[SPOILERS] scooter's Rule of Three

[Tarkeel]

I completely missed the Pyramid build, and I have been checking the log. Whoops.

Agree on the swap to HBR, Monarchy was just a placeholder while saving.

[scooter]

Looks somewhat unlikely I'm going to be able to take a shot in-game now. Yuris played safe and retreated his Chariot. I'm still poking around. The third Chariot will give me the option to threaten Frankfurt again as vodka suggests a coin flip chance for 3 chariots + archer to kill the archer/axe duo.





But I'm sort of leaning towards using the military edge to just claim land. Settler is coming out in 2T, and then I'll have the option to get a second one out very quickly after that. It has me toying with Plan B here, while Plan A is, well, what it sounds like. Here's the basic tradeoffs.


Plan A: It's the less offensive border with Yuris. He won't be happy to lose that second floodplains, but he can probably live with it. It doesn't claim any new foods, but with floodplains and a nice river valley, this is acceptable. The Rice and maybe Banana would simply be claimed with other cities further into the jungle.


Plan B: It produces better cities with Creative, though both will require more worker labor clearing out the jungle. Also lets me save some of that worker labor back by filling the river valley with shared cottages and simply whipping them in an alternating manner. Primary downside is it's tougher to imagine a peaceful border with Yuris this way.


Noodling on this. Have a couple turns to decide, which to be fair means this afternoon.

[scooter]

Oh, completely forgot to include my second screenshot.





Cornflakes is playing a super interesting opening. He's using SPI to grow very tall with HR and Serfdom. I did underrate the Serfdom angle here pregame, and I really like it. The cost here is he's behind on city settling, but that's an easy enough thing to burst out. Nothing stopping him from doing a 5T stint in Slavery, whipping 3-4 settlers, then going right back. Something to watch here.

[scooter]

Enjoying the mind game cold war with Yuris.





Last turn he offered me a worker steal/kill at Cologne. I figured that meant he had a unit behind and backed off that avenue. This highlighted tile had two workers on it last turn. I set up to snipe it, and then he split the difference and moved one off but kept the other. This suggested even more strongly he had a unit behind to recapture. Leaving one implies if I take, I'll see the unit and delete both. I also had to decide whether to declare and move everything up, setting 3 chariots + 1 archer to take a 50% shot at a kill on Frankfurt.


I opted to believe him and pulled everything back. He did just agree to OB, so I decided why not use this opportunity to scout.





Well, I was half-right to believe him. I was correct in what it said about the worker. However, this Sword would have been too late to save Frankfurt, so I indeed did have a 50% shot at a 1/3 kill. I probably would have taken the shot had I known, to be honest. I very briefly considered declaring and hoping it teleported home, but there's a nonzero chance it teleports east and kills itself, so instead I pulled all units back and let peace continue. I will fortify the Archer on the pigs for a bit to build up fortify bonus so my worker can improve it safely. We'll see if he tries something similar with a teleport declaration. Or if he intends to move the Sword up, well I do have an axe in the queue at Blind Mice.

[RefSteel]

I very briefly considered declaring and hoping it teleported home, but there's a nonzero chance it teleports east and kills itself

Actually it would be neither of those if I'm reading your screenshot correctly. (No promises on that; we are dealing with Invisible German Borders here....) Your chariot would have teleported 1SW to the bare plains hill: 1 tile from your unit (2 cost) + "5 tiles" (4, but with two diagonals) from your nearest city (5 cost) = 7 total cost, with the next-cheapest teleports tied at 8. (With "cost" just being my short-hand for something like "reluctance to teleport here" - for today.)

[scooter]

I very briefly considered declaring and hoping it teleported home, but there's a nonzero chance it teleports east and kills itself

Actually it would be neither of those if I'm reading your screenshot correctly. (No promises on that; we are dealing with Invisible German Borders here....) Your chariot would have teleported 1SW to the bare plains hill: 1 tile from your unit (2 cost) + "5 tiles" (4, but with two diagonals) from your nearest city (5 cost) = 7 total cost, with the next-cheapest teleports tied at 8. (With "cost" just being my short-hand for something like "reluctance to teleport here" - for today.)

Actually I think I could/should have figured this one out if the aforementioned Invisible German Borders weren't giving me issues here. I kinda want them changed, but I suppose Yuris might feel it's a minor benefit to playing Germany and may want to keep it.

[scooter]

Absolutely blitzing through turns today. Just played my 6th turn of the day, and there's a decent chance we squeeze in one more. Believe it or not it's been like 4 turns since I reported last, so here's an update.





Proceeding with Plan B. I de-escalated with Yuris - who mind you picked this fight - and even offered him a pseudo fish-fish with 25T peace, and he didn't echo or even haggle over terms. So we're still in an uneasy spot, and I don't think he intends to be particularly peaceful with me. In any case, I settled Triangle Sides as these 3 eastern cities looked vaguely triangular to me, and that's good enough for me.


