[SPOILERS]PB46: (In Search of) Fine Foreign Dining, by Hannibal of England

[The Black Sword]

I very carefully calculated the map balance, and decided that extra seafood on turn 120 would make your position OP. After much consideration I decided the only solution was to delete a tile of land and orphan them.

[Krill]

You realise there is more food on that island than in my first 4 none capital cities? And I have to orphan at least one of the resources, it just cruel. Have you no empathy?

[DaveV]

The only reasonable dot map I can see requires settling on the horse and wheat.

There is no reasonable dot map.

Horse, 3N of horse on the north island.

2S1W of sheep, wheat, and 1N3W of wheat on the south island.

The southernmost fish is orphaned, but all the other seafood can be used.

[Krill]

I find it interesting that you came to the conclusion that fitting in as many cities as possible the was right answer. There are three settlers in production, but the other two settlers aren’t free. I think the decision is a lot more involved than just looking at the resources on the map


(FWIW, I’m just poking fun at TBS for the awkwardness of the resource layout, I think it is fine).


Part of the decision about how to dot map is defence, another is the yield from the cities themselves, the third is something a lot of players seem to miss, is the time it takes to get from founding to profitability.


The north island is easy, but I’d still disagree with founding on horse: I think founding on the plains hill is the better choice: trade 2 coastal tiles and a 1 hammer plant for 3 coastal tiles and a 2 hammer plant, and the hill defence bonus, plus the opportunity to share the crab with the northern south island city. It also allows us to specialise the cities much more effectively: the plains hill city can be the “production” city on the middle island, and the northern clam/fish city just gets minimum infrastructure (Granary/Lighthouse) and is a fishing village, which whips the more expensive infrastructure after the GA (Stock Exchange, courthouse, possibly market for happy). This limits the cost of improving each city, and maximises the value of building a forge, dry dock, harbour, later on factory, power plant, etc. in just one city.


The south island is harder to split. tl;dr I’m not sure if it makes more sense to found 1W of the wheat, and orphan 3 food resources to create a single decent city, plus the grass hill city that splits off the crab. I don’t really see a way to make a triple city island into anything other than a bunch of fishing villages that have a bit of production but can’t build infrastructure, and get stuck between Rusten putting pressure on me and a need to develop, all the while sucking up defenders from the mainland. I’m leaning towards a two city solution, if only because I need to get the settlers out now, and there are other city locations that require settlers (after the current settler blitz I still need 3 for the mainland now and 2 fillers a bit later, Wetheral settler is the third settler for the islands, but then the extra settlers aren’t allocated).


The single crab city reaches 18hpt with a forge engineer. Higher if I lumber mill the forests and don’t chop. But it needs all the land tiles to do that. The fish/crab city would then max out at 10hpt with a forge engineer, and the wheat/crab reaches 6 hpt with forge engineer, and they can work 13 coastal tiles (and ocean fish). OTOH, 1W of wheat can reach 15hpt and work 10 coastal tiles: slightly lower total yield (especially as there are a few extra trade routes, and food for specialists), but it’s a hill city and I only need to build one set of city defenders, one set of city infrastructure. There is still the possibility to swap two grass workshops between single crab and 1W of wheat (as opposed to three with the fish/crab), so it is possible to swap 1W over to a reasonable production city and still build some infrastructure in single crab city (because it can’t be whipped that hard it would need to build the Stock Exchange/courthouse.


One reason I like a two city solution is that I can use the wetheral settler for the 1W of wheat city, and the crab I would split off for the other city can still be used by the plains hill city on the middle island. This should help speed up the development of the islands, which shortens the number of turns until profitability (howevery you want to defenine that: yield into tech, ability to defend themselves etc).


I need to weigh up if I need a naval production city in that area, or some cities that just provide gold and beakers. Naval production in the era of frigates and destroyers is not something I’ve looked at closely, and it is tied in with Aldeburgh and WT, plus the other island cities.

[Krill]

Turn 115

This turn was played last night so I could mull over teh scout developments.

That stuff can wait. Turn report for this turn is as follows.




I'm not sure how TBW is going to view the scouting, but he has a scout in my land so fair's fair IMO. That chariot is also checking for forward movement every turn, but staying out of culture.

