[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[aetryn]

Xist has spotted my cities with a scout, can see they are empty. He's also just double whipped on T46. However, my own scout is monitoring the situation in the valley and I can't see that I'm actually in a settling race here, or if I am, it's not going to actually be contested. I see no settler yet, and my city founds next turn. In any case, he's in a position to double move me I think, since he will go last in T47 and probably first in T48.

[aetryn]

Turn 45: Of Giant Stone Monuments

So MJMD and I talked a bit about border pops before the game and one of the options available outside Creative is obviously to build Stonehenge. Since I had (theoretically) a production advantage in settlers due to Imperialistic, the idea was to leverage the extra hammers to grab it before anyone else was really ready to go for it. As it has turned out, though, the other players have mostly kept pace with my on expansion. Interesting question is: how have they done this exactly?

Anyway, here's the plan, and MJMD has already poked a hole in it over Discord but this is what I came up with:
Whip the settler bound for the south with as much overflow as possible:


(Mind you, I realize now writing this that taking a screenshot of the actual city production screen would have been more useful!)

Two workers are chopping forests and will finish on T46. One of the workers will chop one more forest (this is the mistake - I should have had both workers chop a second time). Between the chops and overflows, I need to come up with 32 hammers from the city. I can do this by working 6 hammers for 4 turns and then 8 hammers on the turn we grow back to size 4, making 32 hammers exactly and a 5 turn build total. The cost is some food in the box, but the city is happy capped and needs a garrison to arrive from Patience to be able to work 4 tiles anyway (and won't be able to grow to size 5 until I both camp AND road the elephants).  In retrospect, I should have just sent two workers to handle the camp/road situation after chopping twice each, but that would have left the road timeline to City 5 and (especially) 6 quite tight. Anyway, did anyone expect perfect play from my first game? It's a mediocre-Stonehenge plan, but at least it was a plan.

[aetryn]

T48: Prudence and rumors of war

Settler arrived on schedule with no movement accidents and founded the fourth Malian city in the south. Since I spent so much time deliberating over the best location for this city, I felt it was appropriate to name it after the virtue central to the making of good decisions: Prudence. Prudence isn't timidity or only doing safe things. Prudence is the habit of discerning the good (i.e. the right aim) and choosing the right means of achieving it and is probably the most intellectual of the virtues. The "good" here is unifying the wings of my southern empire and getting a piece of this lush river valley, and I spent a lot of time with a lot of good advice from my dedlurker choosing which means to use. I decided I preferred the faster econ of the closer site over grabbing more of the land, aside from any diplomatic considerations of the two sites, for a couple reasons. One is that it's simply the game I want to play. I probably have to fight a grinding war with Xist at some point, but probably is not certainty and I want to focus on economy. Also, from simming the costs on this map go up unexpectedly quick for Monarch, and I want to get the economy going before it stalls out. Finally, I'd love to make a play at Oracle and Metal Casting. We'll see if it was the right choice.

Here's the new city site:




What's that you say? A Roman warrior is marching on the completely undefended city of Prudence? Well, it won't be undefended by the time the warrior gets there. I pre-chopped a forest that I'm about to finish chopping so the warrior in the city will be done on T51, I can stuff the scout into the city, and another Warrior arrives from Diligence on T52, which is the earliest he can actually attack. This is a little more nail-biting than I was hoping for, but Roman scouts spotted us at pretty much the worst moment when everything was uncovered. I'm hoping he just turns the warrior around when he sees I have 2 warriors and a scout in there.

One other minor note - the Romans founded a religion and the holy city was his second site, which has expanded borders and picked up his copper 3 turns before mine will be in borders. I do have a road already built, and I think we are probably still fine, but it's an unexpected factor.

Tech has been set on Sailing, because we won't finish this until we're near to founding the 6th city, which REALLY wants a Lighthouse ASAP. That's like 14 turns away - I did say costs were going up!

[Mjmd]

Turn 45: Of Giant Stone Monuments


Anyway, here's the plan, and MJMD has already poked a hole in it over Discord but this is what I came up with:

I haven't been as involved with micro this game vs last greens game and also this game has been moving fast! Plus learning is what we are here to do.

