably go the Maths route.

[Ichabod]

What about the Great Lighthouse? Seems good for this map and you'll have the techs for it.

Edit: oh, I see you already talked about it. I think you are right, waiting for maths before trying for it should be good.

[The Black Sword]

Horses appeared on the island on the opposite side from my capital such that they can shared with either the pig or the fish. That further reinforces the need to take to the seas. The next few mainland cities have a bunch of icky 4f resources instead.

Next up in tech I'm going to finish off Mysticism for a monument in Gondolin(the pig city) before we go for Sailing and Writing for OBs. I'll try to weave in a pair of scouting workboats to find our north and south neighbours and trigger the 3c trade routes.

GJ just founded his 4th city while I whipped my 2nd settler. Mildly scary, hopefully my granaries are better. We're the only 2 who have done any whipping so far, the others know this is not RtR right? To be fair it might not be worth it for productive civs and Borsche has just revolted.

[The Black Sword]

Looks like Borsche doublemoved me here to threaten my worker:




He didn't know the worker was there obviously. I'm going to doublemove him back to cover the worker. I'll send him a PM about it too.

[The Black Sword]

The Borsche border:




Note that we got a trade route this turn after we researched Sailing. I thought we'd need to wait for his Cap's borders to pop but I'll take it. Now we're off to Writing for OBs. Hopefully we can 'persuade' Borsche not to nuke them before that:




He's defogged enough here that he'll have a trade route back to me if he researches Sailing too. Just don't do anything stupid!

The trade connection shows he's hooked a pig so that's where his other city is, which makes sense.

Meanwhile you can also see the Fenn/bandit scout who blew holes in my '3 rings' theory. Now I'm thinking it's just one ring set at an angle and looped around the torus 3 times. Similar setup but we won't be giving each other 3c trade routes so quickly. With that in mind I vetoed my early workboat plans to speed up my galleys instead. It also makes the GLH better value, as you're less dependent on OBs early on.

In the West, I'm off to find a route past this barb city to trade with Scipio:


My workers now defog enough to send the warrior further out.

3 cities:


Growing to 6 to double-whip a settler for the moai spot and then overflow another worker to help finish improving it.



Will hit 40/100 next turn to double-whip the settler for the copper. Then grow back up to 4 to whip another worker immediately. On the topic of farms in this city, it will be giving away any shared tiles long term anyway, so we might as well dedicate any of it's 'own' tiles to production. We're not going to put much infrastructure and it will be relatively expendable in the late game.



1 whip the monument and then probably grow to 6 for a settler whip.




Workers setting up the next two cities. I decided not to chop out a size 1 granary in the copper city. I'll use the worker turns to road the city tile and improve the cows faster instead. It is slower but we'll have 7 Math forests in this city that we can turn into a wonder later. It makes so many hammers it can finish the granary at size 2 anyway. We'll also need a lot of worker turns back in Gondolin for 2 flood plains, the stone and setting up the corn/sheep city.

I'm thinking of putting masonry before Maths btw, particularly so I can start building the Mids earlier and then chop them to completion as Maths comes in. At this stage expansion is becoming more expensive and we have enough cities that techs are becoming good value and I think it makes sense to get more beakers instead of hammers. Either failgold or Mids helps with that.

Demos looking good for pretty much the first time:



(double Writing pre-req but then we're competing with Henge/religion Haram and everyone else is pretty far behind).

[The Black Sword]

We settle Dor-Lomin and Borsche builds some archers. His warrior looks like he doesn't want to declare war anymore, so that's good news.

[The Black Sword]

Well, Dreylin/Grimace built the GLH.




That micro to build that thing by T52 must have been pretty impressive. That's both a lot of hammers and a lot of tech to get through. At the same time, I really doubt the strategy behind the decision is sound. It costs 260h and they're surely sitting on 2 cities right now gaining 4gpt and 2gppt immediately. Even if you assume it has no effect on OBs I think this has set them pretty far behind.

[The Black Sword]

Looking at T74 Pyramids, assuming I get OBs and reach Maths by then. The tricky part is trying to get the appropriate support to settle the island cities as well.

I don't like Borsche's increasing power either and he's just popped borders in his cow city to get access to copper. I don't see why anyone would want to attack over this jungle region but then why does he need the troops at all?

[The Black Sword]

Looks like T73 Pyramids might be possible. I'm not entirely sure yet I can get Maths in time, I was a few beakers off in the sim I ran today. It wastes 3 worker turns compared to the T74 plan moving onto and off forests and I lose a cottage turn too to scrape together the hammers but that seems worth it to shave a turn off if I can.

I settled my 5th city Eglarest on T56, the same turn as Fennbandit settled their 5th.




I like the way the river splits my empire into northern and southern road networks. I'm pondering building the Moai ASAP in Eglarest, using it to border pop instead of a monument. Then use the Pyramids happy to quickly grow the city to size 7-9, along with Gondolin and Menegroth. That's 125h for the border pop, 1gppt and ~6hpt. A monument does get access to the fish earlier though, I need to figure out how much earlier.

I got OBs with Borsche the turn Writing came in. Here's where his extra power is:




Despite orphaning the fish that's a very nice hammer location, possible HE spot. I'm only getting 3gpt from him, his 4th city doesn't appear to be connected to his road network yet. I assume he's getting Sailing now to get routes back to me, but it's nice of him to give them to me earlier. +1 Fortright trade relations. Scipio has refused to open borders and recently settled his 3rd city. I also offered some to FennBandit, who accepted. My scout is moving through Borsche's territory to defog a route while their scout explores me as I presume they research Sailing too. Hopefully I get some goodwill back and maybe lock out a Haram or GJ on his other side from OBs. I just got graphs on FennBandit and they're doing very well but I'm still a bit more worried about the other 2.

[The Black Sword]

I turned on the food button this turn:



and it looks like Borsche has really clear-cut his land:




If I make the Pyramids on T73, I'll have just gotten Maths and have around 9 cities. The Hanging Gardens + aqueduct is 250h, so we need about 8 cities to break even. Assuming I lay down a few more as I build the HG it could be pretty good value.