[SPOILERS] Magic Science and Mr. Cairo in Pitboss 40

[Mr. Cairo]

Another thing, he did double move us last turn, so perhaps he's not interested in war, and this is just a scouting impi.

[Mr. Cairo]

After a more thorough perusing of screenshots, I feel I really ought to apologize. I hadn't quite conceptually realized how close Hong Kong was to superdeaths capital. If I had I would have advised settling with more than just a warrior. In my own first game I settled a neighbor fairly aggressively and had the forces to defend, so I really should have known better. Especially when that neighbor has aggressive impis.
I've mostly been following your updates on my phone while at work (since that's when you tend to play) but if you don't mind, I'd like to start logging in to have a look around in game myself. Screenshots on a phone just aren't enough. 

But what's done is done, we have to look to the future, and I'm starting to come up with a risky plan to either get us back in if we lose Hong Kong, or get us ahead if we don't. I'll have more details in a bit.

[Magic Science]

Turn 42 – 2320 BC
Here is where we stand at the end of the turn:
   
Quechua One is in Hong Kong, Quechua Two is on the copper forest, Worker Three chopped on the copper forest, Worker Two started a road on the tile one east of the copper forest, and Worker One chopped back at Cuzco. None of the units are actually named those names anymore, though. Numbering them like that is handy for planning purposes, but I don’t want Superdeath to get any information about how many units we have, so they are back to their default names for now.

Sidon actually continued building Quechua Three as it had been. I realized that the only way to get five hammers in an axeman this turn was to work the unimproved plains incense instead of the corn, which I felt was too big of a sacrifice. As I said before, I am optimistic that we can still continue to develop, so I don’t want to go into total war/desperation mode yet. Instead, the city will finish Quechua Three this turn, then use to overflow plus its natural production to get five hammers into an axeman next turn, then probably whip the turn after that. Cuzco continued doing what it has been doing, and I kept research on Pottery.

Also, just in case it turns out to be relevant, Hong Kong’s border scouted some fog and revealed that there is a barbarian warrior a few tiles south of the city.

What's the eta for the axe out of Cuzco? Should it be whipped? Even if it's nearly done a whip might let us get another very quickly afterwards. 

The axe will come out in one turn, on Turn 44. It might be worthwhile to whip for the overflow. The overflow plus the chop from Worker One could get an axeman out right on Turn 45. Without a whip it would take until Turn 46, and we would not have nearly as much overflow off of the second axeman.

Another thing, he did double move us last turn, so perhaps he's not interested in war, and this is just a scouting impi.

I hadn’t thought about the double move. It might not be a double move that makes a difference. The Impi is wounded (probably from an animal), and it has likely been healing in place for a little while. I have no doubt that the lurkers will step in if Superdeath does a double move that gives him an advantage.

After a more thorough perusing of screenshots, I feel I really ought to apologize. I hadn't quite conceptually realized how close Hong Kong was to superdeaths capital. If I had I would have advised settling with more than just a warrior. In my own first game I settled a neighbor fairly aggressively and had the forces to defend, so I really should have known better. Especially when that neighbor has aggressive impis.
I've mostly been following your updates on my phone while at work (since that's when you tend to play) but if you don't mind, I'd like to start logging in to have a look around in game myself. Screenshots on a phone just aren't enough. 

But what's done is done, we have to look to the future, and I'm starting to come up with a risky plan to either get us back in if we lose Hong Kong, or get us ahead if we don't. I'll have more details in a bit.

Don’t beat yourself up about it either. I don’t blame you for this at all.

I have no problem with you joining the game. The password (quotation marks not included) is: “barbariannoob9t6”. If you want me to mention any specific details in my turn reports, just mention it and I can.

I am interested to hear the details of your plan.

[Magic Science]

Hong Kong has been razed.     
This is the current situation:
   
Quechua Two has a 32.7% chance to kill the Impi if we want to take it.
I will be back in a little while with my thoughts. Hopefully I don’t slow down the game too much during all of this.

[Mr. Cairo]

well, the odds weren't in our favour, although i was hoping that we'd be able to get good odds to kill that Impi afterwards. Oh well.

I had a peek in-game to think about my plan, and while my original idea isn't really feasable, I think we can go via another route.

