teh: Frederick of Germany

[teh]

Well it also makes creating them easier for me - as the turns are fresher in my mind (and I try to take 10-20 screenshots per turn in case I need them for the reports). I'll try to keep to this 2-3 turn report schedule.

You're right about space running out - these following turns should be more interesting in terms of more player interactions - I wouldn't be surprised if there's a DOW soon (not from me!). Sullla and Archduke share a border in the west actually, so there might already be some tension between them.

[Rowain]

Your Horse-city-spot looks rather dry. How do you plan to get housing up there?

[Ituralde]

Thank you for the reports, especially the faster intervals. Hope you can keep up the pace, as it makes following all threads that much more interesting.

[teh]

Your Horse-city-spot looks rather dry. How do you plan to get housing up there?

I was thinking of placing an aqueduct to the west of the city location, but upon further research, mountain natural wonders actually don't allow you to place an aqueduct unlike regular mountains why Firaxis, why...

[teh]

Turn 52
Mysticism is completed. It grants me a free envoy, and it unlocks the 2 great scientist point card. I use the free policy change to shuffle my policy cards:



Agoge is kept for cheap slingers. I switch into Diplomatic League - the free envoy goes to Stockholm where I had no envoys before, so I get two envoys there with this policy. That adds 2.1 science to my empire.

I take the +50% settler policy out since I'm not planning on getting any more settlers in the near future, and get the +2 great scientist card (recall that the first great scientist gives every library +1 science). Urban planning and ilkum are great economic policies, so they stay. I'll switch from slingers to builders in production pretty soon either way. I decide to research military tradition (5 turns). It grants flanking bonuses to combat units (which would help in offense AND defense), and it gives me another free policy change chance in 5 turns to switch back to the +2 influence point card and to the -1 gold maintenance card (which would be great for countering all the archers I'm planning to upgrade to).

In the meantime, archery shows eta 4 turns, but it should speed up with the extra science from Stockholm.

I decide to grab even more slingers, so Cologne (recall that it has housing issues) switches from Granary (2 turns left) to a slinger (4 turn build). Aachen has a slinger in production due next turn.

Not much on the international front, other than Sullla being first to 9 civics.

Turn 53

The slinger in Aachen is out. It starts moving towards the increasingly more contested center region. Aachen starts the production of yet another slinger (2 turns). The settler moves along to the horses spot.

At his rate, Sullla will get his great general in about 17 turns.

Turn 54

Archery is due next turn, but I stop researching it for the moment and start working on Masonry (I might need an emergency city wall so masonry is not that of a waste of research). I wanted to start working towards apprenticeship, but it requires horseback riding, which requires archery with the latest patch, so a small diversion for the moment. As soon as the two slingers in production are out (one in Aachen in 2 turns, one in Cologne next turn), I'll finish archery. That would give me 5 total archers once upgraded. There is another slinger in production in Aachen, but it's in 8 turns and I don't want to delay Apprenticeship anymore than I have done.



Latest screenshot of the center region. You can see two slingers to the west of Mainz (one 1W and the other NW-NW), both fortified on hills in case someone decides to attack. Yuris' two eagle warriors are marching by the city and Sullla's warrior is also here. I finally moved my warrior past Sullla's city, so it would be able to provide some escort duty for the incoming settler soon.

As discussed above, housing will be a big issue for this city. It will start with 2 housing, the horse pasture and the banana plantations would give a total of 1 housing, and  a granary would boost housing up to 5 eventually. I was counting on an aqueduct here (1W of city center) but as discussed above, it seems Firaxis screwed that up and Mount Everest doesn't count as a fresh water source... Still this city would give good control in the center and even at 5 eventual pop (without additional farms to get the housing up above 5), it has plenty of good tiles to work. The only issue would be to successfully thwart any attacks here, and I hope my eventual archers would dissuade any attacks before they come. My only trader is going to finish the current trade route in about 3-4 turns, and I would start a trade route from the horses city to Aachen to build a road network all the way to the capital. My hope is that such a route would pass through Mainz, too.

By the way, for what it's worth, here are the military strength scores for each civ:

Sullla: 85
Yuris: 84
Archduke: 65
Me: 65 (it was 50 before I got a slinger out, so I'll definitely catch with the leaders here once I have two more slingers out - and pass them with the archers).

I feel more secure with the knowledge. It doesn't seem like one civ is gearing up towards invasion, though the increased amount of military in the center certainly ups the tension - at least for me.



Here's the latest screenshot of my core. Mainz will grow to size 2 next turn and it will pick the copper tile. You can see the settler NW of Cologne; it's slowly but steadily moving northwest. SE of Cologne is the slinger, also moving in the same direction. I have some districts placed down like I discussed in a couple of posts ago, but so far, I have zero actual production gone to them. I'm in the middle in terms of both culture and science production and I have more gold than any other civs right now (not necessarily a good thing, but I'm planning to spend at least 150 gold upgrading slingers pretty soon).

[Singaboy]

Are you planning to back fill those two remaining cities soon? I like that bold approach with your current settler backed by potentially 5 archers. Definitely a strong deterrent.

Also, great that you are updating us regularly now that the game gets 'hotter'

[teh]

Not in the next 10 turns I think - but I'll consider them after that. With the situation in the center building up, I might be bogged down with some conflict and I might need to focus even more on production so I don't want to put down some concrete plans - I'll look at the situation after I settle the horses city. In any case, I really need to get some builders out and that takes the priority over settlers now, but once I have 2-3 builders out (Aachen can get them out in ~4 turns right now and it would only speed up once I mine some of the nearby hills there, and Cologne can get them in ~7 turns).

