[SPOILERS] Out of retirement and into the fires of war. yuris125, Pitboss 68

[yuris125]

Commodore's scout is on the hill earmarked for our 2nd city, which was the logical move for him... now we wait to see if he fortifies there

If he does fortify, and doesn't move away once our warrior is out, we may have to take a slightly-better-than-50% attack against the scout. Which would suck

Got Thoth's graphs, can't deduce any new info from them just yet though. Will start spending EP on Commodore next turn. Somehow no one is spending EP on us

[yuris125]

Commodore did indeed park the scout on our hill. Fingers crossed he's not interested in flipping coins against our warrior one it's ready

His power also went up by 2k. Could be a warrior, but my guess is he finished Mining - I wouldn't expect him to want to invest hammers in a warrior, and timing for his 2nd tech seems about right

Thoth's power also made a huge jump - I think he went BW first and just finished it

[naufragar]

He could be trying to get an archer on that hill for a city to really jam us. Worst case but it’s be real bad. I’ll try to look into some moves tonight.

[yuris125]

When I simmed Commodore's start and went Workboat into Archer, Archer finished on T16. That was with no micro - maybe he can squeeze out a few extra hammers and finish it T15? Then it takes 5 moves from his capital to our hill. We can definitely fortify a warrior there by then, if Commodore lets us have the tile uncontested. Warrior on a forested hill with max fortification bonus... is still 50/50 at best vs an archer (probably less because of archer's first strike), but Commodore may consider it too risky of an attack to take

If Commodore does keep the scout on the hill and lets us attack into it with our warrior, we may be able to take it out, but our warrior will likely be too hurt to defend against an archer. So honestly that's probably the best move for him, if he's set on deterring us from settling that city

Maybe we should've kept our own scout on that hill. I was worried about others interfering with our tiles, but no one tried to do that (I'm actually surprised about that). And now we're facing this situation with Commodore occupying the forested hill we want

[yuris125]

T14

Turned around two turns tonight; Thoth finished a warrior (not a guess, I had scout in range of his capital and saw the unit). Thoth and Commodore both grew to size 3 last turn - wonder when their settlers are going to come out. Commodore's start does have good unimproved tiles to work unimproved, as we talked, but for Thoth I didn't think workboat opening was better than worker. Could be wrong of course - maybe we should've tested workboat opening for ourselves (although starting with Agri and not with Fishing seems to heavily favour worker first for us)

Our warrior finishes at the end of this turn. Time to play the game of chicken with Commodore, will he keep the scout on that hill?

[yuris125]

So we have a decision to make on the upcoming turn. Do we want a second warrior?

The main reason I wanted one was to have a body in the 2nd city defending against Commodore's Archer while we whipped an Axe and got into position. If we can't settle the 2nd city in our preferred location, that is not going to be a concern

Warriors are going to have a very short shelf life in this game, with us being the only non-Agg civ. In fact, I would argue their window is already closed, with Thoth and Commodore having access to Axes and Archers respectively, and us expecting our warrior to struggle even with dislodging a scout from a forested hill. They would be useful as MP later on, especially as we expect to rely on HR for happiness, but that is very far down the road and hardly worth the early investment. Our main units should be bowmen anyway, once we get round to researching Archery

I'm inclined to start a workboat instead of the 2nd warrior, and chop/whip an axe to go with the settler

[naufragar]

I'm very content with swapping that second warrior for a work boat build. Only reason I didn't do it in my sim was to not scare you. But you're right that 2 warriors is just about as useless as 1 right now.

[yuris125]

Right, new plan then. Up until now I've been playing under assumption that we were in a straightforward settler race with Commodore for the furs. But we can initiate skirmishes ourselves. Commodore choosing Archery as his first military techs means he's slow on BW, his dog soldiers will be late to join the party, and even as he researches BW, he probably will need to at least build a worker, he can't rely on working unimproved deer for much longer. All in all, right now he doesn't have a unit that attacks well into an axe, and won't have one for a while. So we should focus on stopping him from taking good positions

If we get an axe, we can park it on the tile E of the furs and block off his expansion in our direction, or at least stall it until we secure the hill city




In practical terms this means:
Revolt to slavery the turn we finish BW
Grow the capital to 3 on a workboat. Then work these tiles for a turn




1-pop-whip an axe, and switch to a settler, putting a chop into it as well (start chopping as soon as the wheat is farmed)
We have just enough time to chop + build a road, settling the city on T30

A more efficient way would be to grow the capital to 4 and finish the workboat, then 2-pop-whip the axe after the chop comes in, overflowing into the settler. In the sandbox, this gets the city settled on T30 as well. But the axe only gets out on T28, reaching the hill along with the settler on T29. Feel way too slow in a real game

If you have time to play around with this plan and look for optimisation, advice would be very welcome!

[naufragar]

I'm not going to have time to sim immediately. We still have a few turns to test? The sim I'm most interested in is simming from Commodore's position to see how quickly he can get to that hill.

[yuris125]

Yeah we have a few turns, can't really do anything other than build a workboat until BW research finishes. I'm pretty sure Commodore can beat us to the hill with an archer if he beelines it - my estimate was T16 to get an archer out, and 5 turns to move it to the hill. But it all depends - Commodore has seen our warrior now, next turn we'll know if he moved the scout off the hill, or if he'll move it once we move the warrior next to the hill

I'm still undecided if I want to attack with the warrior if he doesn't move - it was 63% odds this turn, and Commodore will get a few more fortification percentages before we can attack. But could be worth taking the attack even if it drops to coinflip odds - for the important tile as well as for a promotion on the warrior if we win

I'm also planning to keep our scout on the southern side of the lake between us, on the spices tile, moving to Commodore's border and back to the spices every turn. This way we should be able to spot his incoming archer without risking the scout