[Spoilers] Adrien and Mardoc relax and play civ

[AdrienIer]

I thought Jowy stopped being Jowy years ago. Since he might camp the copper I suppose archery is reasonable. A monument (chopped ?) in the other copper city is also worth it.

Good news on the REXing

[Mardoc]

I thought Jowy stopped being Jowy years ago.

It's possible. I'm looking at capabilities here, not sure we have any way to know intentions.

Realistically, he ought to know he can't do more than drag us down and give the continent to Fenn. But he may want to verify we're covered before he backs off.

Since he might camp the copper I suppose archery is reasonable. A monument (chopped ?) in the other copper city is also worth it.

It's probably/possibly paranoia. Just...archery is relatively cheap, and getting caught without anything better than a warrior is quite expensive.

The last chop went into a granary for that city, but I ought to be able to get it another chop; there's a lot of wood around. Or else use the granary and whip in a monument.

Good news on the REXing

Yep. . Much as Jowy makes me nervous, I like our position otherwise.

[Mardoc]

Hmm...so Yuri just played the last turn, and not this turn. I think that means he's in a turn split .

So even if Jowy wants to make something happen here, gotta remember that the rest of the world also has problems.

But...we're not at war yet, so I went ahead and played our turn.

First thing I noticed - the barb in our territory finally did something that'll let me get rid of him - granted, it was winning a low odds fight against our warrior on a hill, but I was able to clean him up. Now just need to get workers to both the tiles the barb wrecked.


Jowy may still be at three cities, but Fenn's expanding pretty well himself. That wrecks our planned dotmap, of course. Especially since he's also got Henge and thus we probably can't contest either the deer or the copper. Maybe if we'd settled the area first we'd have a chance of fighting a culture war, but not when he has a head start.


So...what do you think about the 'd' cities instead? The west one is solid, two foods, defensive, still gets most of the tiles in the area. The east one, I'm torn. I kinda want to settle it 1W of my sign. That would be a stronger city in the long run; first ring deer is stealable. On the other hand, that will irritate him, require us to spend time with our city tile adjacent to his culture, and take some time. I'm not sure we want to court the risk.



Still, despite the tension, for the moment I've got the civ on an entirely economic focus. With two warriors to Jowy's one, we're safe for the moment. Granaries should more or less double our unit production rate if it comes to full out war - or enhance our economic production if it doesn't. Triceratops already has its granary, and can't grow because the furs was pillaged, so settler seems to make the most sense to me...probably slow-built, because we're working mines.



Not shown: after taking the screenies, I turned tech on. Two turns to archery, projected to have 1 gold in the bank when we finish the tech.

Also, I think it's about time to start on a couple cottages here and there. Making 15 gpt, losing 14, puts our breakeven at about 50%, and I want to hurry for at least two more southern cities and a horse before we even consider slowing down.

I'm not really sure which city should be first. On the one hand, we need a border with Fenn quickly. On the other, we need an option in case Jowy comes wandering this way with Vultures. Archers can hold against Vultures, probably, but there's no way they take ground from them. The current worker locations kinda lean toward horse-first, because I'm going to be fixing the sheep tile anyway; don't have any workers convenient to start working south. OTOH, we have six turns to figure out what we're doing, and a fairly volatile situation. Maybe I shouldn't plan too much until we know what Jowy's doing.

[AdrienIer]

I really dislike the eastern d, in any case we're not settling it before the other one.

I'll be more invested in the game from next week onwards, I don't have the time to reply in to you in details unfortunately

[Mardoc]

I really dislike the eastern d, in any case we're not settling it before the other one.

I don't know what to do, both Fenn and Jowy have wrecked our plans, in different ways. I guess we still have a bunch of options in the east, including our original plan, it's just that none of them are as good as they were before he planted that city.

That said, you're right, there's no particular rush anymore. Can't settle just for land, need quality cities that will pay back quickly. And probably also need horses.

I'll be more invested in the game from next week onwards, I don't have the time to reply in to you in details unfortunately

Fair enough, I'll just keep doing my best. And documenting the situation so you can catch up next week.

[AdrienIer]

Fair enough, I'll just keep doing my best. And documenting the situation so you can catch up next week.

