[SPOILERS] Kaiser and Adrienier are leading Japan to a good bowl of Ramen

[Kaiser]

Turn 25 - the race for Shido



Look at that hornets nest I triggered with my Slinger, he luckliy survived but is now completely surrounded by barbarians. The Horse Archer likely came from the South as well, so if my distraction is working, we will have distracted two units from Kikyo already.
There is even a Spearman, which typically means that a barb camp is in 2 field radius from its current position. Judging from its facing it is NE NE from our current slingers position.



Bacchus is confirmed to have the same tech rate than Ichabod and me, which I can currently only explain by him having met a scientific city state or he is working a natural wonder tile.
It is good to know that he has a similar tech rate because I started to be afraid that he was already outteching us and the fact that he did not meet anybody until now likely means he is likely in a secluded area with some builder mode ahead of him.



I decided to get some more information instead of doing few damage to the barbs before they kill my Slinger.
This is a crazy PETRA location, likely the best of this game. There are 8 DH, 2 DSilver and 3 Oasis in the BFH of the location our Slinger originally was. This means 10 mines on top of 2 food 1 cog 2 gold desert fields for that city.

However it suffers from a similar problem than the location near Ichabod, it lacks the tiles to build PETRA fast. Maybe it is possible to shoot it with the first Great Engineer?
We might reconsider our C2? location based on this, but I doubt we will.



Our Scout did not find anything special, next we will likely move NE on the GH and see from there where we head.



I also checked the pantheons this turn, Suboptimal has choosen Sacred Path giving him additional Faith for HS adjacent jungle tiles. This could indicate that he tries to go for an early religion, although he is guaranteed the last one. In any case, we need to beat him to that and hopefulyl will be able to do that.

He probably is building on his strength based on the fact that he already has +5 faith coming from the 2 religious city states and his dyes tile. In his case I would probably have gone for divine spark instead as Arabia wants to place down many campus districts even before the HS and thus would benefit hugely from it increasing its gain on Great Scientists.



Ichabod made his early aggression plan clear by choosing the God of the Forge pantheon giving him +25% production towards Ancient and Classical military units. This is huge bonus for the moment as his capital with size 2 can work the stone and the sheep for 6 + 4 from his capital cogs. In Agoge and with GotF he produces 18.75 cogs per turn for units, two turning Slingers and 3 turning Warriors.
He might try to rush our city with early units and we need to plan for that possibility. Hopefully he wont start this project right away but when he sees our city beeing settled meaning it takes him 6 turns for two addiotional warriors and 7 turns of traveling time for them to our settling spot.

Luckily so far he invested quite some money (134 gold) in tile buys, he probably finished an barb camp giving 50 gold to explain the difference. Also he does not yet have Craftsmanship researched meaning that he does not yet have access to the Agoge policy.

And then it hit me like a hammer, I just realized that his city beeing at 2 pop means that he finished a settler this turn and will likely gun for the same spot as we do, as it would give him an even better advantage than me with Kumasi in my denying me settling a border city.



Counting the tiles and assuming that his settler will be 2 E of Guardian at the end of this turn, I figured it will be extremly close as I will be able to settle the city just before him due to turn order. However he will win the race if he chopped his settler last turn, which is possible as we only see two improvements at his capital so far.
I just hope Kumasi is not throwing us out of their borders due to enforcing them as this would likely delay us for at least 1 turn.

This will be a nail biter as that location is an essential defensive locations for us and it comes all down to our delayed settler, by my miscalculation and the barb scout a couple turns earlier. On the other hand, it will also mean we are settling his so far only seen horse location, potentially depriving him of the possibility to build Horsemen.

The good thing is that Ichabod is not aware that I have a settler out. I was not aware of that mechanic myself, but as I had more than 24 +food (which are necessary to grow from 2 to 3) in my bin, it just deducted that amount of food without reducing the city size when building the settler.

I just hope we will be able to land that city site, as it has an immensive strategical and defensive value for us, loosing it will put us clearly in the backseat and we need to revise our planning completely.



Here is an overview of Kikyo, I decided to build a trader first in order to help Shido getting of the ground, afterwards we will finish the HS and then see if we can build a Builder or if we need to go for units.

We are currently gunning for a turn 47 PP and a religion on turn 66, if we can land the Divine Spark pantheon which is still open if Rowain did not take it. If we can reach that without loosing Shido, I believe we should be quite safe but will need a strong military presence at the Ichabod border.
By that time we hopefully also have settled C2? and C3? and can consider going for the city states.

The main questions for the upcoming future are:
Does Shido
- will be ours?
- start Monument first or unit first? (it will have a Warrior as garrison)
- buys Horse and Enc tile for 150 gold directly?
Suboptimal
- Do we send a friendship offer to built relations and pacify that direction?
- Is there anything else we can do to give him the opportunity to expand E and W?
Kikyo
- Will we be able to build the HS or do we need to switch for military earlier?
- What do we do against the barbs and to counter our lacking scouting to the E?

