Aurorarcher is looking for blood

[Aurorarcher]

When I saw this on T21 I thought either a) plako is about to die b) someone else is about to die. And it turns out Jale got eliminated . That's what you got for being to aggressive with your scout/warrior I believe . Oh yeah, plako kept the city. Probably smart on this small distances, the maintenace cost is going to hurt still for a while.




And yeah, also found Mardoc's capital. On T22 he moved his C1 scout to that hill within his BFC. I moved my scout 2S of that tile on, he can kill my scout if he wants to risk it 50/50 or if he has a warrior in the fog (and attacks with the help of the forest). Anyway, not a big deal if I lose the scout.

I should probably send a warrior to one of the hills south of me, just in case plako moves forward more. I really doubt it though, by the time he would reach my borders I should have 3-4 warriors.

Demos T22. That's not too high power for plako. Do those wolves from the WS even give power? They should I believe but not sure. I think he might've just sent Lucian + scout forward to find his target.




Settler ready in 8 turns from now.

[Aurorarcher]

Also, forget to mention in the earlier post but is that flashed tile, plains floodplain, intended or a mistake?

[Bobchillingworth]

Mistake. Mardoc was a fair sport and didn't claim it with his capital.

[Aurorarcher]

That's nice of him. Though, I wonder why this wasn't fixed when the game got restarted? I know by that time Mardoc had already played his turn. Or maybe he didn't post about it at that point untill it was too late? Anyway... that tile is simply awesome. Not a game changing but still very good.

[Bobchillingworth]

We figured that it wasn't worth restarting (again) if he didn't claim it with his capital; it's an unintended advantage, but it should't be game-breakingly good.

[Aurorarcher]

Yeah, but I guess you guys didn't know about that (the mistake) when the game was restarted due to Orthus? Or did you? Not that it matters much anymore but...

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah we didn't know about it at that time.

[Aurorarcher]

My poor scout is about become a meal:




Well, that's unfortunate but the poor guy at least did his share of scouting.

Also Mardoc didn't gamble with my scout- so I moved him under his culture along the coast. Unfortunately Mardoc got +10 culture event at some point because his 3rd ring popped already in spite of being CRE. I can still sneak past if Mardoc lets me- though if he wants to kill my scout with warrior he could easily do it.

I've been thinking where to settle in the north, and in fact I can't quite make up my mind here. All of these sites are going to share Pigs from capital + some additional river grass. I really would like to settle on the marsh Rice (B in the pic below) but there are some issues. One of them is healt penalty from all that jungle crap + not being on river, B would allow me to settle from Clams later though. B is a bit further away though and can't be inforces in 2 turns like the other spots. C/D have similar health issues. D is out of the picture because it can't improve Dyes quickly enough. A is my favourite right now, it grabs land nicely towards Mardoc, it is on a river (no health issues) and it can work pretty good tiles even pre-BW (Dyes + 5 farms + mine at size 7). After BW even Marsh Rice along the river under the jungle can be 5f which ain't quite bad. It also won't lose any other tiles than Clams from that corner.




In the south plans are like this. Not going to comment much here as I haven't thought these as much yet as I'm going north first anyway. But A (or 1S of A actually also could work) or C are my favourites. Maybe 1S of A actually as it'd get Rice quickly + after border pop it'd have tons of food. But almost no hammers at all! Only reason to settle on C is that the spot gets defensive bonus. I know that plako is somewhere close me in south. But this city is not going to be our border city so eh, why waste those hammers?

Notice the sign of Slavery- I think with this much of food Slavery could actually be used to some extent. Though, I'm not sure if it's worth to whip away aristofarms later, but I might give it a try in a SIM to see how it would work. Slavery would actually sync well with Calabim play. I wish Slavery just came a bit earlier but Philosophy ain't that far-away.

[Aurorarcher]

It's been a while since a report. I've been travelling a lot and basically have just played the turns quickly and moved on.

2nd city coming on T33. I'm trying to improve my two new happy resources from 2nd city (Dyes + Sugar) ASAP and grow capital to size 8. I'm doing surprisingly badly in demos, especially GNP (maybe pics from next turn), maybe others have better resources (calendar resources?) + teching with prereq bonus? Only plako is behind me in GNP and that's because he is dealing with 2 cities already.

I'm teching to Mysticism first then Mining. Getting that EC up and running quickly is one of the goals of mine, though now that I realized how small the distances are between the civs, hmm.... Considering that, finding Copper quickly might've been the right call. I'll still probably get Mining before my 4th city.

Also found Dave with my scout on T31, his capital is SW of Mardoc. I was lucky to dodge Spider on my way there. I'm trying to improve my two additional happy resources from 2nd city (Dyes + Sugar) asap and grow capital to size 8 too.

[Aurorarcher]

Here are some promised pics.

Settling party ready to settle on T33. Worker will improve Dyes as soon as possible. Capital builds 3rd worker before Dyes is ready, then grows to size 7 and builds a settler. Might put a warrior between there somewhere (or build that in 2nd city).




Good thing I played this safe with two warriors. Unless there are some Griffon(s) somewhere somehow I should be able to survive that one warrior. I wonder how that spawned actually... I thought the barbs start spawning when number of cities > (or equal) 1.5*players in the game = 6. Guess not. There are 5 cities in the world currently.

Here's Dave's border. Moving 1S of the Elephant next turn.