[spoilers] - pindicator is excited for the next Realms Beyond league mechanics

[pindicator]

061

Barbarian warrior suicided into my spear, and that bit of excitement is over with.




With the settler at 96/100 we were ready to whip this turn. The goal is max overflow to get the granary up and then grow to 5 quickly. So with the overflow plus the chop we end up with 160/100 into the settler.

I'm not sure what I build after the granary yet. I have this wild idea about just loading an axe onto my galley and sailing out into the black to see if I can stumble on someone unawares. But really the one spot I want to send that galley is at Old Harry - and yet there is no easy sea route to him thanks to that land shield I was so fondly glowing about earlier. (Turns out it defends against sea routes in both directions!) I could send it west after Mouseferatu but he isn't exactly someone I see as a long term threat. And it's bound to take a long time to find anyone, so maybe I don't?

[Hollybombay]

I smelled a little bit of blood for the blood gods?

[pindicator]

I smelled a little bit of blood for the blood gods?

Basically!  I mean, my main motivation for doing this is just to see if I can add a little bit of chaos and catch someone unawares.  It's a hefty investment this early in the game:  85 hammers.  But it does give scouting information.

Or did you mean Old Harry?  Yeah, I'm watching his expansion rate and already wondering what I can do to check him.  But with the distances on the map either we need to use 2 movers to hold him at the check points, or we need to go by sea.  The distances are just too vast and the choke points can work just as much against me as they can work in my favor here.

Also, I still have lots of good spots to settle so I don't want to over-commit to it.

[pindicator]

062

Heading south...

[Hollybombay]

That doesnt look like a death galley..

[pindicator]

That doesnt look like a death galley..

It gets worse: I decided to wait for the two workers to finish improving the pig and elephant and then use the same galley to shuttle them back to the mainland. I need the worker power to road towards cities 6 & 7 which will take the center of the mainland. I finally mapped out where I'm settling next and how I'm transporting those settlers. After the workers have been transported then I'll send the galley out with an axe. That still shouldn't be too late to have some fun.

Although horses are going to be revealed next turn. That will likely change some plans. Oh please have there be horses by the fish/whale site by my capital. That would make it worth settling!

[pindicator]

063

We had some fireworks between turns!

According to PBSPY, Borsche took a city off of 2metraninja. And he didn't just take any city, he took either his capital or his 2nd city. We can tell this because the difference in 7 points 2metra lost vs. the 2 points Borsche gained: those weren't just population points!

Not to be outdone, the barbarians got in on the act




Yeah, go team barbarian! We need to get a little bit more of that action! I guess that's a benefit of my start: I only have 2 avenues of approach and they're pretty easily guarded.

Horses popped:




Well, I'm pretty confident none of this was hand made because nobody would put horses in like that! I think this does affect how I settle next after the island city. Initially I was going to settle north and south with the next 2 settlers: 1 was going to hit the desert hill northeast of Onslaught, by the sheep and flood plain. Mostly to stake territory in the center of the mainland but also to connect Nemesis a little better to the rest of my cities. And then I'd settle another city between the wheat and cows seen in the screenshot above. I think now I still keep the wheat/cow city but instead of settling north I need to settle the plains tile in the middle of the gems, double horse, pig. I was wanting to wait on that tile earlier because I wanted to keep the Pig with Onslaught longer, but I can't wait on all those horse tiles.

This might mean I only need 3 workers for the 2 new cities - if both spots are going in the same direction that's less roads and easier time transfering workers between tasks since they're all close together. Time to redo the micro! (But the northern city worker micro was ugly anyway so I'm glad to trash that.)

[pindicator]

....and then I thought "Hey, if I'm only going to need 1 worker for a city down by the horses, then maybe I should just whip a settler out of Nemesis as well and use the worker already up there to squeeze city #8 out."

[pindicator]

So OH captured the city back and then whipped twice (possibly defenders?) I wonder how many people are freaking out thinking OH has zoomed ahead to 7 cities because the barb capture didn't show in the points inbetween turns.

I wonder how many other people have lost cities to barbs inbetween turns that we haven't been able to notice...

[pindicator]

064

Hey, I got an event!



Well that's nifty. Excpet is that correct? The small tribe is ... my city Onslaught? Is the game insulting my tech level?


City #5, Ambush:




And with it, intercontinental trade routes.

I did settle on improving the city itself over connecting the luxury resource. I was debating the tradeoffs and because I'm building workers and settlers I'm only losing a couple of hammers in two of my cities. Whereas improving the elephant first will make me lose out on something like 9 food and delay the next city's initial curve by several turns. So it felt like this is the right choice. I'm going to try to shuttle the axe to the next island over temporarily just to see what is over there too. (Of course it would have been nice to think of that before unloading it and moving it away from the galley...)

I wonder how my expenses are going to hold up here. We're at -12gpt now but we also are breakeven at 60%. I'm going to really spam some distant cities soon though...