Commodore cleaned out Thoths stack. He has left only 6 units in his front city but it is still adequately defended.
45 hitters for Commodore, 32 for Thoth. Neither side actually has enough cats anymore. Due to terrain Commodore has to aim for a stack wipe, or he will not get a proper breakthrough.
Pindicator has nothing threatening me, has a crippled tech rate, and hasn't moved in on Thoth. Maybe mailing it in right now? He is stil making less than 50gpt whilst at max tax, and is only researching Civil Service with specialists. I imagine, if I actually put my mind to it, I could get to tanks before he got to Cuirs.
Trying to focus EP on Pindicator to get city visibility. Will be about 10 or so turns, but if he removes OB I will turn on the slider and get it immediately.
Culturally I am making progress securing the borders (and buying more time to reinforce at Rhubarb. I keep on meaning to build a spy or two to scout out Commodore. Most tiles are worked but there remain spaces for filler cities.
The north has space for a significant number of filler cities, but is mostly plains. This area will take off once I get to Biology, but an interesting question is when to settle the filler cities? The five iceballs should probably be settled much later, the middle filler is also going to get squashed so might not be worth it for a while, but the other three cities acn probably be put down when I have time for the settlers (ie after Yuri is in hand).
Yuris is continuing to blockade the coast. I have decided that rather than build naval units, it will be easier to simply take out all of Yuris' cities and let the units disappear into the ether. All the units will stream south as they heal, but I am also in hte process of building defensive units for the north west. Still playing properly, even if the others are not capable to threatening this area. Just looking at one long bow and a second upgradeable unit per city.
I've got four routes into Yuris, and three of them are from the south: fast movers in from teh ice, G2 units along and south of the peaks, a large stack along the road (which doesn't actually do much), might as well just send a large stack in from the north, flush everything out. I don't have sufficient fast movers, but I do have quite a few units that can take G2, and some more that can take G3 if I move units around from Cherry.
Now, if I were to go in with a G2 stack in the south, I could quickly follow this up with a standard stack to flush out the south whilst I use most of what I have in the north to pin down the stack in Yuris' capital. This is probably the quickest way to take out Yuri, and this means I will need to shuffle quite a few units around between all fronts. But with Commodore focusing on Thoth and Pindicator struggling along I can pretty much do whatever I please.
Yuri simply doesn't have the units to pose a threat at this point, it's still a question of hte most efficient and quickest method to take his cities. Still researching Currency on T207. Thoths' culture will be a problem until he loses his second city (Filthy Radicals): All cities will have to be captured and kept, but a combat settler kept on hand to plant a front city 3N1W of Ishgard if Commodore does finish taking out Thoth.
No real update to add to Apple. Keep on growing, excess food from bio and corps goes into scientists. Build units as needed, swap over the missionaries if needed, settlers not before size 20.
Maybe the bank is overkill. Additional population will go into priest slots. Save merchants for last, never work artists or scientists. As I have the GE for Mining Inc, I'm aiming for two of GE/Gspy/GP for the thrd GA (although Taj would give one beforehand). Just chug along, now with Parthenon it's quite quick.
I made a mistake and forgot colosseum don't give +1XP to gunpowder units, so I built three 9XP muskets before adding the third GG to the city. I can add a fourth whenever I want, but West Point can be added for 5XP if I really wanted, and then I'm basically 2XP from commandos ie this city is and will remain a high class unit pump.
Pomegranate is all set to just build whatever is deemed necessary, and grow onto specs with Bio. I should build the monastery sooner rather than later, but need units until yuri is in hand.
I think this city is indicative of how low yield maps need to get played: civics which improve tile yield and accept that they will slow grow, but they can be profitable.
Gradually getting culture back in the outer ring. With the farm and two windmills it will max out at size 15, 14 if I hand over a plains hill and work an engineer for better hammer rounding, but it is more important to work artists and ensure I hold the tiles culturally as that gives one extra turn notice of invasion from PIndicator if he chooses to close borders (note, if he does that I immediately turn the EP slider on to him and road the front to enable sentry movements).
