[SPOILERS] yuris125 trying to find three weaknesses

[yuris125]

After a bit of a border scuffle and unit movement, Scooter offered a fish for rice for 25 turns. I thought long and hard about it, and decided not to reciprocate. With the border this contested, I don't want to commit to anything

That said, I don't have any particular aggressive plans at present, other than culture war for the pigs




I think my priority is a) growing my cities, and b) (logical follow-up) settling the ivory city. Also finally sorting out the food for poor Essen, which has been working crappy tiles because of not one, but two barb galleys contesting the seafood

I'm not convinced Feudalism is the right research choice, simply because it's going to take forever. But don't think Currency or Calendar right now make that much sense either, Construction seems to be too much of a commitment to early aggression, and I don't have enough forests to benefit from the Aesthetics branch. Although Construction could also be worth researching for Hanging Gardens, and in addition to other benefits I do need great engineer points, hmmmm

Cornflakes meanwhile is playing a tall game, he's still on 4 cities, but his first two are already size 10 and 9 (staying in serfdom and not whipping must be contributing to growth as well). Wonder how well that will work in longer term. Might actually be a good option for a game like this. His large cities is the main reason he's leading in score atm

Speaking of score, someone birthed a great engineer and used it to build Pyramids (the only wonder in the world at present); I think it was Commodore, who I still don't have contact with. It's not in one of the top5 cities in the world (which is dominated by Cornflakes's cities thanks to them being so large), and neither Scooter nor Cornflakes are running Representation

[T-hawk]

How exactly do you win that culture war? Scooter can put in just as many culture buildings as you, right, plus he always has Creative on top of that? Unless you can get a wonder or a holy city there somehow?

[yuris125]

Short-term, he doesn't have religion in his city, so I have culture from Judaism, as well as temple/monastery options which he doesn't have. Plus I don't know if he wants to invest in weaker cultural buildings like monument or temple (I don't want to invest in a temple either tbh). That should allow me to take control of the tile in the short term

Long-term, yes, he will always have the Cre advantage, and wonder options will be limited, as I'm putting all the chops into early cultural buildings. But I'm leaving that decision for later. Maybe the city will be ok without a food resource after Civil Service if I farm the greenland. Or, you know, there's always an option to go back to the tried and tested military plan

[yuris125]

I chopped monastery / monument / library in Frankfurt for 6cpt. Should be enough to win the pig fight for now. Scooter even pastured the pigs, how nice of him

Getting ready to settle the ivory city. Scooter settled NW of the rice (3W of where my chariot is on the last screenshot), and I want to lay claim on the land east of that city. Even if it needs a lot of worker force to make it useful, plus Calendar (which will be one of the few techs off my beeline, pretty sure this is the tech I can't get by without on this map, it's even more important than Currency)

Cornflakes came with an offer to trade excess health resources, but the game crashed before giving me time to think about the deal (possibly because I logged in when he was still online? diplo between two players who are both online in a sequential game could be an untested scenario with the executable we use). Not sure if I would've taken it otherwise, obviously with him going tall he needs health more than me, but I would like friendly relationship with him for now, especially if I'm about to expand into land between us he might consider contested. Might reoffer it once I have time to think (our blazing turn pace + work in between turns don't give me much of it)

[yuris125]

A bit of a dangerous play, as I have my settler for the 7th city in range of Scooter's chariot scouting my land




I don't want to wait for a safer opportunity, Scooter will lose the chariot if he goes for the capture, and it will clarify his intentions

Scooter meanwhile looks like he's going to settle 3W of Cologne and steal the flood plains I was counting on. Really feels like our war if a question of when, not if

[yuris125]

Another slew of turns (if only every game had a turn pace like this). I keep growing my empire, just finished Calendar, and now need more workers to improve the tiles to grow onto, and get to work clearing the jungle




Cologne temporarily lost its western first ring, I waited too long hoping for a random religion spread (eventually which it never got, had to do it manually), it didn't need a library with its riverside being farmed rather than cottaged, and it ended up with no culture by the time Scooter settled his city. Should get it back once it gets second ring. At Frankfurt, Scooter started slowly pushing back on the pig tile (53/46 at the moment), but if I understand the mechanics correctly, I should start gaining again once Frankfurt hits 100 culture in 3 turns

Settler is in production for city 8 (the pig/banana city). Not sure what next after that. There's land to the east of Cornflakes he showed no interest in so far




Problem is, there's no hills to settle on, holding it could be problematic. Someone (and I think it's Cornflakes, but will confirm with my scouting chariot) has Feudalism, maybe he was waiting on settling that land until he had longbows

For my own research, I decided to research Currency, now that it's discounted thanks to everyone else having it, before continuing with Construction and Feudalism

[yuris125]

Probably the last update before my holiday. I just settled city 8, Stuttgart




Currency finished, and I'm back on Construction, although might switch to Feudalism. My remaining expansion direction is SE, into land Cornflakes might view as his, and I'm not sure if I can go for it




Someone has HBR, and going by the power graph it's probably Cornflakes, no one else had a sharp increase lately. He also beelined Civil Service and switched to Bureau. He's still very much the leader, and I don't know how safe it would be to expand into "his" territory, even with longbows. Maybe I should discuss a coordinated attack on him with Commodore.... and if I am to go offensive, Construction is the play

I am trying to hardbuild Colossus in Frankfurt for further culture pressure, it is a cheap wonder, actually viable to hard build, and would be useful with my setup (I totally not just building it because I like the wonder). The challenge is that I don't really want to whip the city which is likely to lose its food, at least temprorarily, and all its forests are gone

Current demos. I'm doing ok in the non-Cornflakes category, although we're all quite close




My main concern is that land area category, looks like I didn't do particularly well on the landgrab front

[yuris125]

Scooter settled 2 more cities before completing Hanging Gardens

So I sent an offer to Commodore to attack Scooter in 10 turns. Not really committed to this timeline, but want to sound him out. Cornflakes may be the leader now, but Scooter getting to 11 cities and building HG makes him the favourite long term (alond with him being Willem of America of course). Whereas if Commodore and I can take 3 of his cities and split his land, we can overcome Cornflakes's lead

If the attack goes ahead, it will be mainly swords and cats from me

[yuris125]

Commodore sees the situation differently, and thinks Cornflakes is a more immediate threat. He wants to attack Scooter in 25 turns (probably in knight era), but Cornflakes in 8 turns

It is a little trickier for me, as we don't really have borders next to each other with Cornflakes, unlike Scooter. 1-movers will take their time to get there. Commodore suggested going with 2-movers, which is not out of the question, I probably can get HBR in time, but I would rather utilise catapults

But in any case, I feel like a successful 2-front war could be game-deciding when the price of losing a city is so high. And with geography making Commodore my natural ally, if he wants to go after Cornflakes first, I'm happy to do that. To be fair, with the shape of the map, I probably can gain more land from Cornflakes than from Scooter

So think I'm onboard

[yuris125]

No huge T100 overview, sorry, I'm somewhat limited with screenshot taking on the laptop

I confirmed that Cornflakes is the one with longbows - this explains why Commodore needs help. He does seem to be stuck on expansion as well - he's as low on city count as me, and that's Commodore, who usually prioritises expansion heavily




Cornflakes's east seems to be weakly defended however. I'm moving a lot of units there. If he sees them, I'm about to settle city 9 in a vulnerable location - that's my excuse




But I'd rather he didn't see them

I also completed the Colossus in Frankfurt (didn't expect that to work), hopefully that settles the pig war