The workboat didn't take a wrong turning, but has to go a bit more north to get round this island. I hope this isn't a continent





This was a wake up call. I forgot barbs exist because I've managed them out of existance in my area, but that doesn't mean other players are doing the same thing. After I played this, Elkad move a tracker onto the horse, so I might kill the scout for the 2XP and good will? The land extends a bit north, but it's a peninsula so a galley will scout it anyway.





The barb wake up call stopped me from blindly wandering into the fog with Gilbert. And I found Rusten instead. I am going to follow the coast line but I will not let Gilbert get trapped. Then return along hte coastline slowly, check out 2MN and get picked up by the Merovech later.

I really want to know Rustens coastal capabilities to understand what I need to look out for in terms of production.





Still feeling that banking rush rather than courthouses is the right move.





Growth is stagnated for a few turns, but Rusten seems to be catching OH in crop yield maybe?





Demographics whilst saving gold, but...





...these are the end turn demos. Feud shows as finished in 4 turns at 80%, so long as whipping doesn't cripple me, I may still be able to get Feud eot118


Addendum

So in the prior response to DavV I talked about weighing up options. I looked at where I can even build settlers, and I realised that I can actually get a third settler out of Catfish, for 3 settlers total on the islands. Any more settlers need to be built else where and ferried over: That means I will use 4 settlers for the middle and south island, with the Wetheral Settler. Unfortately, I am one turn short of whipping Huxter for a further settler, but I could whip a further worker from there (one worker for 6 cities does seem a little short).

This is what I have at the moment:




Double whip T117 steal corn, settler 126/100, T118 and overflow into a settler 41/100, T119 give up corn, settler 52/100, whip T120.





Double whip T117, settler 117/100. T118 overflow into worker 28/60, T119 whip worker (sucks to have it sit around doing nothing important, but will not complete in time to load onto the galley if whipped T120.

[Krill]

Question, does anyone know if the players you are compared against in F8 update mid turn? ie If you meet a new player who haa more pop or land that the current "leader" shown in that screen, will it swap from, say, Rusten to OH/Hitru?

[Krill]

Turn 116

Big turn. Big, Big turn. Found Hitru.




Oh yeah, and Rusten is going to bulb Astro. Fantastic. Given that he needs to use the 300 and 400 point GP to do so, I'll be waiting to see when he finishes his next GP (what the hell is he doing about the shrine?)

In a completely unimportant note...just how much terrain is up here? Thi is going to put a dent in circumnavigation timing, and I don't like that one bit.





Great. Hitru is in HR/Vassalage/OR. At least that means more KTB on Feud, so it will definitely be completed eot118 with gold saved (as shown in screenshot).









+~50 gpt. I'm hiding my max bpt and costs from OH now by not running 100% science.

Another player that had fur and gold in their territory.

24 hooked food resources. Why is it that Hitru and Rusten have so many sodding fish? when I look through these lists it appears that Rusten and Hitru had higher yield tiles than other players.





Hitru and Rusten don't know each other. Nor does HItru even know Borsche?! He knows TBW, Pin and Elkad, so is he on the other side of TBW to the far north?





I think that is TBW's capital with the rice adjacent to the fish. I also have a single offshore trade route to a TBW city, so we know where that is now.





Now this is annoying. If anything, I feel even more certain that the barb busting net I have in place to stop galleys is well worth the 2gpt.

I've had to change the settling plan a bit. I'll settle the two middle island cities first, and I'll stack the two galleys together to kill that barb galley. So long as both of my galleys don't die, I will have a three move galley which I can use in a chain to settle the south island. This is partly because of the location of hte seafood: all of the middle island food resources I'd hook forst is oceanic so the barb can't pillage it, and I can skirt around the barb for the clam/fish city (and approach from catfish straight over the ocean).

I've also changed settler routes, but I'll explain that later. Sticking with what I wrote for Huxter and Catfish last turn though. I'll leave the axe to fogbust the south island, as I'll need to know if I'm sailing into barbs in the future.





tl;dr: I'm working on an attack plan to use against GKC, and it comes down to this: SoD down the middle, and galleons along either coast to force him to split his forces. WE, Xbows, cats plus bombard trebs, and swords as city attackers. Knights also necessary to provide support to either flank and try and defeat in detail.

