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

[naufragar]

Hope he doesn't mind our planned city too much, it is mere 3 tiles from our capital, and he probably didn't hope to keep the spices in the 2nd ring of his city against a creative leader. But he might be annoyed. I can only hope he doesn't send a big huge stack at it

Commodore's a pragmatist. If he can kill it, he will. If he can't, he'll live with it. In that same vein, I suspect he felt the need to poke Miguelito who would otherwise be safe since Thoth got hit by us.

[yuris125]

Well that's why I hoped Thoth's attack would come before we settle that city, so that I could reduce garrisons on the border with Thoth and have more units ready to defend the new city. So that Commodore doesn't think he can easily kill it But judging by the fact that Thoth played a 3 mins turn last night, his attack is still not coming (haven't looked in-game yet)

Will probably move a couple of units from Gruul Smash to hold station between the two cities, so that they can defend either, and go for early walls in the new city. At least with Commodore we have full visibility of the land near the border, would be difficult for him to surprise us

[yuris125]

Commodore has a chariot in Yellow Comet this turn. Which is noteworthy as AH was low priority tech on this map. But of course people are picking it up now, especially now that they have IW and can cleared jungles for pastures

Moved our spear (we still only have one!) closer to the Commodore border, just in case

Plato born at eot

[yuris125]

So I spent a lot of time staring at the tech tree this turn, and decided that Monarchy is not the research target we want to go for right now. HR would raise the happiness cap in border cities by a lot. But we would need to lose a turn to switch, and I don't know if we can take full advantage of the increased cap right now, when cities don't have enough infrastructure to work specialists. I'd say we want to time HR research with the first golden age, which would too early right now

We have 136 gold and are currently losing 18/turn. That's 8 turns of research - just enough to research Iron Working and Metal Casting. IW unlocks two new strong tiles (iron mine at Big Red Dragons and jungled pigs at See-Scape); Forges give us an extra happy cap point from the gold, and let us run an engineer in the capital after the next great scientist is born (apart from the production bonus). Then we save gold, and once the next great scientist is born, we can bulb Math and go straight into Construction research (if Thoth isn't attacking, don't think we're clearing his stack without cats)

For now I switched research to IW, which we will need any case. Nauf, if you think the IW / MC plan is nonsense, I'm happy to go back to the Monarchy path. But I do think it's better for right now

Not much to report otherwise. Commodore has yet another swordsman in Blue Moon - have to assume he's chopping them, it's way too soon to hardbuild one. We're find ourselves last in power all of a sudden. But IW and walls should push it back up (not particularly looking to go back to unit builds just yet)

[naufragar]

Sorry, took a step back after PB64. The IW/MC path seems reasonable. I don't know how good or bad our happiness is. Another thing to think about: eventually someone's going to get the idea for galley shenanigans. It would be good to have triremes by then.

[yuris125]

No worries! I appreciate any advice you can offer, especially when it stops me from making disastrous decisions (like attacking Commodore without dealing with Thoth, just because his power graph looks a little weak ), but completely understand if your attention is elsewhere!

Our happiness looked very bad when I decided we wanted Monarchy, but it was because we couldn't spare worker turns to connect the luxuries, and our cities had two points of whip anger. Nowadays with gold and ivory connected, we live with happy cap of 6, which I'd say is decent for this stage. Not worth investing research into the Monarchy line yet, when we likely won't have means to fire a golden age for a while, and Monarchy won't do anything for us unless we eat a turn of anarchy, in addition to beaker cost of religious techs we have little use for right now

Thoth is building a road on the desert tile leading towards Gruul Smash, which further suggests he wants to at least threaten the city and force us to have both Gruul Smash and See-Scape heavily garrisoned




Going to whip a couple of axes in the capital. Will whip walls in Gruul Smash next turn. Overflow probably into a library (although there won't be much overflow, think so far I just put a single hammer into walls to make it double-whippable)

See-Scape is close to being able to build its own reinforcements as it's establishing its food supplies. Will whip a granary there once it grows to 4 (walls there are set up to be singled-whipped if Thoth goes that way). With IW coming in, we will pasture the pig, and it will actually become very food-rich, with none of it useable by other cities. Eventually I expect it to work a lot of specialists

Bringing the starting archer from Big Red Dragons closer to the action. Big Red Dragons can be defenceless for a few turns, will build a bowman there after the Granary

I don't think we need to worry about Triremes yet. Only two players know Sailing, and I'm fairly certain Commodore is the one who doesn't. Miguelito is on the other side of the world (and seems to be engaged in action with Commodore, although there's been no evidence of fighting yet), and Thoth needs to choose between galleys and praets. Sailing is one of the of techs we should backfill sooner rather than later, but don't need immediately

[yuris125]

Looks like we will have a showdown after all




That's 7 praets, 3 axes, and a spear in the screenshot. Plus an unknown number of chariots out of sight (we know there's at least one)

Formidable, but I think we can defend

We don't know where Thoth is going yet. Logically, it has to be Gruul Smash, otherwise there's no reason for him to road the desert. But I held off on whipping the walls this turn - I want him to commit

Started a bowman to have a follow-up whip option after the walls if we need one (we did put a hammer into a bowman in Gruul Smash many turns back, but it decayed ages ago)

Now, I don't think Thoth is actually going to attack Gruul Smash, as we know even praets don't get the odds on axes and bowmen behind walls. What I think he will do is try to bypass the city and go for the capital. If that's the play, once he commits to it, we can evaluate. The plan is to road the jungled pig (where I moved the workers this turn), then move the chariot onto the gold hill and see how many defenders Thoth left behind. If he doesn't have many, we can rebuild the road towards the gold, and take the entire stack from See-Scape to try take his capital. He's still on a single city - if we take it, we don't have to kill his stack. That's the reason for axe build in See-Scape this turn, we can do the usual axe into axe/spear whip next turn, and I want to make sure we have enough units if we decide that trying to take Thoth's capital is the play

Big Red Dragons is still doing its own thing, it's a little far from the action, and because of its low food I don't want to whip there. It really needs a granary, and grow to size 5 to work the banana forest and the iron mine in addition to its current tiles. In an emergency I can 1-pop-whip a bowman or a chariot, but I'd like to avoid it if at all possible

I think our 5th city ambitions have to be put on hold until this attack is done - I'm almost certain Commodore will try to deny us the city if he can, and we can't commit the units to defending it in this situation

[yuris125]

Actually running the numbers, Thoth has ~40% chance of taking the city. Hammer exchange is still in our favour, but just barely. Our chariot will probably have to go into the mix - it might make the difference

[naufragar]

Gotta say, I agree with your second assessment. Thoth making a dash for our capital seems too cute. The simple punch is probably what he's going for.

He could be feinting to Gruul Smash hoping he can grab See-Scape for cheap, but honestly, big Praet ball is just so nasty regardless. Here's the linch pin of the game. If we survive this, we likely can put the praetorian threat in the rear view. But we gotta survive.

Good luck on the rolls!

[Magic Science]

What does "RESET THE FARM" mean? .