Christ I hadn't even seen Noble's land before our chat yesterday. He's guaranteed to get all of that thanks to those mountains. He also may or may not Eat us before we connect metal. Noble will become a monster.
New Micro Plan. Woo! This one is much better! Even more farmer-y! We will eat ALL of the corn or die trying! Plan is spoilered below, with overall thoughts afterward:
Overall, I think this is a much better plan. Our capital is a strong, extremely food-heavy city (in spite of all our complaining) and the rest of our land sucks (hence all our complaining), so I think the best thing to do is focus on improving the capital ASAP. This plan does that excellently, with a granary T39, and 5 improved+worked tiles to boot. This granary is huge; for example, from T41-43, our city grows a pop 3 turns in a row. City2 also gets a granary+monument early, by T50. This means we will look like we are doing terribly until about T60, but hopefully then explode onto the map at lightning speed thanks to a great capital, IMP, and such an early granary. Of course, everyone else likely has a capital just as good, so this is probably wishful thinking.
The copper is connected late, at T53, and we have no planned metal units until about T57, at which point 2 axes and a spear will be produced in quick succession by City1 and City2. This may be far too dangerous. Every planned I've tried that isn't super dangerous is just dog-shit though, so I think we have to hope no one calls our bluff.
The turns in which AT quite possibly wrecks our game completely, or his own. And after I just spent all that time improving the micro, too.
I stupidly moved the warrior to protect the worker on T36, even though there was no chance AT could whack it before T37. God I'm stupid sometimes. I really need to learn to think before I act in MP; most of my dumb mistakes come from playing automatically, including this one. This means that AT can:
A) threaten the worker and ruin my shiny new micro. Annoying but not crippling.
B) attack the city itself, which he will have low (but not impossible, thanks to my STUPID move) odds on. Something like 22%, whereas it would otherwise be about 15%. I'm furious with myself.
The latter obviously ruins our game, gg we lose. Not sure what we do then, but playing a crippled civ doesn't sound very fun. I'll probably do my best to do some serious damage before being eliminated, but I doubt I'd really post much anymore.
In more positive news, this quechua seems to be AT's entire military right now, so he may not want to take the risk. We shall see.
Otherwise, not much happened this turn. We are still number 1 in food!
Honestly, if AT decides to declare war I think he's most likely to choke us by sitting on the corn, which will be crippling for that city. He could also just be scouting out those shiny new borders... You could declare and offer peace to check his intentions.
Regarding the plan, you're missing research from it, and you might as well use names for the workers. Worker2 could be named Gurney Halleck.
"Superdeath seems to have acquired a rep for aggression somehow. In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
-Old Harry. PB48.
(December 1st, 2020, 16:35)superdeath Wrote: Is that bad?
It's really bad. This is an Inca civ, with stone in the BFC, settling a city 3 tiles away from our city#2 and our planned city#3. Stonehenge rush is not guaranteed, but likely, and then we are screwed. Tarkeel and I, as mentioned, had a chat about this development this morning, and decided that we can't let that city live. It's a shame; the city is clearly in AT's territory, but even if he builds Stonehenge there on T60 or T70, which are later than I'd predict, it will screw us over completely.
As a side note Superdeath, it's not a massive deal, but I would argue that stone in the BFC is much stronger than marble in a first ring city, for balance purposes. Just fwiw. It's better for both the reason we are scared about, and also it lets you build Moai a lot faster which matters on this map. Also, capital is better than not-capital, for obvious reasons. Maybe this is just my inexperience talking though? What do lurkers think about this, which would you prefer?
Overall, this choice quote from Tarkeel this morning sums up how we feel about AT's new city:
(December 1st, 2020, 16:35)Tarkeel Wrote: Our greatest strength is being underestimated and unpredictable. I think an axe rush is crazy, but what else are we supposed to do?
So yeah, looks like our peaceful farmer's gambit has turned into an axe rush. With two people who've never done a rush before in their lives.
I'm not sure how legible it is to anyone other than me, but in a spoiler is the new micro:
Total military involved in attack: 5 axes (3 on 55, 2 on 56) + 2 spears (2 on 55) + 3 Workers (2 in south, 1 in north). Should be easily enough to take the city. What remains to be seen is whether we could push on to the capital afterwards. I'm not familiar enough with MP yet to know if that's realistic.
This micro has 3 axes and 2 spears cross into the border on T55, and attacking the city on T56, with 3 combat workers (uh, all our workers ). There are optionally 2 axes another turn behind, though that may be overkill. If AT is paying close attention, he will probably know by about T51. If he is not paying attention, probably T53 or T54.
The main thing we need to figure out is whether we can go for the capital afterwards. I suspect that will be too greedy, but I am very greedy. Even if we stop at one city though, our entire classical military will be built already, and we can focus on pure expansion afterwards. I figure worst case scenario, we capture a nice city on the border with AT. Best case scenario, we're back in the game.