For other greens benefit here is the hole in the plan.

 Mjmd: "anytime your micro calls for not working an uber tile you better be sure of it and its time to ask questions"

I think Aetryn has already modified the road cottage timing so road is going to finish turn before city #5 is settled to avoid wasted movement, but there wasn't urgency to sending worker out that way. Chopping an extra forest in order to work a 7 yield tile would probably been way to go. Or just finishing Stonehenge later.

Edit: Xist didn't double play     Whenever he isn't around chopping forest SE of Prudence would be the prudent thing to do.

[aetryn]

T51: Stonehenge built




I've successfully built Stonehenge and all of our citizens are back at working our best tiles while we build a 5t settler to start settling NE in less contentious territory. After this Patience will take over primary settler responsibility, though I think I will likely still need to build one more out of the capital. The worker who was chopping is belatedly improving my ivory so I can grow to size 5 like some other players have been at for many turns already. The other worker is finishing a cottage (to be worked at size 5), and then will probably have to resume roadbuilding. The new worker from Patience has moved to mine the copper, while Patience regrows on a worker.

Here's the situation in the south:



At this point unless he double moves me, I can have 2 warriors and a scout in Prudence before he attacks it. HOWEVER, he has moved in such a way that I realized I was mistaken in a previous post - until borders expand and/or I have some kind of force capable of striking out against him, he absolutely can just bypass Prudence and attempt to take Diligence. He couldn't possibly hold it with a single warrior, of course, but the raze would be rather bad. I don't know that he's planning to move in that way, and I'm not entirely sure he's actually seen Diligence - I think the scout's vision was always blocked by ridges - so he can't know it's empty. But just in case, I've moved the worker that just finished the second pigs and was planning to road them up to prechop a forest instead, and switched to put one turn into a worker just in case it needs to be whipped, it's not being done at a penalty. I think the timing is correct that if I have to whip/chop this it'll be a Spearman, not a Warrior. The earliest he could attack is on T55, and on T54 my worker should finish the copper mine, so if I chop/whip T54 I should actually get a Spear? I'll test this in a sim just to be sure.

Demographics:



Hey, look, when I actually work my good tiles I'm leading in food! Triple bacon is pretty tasty I guess - and once I hook up the cows we can have triple bacon cheeseburgers on nice wheat buns. With some cod on the side, I guess.

[aetryn]

One thing from an earlier discussion was the possibility of Xist settling one south of the pig in that southern valley - I think that spot is invalid, too close to his second (now holy) city. He could settle 1w of the pigs and still be on the hill, but miss three of the river squares including the floodplain. Or he could settle 1e of the pig and get all the river tiles including the floodplain, but not be on a hill. Either way the way the two of us have settled has almost certainly ruined all the best dotmaps of this valley, but what can you do?

[shallow_thought]

(unspoiled, BTW)

Welcome to the world of MP. I visited once. I personally found it a very stressful place, but many have found it fun. My wisdom is limited but it follows. Remember that most games are won by breaking the oppositions' will rather than any clear victory. Having a team or good lurker interaction can be key to keep spirits up. Many games are lost by annoying someone but leaving them strong enough to put in a fatal backstab at a key moment.

You seem very concerned about planning for the worst case. I absolutely sympathise, and playing not to lose is a valid approach if the point is to go as deep as possible and learn for the next game, but winning normally requires a bit of luck, and by deduction, some risk.

I shall be following with interest.

[aetryn]

(unspoiled, BTW)

Welcome to the world of MP. I visited once. I personally found it a very stressful place, but many have found it fun. My wisdom is limited but it follows. Remember that most games are won by breaking the oppositions' will rather than any clear victory. Having a team or good lurker interaction can be key to keep spirits up. Many games are lost by annoying someone but leaving them strong enough to put in a fatal backstab at a key moment.

