[SPOILERS - El Grillo PB54] Staying home and stargazing

[NobleHelium]

Classical units are barely better than ancient units. I don't think anyone is talking about that when they say an era tech advantage.

[El Grillo]

T88:




This is going to be the recurring nightmare of PB51 all over again, isn't it. Well, this time I'm a bit more experienced, and hopefully a bit less prone to despair. We don't know too much about what's going on in Byzantium, but if I had to guess, the plan looks like:

1. Tech Code of Laws to swap into Caste System to run a bunch of Rep specialists with that food surplus they've been developing.
2. The fastest way to get to Guilds is probably a Great Merchant trade mission or bulb, perhaps alongside a Golden Age.
3. Turn some of that population into an army, then use Cataphracts to run over the weakest neighbor.
4. Consolidate, then repeat step 3 if possible.

We don't have a great way to interact with this plan since we're basically as far away from Miguelito as possible, so we need to scale up in parallel and look to fight later in the age of Galleons and Frigates. Hopefully we can race him to Code of Laws for Confucianism, as I would like a religion to take advantage of OR ourselves, but they have 192g in the bank and are making 31gpt, so it could be tight. Unfortunately I don't think swapping immediately is worthwhile, I'm counting on the happiness from Dyes immediately and Silk soon after. Maybe I can run some Wealth builds after the Settlers finish.

Our avenues of expansion are fairly straightforward, either forcing Ruff off the contested island or carving south or east into one of our neighbors. Each option has its upsides and downsides:

- Against Ruff, we can strike opportunistically if he ends up the target of vanrober's Keshik timing as I suspect. We want him gassed to the point of not being able to muster many reinforcements, but not to the point where he's fallen back to the island as his last stand. Securing the western coast of the contested island is going to be very messy even if we get Metal Casting for Triremes since he'll have access to ocean tiles courtesy of his capital.
- superdeath seems to be the most behind and built the Colossus, which would be a very nice prize with all of our coastal cities. Unfortunately, superdeath has earned his reputation for being a tough target to bring down, even if he's clearly playing this game on the back burner compared to PB48/PB55/PBEM78. Mjmd could also interfere with the attack, and I don't have a good sense of the terrain down there along the southern coast.
- Mjmd has stretched hard to expand so quickly, and if we can settle the inland island in the upcoming turns we'll be able to pressure his northern cities and threaten all along the coast, though it seems he hasn't actually settled a city on the sea until his 6th by the barbarian city. That's good, because it means he almost certainly can't beat us to the spot, but bad because it means we won't be tying down as many defenders. Mjmd also got a lot of combat experience in PB52 and is capable of some crafty tactics, and I'm afraid of this turning into more of a grind than I'd like to get into.



My misdirection of moving up Archers and roading to the gems tile seems to have worked, as Mjmd chose to settle in the most risk-averse spot, while baiting me to commit to settling on the gem hill. That seems like it would get us into trouble, so I'll be content to settle a filler-ish city to grow on the bananas and foster some cottages for the capital. Yes, it's not coastal (gasp, blasphemy), and will need a border pop to work the gems, but it's by far the most defensible spot available, and it gives me an out if I decide to attack Ruff first, whereas planting closer would basically guarantee getting into a fight with Mjmd.

[El Grillo]

T89-90:

Another 2-turn day, hurrah.



Hmm, perhaps we might be fighting Mjmd first whether we like it or not. That's not really a city he can allow to exist. We can found on T93 with an additional Archer, which I think may be too tough to crack at his current tech level, but no doubt he'll go into war-planning mode at the sight of it, maybe even at the sight of my Archer next turn



One avenue of potential iceball fishing village exploration. I founded Winter Solstice to not orphan the whales and allow me to immediately hook silk, which gave the Workboat free time to explore, and our Warrior saw the coast from the silk tile. Hopefully there's some seafood up here, or maybe silver or stone/marble? This area could get dicey once Elkad settles the islands nearest to him, but thankfully he's been very slow to expand and only recently planted his fourth city.



/whistles without a care in the world



Miguelito hasn't assigned many specialists - if anything, he appears to have picked up more food tiles now that he's done with his mines. I also saw via the diplo screen that scooter traded him stone... not sure I follow that line of thinking. I'm scared of the turn he adopts Caste System and shoots into 1st place in GNP while retaining a smaller lead in CY. We are settling three more cities in the upcoming turns and have the happiness to grow to decent sizes, but I can't help but worry...

[El Grillo]

T91-93:

Whoops, thought I reported yesterday but must've forgotten to. Some interesting developments are beginning to take shape:



We founded Confucianism on the contested island of all places on T91, and it immediately spread to Ruff's northern city of Asymptomatic. This would actually be rather problematic in and of itself, as Ruff now has a much better reason to want to conquer it and consolidate his hold over the island. However, as luck would have it, vanrober declared war on Ruff on T92 and seems to have taken a city from him, based off of the espionage count and his treasury gaining a bunch of gold. The Spear on the copper moved out of Pre-symptomatic and is presumably waiting on a Galley to get shipped back to the mainland. In the short run, this is fantastic news because it means that we don't need to commit more forces to the island, and can in fact withdraw our Chariot back to the mainland to deal with some skirmishing elements from Mjmd. If vanrober continues to make progress, then perhaps we should consider what a quick stab with a half-dozen HAs might look like...