I don't think there is a defence other than privateers and a massive cat stack, but then numbers tell and GKC is small. And this strategy essentially works against TBW just as well so I'm going with it.

I'm build the GW in Kettlewell because it's 150 hammers and I'll take the "risk" of fail gold for late game +100% GG points. Not like there is anything else I want to build there, and military is not wanted or available to build right now.





So with settling HoT on T117, I want it to steal the ivory for 3 turns to stack up some hammers for a granary (no way to complete it before size 2). That actually delays the settler from Wetheral. But the galley movements are now screwed because I need to kill the barb galley, so I'm going to whip it for 1 pop on T119 (to 114/100) so it loads onto the galley current at Wetheral on T121, then picks up the second settler from Catfish on T122, and is on the ocean tile between Huxter and the middle island T122, and ideally I will have the 3 move galley underneath to then chain the settlers down south.

This does mean that the workers get delayed, dependent on what it takes to kill the barb galley, but not much I can do about that.

Oh yeah, I was also a doofus and forgot I need to build a workboat ffrom Seahouses for Southease. As I got the happy trade with Borsche, Seahouses will build teh galley for now to stop hammer decay, T119 it will be size 9 and make 24hpt into a galley, T121 finish the workboat (hook fish T124), T122 finish the galley, T123 finish a barracks and T125 finish a chariot and then build logbows, or a forge. TBW has lower power than me, so actually might go straight onto the forge (need barracks for sentry chariot which seems prudent given my difficulties getting circumnavigation, I need back up).





This is what I know: Feud lands eot118. I will revolt T120, and T121 I will finish MC as it is already a 1 turn tech, and on T121 I will have an additional 6 cities making an extra 48bpt at unknown cost to gold. But MC is so cheap it is a one turn tech. My max tec will be in excess off 400bpt, but by how much I don't know.

This means Machinery is only 3 turns to research, but that third turn will be close to breakeven. Eot127 is not unrealistic, and if 4 people have Machinery by the time I start to research it it might not even be that.

This means I'm getting very close to triggering the GA. But I need to use teh GA to generate great people AND to swap into Mercantilism, yet I'll need to swap into Slavery at the end to whip Stock Exchanges and units so I need the end of the GA to line up with tech. I can't bring the GA forward, but if I delay the GA I might end up finishing Banking in the middle of the GA.

I need to keep in mind if I can either fit in techs such as IW (currently takes ~215 base beakers to research) and/or Construction to possibly start building the slowmover stack I'll need, or if I ought to see if I can actually reach Banking by the start of the GA if my tech speeds up more than expected.

For example, if I could finish Banking in 2 turns at the start of the GA, then I could actually delay the civic swap, and get a lot more gpp out of the GA. Looking at Astro around T140-2ish? With Stock Exchanges everywhere I need, I could either use the GA for military or for courthouses. Probably Military: Stock Exchanges and Merc will solve most economy issues except land to grow into, and these costs are not bad right now.

Just have to see what the next 8 cities do to costs on T121. Doesn't seem to have hurt Hitru.





I think Rusten has 40 more pop than I do now, but he only makes about 40 more gpt at max gold. I'll be looking at this screen next turn to see where HItru is with pop.





I know it is very bad idea to compare an expected future position to a current opponents position, but to compare it to my current position seems OK: by T125 I expect to have 6 new cities working (outer ring) fish, a 7th working a crab and an 8th just settled: that's an additional 50 food. On top of that there is pop growth, but 20 pop grown over 15 cities is...on the low side even with the need to recover 15 whipped pop from current pop counts. So in 10 turns (9 turns of output) I expect to be where OH and Rusten are now, if not ahead of that position.

I was hoping to be 8 turns behind in crop yield by T120; I expect to be 7-8 turns behind by T125 even considering the revolt.

[Krill]

Turn 117 - Preamble

I think my tech path is slightly wrong, and it's having an impact on civic revolts and city builds.

How do I win this game? I win this game through space, and to do that I need TBW and GKC dead, and for me to hold onto this starting continent.