You seem very concerned about planning for the worst case. I absolutely sympathise, and playing not to lose is a valid approach if the point is to go as deep as possible and learn for the next game, but winning normally requires a bit of luck, and by deduction, some risk.

I shall be following with interest.

Welcome! Glad to have more lurkers stopping by in the thread, it was beginning to feel a bit lonely with just MJMD and I in here.

I think part of the "considering the worst case scenario" is that I'd prefer not to do something boneheaded that I can't really cover from, and by writing it out I can help myself and my dedlurker(s) detect and correct weaknesses. I'm totally green as far as MP war, so I have no idea what Xist is actually likely to do in this case.

I think another part is that my game plan here is defensive. I think my picks outscale my opponents once their UUs go obsolete (granted, for Cataphracts this would be a while). I also think my land is as good and maybe better than my opponents' - the triple silver 6-lighthouse freshwater lake site in particular is a very lucky find that I don't expect everyone to have. So my game plan is to not get the good land I can see, weather an attack or two, and possibly just econ away to the point that nobody wants to attack me, or if it ends in a dogpile on me at least I'll be at a tech and econ advantage.

And probably a third part is that yes, I'd like to not be the first one out. I'd take a solid second place finish in my first run, but more than finishing position I want to survive until the end and not get eliminated. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to win - I definitely am - but that I am leaning away from risk a bit more than I might as I get more experience.

[aetryn]

T52-55

As expected, Xist just turned his warrior around instead of attacking when he saw I had 2 warriors available to defend with. So now we can have a nice normal relationshi.... wait, 12k soldiers added on T53? Apparently he now wants to try again with axes instead. Well, I'm not without my own metals, though they aren't hooked until 54, but that's soon enough to whip an axe out of Prudence and double-whip an axe + a lot of overflow out of Diligence (thanks for the micro help MJMD!). I moved my scout to spot and, sure enough:





Exactly as predicted, but the second axe is nowhere to be seen - it may be coming up from a further away city, or maybe it's a turn ahead on the forest already and I can't see it yet. Also, he just added another 13k soldiers, one of which was pop-related, but that could very well be a third and fourth axe. At this point I'm leaning toward switching my tech to Archery so I can get some Skirmishers out to help defend - I could have it by T58, which is too late to make any Skirmishers for the initial clash, but it's going to take a few turns for the rest of his axes to make it up, so could still be useful. Otherwise, I need a plan to survive potentially 4 axes attacking at once.

I'm... very unsure what has provoked this aggression. Sure, I settled somewhat close to him, but Prudence is closer to my capital than his. There's tons of decent land around to settle and no other players for miles and miles. He must be chopping forests to produce axes this fast without whipping, and those could instead be settlers or workers. Taking my entire empire is almost certainly crippling due to costs - I can barely afford the cities I have plus the ones I'm going to settle next. Prudence is a pretty decent city, but it's not fantastic and doesn't seem like it's worth building 4 axes over just expanding. He's forcing me to put whips into units, but realistically I was going to be building units soon in most of those places anyway, just so I'm not caught with my pants down later, and in any case, just 1 axe would be enough to force some whips, so why 4? Maybe he feels like if he takes me out or cripples me, he doesn't need to worry about speed since the other players are nowhere close? Maybe he just wants to punish what he sees as an overambitious farmer's gambit.

[Mjmd]

As I mentioned to Aetryn over discord I also find this odd..... It is very reasonable to settle for horses instead of copper on a larger map so we could have chariots. Now maybe some of that power bump is a spear coming up from his 2nd, but why push 1 axe out ahead like this?

But yes it is kind of pointlessly slowing both of us down because he is making an axe push against Mali......... So sure it forces some awkward tech and chops, but Aetryn is imp can make that up. Why not wait to use your whips for a unit that can actually take on a skirmisher? Now any units Aetryn builds will just have a lot of turns to fortify before a praet push.

And ya we talked about two pop whipping vs one pop if at all possible a bit.

Although I love Patience 1 pop whipping a settler, you just never see it even with imp. (or is this just a slow build?; I know you had micro for #6 but not in touch with. In any case size 2 city producing a settler is also cool still).