AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[AutomatedTeller]

And the barbs... keep marching in... and the barbs keep marching in...

ok, they all just moved closer, nothing all that dramatic.



Our units in blue, barbs in red. I whipped an archer into NYPDBlue.

Some more exploration:

The southeast area:



It's not great land, but it's ok and there's food there, so it's useful.

Jowy:



This is interesting:



They are that close and they don't know each other. I'm now pretty sure jowy's scout got eaten early.

ATeam:



Archer->Settler. Or maby archer->grow with rax or something->settler and whip it in later, dunno.

MASH



that settler is in 5 turns, not 6 (I have a chop completing in 2) and I will probably whip it in to get it in 4. Still think that should be the commerce site - we need happy, but more importantly, we will need the commerce as we expand.

Demos:


and, as a bonus treat:



What I see as I log in.


I have a C1 warrior vs. a C2 barb warrior with 1.5 HP. If it moves onto the sheep, I think that's about 50/50, so that's eh.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, if everyone is dealing with this many barbs with warriors, someone's going to get screwed...



Note a new barb north of NYPD Blue

Killed one in the south, promoted the archer, he'll get attacked next turn. The hurt C2 barb moved towards the cap, but I get an archer next turn there, so i kill him. Moved the citizen to ta (new) cottage, shaving a turn off math. We now have 2 cottages, which is kind of sad for a financial civ... We'll have more soon, though.

Debating switching to buddhism for the extra happy, though we don't need it yet.

World happenings:



Was wondering when the first wonder would go. From looking at CivStats, it was TT



Wonders are 16 points.

Both Jowy and Cornflakes founded another city - Jowy had 2 mid-turn score increases of 3 points, but only founded one city. Not sure what that's about - 3 points is a pop point.



I'll have to send an archer over towards Jowy to see the lay of the land there.

[AutomatedTeller]

so, Pitboss experts:


how does this happen:



in the middle of a turn when he only has one more city now than he did before? how does he get 2 pop points in the middle of his turn? is that something weird with civstats, where it only shows up a change from before now?

Color me confused (not that that's all that odd, of course)

oh - never mind.

if you look at this:



you see that the first score increase was 12 points, not 3, thus a classical tech.

I'm guessing he bulbed math. trying to get to construction fast? Wonder if he has a source of ivory.

One problem with NA - we don't have a very good counter for catapults. Dogs don't get odds on them like axes do.

We need to think about this.

[MindyMcCready]

It's hard to imagine that we're not his #1 target. We're closest as far as I can tell; we're financial; we're off to a relatively slow start due to StoneHenge; he has a short-term tech advantage due to bulbs; and our unique unit is useless against his unique unit. He's not likely to waste his unique unit so,...he's coming for us.

But in a sense this doesn't change anything.We still want Math and then likely Construction. We still want Red Star choke point. BUT, we'll want more than 1 archer in there when we plant. I think that this increases the value of landing pig site and using those forest to chop out the settler + archers. If we plant too early, we're just likely to lose it. I think that a reasonably good assumption is that he'll put his hammers and whips into elephants/catapults rather than settlers so I think that that spot should be safe in the near-term.

I think that the assumption should be that we have until he techs Construction and possibly Archery & HBR. We'll need a sentry around Marble city while assuming that Red Star will provoke him.

Whew, interesting times!

PS: Where are we spending our espionage points?

[AutomatedTeller]

Not only are we closest - I don't know how many people he even knows. I agree he's going a military strategy right now - if he was going peaceful builder, he'd have an academy, not a math bulb. We need to look north of his land - maybe TT is right there and he's going to say 'ooh - pyramids!!' go after him, i dunno.

I'll send our scouts north and I'm sending an archer to the blue spot to keep an eye on him. As for which to settle - Red star requires an additional turn for reinforcements, which he can probably cut off easily. it's riskier. It's also a LOT better - can much more easily support itself with a lot of whipping, assuming we get all the food.


Options for defense:

Construction for catapults. We would get cats a few turns after Jowy, but he'll need time to build a few. he would still need ivory and HBR for elephants, so time there.
Feudalism for LB: CGII LB would be fine defenders. It's not a short path to LB, though.

It may be that our path is construction->Feudalism, though that's a long time to go without currency or Literature (for the epics - we'll be eligible for HE well before anyone else, I think)

That said - CG II LB are pretty hard to dislodge from a city on a hill, even with catapult support.

[MindyMcCready]

Haha, yeah right - he probably doesn't even know anyone else! We're #1 target out of a pool of 1! That's pretty hilarious 75 turns into the game.

Does building an Academy increase score? Sorry for the newb question, but just want to make sure that we're not running off on a false assumption when he earned 12 points off an academy.

And trade screen: can we see what resources (like ivory) he currently has?

Yes, that would be mighty painful to bypass Currency and Literature.

What an agonizingly painful decision this Red Star-Blue Pent is. Maybe we should be playing Civ5?

[AutomatedTeller]

No, it's a math bulb. A wonder is 16 points and a classical tech is 12. This is the list of scientist bulbs prefs from CFC:

Writing
Mathematics
Scientific Method
Physics
Education
Printing Press
Fiber Optics
Computers
Laser (BTS)
The Wheel
Alphabet (BTS)

(it goes on, but I know it's not alpha cause I can't trade techs with him and alpha is a dumb bulb (which hasn't stopped me from bulbing it in games) It HAS to be a math bulb. I'll check the academy thing in a sim tonight, but I'm 99% sure it's a math bulb.

We don't have a connection to him for trade, so we don't know his resources. Hopefully, he's getting overrun with barbs right now (like they are trying to do with us).

[AutomatedTeller]

Espionage is 2 to Jowy, 1 to azza and 1 to cornflakes. nothing on commodore. Jowy has been dumping all his espionage on us, as far as i can tell.

We should get demos on jowy soon - he's had them on us for awhile, I'd guess.

[AutomatedTeller]

Why archers are useful:



Last turn, we had barbs everywhere. Poof! vanished!!

As expected, the southern barb hit the archer, bringing him up to 6 xp. I had an 80+% shot at the hurt barb next to the cap - if I won, 2 xp and HE! if I lost, well, cap still had an archer in it who could use a 2nd promo.

and we can build HE - when we get to it.

I really want to get to it. It's an awesome wonder, we have marble and the GLib would be quite useful to us. Construction is a heckuva long time away, though. Guess we have to figure out priorities... I believe cottages and commerce are our immediate ones, cause we have a lot of tech we want.

Anyway.

Unsurprsingly, an industrious civ has a differnet way of dealing with barbs:



Demos:



scouting past commodore/brick:



scouting past jowy:

[AutomatedTeller]

More pics in a few - turn just rolled and I played part of it... anyway - two things occurred which pretty radically change the way I think about this:



In the pink, Jowy adopted hereditary rule!! So, one of two things happened:

Either he's been teching towards Monarchy, which is more of a builder tech than a war tech or he popped it from a hut last turn, instead of bulbing Math, like I thought he did.

oh... and in the grey, we popped metal casting from a hut.

Yes - we popped metal casting from a hut. Thus, forges (GE points) and, of course, Collosus. For a financial civ. On a lakes map. If my name were Mackoti, Krill or SevenSpirits, this would be the point where the lurker thread would explode with "well, that's game over"

As my name is not any of those guys, or any of the other good players, the lurker thread is exploding with "wow - how's he going to screw this up???"

In any case - we need to get Collosus.

We also got Jowy's charts... and I think he made an academy with that scientist - I don't think he bulbed anything. Why? Stay tuned to next update...