[SPOILER] Krill rambles on

[Krill]

T104 turn report




So Tsargon planted a city pretty much ideally spaced to fit with Chesterton. I settle Chesterton T108, and Porthill settled next turn T105. HAK only has an axe/archer pair in Scott Harvey and he just captured Gonnorrhea, so I'm not concerned about holding Porthill. I'm more concerned with HAKs reaction when he sees 5 HA of various health sitting on that plains hill and reacting weirdly.

Note Tsargon will not have vision one my borders even once I found Porthill, but will see me move the settler onto Chesterton hill.





HAK lost a couple of units trying to kill TW stack that he moved onto that forest hill that contains an archer. I don't quite know why TW moved his stack: when facing certain destruction, often best to just delete units to not givew GG points IMO, it's the same logic for when you delete scouting units. That said, if we had kept the turn order I would have had the option to kill some of those units for GG points myself...if I had declared on HAK. Which I wouldn't have done, so no worries there.

Turley is empty. HAK is streched.

Aureau contains 1 sword, 2 axes and 3 spears. I want to attack it with 4 cats, 2 axes and 4 swords plus whatever HA I can scrounge...which is about 8-9 total, but I don't want to give HAK an openning to invade whilst my units are out of position, so I may need to delay and up numbers to about 7 cats total for 3 on defense, then 8 swords and 3 axes. Really the decision to invade is going to be quite fluid.





Settler eoT107 for Maybank (sign just visible under city improvements), workboat eoT108 and eoT110, the former for Maybank city, and the latter for the clam at Trent Dock. I will delay hooking the silk a turn to speed up settling Maybank by a turn (T110). Maybank crab is hooked T112.





Library finished eoT107, but at that point need to build a worker because losing hte pig.





building the settler form next turn, working hte forest to get to 55 hammers by eoT109, whip T110, overflow workboat eoT111, and settle Westport on T113 with fish hooked. And find a worker to get a grass hill mined by T118.

I think I'm going to cottage everything here. I was considering using Gladstone as a major hammer port, but with the next two cities to hte north dedicated to hammers, this city is too good a commerce location and still picks up a good amount of late game hammers from the silver mines, hills and a levee. I'm sensing Ottawa-porn minus the Bureaucracy.





Whip the lighthouse T108, then pretty much grow in preparation of Caste workshops sucking up the spare food. Nothing wrong with growing on coast IMO. And use that lake.





Whip the lighthouse next turn, and again grow on coast to delay the need for worker labour. Probably whip a worker at size 4 though? At least will build a barracks for the border pop, and opverflow hammers would help with that.





Granary chopped T106, steal the pigs T106 as well, but hte two workers have to mine that roaded grass hill for the capital which would delay a lighthouse. I think the plan should probably be a double whip at size 4. The clam will be hooked on T113, immediately on border pop whilst the cow is hooked by two workers.

[Krill]

Congratulations, my empire is so large it spills over all four sides of the minimap!

[GermanJoey]

sick!

[Krill]

Well, what's sick is if everything goes to plan, I get the keys to new house on Friday, and I can finally start using this newfangled fibre internet. And then I get to spend the weekend moving the various detritus of life to the new place from storage at the parents.

Turn 105 report




Whipping the library on T107 pops borders eoT112. Settling Trent Vale then seals off the game, so the Game can be improved form the turn after settling TV. I'll probably double whip a settler out of Lw after this, around T113 (with 1 chop) to settle Basford T116. As an aside, I've changed my mind on the settler from Gladstone, discussed last turn. I'm sending that settler to the TV site. The entire western seaboard will be settled on the founding of Basford.





Just an update on Bloxwich.





Whipped the lighthouse. Some bright spark could run the numbers between the copper and the hamlet, but as I would prefer to have another 20 units stack to hit HAK with I think the hammers are more important right now.





The more I look at cities like this, the more I wish I had Caste. Oh well, Couldn't hwip the settlers I need if I did htat, could I?





With that happy cap, whipping the barracks and then going to whip a lighthouse: I'd prefer to go straight to whipping units but I need the 2 food tiles to grow onto. The workboats I need, I now only need to build 2 workboats thanks to TW, so I'll time their completion with the border pops and travel time ie due eoT112 and eoT114. The allows me to double whip the lighthouse on T110 (to size 2 and off a resource tile), overflow out the workboat on T111 and then the second work boat is completed on schedule with growth between dumping the overflow into the wb and finishing it. I would prefer to delay whipping the lighthouse to only 1pop whip it, but if I do that the first work boat comes out a turn later, and that delays improving the fish: trading 2 food and 1 hammer for 3 food (and the commerce?)





Borders didn't pop into correct shape for some reason? No worries...I'l just have to use the pig from next turn.





With the border pop due eoT115, I can easily have 3 workers in position to imrpvoe the corn...but I think the corn may be avaiable sooner due to settling a city north of it around T114? Again, shouldn't be hard to get a few workers onto the corn to improve it, especially as the corn needs roading to hook up the northern city site anyway. The granary is going to be slow though. Probably best to time the roaded forest chop into the granary (as Werbergh pops borders in about 7 turns?)





Barracks>Granary. Wheat will be improved T107 (and both food resources used on T108 when Chesterton is founded). Chopping the barracks and then 1 pop whipping the granary. Both forests are chopped after that (minus road tile to Chesterton) so chopped T111 and T112 respectively. Growth eoT110. Barracks eoT111, Granary eoT113, and overflow into a lighthouse.





Overview. Note settler HAK chariot and that Tsargon still has no idea what I'm doing. Oh, and HAK settled a nice front city for me. Ciompletely irrelevant though, it'd probably get taken by Tsargon and I'd be OK with that. Provided I still get a gold resource somewhere.