Thanks, I really appreciate the reports and will try to answer the important points as much as possible

Oh and plan has to be rush currency and CoL for the economy

[Mardoc]

Ok, so we're at war. Jowy observed a turn split, didn't offer peace. I did offer him a peace treaty, although I don't expect him to take it given the tactical position.



Not likely to clear that warrior with anything short of an axe. Chariot/spear might manage OK odds, in theory.

I thought about it, and didn't change any builds. I don't think extra warriors will make much difference to us. Once archery is in, I will probably start one or two of them: since Jowy didn't occupy the copper, we can probably still get copper from our front city. Just...not with only a warrior to cover.

I did consider swapping our backlines copper city to a monument, but we're only ten hammers/two turns away from our granary there. If we lose a lot by being two turns behind on copper, then you can blame me for it. But I still think the Diplodocus copper will come in first, if we're able to push forward some archers fast enough.

I didn't, but maybe should have, swap Diplodocus to a monument. I'm still hoping to keep the war investment low. But maybe the best way to do that is to respond dramatically enough to scare Jowy straight?

Edit: Actually...he hasn't played yet. Culture here would be really nice - constrain his mobility, give us extra time to react to any invasion, and give us mobility. And more defense. And visibility - especially if we can get that mountain tile to the north. Logged back in, swapped Diplodocus. Will either whip it in three turns, or apply a chop, depending on the situation.

Also, Hindu fell, so it's a good thing we didn't try for that after Buddhism.

[Mardoc]

Well, this is better than not talking at all, I guess.



But I still see no reason to give in. We can hold, I think. Counting tiles, the city center is something like 8 tiles from Jowy's cap and 6 or 7 from ours, depending on how you count diagonals - so we're a couple tiles greedy, not excessively.

He's still at three cities while Fenn's at four and we're at five - our five are growing up nicely, too. Mid term and longer, I have every confidence in being able to outproduce Jowy - the main risk is whether he drags us down to the point where Fenn can kill us both. But then he can always do that, whether we pay tribute or not.

He added a scout to his invasion force. 73% odds, I debated back and forth for a while, but ultimately I think denying him information is worthwhile. And XP is useful. Turned out we killed it without even a scratch



I chose to whip the settler from Triceratops. That was our last chance for a 2-pop whip, and it should also overflow enough to 1-turn or 2-turn an archer. Meanwhile, Diplodocus continues to work on a Monument. I think we could have either a monument, half a granary, or a second archer with a chop; I lean toward the monument for the surprise factor. Ideally, Jowy doesn't know we have an archer available until we can advance from behind the city out of sight to on the copper in a single turn. An archer in place will be very hard to shift, while it'll have only so-so odds of killing Jowy's warrior if he occupies the hill first.

Speaking of near-term production, we have a chop coming in to Stegosaurus next turn, right after the granary finishes. Right now I have it going into a monument, to claim our safe copper. That's a long term investment in security - a reasonable alternative is to push out another fast archer. Or a very long term alternative would be to build a barracks - get our culture but also some XP on our units.

I still think Monument is the best choice here, but I can be persuaded.



With a whipped settler, we're going to have to pick a destination for him. As a reminder, our choices are basically between the better site, to the south, and the horse site to the north. It comes down to the question of what we feel we can expect from Jowy and Fenn. Do we need chariots ASAP? Can we wait to settle the south and still get some decent land?





My gut tells me we need the horse site. I want to believe that Jowy will give up on the war and go home, but that city demand doesn't bode well. If he comes with Shock Vultures, we'll pretty much need chariots to shift him from our land.

[AdrienIer]

When will we get the setter after next ? I wouldn't want to lose a good city to Fenn because we're over careful. On hills chariots aren't that great anyway.

[Mardoc]

When will we get the setter after next ? I wouldn't want to lose a good city to Fenn because we're over careful.

Going to be a while. None in queues, and generally the cities need to grow at the moment. And I wouldn't be surprised to find we have to whip a unit or three where we would rather not.

On hills chariots aren't that great anyway.

Well, there's no good solution for hills no matter what we use. Fortunately that works both ways and we're on the defense. I suppose a few extra axes may work better than just enough chariots, which would argue for the city which will pay back sooner.