[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[Old Harry]

Turn 52

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention in the heat of the moment: We have a new city! It's fairly vulnerable to OT4E, so going Monument first seems wise, possibly followed by a spear and then walls. OT can't hit it from the fog with a chariot so I think as long as we get an axe in there and get hammers into a spear and wall we're okay. If a detachment of axes arrive the walls go up, if a chariot appears the spear gets whipped.


If Hippo pops borders before we do we're also in a bit of a fix, but I can't see any cultural buildings so no panic just yet.


If our sims are correct the barb will attack this warrior - as long as the warrior doesn't have any fortification. If it doesn't then we have to decide whether to take a 50/50 shot to defend the gems next turn.


We met a new friend! Donovan Zoi's scout is woody II so it's had a few fights, possibly including a bear... Donovan has the Buddhist holy city and Dark Savant's land, so it's possible that William and OT4E have extra space to fill and a juicy prize on their other borders and they'll ignore us. Yeah? I think we want to keep our EP spending on William for now, but we could switch to get Donovan's graphs. William's warriors are spreading out, which I doubt is a good sign. The barb warrior decided against suiciding on my axe and went for the sheep-pillage instead. That doesn't go well for him, but it does mean that the axe is off the road network, will take an extra turn to reinforce Dragon Age and took two hits (3.9/5 health). Perhaps he should try to hit one of William's warriors to get the XP for that first promotion?


Up north our fogbusting warrior is covering five tiles, but can't get back to AC in time should something appear in the north. I'm inclined to move him back up north where he'll bust 10 tiles for us and cover AC... Any dissent?


Demos and power. Looks like William and OT4E both built axes.

[Old Harry]

Turn 53

Our brave warrior killed the barb here and will proceed NW to fog-bust the coast. The axe completing in Baldur's Gate will head towards Elite next turn and BG can get back to building its worker. I think OT4E just built an axe, but I presume it's to counter our military build-up rather than for offence.


I'm expecting warrior-William to kill Donovan's scout next turn... After taking this picture I changed DA and Elite to put a couple of hammers into walls this turn, with stone they're only 25 base hammers so can be erected at a moments notice. I also whipped the axe in Colonization for reasons that the power screenshot will make clear. Ouch.


Questions for next turn:
- Do we whip the axe in Civ?
- Funnel the chop to BG or Elite?
- Do we show the Axe bound for Elite to OT4E straight away by moving SE or hide it by moving E?
- Will William give us another two turns to prep our defence of Dragon Age? At that point we'll have three axes and one warrior in the city and feel pretty smug.

Further questions:
- Where are we building the next two settlers?
- How can we get them enough worker support?
- Should we build some of those granary thingies?

Demos and power. Big jump from William, which I suspect means he has three Axes. It's possible they won't all be Shock, but we need to plan as if they are...

[Fintourist]

Summing up here a bit as we have actually had couple of quite rough turns lately.

I think we started the game in a really strong way. 6 cities by T50 is definitely a great start and I think we abused IMP well and put ourselves into the lead or at least in a great position. However, then we narrowly missed our two key targets.

1. We decided to go for a Stonehenge, which would have been a great wonder for us (border control from culture and 20 % def bonus + couple of our core cities need a border pop to reach their food resources). Going for the 'henge led us to commit beakers for Mysticism&Masonry and settle on the flat ground at William border. Losing the wonder to a coin flip is especially painful 

2. We rushed for a sustainable border city at OT4E front and got beat due to turn order if I've understood our team chat correctly. While our city plant would have shared the resources in the area, OT4E went for a city that grabs them all. Not really blaming him as that is the most natural plant from his perspective. In retrospect, we are questioning us whether our southern reactionary city is a mistake or whether it's a decent attempt to get our share in the south. For the moment the city is not really productive and definitely creates tension.

So in the big picture I feel we drew a short straw when it comes to neighbor and in hindsight our gambles did not pay off. William's aggressive behavior does not really feel necessary and it's a pity that OT4E decided to expand in a straight line towards us. At the moment we are sitting with 2-flat-ground border cities and are forced to build up military and it will definitely slow down our development. At the same time someone, somewhere will definitely run away from us and enjoy playing his sandbox for the first 75/100 turns and eat an easy neighbor 

It remains to be seen what kind of damage the latest events will cause us and whether we can create any openings to pull us from our future hole back into relevance. However, the big positive is that the game is very dynamic at the moment and we can't complain that our game would be boring - not even close 

[Old Harry]

Turn 54

William didn't sit his three (?) shock axes on our lawn this turn, so now we feel pretty good about our position. If he does bring them along we'll have three axes and a warrior and the ability to whip walls. If he moves his warrior W next turn we *could* kill it, but then Dragon Age will only have two axes in it until t57.