I want to attack this:

At first I wanted to go overland with a couple workers building roads fo some axes, but there's no good approach, so instead I think we should go via the sea. 2 Galleys, 4 axes.
If we get Sailing after Pottery, and arrange to have plenty of overflow and forests pre-chopped the turn we get Sailing we can get the two galleys quickly. Unfortunately, we can't attack out of the fog, but there'd be a lot less warning coming from the sea than from the land.

Now this is not without risk, but to be honest, I find the costs worthwhile. 2 Galleys is essentially 1 settler, but the potential gains are huge. (I'd imagine we'd build the 4 axes anyway)

We would have to stay at war with Superdeath, otherwise there'd be a trade connection with him once we get Sailing (I think only one party needs sailing for the connection to appear), and he'd guess what we were doing. As it is, he'd see any power increase of ours as a panic/paranoia induced response to his razing of Hong Kong. We'd probably want one or two more axes around our empire to keep inquisitive Impis out.

I didn't check while I was in-game, has he met anyone else? I was thinking we could also start putting our EP into him alone, a move he might interpret as us deciding to do what we can to make life miserable for him (as opposed to hiding our alpha-strike).

I know it's a risky move, but it might just get us back into this game. Or at the very least, grant us a measure of revenge 

[Magic Science]

Mr. Cairo, to be direct, I do not think that attempting to alpha strike Superman like this is a good idea. Here is why:

It is an extremely high risk move. If Superdeath figures out what is going on or sees us coming more than a turn or two in advance, then the attack will almost certainly fail. Even if he doesn’t realize what is going on, he will still have a turn or two to prepare because our galleys will be spotted in advance by his culture. Superman will be at third ring borders by the time our attack would come. That turn or two could definitely be enough to gather the forces to stop us depending on where his units are. Even if everything goes right and he doesn’t have very many units in Superman when we attack, we could just get plain unlucky. When there are so few units involved, single dice rolls are huge. It is also possible that Superdeath attacks us when the galleys are sailing, which could be disastrous.

I don’t think that the reward for succeeding is enough to compensate for the extremely high risk. Keeping Superman would be hard and unprofitable. By the time we would take the city, Superdeath will probably have 3 or 4 cities total, and those could produce enough to defeat the survivors of our raid if we didn’t send reinforcements. Also, the distance maintenance would be absurd. Hong Kong, , cost 2.65 gold in distance maintenance. I wouldn’t be surprised if Superman cost somewhere in the range of 8 gold. Razing the city would avoid that issue, but it wouldn’t actually do anything to get us back in the game, it would just knock Superdeath out of it. And about that…

I don’t feel nearly as mad at Superdeath as I thought I might right after I saw the Impi yesterday. Yes, I would like revenge for the Great Injustice of Turn 43 someday. No, I do not anticipate peaceful coexistence for the whole game. However, I don’t feel like whipping the Incan League into the ground to get that revenge. I would rather try to get back on the development track and meet the goal I have set for myself now that winning is out of reach: survive until the end.

With that in mind, I have a rough plan. I am not that confident in my ability to read the power graph any more, but I am pretty sure that a few more Impis will be coming our way. Even if Superdeath initially only planned a small scale, short raid using just one or two Impis, I suspect that this smashing success will embolden him. We need to whip and rapidly increase in power to (hopefully) convince him that attacking further is a bad idea, and, if necessary, to beat off any attacks that do come. This will entail two axes out of each city, then an archer or two, and some more units if a large attack actually materializes.

After that, I want to try to start developing and growing again. Cuzco will build another settler. I’m not sure where it would go yet. If we are confident in our defenses, it could go right on the ruins of Hong Kong. If we are less confident, it could go for the white filler spot by the sheep. I suspect that the wheat and silver spot is now out of our reach.

For this turn, that plan would mean whipping the axe in Cuzco, continuing to build the axe in Sidon, and then whipping next turn. Workers Two and Three will retreat, build some roads to help unit movement, and farm the floodplains and mine the hill northeast of Sidon. I can work out the exact micro later. For this turn they just need to run away. Quechua Two should probably not attack. The odds aren’t good enough. I think that he should retreat to the forest hill that he was on last turn. He could stay there as a sentry or retreat farther, I am not sure yet.

