[SPOILERS]yuris125 looking for inspiration in Pitboss 73

[yuris125]

Looks like Scooter deleted the warrior for XP denial. I'm going to send some axes his way, to probe his defences and see what I'm facing. With phracts on horizon, don't think there's going to be peace between us any time soon

Nicaea will be resettled on the turn HBR comes in, so the outcome of this war - no prebuilds for me

[yuris125]

Not having prebuilds simply means that I will have to triple-whip the first set of phracts (prebuild would've made double-whipping possible). Then chop and double-whip the follow-up

The problem, of course, is that only two cities will be able to do that, Constantinople and Adrianople. Thessalonica will be whipped down to size 2 to make a settler, and there's no way to get it above +5 food at size 2 and +4 at size 3, it will take half a dozen turns to regrow and be ready for another whip. I will probably wait for it, but even so, remember how I was hoping to have 8 or even 9 phracts for the initial wave? Think I will have to go with as few as 5

Also, I should probably get a spear out before sending a probing stack Scooter's way. If I expect elephants, they get 66% odds on axes in the jungle, and demolish them on flatland. With a spear we can at least poke around defensive terrain

Just wish the turn pace was better..... don't get me wrong, I'm super happy to see the old school guys back, and we still get a turn most days - I just want to find out what happens!

[yuris125]

Tech priorities after HBR:

Sailing - free commerce right away from trade routes with Mr. Cairo (and probably others on the other continent). Also lets me think about settling the islands - but that's more of an afterthought right now. I suspect all production will go into phracts for a while, we'll see what I see what my probing stack gets to Scooter, but suspect I'm absolutely not allowed to develop peacefully. With the power of his start, he could well get to pikes if I tarry - I have to stop his snowball

Monarchy - I will be whipping a lot and need happiness to counteract

Writing / Maths / Calendar - all essential techs, problem is that Writing and Maths don't contribute anything right away. A library costs as much as a phract, will be a while before I can afford one. Maths improves chops, but every forest in existing cities will be chopped pre-Maths. Probably won't get to this branch until after the war (won't get to it at all if I lose the war)

Metal Casting - this is painfully expensive in base BtS and probably has to be researched after Writing, but assuming Scooter survives the phracts, I will absolutely need triremes to at least have something against his Viking fleets

[yuris125]

What worries me is that if I commit everything to the phract attack, it may end up as poorly as Superdeath's attack on me in 71 - a stalled attack which drags both players down. Of course, the situation is not the same - whenever I think of it, I keep coming back to the fact that with Scooter enjoying Bureaucracy uncontested for 60 turns, I'm committed to this attack from the start, there's no option to seat back and develop peacefully. And phracts are much stronger units than keshiks. But I will need to make sure I do make gain....

Which is why Scooter declaring a preemptive war is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it was a setback. Gives me an opportunity to send a probing stack in and decide if I can make gains with a stack of 4-5 phracts or if waiting for more will give me a better chance

[yuris125]

Scooter is on 9 cities on T66. In-freaking-sane

[yuris125]

Contact with Oxy, whose cities popped up across the strait from Constantinople




He's on 9 cities as well, as one would expect from Joao with a strong start

He's also more than likely a phract target after Scooter

[yuris125]

Looking at PBSpy, rip me. I lost another city to Scooter - most likely Adrianople to a 4-move galley attack

This one, I don't even know how much it is my mistake, and how much it is Scooter playing really well - I've been commenting on how well he's been leveraging early Bureau the entire game. The fact that he's keeping up with Oxy in city count despite not having expansion-oriented traits speaks for itself

I will of course still do what I can with phracts, who are about to come online, but at this point Scooter can most likely just build enough units to defend against them by sheer numbers

I will say that it took me way longer than I hoped to get them online, and in general I think this pick didn't work out. Whether I could've played it better and made things happen faster, I don't know. I did put significant effort into simming (at least by my standards) and couldn't find a way to speed things up

[yuris125]

Definitely my mistake tbh. I actually was looking at Adrianople coast and wondering if an attack could come that way, but still didn't put a spear in the city, instead trying to get a stack to send into Scooter's land to get an idea of what I was facing. Which is all good and well, and I did need a spear with the stack if I expected war elephants, but if I don't have cities to build phracts, it all doesn't matter

Funny how I was so paranoid about an axe rush in the early game, which as it turned out was never coming, but didn't give enough thought to defending against real danger

[T-hawk]

Yeah, I think it's far enough past to say this now - Scooter didn't have an early axe when you thought he did, the power graph you thought was that axe was a combination of other things.

[Krill]

Yeah, I think it's far enough past to say this now - Scooter didn't have an early axe when you thought he did, the power graph you thought was that axe was a combination of other things.

You can't say this in a player thread, it's spoiler knowledge.