[teh]

Turn 55

Another slinger is out in Aachen. It starts working on a builder, as I feel safe with the amount of slingers I have now. The builder will be out in 4 turns, and Aachen will grow to size 5 in 5 turns. Checking the production values, Aachen can complete its commercial hub in 9 turns now and its campus in 11 turns now, but those figures should be cut down with the future mining of the grassland hills here.

Cologne, in the meantime, is going to produce a slinger next turn, and it's going to grow to size 5 next turn. It's going to need some builder help and I might decide to buy the two tiles to bring the iron (to the west, near the entrance to my peninsula) inside my borders to mine it. It will cost some gold, though, but given that I have 245 (with 11.5 income) right now, and that 150 will go towards upgrading 5 slingers to archers (not necessarily in one go), I should have enough gold to buy those two tiles in a couple of turns. It's not in a such a rush though, since I don't even have a builder out yet. Food for the future turns. Cologne can complete its commercial hub in 17 turns - desperately in need of more cogs here!

Mainz grew to size 2, picking up the very nice copper hill (1f2p2g -> to be 1f3p2g once mined -> 1f4p2g with apprenticeship). It has a slinger in production to be out in 4 turns, but I won't delay archery anymore for that, so all of the production will transfer to an archer production there.



Here's a view of the center region + northwest of my peninsula. Yuris has 2 eagle warriors moving around here, but I doubt he's going to attack me. I have 2 slingers (soon to be 3) here and my warrior, and the settler finally arrived to the gates of Mainz.

One more turn of research into Masonry, and next turn, I'll finish Archery.

I see no more settler production from other civs (like me), so it looks like that phase of the game is over.

Turn 56

Cologne finishes the final slinger (my 5th so far) and grows to size 5 at the same time. It starts working on the interrupted granary. With the production overflow, it will produce the granary in 1 turn, bringing the much needed 2 housing here (housing is 5/5 now).



Here's a view Cologne. I decide to place the newly grown citizen to work the whales (2f1g) instead of a marsh (3f) here as there's plenty of food here. I would work a hill or forest tile, except there are no inside the borders, so I decide to pick up an extra gold here.

Not much else this turn. The settler moves NW-NW to be NW of the city center of Mainz, and I make sure there are military units of my own between the settler and Yuris' eagle warriors here. No need to tempt the fates by putting an exposed settler out there.

Turn 57

Archery AND Military Tradition are completed. Next on the science side is Horseback Riding (5 turns), and then Apprenticeship (25 turns, but will soon be cut in half as I'm going to have 3 mines definitely by the time I start researching this tech). On the civic side, I choose to research Games And Recreation (12 turns - boost is Construction tech, but I don't think I'll have that researched in time) since it's on the way to Feudalism.



Here's my policies after I use the free policy change that comes with the civic research completion. Agoge is replaced with Conscription, since I'm not building slingers anymore (agoge served its purpose well) and Conscription will cover the maintenance cost of the archers I'm going to have pretty soon. The other change is that I get charismatic leader back (+2 influence points) to get more envoys faster.

Mainz's slinger production turns into an archer production. With Agoge, it said 4 turns, but now that I switched that out, the archer would come out in 6 turns. However, I switch the production to monument (15 turns) since I'll need the culture here for quicker border pops.

Cologne finishes its granary, and the growth to size 6 drops down from 43 turns to a more manageable 8 turns with the increasing housing and the extra 1 food from the granary.  I still keep the 5th citizen at the whales since there's plenty of food here as I said before.



You can see Yuris' two eagle warriors moving to my peninsula. The slinger on the truffles tile will be able to move SW next turn to block the eagle warrior from moving further inland if it decides to do so. Also notice that I already upgraded one of the slingers here to an archer (SW of Cologne).



Here's the screenshot for the center. One of the slingers moved to where the new city will be settled since I didn't want Yuris to move his eagle warrior there and block my settler. The settler SE of the first slinger is covered by the warrior, and it will be able to settle down next turn. The second slinger covers the southern side; Yuris' eagle warrior in the south is too far to attack anyway. You can see the third slinger SE of Mainz, too. So, between the new city and Mainz, I'll have a warrior and 3 slingers (soon archers) defending, with another archer in Mainz to be produced in 6 turns (or even faster if I add some more production there) if needed.

Sullla is the first to 9 techs now. Everyone else has 8 techs.

In terms of civics, Sullla is at 9, I'm at 8, Archduke at 7, and Yuris at 10.

Here are the most recent military strength scores for each civ:

Me: 95 (it was 50 before I got 3 slinger out, so we know that each slinger is 15 points, and this will increase more next turn once the game registers my first slinger->archer upgrade).
Sullla: 85
Yuris: 84
Archduke: 80 (He was at 65 3 turns ago, so a slinger out for him, too?)

Given these numbers and the relative lack of increase for the other civs in these past 3 turns, I think I'll be able to defend my cities if needed.

[shinghand]

When will you will upgrade your slingers to archers? Are you going to upgrade them immediately/soon, or are you adopting a wait and see policy?

[teh]

The upgrade requires the unit to be inside your borders, so I couldn't upgrade the slingers near the settler last turn even if I wanted to. I'm adopting a wait and see policy. I played the new turn, and settled the horses spot, and upgraded the slinger in the city center tile to an archer just to be able to defend without wasting a turn for an upgrade. The other slingers are not upgraded yet (I have an archer and a slinger near Cologne, a slinger in Mainz, and an archer and a slinger in the new city - Frankfurt). I need the gold for other purposes (mainly buying tiles), so I'll try to delay the upgrades as long as I can. You'll see in the new report, but I have 2 slingers, an archer and a warrior in the center, and that should be enough to deter even without upgrades.