[SPOILER] - Suboptimal finds trees, still seeks forest

[CFCJesterFool]

Ideally, you drag the slinger out of position to prevent an upgrade. Pin has enough gold for one archer upgrade right now. An archer firing from a city is more than enough to defend against just ranged. How long until a second warrior will make it down? I wouldn't wait to start the attack but just pointing out that without a credible threat (of city capture)  to draw ranged fire away from your own ranged units, the best you can do is farm xp until you are forced to heal. That is fine but it does give Pin time to upgrade his other slinger and build units.

[suboptimal]

The second warrior is ready to move on the coming turn. It'd reach the river crossing on Turn 42, cross on Turn 43 and could attack the city on Turn 49. If the warrior in the area gets the opportunity to promote it will be taking Tortoise. It does represent a threat (though how credible depends on perspective) to take the city with the archers taking down the garrison, so long as it's mostly healed. The idea would be to use archers to take down the garrison strength and maneuver the warrior to a tile north of the open grassland as the garrison hits zero. The archers could then take out any healing and the warrior crosses the open ground to capture.

[suboptimal]

Turn 38

Archer and warrior complete, earning the inspiration for Mercenaries. Barbarian warrior has remained fortified, the archer won’t be able to kill it this turn. I decide to not kill it for now and move east. Why? Well, it’s remaining in place. Second, with the river source right there it also appears that there’s a mountain E-SE of that warrior. Then there’s Pindicator’s scout...if I move there I have it hemmed in between the mountains, the barbarian and my borders. If he moves adjacent to it (he can’t see the warrior from his current position) it might wake the warrior up and cause it to attack. Or not. Of course, there’s always room for more trouble and we’ve found it...




Mmmm...slinger. That will likely attack the archer this turn. There are no city-states visible up here, just fresh water river tiles. The assigned river name is “Rion...”, which according to the XML is likely the Rioni River, which is assigned to Georgia, so we’re likely the first ones here.

Mashed starts a settler – I’ll work on that for two turns then switch over to the Campus once Mining is complete and I can chop down that forest. I briefly consider getting out another archer but we don’t need one yet. The just-completed archer moves out to the deer tile to keep an eye on Pindicator (and perhaps sandwich him in place if a war dec happens sooner rather than later). AT Dauphinoise the warrior moves southeast and the city starts another warrior. Second archer pair repositions.

While checking XML files for river names I found that “Atbarah River” is assigned to...Nubia. That means that we found the river before Pindicator though he was likely the first to cross. Speaking of crossing, the lead archer moves to the jungle hill and I bring the second archer across the river as well. Over by the warrior, Pindicator has kept his slinger out of sight. I move to the sheep tile...and meet a warrior from Kabul. They want the eureka for Astrology. The screenshot of all of this:




Many things to note here:

- Pindicator cleared the barbarian camp that was on the desert directly south of the “ERT” in “Nubian Desert” two turns ago (his Turn 36). He used a warrior to do so and that warrior could be as close as the sea-adjacent sheep.
- That Kabul warrior is a looooooong way from home.
- Pindicator has one envoy there. “Unmet Player” has two and there’s no tooltip to tell me who that could be.
- I check the deal screen, Pindicator has met “Unmet Player”
- More relevant, there’s open ground SE of the lead archer. The river fork terminates along the NE and NW edges of that fogged tile just east of the copper. We might be able to go around that river to both sides.
- Wealth of Nations has three jungle diamonds.

My plan is to bring the warrior directly east from its position, manuevering around that Kabul warrior. The lead archer will move to the grassland next turn then cross the river the turn after. Time for some pins…




This would be the position of all four archers and the warrior as of end of Turn 40. The archers would not be visible from the city at this point in time. If one of the archers can reach the “Archer” marked tiles on Turn 41 and use only 2MP to do it then I’ll attack on Turn 41. Otherwise I’ll move into position and attack on Turn 42. The warrior has two options. The first is to move to the marked tile if the tile to the east is not a 1MP tile. If that tile is a 1MP tile and there’s no archer in the city center the warrior will move to the open grassland to minimize the counterattack direction. If there’s an archer in the city, well, I’ll figure that out once shots are fired. We will get to see most or all of the pinned tiles next turn.