Mjmd settled Warcraft 3 on T92 and I settled Summer Triangle on T93. He has an Axe and Chariot on the plains tile and an Axe trailing a turn behind. We currently have only one Archer and a W2 Warrior in range to defend, but the Galley lets me bring in reinforcements very quickly from the capital. There's a second Archer on board ready to move into the city on T94, and the Chariot that's currently on the western Galley can be unloaded inside North Star and immediately board the eastern Galley, meaning it can reinforce on T95. Considering that the city is on a hill and these are 3xp Archers coming from the capital, I'm not too worried. In fact, if he slips, I can attempt to raze Warcraft 3 through the canal, but he faced a similar threat recently in PB52 and shouldn't be caught by surprise again.



In the inner sea, we founded Great Diamond and have an Archer on board the Galley which threatens his empty city of Medieval Total War and the Worker on the stone. Again, I would hardly expect him to slip up here, but if he does insist on declaring war over the north, we can keep forces tied down here and harass him without much fear of retaliation.




Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.

[El Grillo]

T94:

Mjmd responded appropriately by defending as needed and withdrawing his forces in the north. Good call, friend. I moved my own Galleys back to non-threatening positions in response. I also thought a bit more about attacking Ruff and decided again to hold off for now. Whipping out enough units to act quickly would come at a steep opportunity cost, and also move all my Galleys way out of position such that I'd be much more vulnerable to Mjmd. Instead, I decided to press on with researching Civil Service. The Golden Age timing for civic swaps is too good to pass up in my opinion. I can adopt Bureaucracy the turn the GA starts and research up through Monarchy for HR and OR, combined with a dip into Caste System to pop some borders and work on a Great Scientist for the capital. I'd like to aim higher, but I don't think I can muster up both the 200gpp and 300gpp this time.

And I know I say this a lot, but I'd much rather be growing my cities now (well, aside from maybe one more Worker whip... maybe 2...?) than whipping them down again. Our recent expansion has raised our expenses such that we break even at 50%, and while there are definitely still more sites to think about settling, we're going to need to start thinking more about how to support and defend our territory. PRO Archers won't be good enough forever, after all.

Abroad, the WW counter shows quite a bit of combat between Ruff and vanrober, whereas naufragar and scooter are still at war but no recent fighting has occurred. Miguelito indeed swapped to specialists, but I think top GNP is actually giraflorens. I say that both because Miguelito is saving gold while giraflorens is spending it, and because it would be really depressing for him to be top GNP at 0% and retain top food, so...

Giraflorens, with an Academy and 2 happy resources connected (more than most, it seems a lot of people only had ivory nearby), is my best hope for a counterweight/speedbump to Miguelito on that continent. We traded our horses for their furs a few turns ago, and our interests certainly align when it comes to keeping Miguelito in check. We're spending EP on Russia next to get a better sense of where they stand in number of cities and demos, hopefully they're doing better than Elkad and Cairo currently appear to be.

[El Grillo]

T95-97:

Apparently not much happened recently.



I was lazy and moved both my Warrior and Settler onto this island in one action. Pretty sure Settler-aboard-Galley triggers free wins against barbs, and I definitely would've tested it. I wasn't expecting much from this site but it would be GNP-positive, easy to defend, and get me a second source of whales for trade, so I'm very happy about the two fish for my upcoming Caste cycle.

Elsewhere, I offered Mr. Cairo dyes for his stone for Moai and possibly Hanging Gardens, which I've been thinking about but haven't put together a great build plan for other than just slow-building it at the capital with Bureaucracy. Our unchopped forests are at our borders with superdeath and Mjmd and I definitely wouldn't want to tempt either of them.

I also moved Galleys back from threatening positions, though I could've sniped one of Mjmd's Workers with my 9xp Warrior. Feel like saving him for a potential upgrade and HE unit, and there's a part of me that still wants to have Mjmd aimed at superdeath while I attack Ruff. Speaking of, he's whipped and chopped a pair of Swords so he clearly wants his city back and not just to defend. Curious, his power rating is still far short of vanrober's.

[Charriu]

I was lazy and moved both my Warrior and Settler onto this island in one action. Pretty sure Settler-aboard-Galley triggers free wins against barbs, and I definitely would've tested it. I wasn't expecting much from this site but it would be GNP-positive, easy to defend, and get me a second source of whales for trade, so I'm very happy about the two fish for my upcoming Caste cycle.

Very sneaky. As I always tend to say: Users are chaotic evil.  

I plan to remove the free wins mechanic with the next version and replace it with something else, so I most likely won't try to fix this.

[NobleHelium]

I would say abusing the free wins mechanic to help further your position in the game is more of a Lawful Neutral action.

[El Grillo]

Don't I get any credit for first and foremost trying to keep my units safe and unharmed?

In more relevant news, I admit my micro has slipped pretty significantly as we've come into this part of the game. I need Workers in places they aren't, need more Workers overall, and whipped two cities one more time than I probably should've. Small things individually, but they do add up. It's just been hard to stay as focused without being able to maintain a sandbox. How do you all keep up simming and micro planning past the sandbox phase of the game? There are calculators for combat and spreadsheets can be fine for managing single projects like building a wonder at one city, but empire-wide?

[Charriu]

Don't I get any credit for first and foremost trying to keep my units safe and unharmed?

 

But seriously thank you for telling me things like those.