The grocer and Bank make sense given the commerce output here, even after gifting away a town.
Grocer and bank, even the Zigg are wanted. This city is maxed out until corps, Bio will unbalance everything but hey ho.
Olive will cap out at size 14 pre-Bio, and 24 base hpt. Mesquite will be settled shortly to help defend it and provide a launching pad into Yuri. Again, it can just build whatever is needed.
Never has a city given so much for so little food.
Future IW city; given this, I should actually go back and look at what I can do to maximise growth. That's probably a misplay on my part.
Future NP city; because this does not rely on growth to be useful, I should make Raspberry subservient to Plum. It should build that temple as well, and if it ends up stagnating then I should just pump settlers out of it once ready, given so far from any front.
I will farm over the cottage (built by Bing), then grow onto lumber mills and the silk. Max size 12, 20 base hpt with silk and an engineer. Not exactly a powerhouse city but good enough. Bio would give +7fpt so it picks up the tundra forest lumber mill and more specialists, and it would help push out a SS win in the long term.
Powerhouse. Making 5XP muskets here for the potential Rhalgr hill play. Not going to stop until Yuri is being cleaned out and then moving onto settlers, the only reason to come off is to build cannon; grab the temple when possible. Most settlers for the south will come from Potato or Onion.
Future FP city. I'd been mulling that decision over for a while, and this helped push me towards deciding to take out Yuri: it just fits better here than anywhere else. Stagnate at size 15 and 24 base hpt with an engineer (swapping hills over the windmills). I will have to farm over a spice for farm chaining but whatever.
Please note that this city essentially only needed Machinery, Monarchy and Calendar to reach this level of productivity; a charismatic leader with HR could have quite easily got this city to 16hpt at size 7 and had happy cap and spare food to play with in terms of working cottages.
Onion is ready to start building settlers if needed. I can't solve the food rounding issue. Worst case scenario I'll dump it on a coastal tile.
I'm considering swapping the iron to Lime when needed, and swapping the engineer to a spy. Drops the base hpt to 16 but whatever. It will help because Lime has a lot of food but needs a few hammers to build basics. Just swap the spare pop onto a coastal tile; it should be noted that the last few pop points in all these cities can pretty much be drafted for no real economic harm, hence the reason I'm not that fussed by perfect micro. I'd rather just keep it as a good hammer bank, even if I have accrued it a bit early.
Probable GT city, especially with Bio. In which case it would be Zigg into theatre into GT (and ensure enough theatres are built, shouldn't be a challenge). Then either draft or work specialists; this presents a problem because I will need to build to get the spec slots.
Filler, city, who cares. Theoretically I could only use this or the Melon site to draft from due to population requirements (at least, until Bio and Cereal Mills). It should build a barracks and Zigg in some order.
Not quite a filler city, it can hit 16 hpt base at size 11 with the lake as a superfluous tile, and I the cities are tight enough that I can poartially empty Pomegranates food bar to speed up growth at the higher pop levels. Worth building a forge in a long game (we'll ignore the fact this game could end by concession at any point).
Cabbage, newly settled, but should reach size 11 and an easy 20 base hpt with two lakes worked. but it will have to get there at 3fpt. Thankfully everything is a 2 food tile until the very end, and the lakes enable easy growth to the max hammer output.
Plantain will give up a bunch of tiles to surrounding cities, so right now I will probably have to cripple it to work relevant hammer tiles.
I think going to max out at size 9 making 12 base hpt. It's a coastal city so theoretically I ought to prepare it to build a navy before anything else.
Moai city. Max size 19? And max hpt is around 31hpt without rep parts or rails etc. Not that it will reach that level for a very long time. Also ought to be held far more securely than this: if the tech situation were different and we were looking at galleons travel to Japan, this would be the focal point of defense and attack.
Still working out options. SoZ is obsolete due to Gunpowder.
Soon™
Later™