Trying to get Merc a turn faster to get an extra 75 beakers doesn't help me. Having an army and navy in the right place, at the right time helps me.

What am I trying to do in a GA to meet this aim?

I need to generate enough GPP to be able to bulb Astro (which opens up new routes to strech and break both GKC and TBW), and make a start on the GP for the second GA. I need to swap into Merc and Slavery (to whip the units and Stock Exchanges I need). I need to have a clue about religion: There is a point for picking Judaism, or do I get something else?

When could I research to Banking naturally? Guilds is an arm and a leg: 2050 adjusted beakers. But I reckon that OH will provide at least one set of KTB. Assuming that, base cost is around 1660 beakers.

Given that I know from just settling new cities I will be over 400 base bpt, I wonder if I will get to 550 base and be able to push it down to a three turn tech? I think that is unlikely: Assuming 25% beaker modifiers, that means 40 pop working coastal tiles or scientists to generate 120 commerce, which is the 150 beakers. OK, not that implausible: Sneatonthorpe, Lucker, Oakenclough and Kettleness will grow 25 pop between them by T130 IMO. Add in Huxter and Catfish recovering from the stacked double whips and it’s not far off. 3 turns max research and a turn of breakeven even looks quite likely.

I’ve already posited that Machinery should be completed by T127, unless city maintenance explodes due to the new cities. A straight Guilds rush would look like eot131 plus the turns to save gold, so probably T136.

I know that I can push out the 200 point GS from Westminster. I’ve planned to get the 300 point GS from Oakenclough, but the reality is that I’ll probably get the 300 point from Wormelow Tump and the 400 from Oakenclough. Delaying the GA start past T132 doesn’t do much to help the GA situation, but does give me an opportunity to grow cities. OTOH, it also costs me turns I could be whipping an army and delays military action, and possibly delays Merc (must be revolted on last turn of a GA, or in the first three turns of the GA).

Why should I revolt to Serfdom/Vassalage before the GA at the cost of gold, hammers and food?

If Vassalage saves me 13 gpt in unit costs and costs me 4gpt, it’s fair to say it saves 10gpt once you consider inflation. If max tax generates 130gpt, then 13 turns of Vassalage will cost me no gold, only the food and hammers.

Hammers will cost me roughly 100, food looks like about 90. In exchange I get +2XP on all units (so I can build military units which aren’t junk, galley gets +1 move in the hunt for circumnavigation), and unlimited spec slots. But do I really need those slots?

Think where I will use them: I will not use them before T132 at Oakenclough. I can actually do without them at Westminster, and WT needs them once it reaches the happy cap, so from the early T120’s. But most importantly, I need them at the 8 new cities to pop borders to grab food. So yeah, I need Serfdom because the border pop will pay back the food at the new cities. So really I'm only going to lose the hammers (and even those I’m not sure how to value due to the faster workers), and it’s the ability to whip that I’ll miss (but I only want to whip at new cities, and without serfdom popped borders I have no food to whip, so better to grow the pop and whip after the GA than keep the whip for now).

So when am I going to build units? I'm not, because I will have no techs to build anything.

So I’m going to grab Construction and IW, aren’t I? Because it makes so much more sense to start building the slow mover stack now to hide a power spike in plain sight, and to let to accumulate at Lucker/Seahouses. If I don’t, the only units I can build are longbows and trebuchet after Machinery. That allows me to use the GA around the early T130’s to play through Guilds and Banking whilst I push out a few swords and crossbows in the meantime. Then afterwards, I research HBR and the Optics line, bulb Astro and finally turn around to grab Paper and Engineering, and Literature. Construction and IW probably cost 170% of max slider right now.

Turn report




No. I'm not giving them anything that can help them "over the top" against a target.





Not a continent. Or at least, not a north/south one that will destroy scouting progress like has happened at Borscheland.

TBW has three forests at his capital and isn't chopping, yet he has Maths. He settled Ravenna for two outer ring seafood. 10 coastal tiles at his capital, yet picked Shaka of Rome. At least he had a bigger river than I did.