[AdrienIer]

I think Kikyo needs to build a couple units in the near future, because barbs + Ichabod threat is too dangerous to ignore. What is Ichabod's power level ? Still just a warrior ? If so going monument -> unit in the new city is probably the way to go. If by the time the city is built he's started spiking then maybe a slinger first is better.

Buying horse is tempting if you decide on unit first in the new city. If it's monument first then the culture will get it soon enough.

About Suboptimal, IDK what to do really. If we had infinite military units we could put one or two at our wanted city spots to tell him not to go that way but military units are spread thin right now. The problem with a DoF is that he could settle on our doorstep and we'd have to wait 30t to make him pay for it.

[Kaiser]

The Horse tile is at the same time the best tile to work and the most threatened tile to be picked by Genova if they get a second envoy, so I believe we should make sure to get that tile.
Our culture shall hopefully claim the 2 Pwheat tiles near Kumasi before it expands its borders as we are banking our city growth on these tiles. Getting the THSheep would be nice as well but not that urgent so we can live with Genova taking that tile.
That is actually the main disadvantage of that location, due to the two neighboring city states, we have quite some pressure to get the important tiles in our BFH before they claim them from us.

Ichabod is still at just a Warrior, the question is if we delay the HS to build a Warrior or Slinger with the risk of loosing out on the first prophet and the added defense of Defender of the Faith on turn 66.
If we miss the first GP, we will likely have a 30+ turn delay for getting the second one.

Building units is sadly inefficient at the moment as well, as we switched out of Agoge for Discipline and thus lack the 50% modifier. We will be able to switch civics again on turn 37 with getting State Workforce.

[Cornflakes]

There is even a Spearman, which typically means that a barb camp is in 2 field radius from its current position. Judging from its facing it is NE NE from our current slingers position.

One of the players in PBEM 1 or 2 noted that apparently all units face the same direction towards the SW on loading Hotseat saves. For example the barb horse that followed your slinger from the west is still facing southwest in the screenshot.

[Kaiser]

Thank you for the info, that is good to know so the Spear could also be from NE E and E E.

[Kaiser]

Turn 26 - the first casualty of the game



this turn confirms our worst fears and realistic expectations as we lost our Slinger as likely the first player unit lost during this game. We will mourn his short life and try to guide our remaining units to a better and longer life, although we already see an even greater conflict brewing.

Let us just hope, that we won't see these vile barbarians too soon again so we can continue with our plans in our empires best interest.

Back to the game



In order to avoid pulling these barbs back to Kikyo, our warrior will turn around N of Tsingy and will inspect the remaining landscape between Suboptimal and me. Our Warrior should return in about 10 turns to Kikyo this way.

I am strongly considering sending Suboptimal a delegation, in order to build our relationship if there is no premium settling site in between us. As we have sight on his lands, we would not gain any crucial information we could not deduce by D&C, but I hope to establish a good relation and to give him the ease of mind to settle his prime locations to the E and W.

Without a premium settling location between us, our individual settling plans look quite clearly defined to me. He has the better access to anything N of the jungle and E of his capital, while we have the better access to everything S of the jungle and W of our capital.
This looks like a natural split of lands to me, slightly favoring him as his NW part looks better than my NE freshwater desert. (This desert provides a crazy amount of fresh water, it is a shame that there are no ways to improve these desert tiles for me and Suboptimal.)



Anyway, I believe he knows this and sees the offer as what it is, a way to build good relations and to show that we do not plan a conflict but are looking for a good relations on our border. As we both are likely in a central position, I assume he has a similar desire and this could end up in a good and necessary cooperation enabling to play a game on par with the CIVs with a more secure frontier.

Best case he will offer us a delegation to confirm he goes along with our suggestion and we will receive the 25 gold back we invested. Worst case is if he takes the gold and forward settles us early, but I believe we can take that risk for an 25 gold investment.



Here is a small overview of the current status of our race, we actually have to possible ways to approach the C3? site.

The upper one will get us there a half turn early enabling us to settle the city in 5 turns. It will also be more likely supervised by Ichabods Scout, though I hope he is using it to scout the N.
Worst case the Scout is blocking the C3? tile which would mean he would win the race for that city location as we won't be able to kill it in 1 turn.

The lower one will end in 5 turns as well on that tile, but as we cross a river we will not be able to settle the city that turn but the turn after. This has 2 drawbacks, first we would loose 1 turns worth of production, food, culture and science and will delay our inspiration for EE by one turn. It also opens us up to loose out on that spot if Ichabod would aim for the orange marked city location. He could arrive there in 5 turns from now as well and would invalidate C3? before we could settle it.

I do not think the spot SE of C3? is a good alternative city spot, but in case he settles orange or he blocks the tile with his Scout, we still could consider settling it in order to have a better defensible border with him and deny him a city here.
The alternative is taking Kumasi as our defensive city and stage our defense from there, however this would mean that Ichabod has a lot of space to settle while practically neighboring Kikyo.