Edit: the bigger problem is that Pindicator will have sufficient gold on hand at the start of his Turn 41 to purchase a warrior in the city. That would slow things down way more than an archer would

Archduke has recruited his Great Prophet but didn’t found a religion yet. No other players are generating GPP yet. Kaiser has completed his fifth tech.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hmmm, the unmet player must be out to pin's east. I wonder if Kabul is connected to us on the eastern path as well? This continent is pretty snaky, it seems. We do probably need to push a single scouting unit that way in the near-ish future in order to inspire Political Philosophy. Also, thinking medium-long term, assuming we can successfully conquer Pin, Kabul would be a good next step for the army to keep the troops busy and out of trouble. Going from the envoys, it's an outpost towards the next player on the continent, and capturing it (assuming we can defend it, hopefully it's not Cornflakes' Rome out there) would do a lot for landgrab purposes.

Your plan of attack looks good. 4 turns to go and pin has only 48 strength. We know of a warrior and a slinger, and that gold is included, so he is running out of options to get out a strong defense. If he doesn't have archery, then he has nothing that can credibly defend against potato archers. If he DOES have Archery - unlikely, since we know he researched Astronomy first and his science is weaker than yours - then he only has 4 turns to kick out archers from his capital and Wealth of Nations. So it's unlikely that you'll see more than one archer, worst case, at WoN, and I don't think that will be enough to stop 4 potatoes and the warrior. He'll need to kill off the warrior entirely to save the city, so as long as you don't give him that shot you should be golden.

Finally, WoN looks like a great pickup. Fully 3 diamond mines will be absurdly lucrative with Nubia's bonus! Chopping the jungle to prepare the mines will give a nice boost of growth to the city, too, though feeding it might be difficult afterwards. But if you can take it, coupled with your diamond mines at home, gold should never be a problem, which will let you in turn fuel a large military. On the whole things are looking good! No need to worry if we fall behind a bit in this opening phase, a successful rush will accelerate us past the others.

[suboptimal]

If I had to guess I'd say that the ocean to our east is a large inland sea or cut-off ocean. I don't think we get around to it Kabul but I'm hopeful we'll find a city state to the north or north east. Perhaps the next player will show up soon. If I have the time tomorrow night I'll check the deal screens on past EoT saves to see when Pindicator met the other player. If it was very recently, then my assumption would be that the other player found Pindicator and may be nearby, rather than Pin finding them. Pin's units are generally accounted for - one slinger somewhere SW of the mountain chain in the pass, a second slinger in the general vicinity of WoN, a warrior somewhere north of Res Publica and the scout up by Mashed.

Two archers and a warrior, with the warrior attacking twice, could take out the city in three turns provided there isn't an archer or a warrior. The best case for us if he spends gold would actually be for him to buy a warrior. It slows down the archers a bit but lets the others catch up. Of course, I'd rather have him purchase a tile or two to unload some of that gold now. .

Regarding the jungle mines, IIRC we don't need to chop the jungles to put a mine down on a luxury resource. That means that a mine could make those tiles 10 yields before apprenticeship.

[Banzailizard]

Honestly a bigger threat than archers might be walls, not that I see him having the techs for that. Overall looking good, I think if you succeed in grabbing three more cities this early the game will be yours to loose.

[suboptimal]

He doesn't have the science rate for it. He's currently at 4.8 science and has no quarries (that we can see, anyway). He'd be about a dozen turns out from Masonry if he was prioritizing that over Bronze Working or Archery in that scenario. By that time he'd be down to just Res Publica if things went according to plan.

[suboptimal]

Turn 39

The save openings are starting to have that mix of excitement (because war is close) and trepidation (because war is close so getting the plan screwed up is close). Something has prompted a lurker post, even if it is the mapmaker. Cornflakes seems particularly active over the past few turns. Wonder what the save holds for us….let’s find out…

There are no notifications. The slinger is likewise frozen in its spot, though not fortified. I wonder if the barbarians were on a mission and had a city-state clear their camp and put the AI into a state of confusion. Pindicator’s scout moved up to the forested hill and was attacked by the barbarian warrior (it wasn’t the other way around since Pin would not have had the movement to attack). The western archer moves to the coast, gains line of sight to the now-redlined warrior and kills it. The road clear for the other archer I advance to the wheat, next to the slinger:




There is nothing on settlervision – those tiles along the river are just fresh water. In looking at the territory I attack the slinger. Pindicator can’t get there with his scout to kill it for a possible promotion or eureka during his next turn. I’ll move to the hill to the north and kill it from there. Note that we are at the northern edge of the map. Good to know.