Hitru has refused to play his turn. I've moved forward. I expect him to move the scout underneath the chariot so that he thinks I can't declare to kill it. Nothing he can do can save that scout apart from move it onto a galley, but I don't want to kill it. No point being antagonistic at this point.

Note the Borsche settler underneath the scout. Borsche has an immortal out, so maybe he will settle the 1 tile wide isthmus and I can sneak my galley through? I doubt it. More likely he settles 1NE of the cow.





I'll accept that founding this city "so early" is a mistake because of the effects it has had on Westminster (needed to build another galley), and on galley positioning. Founding on T121 would really be neither here nor there, but I would probably have been able to get a worker over to "improve" the tiles a bit quicker. And you know what? I don't care. I need to push galleons past HoT to attack TBW later on, and with that barb galley spawn I'm no longer sure rushing a single settler down to the Widewall location is a wise decision (as there is no work boat for food, no worker to hook the wheat), so it would be no different than HoT working a hammer tile for a few turns.

Except HoT needs to work the ivory to get the granary in (and it will probably get forced to chop the forest for the second half of the granary), and then use workshops to build the lighthouse. So it was a mistake to make the decision to prioritise settling in the past, but right now it looks a lot smarter IMO.





Either that galley didn't move, or there are two of them. I don't think it moved, because there is nothing to attack, no nets to pillage. I'm going to use the axe to make sure that the coast is clear next turn, then use the axe to fogbust for the return of the galleys.





GKC: pop borders and teleport Cavendish! AND CHOP YOUR FORESTS!

Elkad turned up so I moved the axe into Seahouses, and I will finish an archer on T118 in Lucker, build a worker on T119 and whip it on T120 before the revolt. The chariot will provide cover.

I'm toying with changing Seahouses micro slightly. I might want it as the HE city (32hpt at size 14, forge gives +1 happy, therefore needs market as well). And I'm also thinking that I might need to turn Westminster into the Moai city (it can make 20hpt right now, Huxter makes 5 and would need to grow to make more hammers than Westminster would), and WT into the NE city (Quernmore doesn't even exist in planning stages).

I'll move the spear out on T118 to the Seahouses tile on T119. No need for a road in place.





HoT cost 6gpt in city maintenance but brings in 7, so it's looking better for the new cities not breaking the tech rate. All the same, because I've whipped so much pop this turn I can't safely fit IW in this turn without risking Feud being delayed too far.





6 settlers in production, 7th to be finished eot121 in Catfish, Sneatonthorpe to shove one out at size 6 eot126, settled on T128. That gets me to 24 cities with space for three more(and I need two settled before leaving Serfdom because of needing the artist slot to pop borders for food.

Gut feeling is that other than this stuff, every city gets a library>Stock Exchange>?Barracks?>units, and forget forges except for core cities (Sneatonthorpe, Seahouses, Westminster which will push 500 hammers through the forges for pay back during any way I fight).





So Rusten still has more pop than Hitru...and more land. This is very interesting.

Long term, will the +15% beakers, plus Emancipation/Free Speech cottages be stronger than shrines? Do I have enough land to make it work if I can take out GKC and TBW?





So who has top crop yield? Hitru? Or Rusten? Tune in after I get graphs in 10 turns to find out (unless they have court houses and make more EP than me).

[Krill]

Turn 118

So this is the last semi-reasonable turn before I try not to fuck everything up. Hopefully we have no pauses, so I can play T119 on Tuesday, T120 on Wednesday and then fully report T121 on Thursday as I'm off for these three days (yay 3 day work weeks) As such, I'm going to try and say as little as possible about my plans, and try to look more at the bigger picture that other players are seeing.

Right now I have contact with everyone except Mouseferatu (BaII, but he really should change his forum name), Adler/AT, DS, Commodore, Gav and BeardBeard, so I have less knowledge of what they are doing, except they are probably the "distant" civs whom I want to cultivate friendly relationships with: I can't fight them, and none of them are runaways, so I want them to be strong to make life more difficult for OH/Rusten.