We show OT4E another axe, en-route to Elite. Hopefully that discourages him from getting any ideas.


Demos and power. We like our crop yield, GNP and MFG, but best of all is that our army is number one! Unfortunately I'm pretty sure that William has the rival best (he whipped and power went down this turn) and we should be near the top with IMP. What I'm secretly hoping is that William is using our war as a phoney one, and actually plans to hit Donovan, who we suspect is his neighbour to the south or east.

[Old Harry]

Dotmapping

With the location of horses (really inconvenient - thanks mapmakers!) we need to figure out our dotmap and settling order (along with micro, tech order and names). Here's a blank map:


And three versions as I see it:
V1 - Settling a coastal city F for the horses, we could road two tiles or get sailing to hook the city. K can share the sheep from J.


V2 - Settling F on the horse gets the resource straight away, an extra hammer for the city tile and an extra forest, it needs one road tile to hook it up. This version of K is probably least likely, but does allow a future filler on the plains hill NW of the spices.


V3 - Settling F east of the horses means it needs to steal the capital's corn to grow. This could be good short-term if we want to work mines to build settlers? It allows H to be slightly stronger and shares more cottages with Civ, but sacrifices a forest and doesn't get wheat in the first ring. K goes here if there is seafood to snaffle.


Anyone got a preference? And what order do we want to settle?

[Old Harry]

Turn 55

We don't need to worry quite so much about chariots from William and OT4E (presuming their horses are as inconveniently located). However William might have three shock axes poised to swoop on Dragon Age next turn, so we thought about this fight for a good minute or two...


Oh. Oh dear. According to the combat calculator there was a 2.8% chance of that happening. That warrior now has 25% to kill our axe. On the bright side Lara is avenged and there is a pigs/wheat city to be built here.


Demos and power.

[Old Harry]

Turn 56

William is pincering us. This leeds to whipping this spear a bit early and moving an axe out of Dragon Age. We'll probably see a bunch of axes appear by the city next turn. :/


In our backlines we've now fogbusted every tile. We'll be settling horse/silver next then the moai.


Demos and all the graphs.

[Old Harry]

Ministry of Information

I've been updating the C&D a bit, and there are a few interesting revisions...

William:
Started with Fishing & Mining
T9 - Hunting
T16 - Warrior #1
T17 - Mining
T24 - Warrior #2
T30 - BW
T35 - City 2 - TBD, the closest city to us
T38 - Pottery
T42 - barracks in the capital Warrior #3
T44 - agriculture
T48 - city 3
T49 - barracks in TBD + Mysticism (this one is a bit baffling - but its the only 0 power tech he could have got in 5 turns, isn't it?)
T50 - Axe #1
T52 - Archery + Axe #2
T57 - He whipped something, but what?

So either he's heading towards AH-HBR for horchers or he got Archery to make himself feel safer. I'm glad that he doesn't have three axes as I think that frees us up to deal with his warriors a little more decisively.  

I've got a busy day tomorrow, but if anyone wants to have a go at figuring out OT4E's recent activity this graph should help...

[Old Harry]

I found myself less busy this afternoon, so here is the update for OT4E. We've less certainty on this - T44 and 51 in particular - as we've seen a lot less of his units than William's. I've also edited the post above to give the full picture on William.

OT4E
Started with Fishing and Mining
T9 - Agri
T18 - Warrior #1
T22 - Warrior #2
T24 - BW
T31 - Wheel
T32 - City 2 - Utica
T38 - Settled city 3 - presumably for copper
T39 - Pottery
T44 - Probably Hunting, or Myst + warrior #3
T47 - whipped Barracks in Utica
T51 - settled city 4 - Hippo, on our border. Along with a tech and 6000 soldiers - I'd guess Animal Husbandry for 2000 and a spear, or Archery for all 6000, or Myst + axe.
T54 - Axe #?
T57 - A tech, but we don't know it's power yet...

[Old Harry]

Turn 57

Two big news items this turn:
1. Rusten lands the Oracle and takes...
2. You know that stack of doom that I've been worrying about for the last 15 turns?


One axe! And 3 warriors! Okay, I think we're fine here - we'll whip the walls as planned and move all our axes into the city. Then we'll get 80% vs his axe and 100% vs his warrior. Also worrying is the warrior making eyes at our sheep, but we've got a brand new spear ready to put a stop to his game...


Oh FFS. 4HP remaining! Our warrior gets a flawless win, pointlessly. Should he head back to Col next turn or set off to explore the wilderness?


Here's a nice overview of the world as we know it. With everything a little too small to make out. Utica will pop borders eot.


Finally just so you don't get the idea that William's attack has thrown us off our game - we spent several hours this evening arguing about whether Flappy Bird should make a cottage before chopping this forest.


Demos and power.