[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Turn 38 - Phoenicia



I reap the rewards of my warrior sacrifice, dropping my military score all the way down...to 2 . Wonder what suboptimal thinks of that. I should be totally safe though, at least from the current level of barbs, with a bireme coming in 3 turns (after the FT policy swap) to boost my city defense scores out of range of the kinds of threats they can currently bring to bear. It's apparently now your turn to get a barb camp spawn irritatingly close to your city though, unfortunately, just SE of the capital with the shape of the peninsula pointing its scout pretty directly at you. Here's hoping you get luckier with that than I did. I wonder if that one spawned because I cleared the camp up here...

Anyways, CN in 9 turns. The capital will make 2 biremes at this speed, and the trader takes 4...hm. Well, maybe that'll come down with production overflow, and, if not, I guess it's worth delaying the harbor by a turn to get it done. Alternatively, I could buy the trader as originally planned and finish that warrior in the capital for some safety against barbs, though I probably need to wait for the scout to die first. The worker pastures the sheep, and will either start heading down towards the second city...well, unless it seems like a good idea to keep it up here to chop that plains hill forest as soon as Mining comes in. The builder won't actually get down to Linear A until pretty close to when its builder finishes anyways, so maybe this one should just stay here so I can chop into the GP/Cothon/first settler.

[Woden]

Turn 37-Vikings
Not much going on in Norway. My longboat moves east and finds...
   

They want me to boost craftsmanship. Pretty easy and will have it in like 6 turns, once my builder gets over to the rice tile. I could always just have my new builder (that will be out in 5 turns) hook up the rice but I need him to hook up the pearls ASAP because my 2nd city is already unhappy and -10% penalty, thanks to the stupid luxury change.

[Woden]

Turn 38-Vikings
Open the save to find a new barb camp just southeast of my capital. Warrior and slinger are starting to make their way back, so they will go handle it. My new longboat finds China...
   

I should get vision on the city next turn and you two can meet. My other longboat continues east and finds a larger island...
   

This might be someone's home island or a larger unpopulated island. If it is, might be  a little far to settle but might be an option if we want to spread across the map. I will continue south and east to find a way around it.

[ljubljana]

Turn 39 - Phoenicia



Not much this turn, just moving the builder and warrior, and apparently contact with China despite not having vision on any of their units. Next turn we should get a pantheon, though, and the first boat in 2. Still no religion up from China, huh? I guess the prophet must be making some sort of long trek from the Stonehenge to their Holy Site? They have more than enough faith for a pantheon, so it can't be that (which has tripped up some SP China games of mine in the past)... CMF added 4 more ES this turn, weird. That could be a city founding and a settler popping, but more likely is a second Lavra and some pop growths or something.

Where in the world did that barb scout go? I think I would have been notified if it had attacked the city and died (and I doubt it would have died anyways), so I guess it must be on the fogged hill 2SE of the horse, the only fogged tile in range of its position from last turn...but why would it go there? I thought scouts went into "attack the nearest enemy" mode when their camp is destroyed...

Do you think I should buy the trader next turn and build a warrior in the capital after the boats, or hand-build the trader as originally planned? My instincts are that one warrior is not enough to be safe from future camp spawns, but blowing 2-3t of production to hand-build a warrior this late seems pretty wasteful...

[Woden]

Do you think I should buy the trader next turn and build a warrior in the capital after the boats, or hand-build the trader as originally planned? My instincts are that one warrior is not enough to be safe from future camp spawns, but blowing 2-3t of production to hand-build a warrior this late seems pretty wasteful...

With the scout somewhere in the fog, you might run the risk of the trader being pillaged. IMO, it is never a waste to build a military unit. I don't know how many times playing these games I think "why didn't I build more military", rarely do I think "why did I build so much military". There is never a good time to build units in the early game when you have so much else you could do. Another possibility is buying a slinger and building the trader. Slingers are fairly cheap (160). What would work out better in your plan, buying a unit and building the trader, or building the unit and buying a trader? It will be a while before you have Craftsmanship researched, so no production bonus. Either way, you need both, just need to figure out what works best.