In the south nothing has changed position. Rear guard troops advance. Warrior moves east into the marsh and finds a mountain where I had marked the western archer tile. :gripe: Lead archer moves SE, finds an active volcano in the way. :gripe: Moves to the open flat land and finds...a Khmer scout. I clear the attack pins for a screenshot:




AWKWARD! Fog-gazing indicates that the tile SW of the scout is open ground of some sort. After looking at this situation I move the other lead archer to the jungle and call it a turn. The first question to ask is “have we lost the element of surprise yet?”. Time for some arts and crafts for battle plans, but first a religious intervention:




No surprises there. Conquest of Paradise is back up to 4 population.

Battle Plans

After pondering this a bit I think this will be my approach to make the attack with hostilities starting on Turn 42. I took a screenshot from of the EoT save after that last archer moved. It may be obvious but in the diagrams the dots are EoT positions (starting with EoT40) and lines are paths. I am omitting the northern warrior – that unit will reach the jungle hill west of the marsh rice on Turn 44 and the geothermal vent on Turn 48.




The warrior would spend Turn 41 healing on the geothermal vent while the red & blue archers move into position. On Turn 42 we declare, move up the archers and warrior and attack the city with two archers. On Turn 43 the yellow archer arrives on the geothermal vent and moves to the second ring diamonds on Turn 44 to provide flanking cover (though no formal support bonus) to the warrior. The green archer moves to the geothermal vent on Turn 44, from where it can swap in with the yellow archer or shoot anything coming up the pass to the west. The warrior and red archer would have the option of swapping positions on Turn 43. This sacrifices an archer attack but still allows the warrior to attack. This doesn’t slow down the ultimate conquest any but does put an archer between the warrior and any reinforcements. That archer could be swapped out to either promote or because it needs to heal.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Don't read too much into lurker posts - there've been many times I've made or seen an innocuous post ("I'm so bored, I wish something would happen" or arguing about a silly game mechanic) that players have been started feverishly speculating about. It looks like we're up to at least 3 global lurkers posting, though! So that's something.

Archduke's religion looks entirely predictable. Earth Goddess is always a solid pickup, choral music just makes sense with lavras, and DotF effectively makes you rush proof unless you have the misfortune of spawning next to fucking Hungary. If we're lucky, Archduke is on the other continent, though - Russia is scary but not nearly so threatening if they need to cross the sea to get to you. So, on the whole, if he's over there, it's good news for us since it denies pin or Mystery Neighbor X good religious beliefs.

Note for the future: we should map out some middle tier religious beliefs to pick up. If we can successfully conquer Khmer we'll have some random river holy sites and we'll get a GP eventually.

Regarding attack tactics, the only thing I'm concerned about is the blue archer. If there's a hill on the fogged tile he may be cut off from attacking. If you can scout with the red archer before committing to going around the mountains, that'd be ideal. If you can't, I would err on the side of caution and bring him down the west side so we know he can engage. Green can take his place instead. Hopefully 2 potatoes and a warrior should be enough for the first city. The only way I can imagine saving it would be for him to kill the warrior, so definitely prioritize preserving him over an archer. An archer loss would sting but not be too concerning given how fast you can crank 'em out.

if pin rushes to walls, just follow Alhambram's play in PBEM16 and buy a ram. I'd preserve our gold for that eventuality. It will significantly harm our archer attack, but if he doesn't get stronger melee units 2 or 3 warriors should still be able to overwhelm capital walls. And if he goes for masonry, then there's no conceivably way he could reach Bronze Working and then Iron Working for swords. On the whole we're in very good shape I think.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Knock on wood that volcano doesn't erupt and kill our army.