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

[naufragar]

Well, it looks like he's firmly focused on us.  Seems like we're gonna be reactive rather than proactive for a while.

We still don't know if that scout is anything more than a lookout. I'll try to stay optimistic.

[yuris125]

No dice. Commodore moved to the northern side of the lake, and seems to be heading straight for the hill. He's too good of a player to chase stray scouts

Revolted to slavery, but dislodging the archer off the hill will be a pain. I'd be much less willing to risk an attack with a axe at coinflip odds than I was with a warrior

[naufragar]

Likely he looked at the same dotmap we did and saw how crushing our city would be. No idea what we can do about that archer. If we can't take the hill, any eastern city gets founded on flatland toward Comm. Which is where dreams go to die...

[yuris125]

Well we will have a second axe the turn after double whipping the settler - think we'll just have to accept trading an axe for his archer (and hope his archer doesn't get flawless rolls against our first axe). As long as Thoth remains non-threatening towards us

I don't even think our planned city is crushing for Commodore - it's as non-aggressive as a city contesting a luxury equidistant from our capitals can be. I'm just not willing to cede all the land on our east to him

[yuris125]

The interesting question is - where does Commodore settle his city? Presumably he has to be working on civilian units now, he doesn't have a worker, he doesn't have a settler, this archer + scout are his only units right now (not counting the initial archer stuck in the capital for another 30 turns). Presumably his city on our hill wouldn't be defensible. But any city to the east would have to be on flatland, to defend it he would have to unfortify the archer and move it off the hill, at which point our axes get odds against it

I guess his best play is to get to BW and whip a settler into a dog soldier, and accept continued life without a worker

[naufragar]

I guess his best play is to get to BW and whip a settler into a dog soldier, and accept continued life without a worker

Benefits of that Northeast start. The unimproved tiles are a tad better, so it's less of a distasteful idea.

[yuris125]

Commodore's archer has arrived. I whipped our axe, but it doesn't get the odds on the archer even before fortification kicks in (I forgot about archer's bonus to hill defence, although it makes sense)




Commodore also revolted to slavery last turn (as usual, he plays after us, so I didn't see it until this turn). We need to start thinking about alternative expansion plans - I don't know if we can contest the hill tbh. The way he played the opening, his start is just faster, and of course he now has access to dog soldiers, which we can't fight without bowmen

Thoth may still have a warrior as his only unit; his power jumped by 4k last turn, but I think it's The Wheel research, none of the early game units give this much. There could be a chance for us to contest the ivory. Sucks that all our cities will be on flatland this way, but that's just how it plays out

[naufragar]

Initial city thoughts: 3S of Comm's archer and 1S of our gold are still workable cities.

Sucks that all our cities will be on flatland this way, but that's just how it plays out

Mhm. Bowmen like to be on hills, but I suspect most cities this game will be planted on flatland. There aren't too many good hill tiles.

[yuris125]

Yeah, this was the dotmap I was looking at if we decided not to worry about praets (I posted this image a while back)




Forget about the cyan dot, which is way too ambitious, move the orange dot 3S, and we have a workable set of cities

[yuris125]

The biggest problem with 3S is that the hill E of the fish is a legal spot for Commodore, so he's likely to steal the fish down the road. We can go for the plains tile W of the fish instead, but then we lose the option to share the wheat and the oasis with the capital. Could just settle on the spices?