[SPOILERS]yuris125 looking for inspiration in Pitboss 73

[yuris125]

I think Scooter just made an axe. I could die to that, you know. Depending on where my copper is

[yuris125]

So if Scooter beelines for my capital with his axe, it will take him 12 turns to get there. 11 if we account for delay in the graph

I will have BW in 8 turns (says 9 now, but I will gain a commerce from working the spices when I grow to 3)

There's a chance the copper is on the hill I moved onto, in which case I may be able to defend. If not.... well, I probably cannot. Scooter almost certainly can camp the copper and stop me from ever connecting it. Annoyingly, Scooter already knows where my copper is

Kinda wish I recognised the possibility sooner, but what could I do about it? Go for AH before BW? With how important BW is, I think it would've slowed me down too much

In any case, switching to AH now would be too late. And, well, maybe Scooter built the axe for defence (he started without a warrior after all), maybe he just wanted at least one military unit and didn't want to build a soon-to-be-obsolete warrior (who does?). Let the record show that I recognised the danger, and chose to ignore it

Also, note a mere 4 turn gap on the power graph between Scooter researching BW and finishing an axe. He's not in slavery - this is the power of early Bureaucracy...

[yuris125]

The isthmus I've been exploring turned out to be a dead end




The more I learn of the map, the more likely it looks that my expansion path will have to go through Scooter. He's also still spending full EP on me, even though we're well over the threshold for graphs now; either he sees me as hostile enough to make this EP spending worthwhile, or he hasn't met anyone else either. Has it been confirmed that we're all on the same landmass?

[Tarkeel]

Has it been confirmed that we're all on the same landmass?

From the tech-thread:

Does Big and Small mean there will be one player isolated? (you don't have to tell me if that's a secret)

Big and small means not everyone starts on the same landmass.

[yuris125]

Thanks!

Well, sounds like either Scooter axe-rushes me or I phract him

[yuris125]

Not really finding much food outside the starting area




Since I know that Scooter has an axe (almost certainly know, don't think there's any other way to get 6k power increase at this stage), not even going to bother bringing warriors back, as they won't give any defence against an axe. If Scooter does beeline towards me, I die. He's not following a turn split and not building more axes, so fingers crossed he's not out for blood. In fact, he just settled the 2nd city, perhaps that axe was indeed for defence

Will see where copper is before making further plans. May need to bump AH before Pottery, but since Scooter does have Hunting, doubt it's worthwhile, he can just bring a spear with an axe stack to invalidate any chariot ideas. As long as copper is not in an especially inconvenient spot, I should be able to defend with axes - just a matter of getting them before Scooter comes to test my defences

[GeneralKilCavalry]

What's the plan for cataphracts? rushing HBR ASAP, or something more dev-oriented in mind?

[yuris125]

If it is confirmed that Scooter and I share this continent and everyone else is on another landmass, probably cataphracts asap

In FFA scenario with everyone on the same continent, I would have to worry about someone else joining the war (on either side). In this setup
* Naval action will be limited to galleys for a very long time. It will take a while for big scale naval invasions to happen
* Scooter - thanks to early Bureaucracy and better starting techs - has a much faster start than me and much better long-term potential. The longer I wait, the harder cataphract conquest will be
* Thanks to Scooter's Bureaucracy-powered production, without cataphracts I am at risk of being overwhlemed by sheer number of his units, should he make a coordinated attack - even if I establish sufficient defences to avoid dying to an axe rush
* I likely will be left out of sharing Oxy's land, or at least my opportunities to grab a part of it will be limited. Assuming Luddite and Cairo will be sharing his land, I will have to take land through conquest of my own to keep up with them

Currently research plan is Pottery and AH after BW - both useful development techs which also advance me towards the techs required for phracts. After that, I'm still unsure if I want to pick up anything before going for HBR and IW, and will need further scouting info before making a decision on that. But the more I learn about the map, the more I feel that teching to cataphracts asap and securing the entire continent for myself will be the play

[yuris125]

Copper




This changes everything - 2nd city has to go north, either NW of the corn or just on the copper. Leaning towards the latter, firstly it lets me connect the copper faster (in fact, I think there will be instant connection via coast), and secondly, it lets me utilise the grassland tile up north in longer term, which would go to waste otherwise, with the lack of food resources around it. I actually may have jumped the gun moving the worker onto the corn to road towards the second city - road connection can wait if I'm settling on the copper. But I'm going to have to go back to the sim before deciding

[yuris125]

Conclusion - I don't know :derp: I actually like the spot NW of corn slightly better, as it has 4 decent tiles to work (corn, copper mine, and 2 regular mines), whereas on the copper only has 2 tiles (corn and 1 hill) - the plains hill ends up in the 2nd ring, and I don't want to invest in a monument so early. But I am terrified of not being able to build an axe for another 6 turns

One thing I established is that now that the city next to the eastern wheat will be the 3rd city and not the 2nd, I can afford to delay AH a little more, which lets me fit Fishing before Pottery. No immediate benefit from it, but I will need it sooner rather than later, if only to get a scouting workboat out, and it is a Pottery pre-req, so saves a few beakers in the long run

Still 2 turns to pick the city spot.....

Oh also, moving the worker onto the corn and roading it works out regardless, I will want the road connection one way or the other. The alternative would've been moving onto the hill E of the corn and chopping the forest into a worker in the 2nd city (I know, I know, building a worker in 2nd city at size 1 sucks, but that's the least bad option - 2nd city needs to be settled asap for copper connection, but I want to keep corn in the capital for a few turns, so building a worker while working an unimproved tile is least painful); if I gave it more thought while playing the turn, I would've loaded the sim a turn earlier and evaluated both worker moves. But now that the move is made, chopping that forest later still gets the chop done at the right time. And of course, if I do end up settling NW of the corn, moving the worker onto the corn was necessary