[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[Zed-F]

Thanks to Luddite, though, our tech rate is way better than I was projecting. It seems like we will beat Yuris to WEs and it won’t be close.

The thing that most informs us if we can take Currency is if Yuris has HBR or IW before we can Oracle it. If we can Oracle Currency before he gets HBR we can probably get away with Currency, I tend to think. If we can do it before he gets either, definitely we can. The only exception is if he’s deliberately stopping a few beakers short of the first tech and switching to the second to hide progress, but that requires a better meta reading from him than we’ve seen thus far. It seems real likely Currency should be doable.

At this rate even if we don’t speed up our tech rate at all we’ll get WEs by T70. It’s really hard for me to see how Yuris could possibly beat that, even if he did focus substantially more on commerce than I did in my simulation.

[Qgqqqqq]

If that's his only horse, I think I agree with denying. How well do WE trade against spears, if we leave them on the jungle? Getting 2ish up there and parking them while REXing feels low cost.

[Cyneheard]

If that's his only horse, I think I agree with denying. How well do WE trade against spears, if we leave them on the jungle? Getting 2ish up there and parking them while REXing feels low cost.

Two spears will kill a WE very reliably. Not getting defensive bonuses is a huge problem - you'd want an axe to cover them in the jungle really badly.

A WE + an axe together is very hard to trade with profitably, though, without Cataphracts, 4 axes would have a decent chance of cracking that pair, but you'd really want to have 5 in case any of the suicide attacks don't do enough damage.

0xp Spear attacking 0xp WE: 50-50
Combat I Spear vs Combat 1 WE: 65-35 in favor of whoever is attacking unless the spear has any extra defensive bonuses of 10% or more (5% fortify just makes it 64-36)

[Zed-F]

Yeah seems like denying horse is more of a medium-long term plan than a short term one. We have to amass enough WE to convince Yuris he can’t profitably attack first, or beat him off if he does anyway.

[Jabah]

You don't have any axes right now (couldn't see any in the previous pictures) ?
So parking one or several WE+axe pair(s) will need to wait until you get back your copper somehow.

What if he is planting the city ON the horse, it would be seriously more complicated to get him out of cataphracts (and if iron is safe, he could be really tempted).

[Zed-F]

Getting copper back is as simple as canceling the gift to Luddite, when that becomes necessary. I’d be surprised if Yuris plants on horse since then that city doesn’t have first ring food or any other good tiles, and he’s expecting to be the aggressor, but we’ll see.

[scooter]

Yuris got Iron Working. Based on my break-even for HBR and extrapolating to what his rough rate must be, I'd guess I have like 12ish turns before he can build Cataphracts. Probably a little longer than that, but let's call it T71 conservatively. I have no way of knowing Iron's location, so I'm just going to have to assume he has it, though I can watch for improvement oddities to try to figure it out.





And he did settle on the expected spot. I pulled my warrior back to keep from getting popped by the east axe. Peace expired, and he moved his warrior quite aggressively towards Connor, but I have it covered if he declares next turn, which I don't expect he will.





Don't see anything to change my mind about Orange Dot. If there's extra seafood west/northwest of it, I can just grab it with the other islands that are there. There are 2 tiles where I am risking a total orphan here, but I can check those at time of landing and verify.

[Zed-F]

I guess last turn’s pics were after EOT and this turn’s are before, which is why they look so similar. I did see an int sign, though!

I guess a couple more turns before we have to make a decision on Oracle, but Yuris getting iron working and not hiding his tech rate from us is probably good news on that score. Pretty confident we can win the race even with Currency first, though Construction would give us more prebuilt WEs if hammers are the bigger bottleneck. Do we want a quicker Currency at the cost of an all-hands-on-deck for WEs around T70-75, or do we want to pick a couple military pumps and get started earlier, at the cost of a slower Currency?

Starting to come around a bit on the idea of Oracle Construction; beakers aren’t really our problem and if Construction first lets us smooth out hammer allocation to keep expanding while we build military a bit more easily, that could have some value. Depends on whether we can extract any real value from possibly improved sequencing.

[scooter]

I did see an int sign, though!

Nothing may come of it, but maybe?

I guess a couple more turns before we have to make a decision on Oracle, but Yuris getting iron working and not hiding his tech rate from us is probably good news on that score. Pretty confident we can win the race even with Currency first, though Construction would give us more prebuilt WEs if hammers are the bigger bottleneck. Do we want a quicker Currency at the cost of an all-hands-on-deck for WEs around T70-75, or do we want to pick a couple military pumps and get started earlier, at the cost of a slower Currency?

2T til Oracle, so we will find out shortly. I'm not playing coy, I literally have not decided.

[Zed-F]

I guess part of the question is do we even have any cities that can get a barracks built in just the next 5 turns so if we do Oracle Construction they can build WEs immediately, other than the capital? We might not benefit that much from early Construction if we’re building unpromoted WEs. I think having cities with barracks being the ones concentrated on military is the biggest draw of early Construction.