I also took some alternative settling sites for Ichabod into account with the purple and black lines. Besides him settling on the orange field as described, they are not that threatening to our settlement.



Here is another overview over Kikyo, we are currently building a trader and will soon grow onto the marsh tile for another 3 food tile. Afterwards I would like to build the HS to get an earlier civic swap with State Workforec and to get our religion game running. However Adrienier pointed correctly out that we might need to push for units here.
I thought about going for the HS and buying a Warrior (160) or Slinger (140) in case we need it at Shido. We should be at 178 gold when settling Shido, so we could buy the horse tile and would need to wait for 5 turns to buy a Slinger and for 9 turns to buy a Warrior.

The marsh lacks production so it would be a difficult choice to work it, we could go for LotRaM to boost the marshes at Kikyo and the FP at C2? and C4? but this map daoes not lack prodcution and we want to pressure GP with DS if we can get it.
As you can see we lack good growth fields and it will stay like this until we research feudalism when our fPwheat will easily be triangled into two 4/1 and one 3/1 tiles.

For the moment we could build a Granary or, even better, build a Water mill here to increase our food yield based on the wheat tiles. The Wheel should be soon researched by us but we need to mine a resource for its Eureka, which we could do at our 3rd city location (C2?) with the silver.

We could consider going for feed the world as our religious founder belief, but I believe due to the fact that we inheritantly want to build many districts and have 3 cheap districts at hand, we want to go for Zen Meditation instead giving us an additional amenity in each city with 2 or more districts.
Do you see any other valuable alternatives for the founder belief?



Bacchus took over the lead in the domination victory tab, meaning that he has at least a domination score of 55. As he was slowly raising in this category, he was already ahead of Suboptimals 45 last turn, I assume he has build a Scout, a Warrior and either another Warrior or a Slinger so far.
Building Warriors projects more strength in this category, as Slingers count only for 5 points while Warriors count for 20 points as long as they are healthy.



Rowain lost a bit of faith production, clearly indicating that he did not meet a religious city state but was working 2 +1 faith tiles from a resource or a natural wonder. He probably got his pantheon last turn. Let us have a look at the current city state situation.



Here are the known city states so far, I strongly assume that Rowain's wealth stems from a commercial city state and that Bacchus has found a scientific city state. This means that there are still 2 city states unknown, which have to be either still found or provide difficult to deduce boni such as industrial and militaristic city states.

We will likely be able to land all the current city state quests with the exception of the Genova one before advancing to the next area with PP. The most questionable is actually the Encampment, as it needs us to hit the Eureka for BW first and then some time to build. As we likely want it to be built at Shido, this will be even slower than at Kikyo and thus we might end up missing this one as well.

Open questions this turn are:
- Which pantheon will we choose?
- Which founder belief will we combine with DotF?
- Do we go the upper way or the lower way?
- Do we try to finish the HS or build military right away potentially loosing out on the first religion?
- Do we sent a delegation to Suboptimal?

[AdrienIer]

Pantheons : one of divine sparks, fertility rites, religious settlements and LoRaM (for marshes and oasis).
Founder belief : lay ministry works well with our UP.
I vote upper way, I'm betting on Ichabod not using his only unit on a sentry net when there's so much to scout.
I think the proximity of all those barbarians means we should build a unit or two (or we'll get pillaged before we can take care of them). Then the remaining units can go NW clear the barb camp (which will open up the city spot there).
Delegation could work yes

[TheArchduke]

Tough luck on the slinger.

I am enjoying your detailed reporting immensely. Thanks for keeping it up.

[Kaiser]

Thanks @the_Archduke I will try to keep that level of detail. The Slinger was used too recklessly by me and sadly I had to pay the price. Let us just hope that his distraction works out.

@Adrienier:
Pantheon: I agree with you selection and think DS is our best bet as it will allow us to push the others in regard to GPP, although we have 2 tiles at Kikyo, C3 and C4 each who would profit from LoRaM.
Founder belief: After checking our options for food generation I became aware that there is only a real issue at Kikyo and Shido, the other two spots have 2 FP each (so 4 food tiles after farming) and additional 3 food tiles (osais and bananas) around. Both Kikyo and Shido would benefit enormously from a Water mill, I will detail that in the upcoming report.

Upper way it is

In regard to the barbarians we are actually quite safe from pillaging as there is so far only the farm on the fPwheat W of our city, so on the opposite side of the barbarian uprising. Clearly there will be the HS as soon as we would finish it, so I agree that it would be wise to produce at least one unit, it is just a shame that we won't have Agoge available for it. Swapping Agoge was clearly a mistake.

The question is if we can delay the unit until after the HS, by then we should have Agoge back. We can still buy one Slinger or Warrior in a couple of turns in case it is urgent, however we would run light on military. Spoilering the upcoming turn for this descision, our Warrior will likely only need 8 turns to be back at the capital.

[AdrienIer]

I just thought about it, and yeah an emergency buy is possible therefore starting on the HS (at least until we have agoge) is probably the way to go