[ljubljana]

Building the unit and buying the trader would probably work best, just because I already have put one turn of production into the warrior at the capital (since I didn't want to start the boat before the doubling policy came in). Ok, I'll do that, most likely after this current boat finishes - thank you for the advice!

[ljubljana]

Looks like God of the Open Sky and God of the Sea are both on the board - what do you think? I'm strongly leaning towards Open Sky, which is +3 cpt as soon as the builder gets over to the horse, but it tops out at only 4 cpt total from what we can see, while God of the Sea will eventually do better than that in terms of hammers, and has a better chance of improving settlements on yet-unexplored islands as well. Just thought I'd give you a chance to argue a little more strongly than I did here for God of the Sea before I blow it off completely, should you be so inclined.

[Woden]

I would go for God of the Open Sky. Culture is much more valuable right now. 3 is 1.5 monuments and would be a ~40% increase in culture right now.

[ljubljana]

Turn 40



God of the Open Sky -> 9.7 cpt. Trader purchase, and unless the scout reappears I'll just send the TR next turn. Builder's close to getting to improve the farm and pasture, which will allow the TR food to be actually worth something. First Bireme comes out next turn, which will head west to link up with yours for circumnavigation. China's religion is up, and it's Choral Music and Sacred Places IIRC - pretty standard for China, I imagine, though I'm a little surprised they're planning to make enough holy sites to get good use out of CM.

Missed the score updating in the spreadsheet today, as I had to switch over to a Windows machine and messed up my screenshot saving. I should have the hang of it by tomorrow, though.

Oh, and I just noticed I'm going to hit the horses cap in a few more turns. I guess I should send you 50 gift horses then so that my income doesn't go to waste.

[ljubljana]

Should we be considering sub/roland as the early favorites for an attack? Neither civ has much in the way of military bonuses this early, China in particular needs space to be a builder and hates being rushed, and both CMF and Archduke have demonstrated a level of tactical knowhow as individuals that make their teams look relatively dicey as targets, all else being equal. Also, at what tech level do you think we should be aiming to go after somebody? Horses and swords supported by quads and our UU ships could work, especially with a fast GA to come from my Cothons, but a) horses are annoyingly late on the tree for that and b) pulling that off quickly seems likely to interfere with our push to settle this island with Cothon-boosted settlers. Then again, waiting too long will effectively waste our UUs...

I suppose we could also aim for a longship-based coastal raiding campaign, with me supporting via Biremes and quads, with the hope of setting someone back for long enough that it won't matter if we're slowish to swords. That sounds more likely to damage them but push them into a dedicated enough military buildup that they'll stave off conquest than it does to actually work, though... Either way, and even if we don't go for a galley-based rush, Shipbuilding seems like a good choice for our next medium-term tech goal to me while we push for PoliPhil - thoughts?

I guess if we're going to go for a Classical Era attack, I really should start saving gold now for the eventual sword upgrades, huh. Luckily, BW is on the path to Shipbuilding, so we can start building up iron stockpiles soon enough if we do go for that plan. That also means saving the last charge on my upcoming builder for an iron mine, I imagine, with the other two going toward the marble quarry and the mercury mine (and then gifting you the extra mercury, ofc).

I can't help but feel like, from an offensive perspective, sub/roland's suitability as a target will depend pretty heavily on...how defensively they've settled with respect to the coast. We can quickly bring to bear essentially as many melee ships as we need to surround their cities easily, but will have limited access to quads since they're pricey and it'll take so much time to get to the tech. If we can win by beating their navies in the field, surrounding and killing a few cities with melee ships, then landing ground troops, I think we have much better odds than if we have to rely on one ship attack per turn to support our handful of swords or whatever. Following that logic, I'm feeling pretty good about our own decision to not expose any city to a multi-front ship attack thus far .

One potential reason not to attack roland/sub, though: I think it's roland's first game and I don't want to be mean and wreck their game with a rush. That's apparently why thrawn spared me from his Pitatis in PBEM19, and it feels a little rude not to pay that forward... Of course, I guess it's an open question as to whether the proposed t80-ish sword attack (which is slow, but we just need too much tech to be much faster than this, I think) would really qualify as cheesy on the same level as a t40 Pitati rush .