Edit: If we do decide to go for the capital, and we take the City#2 on T56 as hoped, we could attack the capital on T59, with whichever of the 7 units survives the first attack. Also, if his borders expand he will see the stack on T54.
"Superdeath seems to have acquired a rep for aggression somehow. In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
-Old Harry. PB48.
Trigger Warning: This post might come off as whiny, but here's my take on our immediate territory, tech implications and other consequences.
Our capital is very food rich, but with two of those sources being seafood we're more or less forced to start with Fishing. Given the lack of production (just two hills and two forests) we're more or less forced into researching Bronze Working for slavery first, and then Pottery for granaries. This has dictated our research so far, with just a minor "detour" to hunting to get the only luxury hooked up.
Our first ring of cities has one good spot picking up hillside pigs, but those need Animal Husbandry. The only reason we're able to research this as early as T39 is that our start is very commerce rich. It still forces us to delay our one strong early city, instead opting to use our IMP trait to claim some territory that wasn't rightfully ours. The only two other options for first ring cities are the rather crappy cyan spot and the silver island. The latter requires sailing, while the first has strictly worse terrain than what we settled.
Edit2: Our situation is exacerbated by the fact that while our one good inner-ring city is west, the rest of the west is a barren wasteland, atleast on our side of the midpoint. We did flirt with a pink-dot in that direction to steal us some stone, but when both of our western neighbors have their copper in that area that just wasn't feasible. (We'd have to settle the hill midway between Ruff and Vanrober that claims stone, corn and cows). Instead we have to go east, but that runs into hard terrain: the only landtile east of the capital is a hill, with a river in between, stopping any fast movement in that direction untill construction.
Given that ElAutomatedGrilloTeller is IND/PHI and started with Mysticism I predicted from the start he would go for an early Stonehenge and associated Great Prophet. His latest city can work riverside grasscows to grow onto hillside stone and later grasshill mines for a monster production city. It also has two forests for early chopping, a third on T50, and four more after borders pop.
I had hoped that by settling the less aggressive of our pink dots that EG/AT would go settle their copper or furs first as they are more strategic. It really doesn't help us that his copper is in a rather safe spot under capital culture on the other end of his empire. We probably need to send our lone warrior on a trip towards it this turn so we can maybe keep it from being connected (edit: It takes 11 turns for the warrior to reach that spot). The only good news is that it's not on a river, so it needs a road for connection.
The sad part is that this makes about as much sense as Japan bombing Pearl Harbor to keep the US from intervening in their acquisition of eastern Asia, and I fear it will be about as successfull.
(December 1st, 2020, 21:48)Amicalola Wrote:
(December 1st, 2020, 16:35)Tarkeel Wrote: Our greatest strength is being underestimated and unpredictable. I think an axe rush is crazy, but what else are we supposed to do?
Yeah, it's worth noting that my post is a very optimistic take on what is overall still a pretty grim situation, and a mediocre rush at best. The Pearl Harbour comparison is depressingly reasonable.
I just did all my ranting in the private chat this morning.
But don't even get me started on that godforsaken river.
It's Turn 39 and we finally researched our mandatory techs, praying for some horses in that river valley...
Nope, no horses there! They are indeed at the red spot, which really didn't need another boost, but atleast it was a city we were always going to build. But where are the other horses? AT, Noble and Ruff all have their horses at the copper spot, while Vanrober and us need two separate cities to claim ours (I'm assuming that Vanrober has horses on the other side, and no copper there). It's not a big deal as our capital will claim it on T50, but we still need some more presence to secure them.
This being the first time in this game we actually have a choice of what to research, we had a small discussion earlier:
Sailing would be needed to settle the silver city, which we're ready for in about 20 turns time. Not a priority.
Masonry would let us quarry the marble for red city, but we have no immediate use for the resource and the city won't be founded for a while. Not a priority.
Mysticism would let us get some monument culture in. But wait, only Buddhism has fallen of the early religions, might we have a shot at founding one? It's a crazy gamble as it would take about 15 turns to Polytheism, but let's try... It's not like we have much to lose?
I really need to learn to think before I act in MP; most of my dumb mistakes come from playing automatically, including this one. This means that AT can: 
![[Image: noidea.gif]](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/noidea.gif)
In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
). There are optionally 2 axes another turn behind, though that may be overkill. If AT is paying close attention, he will probably know by about T51. If he is not paying attention, probably T53 or T54. 
Even if we stop at one city though, our entire classical military will be built already, and we can focus on pure expansion afterwards. I figure worst case scenario, we capture a nice city on the border with AT. Best case scenario, we're back in the game. 