Gav, as we know, went Oracle>MC for fake courthouses + forge engineer>Mids. I've caught up with him in score, and he has a slow leader. I seriously doubt he has a high crop yield though (top two are Rusten and OH, then I'm vying for third position with someone else). OTOH, he has Rep (or PS) so he drops his crop yield to tech. I'm not being drawn on anything until I see his land or get his graphs, but I don't think he ever goes away as a threat because he has semi-cheap banks and universities, -20% civic costs and about -70% city maintenance all in, so he can actually build better than Rusten or OH/Hitru, and then he has AGG for Amphib maces/muskets/rifles.

Commodore is matching Pindicator in score, which is just another way of saying two FIN players with alternative methods of border pop and a trait to help expansion have 40 more score than me (and I finish about 25 points worth of score eot and then start racking up classical era techs before rushing to Banking). We're all pretty much in a group with Gav behind the leaders, but Commodore has an opportunity to use PRO as his singular benefit (Pindicator has used Arabia for religion and shrine, and will have a bastard of a knight UU to skirmish with). Again, doesn't feel like they have as much to come as I do with CHM/England.

DS screwed about with Henge, and has dropped down the score chart but it looks like he just landed MoM? AT/Adler have landed Collosus and are using that to stay relevant but they have Julius of Sumeria and they aren't top ranking: Collosus and Sumeria fall off, as does IMP leaving them just ORG to match other players. Not feeling that they are anything but an unappetizing obstacle compared to other food sources, but they don't seem like major players. Definately worth befriending. DS just looks like food with MoM.

Mouse and BeardBeard, well, I have no idea.

Out of the players I can see:

TBW




Everything dies to swords and Xbows off galleons. Everything (except his front city). All his cities are canal cities. He is a much more tempting target than GKC right now, and he is screwing around with CoL plus he spent a turn revolting to HR. TBW is now food tier, he is not a threat to me but could be an annoyance. After the game I'll have to come back and revisit the decision to to challenge for the front city. Could still be completely right, or completely wrong.


Borsche




Borsche is low on score and as Sury of Persia has zero late game potential. Not quite food tier to me, but Rusten would probably disagree and just eat him alive after munching on 2MN. He hasn't developed north, he is only just getting a road underway and there is a barb city blocking his expansion path to...somewhere. Plus the seafood locations are annoying: forced dot map 1W of lake, 2SE of lake on the plains hill, and then on the dye tile my scout is on. None of those cities are any good but at least they make use of CRE. Still, Calendar rush has given him sugar, he'll hook dyes, and he has traded for sugar so his happy cap is good. But he has no room for expansion because 2MN will get hit and eaten by Rusten, and then Borsche has to defend from Rusten.


2MN




This is not a shot of 2MNs' core, but I don't see any point in showing that. These two cities are a perfectly good example of why he is a dead man walking: He extended around Rusten, and can't hold these cities against 8 strength pikes, catapults (which he is already building) aren't enough. But I have a quibble.

TBS, did you know that in the base map generator, luxury resources are grouped per landmass? That means that this area down here, which has so many gold resources, was most likely created as a separate landmass to that which 2MN and Borsche started on (as there are no gold tiles in their lands except the single gold tile most likely placed by the lux resource balancing order I put into the custom script). Then the land was joined up.

This means that Rusten probably started on a landmass where a huge maps worth of gold were placed around him, in easy reach. He already has 4 hooked, and he only got the last two done recently, so I'm not saying you missed this, or it was a mistake. I'm bringing this up as another example of something that probably needs changing in map generation.

Rusten I make no comment on, he is up there with OH/HItru and he is going to eat 2MN. The timeframe for him doing that affects my actions as well, so I'm just reacting to him right now. He got another 20-40 gold through an event (motherlode, turns out events happen when you log in not at turn roll). I can't complain, I got whales.


GKC




Brutally honest assessment: GKC will be harder to attack than TBW due to terrain, not player skill (on which I make no judgement). He has tech visability on me, but he lost a city to Pin, I can't even get graphs on him to know what the effects are. He has no knowledge of the eastern world. But I don't know his tech situation, yet at the same time he is not putting up what I would consider competant development in Tamuin: I suspect this extends to the rest of his land.

