[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[ipecac]

Two more important things, the first not observed much, if at all:

1) Your 3xp AGG swords are going to be good defenders against anything up to and including Shock Elephants, with great counterattack potential against anything up to a Shock HA rush. Even shock XBows won't get that good odds against your swords if you have walls, and they'll need maces, Knights or catapults to break a massed Swords defense.

So if you go for IW soon, you don't need Archery but can use Swords as a defense/offense force. The only weakness is the low movement, but...

2) This map looks perfect for doing some massive canal system (that you don't want opponents to see if possible), coupled with 3 move galleys to move troops around 15 tiles in a turn using a mass galley chain.

[Dark Savant]

OK, thank you for the detailed advice.  

I planted city #7 this turn (we kind of need to, in order to have an easy route to my intended island city) and as you might expect, our finances currently aren't in great shape.



Right now, the breakeven science rate is only 25%.  That's partly because I'm working extra production tiles, and it also should improve with more silver tiles to be worked, but it does say "stop expanding on land for now".

This should ease somewhat with the planting of city #8, on the dot I pointed out earlier, which should happen on t84.

I'll have a better idea after GermanJoey plays t78 what the Great Lighthouse situation is, so I'll prepare the ETA to possible technologies next turn (and set up a sim for giving me an idea what city #8 will do).  I'm going to still run gold for now; if I abort the Great Lighthouse next turn, we're going to have 111 failgold plus 44 gold in the treasury.

That won't be enough to sprint all the way to a Classical technology, even if I deliberately chop all of Castleview's forests into failgold for another ~71 gold.  We'll have to think a bit about deliberately chopping for failgold.

[Dark Savant]

Also, about setting up a continent-crossing canal:

We could set up one at Castleview easily, since that's a two-tile-wide choke.

If we settle the coast west of Castle Ironfist (at one of the black dots), with 3 forts we can create a canal from black dot all the way to Sorpigal.

Is this actually worthwhile, though?  We would need Construction and several extra 50-hammer galleys.  Is the window between Construction and Engineering large enough to justify that?  What previous game here did this pay off in?

[Dark Savant]

Turn 77 (950 BC) - Part 4

As mentioned, we planted city #7, Fountain Head.  It's the first town in Mignt and Magic III:



It's two words in the original.  I suspect people have more often seen it run together as one in the Heroes of Might and Magic series.

I should actually show the local situation:



You can see the delayed workboat but I actually do have a worker (singular ... too many busy with the Great Lighthouse and at Garrote Gorge and Vertigo) on the corn already.

Note that Whitehall is still ungarrisoned.  I will be producing the galley for our island settling party on t81.  If Coeurva still does not have this city adequately guarded then, I can instead launch an amphibious raiding party of 2 spears, or 1 spear and 1 axe, and I can declare war and attack Whitehall on t82.  This will delay the settling of the island city by 1 turn.  I can also launch just the intended spear and settler, and attack with just 1 spear, which wouldn't cause this delay.

If Coeurva's warrior remains on its current tile, he won't actually ever see the galley.  I'm going to keep our Sentry chariot in the area to discourage the warrior from moving either NW or W (which would let him see it).

Anyway, Harmondale is going to work on a worker at max speed.  It's a bit of a waste, but its overflow is going to go back into the galley so it can finish on exactly t81.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 77 (950 BC) - Part 5

Current northern situation:

It's about time we got going again on scouting that northwest peninsula.  Our warrior in the area is on it:



Oh, I guess that's all there is.  And it turns out we wasted that rice tile.  Not a big deal; it's going to be a long time before we can even think about supplying it with fresh water, anyway.

Our progress on the Great Lighthouse continues as planned.  And boy, look at Gavagai's defense force:



Yeah, an attack here soon wasn't ever going to happen.  We're going to need catapults to crack that, which is a long way off.  And Gavagai played after me, and he moved another archer in there.

We have another axe on the way, incidentally.  We're both going to be tying up a lot of military here to stare at each other, aren't we.

[Dark Savant]

t78 just rolled; I logged in to get info (did not touch any units, as usual for me logging in so fast), but will wrap up t77 before starting in earnest on t78.  Also, I'd like to see GermanJoey end his turn before actually moving anything at all.  (He's always ended his turn before me lately.)

Gavagai and Krill always play late in a turn cycle right now.  They didn't touch the turn for several hours after Mardoc and Yuri gave the all-clear; then I got a chance to play and did.  Then Gavagai played almost immediately, and then Krill played immediately after Gavagai.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 77 (950 BC) - Part 6 (C&D)

Score tally:

• Us: +5 points for +1 pop in each of Harmondale and Castleview; +3 points for planting city #7, Fountain Head (25 pop total).
  
• CML/Yuri: +2 points for +1 land tile held for 20 turns; -2 points for -1 pop, probably a raze by Coeurva (14 pop total).
  
• Coeurva: +5 points for +2 pop (27 pop total).
  
• dtay: +2 points for +1 pop; +3 points for planting city #7, Haffaton (23 pop total); +10 points for 8 land tiles claimed in the 2nd ring of a city for 20 turns.
  
• Gavagai: +5 points for +1 pop in each of Istanbul and Konya (21 pop total).
  
• GermanJoey: +5 points for +1 pop in each of State of Zijin and Yellow Maple; -2 points for a -1 pop whip in State of Yue (23 pop total).
  
• JR4: +3 points for +1 pop; +2 points for planting city #6, Nambui; -5 points for 2 -1 pop whips (24 pop total).  Yeah, he definitely has a "women of the Mongols" theme going.
  
• Krill: +3 points for +1 pop in 12 Monkeys (16 pop total).  Krill also just built a library in Animal Farm.  Why isn't he building settlers?  He's falling behind at only 4 cities.  
  
• Ventessel: +2 points for +1 pop in Anchorage (9 pop total).  
  

I'll have to correct the t75 C&D report:

• CML: +1 pop, +3 land
  
• dtay: +12 points for Iron Working
  

Krill stopped putting EP into us at 47 EP, so I'll sign off at 47 EP as well; we're at the point where he could suddenly put 4 EP into us and we'd still have graphs, anyway.  I'm not sure why he did not sign off at either 43 (enough for mutual graphs) or 45 (enough so the other could put in 4 EP and not result in graph loss).  Well, there wasn't really a reason to go to 47 instead of 46, but eh, following Krill's lead can't be the worst idea.    We should get graphs on GermanJoey next turn (t78 spoiler alert: we did), so I'll start putting EP into JR4.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 78 (925 BC) - Part 1

GermanJoey just whipped Seven Mysteries for 3 pop.



We definitely aren't getting the Great Lighthouse now.  Oh well.  If I'd planned this farther in advance, I think I could have tied that at least.

If I'd planned this even farther in advance, building this at Harmondale instead may have worked better, since I could have chopped its 3rd-ring forests as well.  That would have taken pretty much all our workers, but still.

Okay then ... we'll get 123 failgold in 2 turns.   I'll save the forests at Castleview then, and I'm certainly not going to whip it again soon without a better reason.

I was going to ask if we could cash in the forests for failgold, but that doesn't work in my sandbox; you only get gold for already-cashed-in hammers.

[ipecac]

Hmm..

That's a sign gavagai might attack. What's his power like? That needs turn by turn monitoring.

Empire.canal.idea wont pay off now, yeah. Maybe in renaissance onwards

[ipecac]

It might be better to play safe, rush to be IW and get swords for defense behind walls