This did make positioning my units here awkward as I have to account for the possibility of Yuris declaring war on me and then attacking post-teleport, which is a headache. Fortunately a barb Archer suicided into my Sentry archer last turn netting me a City Garrison promotion, which I duly took and fortified the city with both Archers. I also flipped the Worker to chop the forest SW of the city even though I would have preferred the one on the river for similar reasons. Just a lot of shuffling units around to cover everything off even though we are ostensibly at peace with OB. I'm hoping for trade routes to come back online - currently I still don't have any which is supremely annoying.





Demos are improving, although Cornflakes' food has flatlined for a bit which suggests he's been slowbuilding settler(s). In general he's racing out ahead of us in most metrics. Speaking of, here's the graphs.












I missed the GNP graphs, but Cornflakes has a large lead there. The basic story here is Cornflakes looks like the early leader, though his slow settling pace may temper his ability to snowball. Then Yuris and I are in a firm tier two, which maybe a slight edge to myself. Commodore has been in the rear, though not enormously so, and his huge power and relatively isolated position makes me think this is mostly barb-related.





Here's the empire as it stands. Ignore a couple unimproved tiles being worked - this was taken after pressing enter but before juggling tiles next turn. Stooges has a Lighthouse now too, so I can shuffle tiles by working 2/0/3 coast too which opens up a lot of flexibility. Culture Victory grew into some unhealthiness, and I need to decide next turn between a whip of the settler to buy some time before another health resource is hooked versus just slow-building and eating the 1F. Leaning towards the whip with the strong food surplus and Forged Gold to make the unhappiness irrelevant. Plus overflowing into a Horcher or Barracks/Stable would be nice. But practically, I'm probably going to have to suck it up and build an Aqueduct soonish.


Missionaries are mostly to capitalize on OR bonus. First one is going to go into Triangle Sides in order to squeeze some extra hammers out of the impending Granary chop. Second one will be one of the two front cities with Yuris. I forsee some Barracks/Stables in our futures if I can't get Yuris to simmer down with me, so the bonus hammers, culture, and happy are all welcome.

[Tarkeel]

Stooges is in an interesting spot as it has three good tiles that it can't share away (fish, copper and one floodplain cottage) while still growing like a weed, so it needs to do the less efficient 5->3 whip. It could go on permanent 6->3 settler whipping, but I think we might want to mine the hills there soon.

Traffic Lights is on the other end of the scale and have 0 unique good tiles to work, but the dry wheat is the only food positive tile, so whipping hurts more there.

Amigos has two decent tiles, but relies on the capital floodplains for growth, so I'd rather avoid whipping it. This was only ever a helping hand filler city, but it can work quite a few cottages down the line.

[scooter]

Yuris has decided to pump culture into Frankfurt in an effort to take the Pigs from me. This is going to work for a few turns. He has gotten religion, a Monument, and a Temple into this city already despite not being SPI. This is all just so tedious. He cannot win this cultural battle for the Pigs long-term, so instead he's just going to make us both burn hammers on it. I'm responding by adding religion to my city (missionary moved into the city this turn), and chop/whipping my CRE-discounted UB which will settle things. I can stick a religious building or two in as needed. If I have to put in a CRE-discounted Theater later, so be it, but it would sure be nice if we could just not do this? I expect he'll add a Monastery soon. Just feels like there's no real salvaging this relationship.





So I'm planting this city next turn.





Events are good.

[scooter]

Stooges is in an interesting spot as it has three good tiles that it can't share away (fish, copper and one floodplain cottage) while still growing like a weed, so it needs to do the less efficient 5->3 whip. It could go on permanent 6->3 settler whipping, but I think we might want to mine the hills there soon.

Yeah, it is growing faster than wearing off whip anger, so I have it slow-building a settler at size 5 which will go for one of the marked spots near itself and Amigos. I think it's gonna be on settler/worker duty for a bit longer honestly because it has just under 20T of whip anger left. I'm having it shuffle between cottages and coast according to the needs of Culture Victory and Amigos.

Traffic Lights is on the other end of the scale and have 0 unique good tiles to work, but the dry wheat is the only food positive tile, so whipping hurts more there.

Yeah, I don't see a big purpose in whipping this. The city will be pretty middling for awhile, but post-CS I should be able to get enough food surplus in to carve out a decent mid-level production city. Likely just pump military units forever at size 7-8 or something.

Amigos has two decent tiles, but relies on the capital floodplains for growth, so I'd rather avoid whipping it. This was only ever a helping hand filler city, but it can work quite a few cottages down the line.

Yeah this one is tricky too as it just doesn't have any real food surplus. It can work quite a few cottages as you said - but I suspect its long-term fate will be eventually giving those up to its superior neighbors. So I don't intend to invest a lot of infrastructure here.