That is what I am thinking right now, but I could still be swayed to something else. I may have sounded certain of myself, but I am not really that certain of what to do.

As for your question about Superdeath, based on our espionage ratio, I am pretty sure that he has met someone else. That someone else is not shallow_thought, though.

[Magic Science]

I just realized that I went that entire post without even considering signing peace.
Is there any reason not to try to offer a peace treaty? I doubt that Superdeath will accept it, but we might as well try, right?

[Mr. Cairo]

Definitely offer peace, it'll tell us if he has more Impis coming out of the fog to attack us or not.

I wasn't really planning on keeping superman, rather just burning it to damage Superdeath enough that we wont end up completely hemmed in by more powerful neighbors. But fair enough, I won't mention it again. Let's see if we can overcome this hurdle with 'peaceful' expansion alone.

[Magic Science]

Turn 43 – 2280 BC
   
Great. As if things weren’t bad enough, Moncacht-Ape is going to get killed by a barbarian warrior at the turn roll. I was the last player to play this turn, so I can confirm that he was indeed killed by that barbarian warrior.
Rest in peace Moncacht-Ape, you did good work.

   
I did all of the moves I described, and then some more. I had Worker Two put a turn into farming the floodplains, and I had Quechua Three move out of Sidon towards Cuzco. If that Impi charges out of the fog at Sidon, then he can return to the city with the only consequence of his walking out being lost fortify bonus. The reason he is going towards Cuzco is that Cuzco is going to need military police next turn when it grows, and I want to be able to send Axeman One somewhere else without sending Cuzco into unhappiness. As the image shows, whipping Cuzco had the unexpected side affect of delaying Pottery by one turn due to losing one commerce from the tile no longer being worked. That is a little bit annoying, but I don't think that it will matter.

Two other details about Superdeath and the Injustice League that you should know are: Superdeath whipped away two population this turn. I am not sure if that is a double-whip or two single-whips, but I am afraid that he just whipped out some more military. The other detail is that the Impi who just razed Hong Kong is at 48/100 health, so he will take a while to heal.

Also, it is probably not going to matter, but I am pretty sure that shallow_thought has at least three workers. As he walked along Orphan borders, Moncacht-Ape, , noticed workers named Bradawl and Chisel. A “B” name and a “C” name with a common theme. I think that shallow_thought it naming his workers in alphabetical order to keep track of them, so there must be an “A” worker as well, making at least three.

Definitely offer peace, it'll tell us if he has more Impis coming out of the fog to attack us or not.

I wasn't really planning on keeping superman, rather just burning it to damage Superdeath enough that we wont end up completely hemmed in by more powerful neighbors. But fair enough, I won't mention it again. Let's see if we can overcome this hurdle with 'peaceful' expansion alone.

Sorry if I came across as hostile of dismissive or your idea, I wasn’t trying to seem like that. I respect your contributions to the team, and I am willing to consider offensive action against Superdeath in the future.

Also, just as I am writing this I realize that I forgot to offer peace to Superdeath. I don’t think that it would be fair to enter on the wrong side of the turn split to correct my mistake and offer peace, so we will just have to wait until next turn. That was foolish. Hopefully it will not matter.

[Magic Science]

I entered the turn to see this:
   
I clicked the mini-map to look around while locked in the trade screen, and I was able to see two impis in position to bother us on our borders. I accepted the deal. I am not sure why Superdeath offered this, I think that it benefits us more. One thing that came to mind was that he has a plan to settle a pink dot by us during the peace. That would be a bad idea due to high maintenance costs and the fact that the person you are settling up against is about to spike in power, but he might not see it that way.

Another key piece of information is this:
   
The barbarians have founded a city exactly on the place I wanted to found our fourth city! This is awesome because it allows us to turn hammers put into units for defensive purposes into expansion. However, the position of Superdeath’s northern impi means that he must know about it too, so there will be competition.

I don’t know if the city is garrisoned by warriors or archers. Does anyone know of a resource about barbarians that I could read to figure out which it is?

These two new developments mean that I need to adjust the micro plan I was working on, but I need to sleep now, so I won’t play the turn until tomorrow. I guess that it is time to start making use of the whole 24 hours of the turn timer.