[PB28 SPOILERS ] Fenn Presents: A Comedy of Errors

[Cheater Hater]

We'll settle both my 6 and 1E of your 6 eventually; I just didn't think that far ahead--everything depends on how far our rivals settle into our territory.

[Fenn]

Yeah that's true, the 6 area is close enough to Jowy's territory that we can't plan on it being free.

Not much happening ATM...still last in Crop Yield lol but we're about to hook up Wheat at Cholera followed by Fish, and our third city is only a few turns away too. Thinking about what Plague should do - grow onto five tiles or whip out another Settler? We really do need to catch up in city count...

[Cheater Hater]

I need more details--what would you grow onto (a tile that needs to be improved?), what would you put hammers into (just a warrior? How many do we have atm; can we cover all our current cities?), how long would it take (a decent time, since it's still at half-food?)? Based on what I can guess from the picture, I think I'd build another settler and put a forest chop into it; the tile you chop could then be improved for afterward when you do grow to size 5.

[Fenn]

Ah, well the turn just rolled so here's the situation in Plague:


We could grow onto either the Wheat or the grass river cottage, and put hammers into a Granary. If we steal the Wheat back from Cholera, we can grow to Size 5 in 3T, one turn after the Granary would complete. IIRC that wastes food, so probably a Settler chop is the right move here after all.

And in Cholera:


Borders pop in 1T, so a Work Boat would be useful and cheap. Granary is an option afterwards, or we can build a bronze unit or Workers.

Our units:


The two workers in the south still have their moves free. We have one Warrior for each city plus the scout in the northeast.

Also we should probably revolt to Slavery in this turn.

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, settler chop is the definite right move here--it looks like you have a decent amount of overflow, and now you don't need to rush getting a warrior to cover the capital (or hooking up the silver).

Any thoughts on tech path? Obviously we need Hunting, but what's next--I think you mentioned Archery in passing, but not much after that. Can I get a tech tree picture to see our options? I'm assuming the obvious answer is Writing, but I feel I overvalue it somewhat (since I overvalue Libraries). Have any religions fallen yet?

[Fenn]

I switched Plague to a Settler and moved my worker into the city; next turn he'll move onto a forest. Here's our tech tree:


No religions have fallen yet. Writing would be good to build a Library in Plague and get us towards Currency, but being able to build a shrine would be decently profitable in a 9-player game.

[Cheater Hater]

Writing feels like the next best tech, then we can see if any religions have fallen. We also should get a scouting work boat out soon to see how much we need Sailing. Do you remember if there's stone/marble on the map? I don't see any in our area, so I'm assuming there isn't--I doubt we want Pyramids regardless, but it's something to think about.

[Fenn]

I'll probably do Writing soon; religion's nice, but it doesn't help us right now. I'm quite sure there are multiple landmasses in this world; I can see land in the fog off of our southern coast already. Absolutely no Stone or Marble in our area - if it exists, it's likely located on offshore islands or the like.

So, Turn 48:


Leprosy was finally founded until this turn. It's actually a little neutered until we tech Hunting, but it can still grow its borders and receive forest chops, so it's not all bad.



Starting the Wheat farm near Cholera. We can see Fish off the coast here, so this future filler city would be pretty decent with two resources to itself.

Interestingly, my scouting Warrior stumbled upon this scene:


Looks like Mardoc plans to plant a city on the hill where the Warrior's standing. My own Warrior has C1/Shock and gets 68% odds attacking his unpromoted one, so I could be pretty nasty here if I wanted to. I don't think it's a good idea to harass Mardoc like this, though - this city would be much closer to Jowy than me (in fact you can see his blue borders already), and I can only deny Mardoc Copper for so long with just one Warrior. And, while I don't know Mardoc, I'd think doing so would sour relations with him. My presence is already annoyingly limiting what he can do with his Worker and Warrior.

[Fenn]

Evidence for the above claim: Mardoc and Adrien making multiple posts in their thread before and after I played my turn. Bet they didn't want to run up on a Shock Warrior.

In this situation I should probably wait until they've played this next turn before I do anything (I played after them last turn).

[Cheater Hater]

Yeah, you certainly should wait to play in this situation, especially if there's any chance of you attacking (and I think it's non-zero).

The real question is if delaying this settlement would delay copper a reasonable amount, and since we've seen multiple copper resources in our area we can't be sure of it. Would this be Mardoc's third city (they have only two cities right now, one visible in the trade scene). Still, letting Jowy get that site if he wants it (which isn't certain, considering the close proximity of the border) might ensure Mardoc can't get a hold on the continent and force him into a backwards state.

Speaking of which, can I get a big-picture view of our continent? I'm guessing just based on what we've seen so far our continent is a triangle (or wheel with 3 spokes), and then there are three of those land shapes, with various islands in-between.