[SPOILERS] Bacchus and Archduke serve a mouthful of Pecorino Romano

[Bacchus]

Not much happening: units stuck on garrison/escort duty, capital completes second slinger, second city planted in 2 turns, nothing interesting on the scoreboard.

[TheArchduke]

I thought you would settle 1 SW of the Rice near the Reef, I love having a waterwheel boosted agriculture tile, but as I recently posted somewhere else, I fear this is SP talk.

It also enables a filler city, but still.

Ah well, at least the bath places itself in that case.

[Bacchus]

Yeah, water wheels are awfully slow, and we are already building one in the capital.

Also, I think waterwheel may apply even if the rice is under the city (not in this case, lack a river).

I'll post the dotmap today.

[TheArchduke]

You can not build a waterwheel if not on the river. I can not tell you the amount of SP dotmaps I tried to put around this efficiency of plus 1-2 food.

My reluctance to harvest ressources is also something which haunted me throughout PBEM 4. Looking forward to the dotmap.

[Bacchus]

Also, in this case we already have an abundance of food, so our early hammers are much better spent on baths. There are other situations where that +3 food is much more valuable. Our desert deer city could really use it, but there are no cereal resources there sadly.

Also, we don't seem to have an easy quarry anywhere, which is a real upset for baths. OTOH we have resources to mine for the wheel eureja, I guess getting one of two is par for the course. I'm growing to really dislike these Eurekas as a mechanic as time goes on BTW.

P.S. The broad running plan is campuses/commercial hubs into baths, resulting in a large science lead, converted into a beelined cavalry timing attack. We have two horses to build horsemen everywhere without camps, which is a huge help.

[Bacchus]

A bit of a barbarian problem, glad to have built these slingers:


Probably have to get archery to plant city 3. 4-5 to be built more or less concurrently in Colonization.

Oh yeah, another reason to plant the city on the lake -- if on river, we wouldn't get the second Barrier Reef tile workable until the entire second ring is filled out, which is ages. This way we get it asap, and an additional two science at this juncture is pretty huge.

Capital tile picker has zeroed in on the jungle towards the stone, so we might actually be able to buy and quarry it. ~80 gold into 40 science is not a bad conversion rate.

[TheArchduke]

Approve of the dotmap. Especially 3 has a campus and bath in the first ring and a nice harbour as well.

? or the desert dot I would move 1W, the bath is just that strong and you want Petra for that city anyway.

[Bacchus]

Huge turn.

On the interturn, barb warrior suicides into our slinger, yielding us the archery eureka. Settler vision across the barrier lake reveals a new continent, just in time to give us some peanut inspiration culture, and to show the borders of a religious city state.




Note the nice 4-yield tiles between and slightly to the north of our two cities. Unfortunately, barb scout was projecting a ZOC, which means our settler can't settle this turn. Do you know who managed to settle already, using the extra hammers from Carthage? Ichabod.




Also confirmed by his score. This is... interesting. We currently have a massive intelligence advantage over him, and will continue to do so until we buy the Jade tile on the carthaginian borders. Ichabod has never surpassed us in military score, which suggests that he only built a scout. We already have two slingers, one with a promotion, one soon to receive it, and the Archery eureka, as well as the bonus science from the Reef. An archer rush looks pretty tempting.

Another warrior is coming at our capital from the western jungle, so more promotions are assured.

[TheArchduke]

An archer rush can be VERY nasty on the unprepared. Definitely an idea. Maybe start off by taking Carthage itself as well?

[Bacchus]

Lots of settler-second builds: Krill has also founded a city last turn, 1 turn ahead of us. This is pretty worrying, as we had very high yield tiles and a two-cog plant. At least Ichabod's speed can be explained by Carthage, but maybe there are just generally lots of militaristic CS around.

Anyway, I founded, and got a nice boost to culture and science, we are making 6 of each now. We also have a road going towards Ichabod, yielding us a further advantage in any rush scenario. Thanks, Rome.

Science-wise, I complete Pottery, so that Proxy Hatch (second city) can start work on Granary. Next up is Animal Husbandry, both for the pasture and Craftsmanship Eureka, and for Archery. I'd like to build the third slinger and further units in Agoge.

Considering buying a Trader for the +2 cogs from the Carthage envoy. How much is the Slinger -> Archer upgrade these days?