He picked Aztecs, but I am unsure what use he has made of them. No point commenting on past per formance, but I don't know what he is going to do because he is far behind despite having Darius. No way can he be more than an annoyance if he tries to attack me through Sneatonthorpe, but if he is in a tech lead and grabs Paper and Optics he could be annoying and rip up nets. Then I shove everything through the centre and he dies, slowly and painfully for the both of us unless I make proper preparations. Which is why Astro and TBW look more enticing.





Elkad is a bit of a conundrum. His actions influences TBW, which possibly widens any window of opportunity for me (but I don't see how it would shut such a window given the current discrepancies between TBW and myself). His GNP and MFG matches mine own, but his cropyield is low such that he is going to be paying the price in 20 turns. And I don't know what OH/Hitru are doing or where they are: will they be in position to take advantage of a period of "weakness" if that weakness is Elkad playing PRO/CHM of NA with triple promotion longbows making any assault futile? Because if OH/Hitru can't, then I don't see who else could do anything.

But does he try to settle the southern island? If so, that gives me a potential partial conquest of an important area, which completes my defensive structure against Rusten when he takes over his starting continent.

Elkad is not a friend, but at the same time he is a source of realpolitik and opportunity.








By my count, current at 83 pop, by eot120 I'll be at [94-8=86] with 2 turns lost to revolt. Then on T121 I'll drop down the rest of the cities but I don't see an improvement in pop for another 10 turns or so (granaries are hard to build in the island cities due to lack of forests). Soon to be 23 cities and up with OH/Rusten I think, but pop will take time to grow.











I think that top MFG is Hitru, but Rusten has higher pop: I can't tell who is where between the two: it's possible someone else has triggered a GA and the MFG is a third party such as Commodore or Gav. I also look at the crop yield and think I'm falling behind, but that's just the delayed growth due to the settlers.

All in all, I'm feeling more confident of the Astro bulb plan every time I log in, as galleons seem the best way to get units to the front, and open up most attacking opportunities. The problem is how my actions will match up with OH and Rusten. I don't want to leave an opening for Rusten to attack over the ocean (but at the same time I'm not exactly delaying grabbing Privateers or Frigates because the Astro bulb is itself a method of forcing players to defend rather than throw everything into attack).

[Krill]

Turn 119

Played this turn in two parts, because I realised half way through I needed to get IW before I settled every city in case I screw myself with iron positioning. Due to that, I've had to put a few cities on research (rather than welath), but more on that later.




Found Pindicator. There is a bit of space between this city and TBW, so I don't know if this is where OH is, with this being Pins eastern most city, or Pin is sitting in the fog and this is a south western city for him. That is for hte galley to figure out...





Going to see if this city is defended by warriors or archers.

If warriors, this is a nasty decision to go for a HE chariot here whilst the galley rounds the city. Gut feeling is that Circumnavigation is more important, and also I can build a HE unit after Construction/HBR lands so it's not like I'm forced to do it. Don't want to piss off Borsche either, if he is sending an IMmortal to take the city. OTOH, is it worth attacking if it gives 3XP and that means Sentry? That answer is no, it really, really isn't worth it.





Gilbert can run around the hills then go back up to 2MNs core: E - NE, N - NW, SW - NW, rather than taking a longer detour. In the fullness of time Rusten and I may sign OB and I can scout out then.





For the love of god GKC, pop your borders.





This picture is how I left the slider and cities when I logged out.

Research can be built in the three cities identified, and the cost is 9 hammers into a barracks, 6 hammers into GW, and 4 hammers into an archer. Not a significant cost, but if I put them into wealth, then I could not run 60% slider to finish IW. But every other city except Owlthorpe (Market) and Kettleness (making 1hpt) is building a settler, a worker or library I MUST whip next turn, work boat that is already timed to hook a fish, or a granary (head of Tild), so putting those cities onto wealth costs more than just the hammers. So research it is. I'll save gold after the revolt and figure out what I want to do then.

Isn't this exciting? I'm betting on the iron being around Huxter/Catfish and it completely screws the settling micro I've got on hand for the middle and south islands.








I have hammered the commerce output over the past few turns, but breakeven is still around 140bpt. As a low point it's, well, acceptable.




Looks like I was completely wrong on T109 when I thought I would have a greater crop yield by this point. I can't assume that I'll catch up in the short term, but I'll probably pull away from the pack?