Note that once Chesterton is settled, there is only one legal city location remaining, the tile south of the peak. That is a flatland tile surrounded by hills. It's a shit city location. If all three players remained extant then I feel this three way border is actually pretty stable. Not that the first assumption is accurate though.





You see that Crop yield? When I was down almost 60?

I want to make it 100 over second place by T120.

[Krill]

One last thing. When I settled hte last city, my BPT went up by 1. That did bring 8 units into my borders though, but I'm going to reach the conquerors plateau in short order.

[Krill]

T106 Turn report

This turn I started thinking more about the game as a whole, rather than just what I was doing. I think that this game is probably one of the bloodiest in PB history. Lots of battles.

I opened the game up to this:




Yes. Obviously. I'm a whore for trade routes at thee best of times. This is like another 7 cities worth of trade routes for me, and as I now have concrete plans for settling the western seaboard. This just put me 400 beakers closer to Code of Laws. I'm happy with that.





Um. AT will capture at least 2 cities. I don't know what units he has sent to the "southern" front cities, but these northern cities are toast.

Due to the lack of support troops, I don't see AT taking the capital shrine city, so I don't see Adrien collapsing and thus I have no need for northern troop build up to take my share of the spoils (which is like 3 cities I want). If AT does somehow break Adrien then...sucks to be wrong, I suppose.

These are my plans:




Yeah, this is straight forward really, as it is dictated by build times. I will build an axe in Bloxwich (not a cat) and whip the cat on T109 in Sandwell, to overflow out another axe on T110. That allows me to move in with 2 swords, 3 axes and 4 cats. A fifth cat will join the stack on T114, so Aureus will be bombarded on T113, T114 and T115 down to 0% culture defence. Then there are 8 HA that can be used as stack defence and attackers as well, and even if TW builds 5 more units in that city I would still have more real hitters and 5 cats to slam into the city, so I can take the city out on T116 with reasonable amount of certainty. Plus I have a medic 3 warrior in that stack to dissuade any plans of attacking my units on the hill.





17 workers and it's not enough. I feel like I need another 3 at least, but they can wait. I can cope well enough with 17 workers and 25 cities. I think.





City locations and settling turns. I've tried to dot map this area with only three cities, but I always come to the conclusion that although I'll have to pay an extra 120 hammers for a additional granary and lighthouse, the Basford location gets enough food from the lighthouse lakes plus the extra build queue to whip in to make up for the 16 worker turn cost from chopping those forests earlier (and the "loss" of the optional forge in another city). Basford is probably going to be intentionally crippled by giving away the fish longer term once it's hit a predeetermined size around size 10. That allows the other cities to become better late game cities and to utilise the food better to reach those larger sizes.

The worker 2E of Wolstanton will get the roads in place for Bradwell and to prechop the roaded forests to help get the granaries up. The only city that needs to pop borders is Bradwell for the fish. Basford could do it, but due to delay in settling it it's better to just chop a barracks IMO.





On that food number, I counted the amount of food I get just from hooking up all the food available to me by T120, and it's about 85 food per turn, including the food from new city tiles. I need to focus on increasing that power number though...





OK, here's the issue: why is Gavagai increasing power that much? He borders 2 people AFAICT, Barteq whom he has already fought with, and Tsargon. Barteq I know has significantly higher power than Tsargon just from the units I've seen wandering around 15 turns ago, so that only leaves 1 realistic conclusion: Tsargon gonna die.

I don't like that, not one bit. I'm not in position to benefit from Tsargon being...preoccupied. I don't even see any of Tsargons cities I'd actually like to capture. But the main concern is that HAK has cities that are only separated from Gavagai by like 12 tiles. I need to get a move on to capture HAKs northern border, ASAP, get it out of revolt and damn well defended.

I may be forced to do that and then fend off Gavagai whilst I dismantle HAK. It's a challenge projecting an army 30 tiles away from your capital before T110. So I'm kinda considering putting everything into military to just whip out an SoD to do the latter whilst I build HA to do the former.

[Ceiliazul]

T106 Turn report

So I'm kinda considering putting everything into military to just whip out an SoD to do the latter whilst I build HA to do the former.

So Much Popcorn

Love the reporting, you're assembling a great "newbie go read this before your first game" thread, keep it up!

[Krill]

Thanks, but nothing's perfect: what could I do to make it more useful, interesting or informative?

As much as I like the idea of writing a 2K essay on weird, esoteric details, I know most people just look at them and go

I can talk about the metagame, and I can talk about the generic strategy. I can give history lessons and compare between games. What do people actually want to read, and what is it people want to understand better?

Whatever people say about this version of the mod though...I think lurkers are liking the bloodshed. Just need a few tweaks to slow the game down slightly, and I imagine maps need to have a bit less food (this map is food heavy even by ordinary standards right?) Do people want me to explain how mod changes affect certain things and the variances between base BtS and RtR, linking it to this game?

[Ceiliazul]

Most interesting things to me:

War reports with tactical planning/execution
Big picture goals analysis (domestic and tech and military)
Meta/geopolitics analysis, and history thereof
Mechanical tips on gameplay (I.e. Whipping mechanics)
Mod thoughts from the chef who has to eat his own cooking
Player dossiers (tier lists are a quick and dirty version of this but deeper is better
Occasional flavor stories: tour the land, or battle from the view of a horcher, or similar

All just ideas, I like the way you're running the show so far. And yes, the pace of the game is faster as mich from the map as from the mod... Not sure if this pitboss is useful in evaluating game pace tweaks.

[Krill]

You might get a flavour story or two: All hte city names are based of my hometown, so I could do a Commodore special or two. If you don't mind looking at a dour, grey, run down industrial city.

The other stuff, yeah, I can weave that in.