[spoilers] AT makes a funny thread title

[Elkad]

Quecha don't obsolete until maces IIRC

[AutomatedTeller]

Thanks, everyone. that seems to be unique to the Quecha - looking at the xml, it upgrades to axe, spear and mace, which is why it sticks around.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 38, where AT gets a little worried

I lost Ruff's graphs, so I put espionage back onto him. 

Here's what I'm worried about:

Ruff mined a plain hill, which makes me assume he's already got his copper improved.  Which means he's a whip away from having an axe and then 4 turns from WaitWait. 

An axe will wipe out a quecha or even a couple of quecha.    I'm at least 6 turns from archers and a long way from hooking up a road to WaitWait. 

I dunno.  I am running 0% right now and I'm thinking of switching to hunting->archery, instead of pottery.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn the 39th.  One more turn till barb warriors!!!

Though, still a long time till they enter our lands.

After a lot of thought (and after getting graphs on ruff back, plus a look at his cap, plus seeing what I am overflowing today), I decided to go for Pottery. 

The big power guy is Mr Cairo and he's got a lot of power, but I suspect it's mainly tech - I think he got Archery (which makes sense).    Archery is a good tech for him, but the quecha is archer proof, so I'm not worried about him.  Axess are another issue, of course, but i'm not long from being able to whip an axe into DeliciousDish.    And he has no way to get visibility into the city from outside.    I'm not even sure he knows that deliciousdish even exists - he settled up right next to GKC, who is under pressure from krill, too. 




Most of ruff's power is in warriors:



he's got 2 in his cap and there's one on barb duty to the east of my scout and possibly a 4th to the south (he had one wandering around that way before, but that might be on guard duty in the cap now for all I know.)  I suspect he's building up for a settler whip (he's working a grass forest tile), probably for the grass oasis area which he's barb busting. 

These are the demos:



What do I get from those numbers?  Well, top soldiers is 44, which probably means 2-3 axes.    Weakest rival is 27 and I can see that both Krill and Ruff are about the same and probably both high 20s.    Which means 3 guys 40 or above, 2 guys near 30 and me, running the farmer's gambit.    I'm guessing that krill has at least one axe (that 2nd big spike in the green) and GKC or superdeath is top soldiers.   Mr Cairos power is probably mostly in tech (archery and a totem pole), but he has at least one axe (I keep forgetting he doesn't have dog soldiers in this mod), but that's it's probably over where the scary action is. 

I need more military, but what I think I'm going to do is whip an axe into delicious dish when I can and, when I hook up the road to WaitWait, keep an axe with enough hammers to emergency whip.   

2 workers completed this turn!

The one in WaitWait moved to the forest and will road south to wait wait. 
The one in CarTalk moved SE and started roading towards WaitWait.  This will give me A) an extra commerce from the trade route B) more efficient ways to reinforcing should ruff attack and C)  the ability to whip axes into WaitWait

After the roading, the worker in WaitWait will probably improve the cow, the one by cartalk will likely move to delicious dish.  the original worker (which is currently mining copper) will move south to make some cottages.

Copper mine completes in 3, then it needs another turn or so of roads.

Pottery in 2.

WaitWait gets a quecha next turn, CarTalk the turn after.   OnPoint still building a WB, but using one of the PH.  It will switch to the copper mine when that is completed.  DeliciousDish can whip in a quecha in 2 turns.  I've been dithering on this one quecha for a couple of turns, but he's moving to deliciousdish, since mr cairo is clearly the bigger threat - though, I'm pretty sure his attention is East. 

I'm happy to run a farmer's gambit here.

[AutomatedTeller]

Looks like we might have a reload, which looks like it's probably important, as it looks like Krill lost his axe last turn.  But I don't think his cat is a valid dedlurker...

I'll post a more complete update if/when we decide on a reload, but I did take a pic in the strategy layer culture mode and found:



I had thought Superdeath was way over in the corner, but he's not.   Also, he's not met GKC yet.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 40.  

So, a round number deserves a check in on the civ. 

Tech:  I have:  Agriculture, Fishing, Wheel, Mining, Mysticism, Meditation, Bronze Working.   1 turn to Pottery.  Next is Hunting->Sailing->Animal Husbandry.  I could gain 4 beakers by on hunting by delaying pottery for a turn, but that doesn't really seem worth it.

I am buddhist and in slavery.

Units:
4 cities, 7 population
2 scouts
2 quechua
3 workers

I just showed a high-level on the civ a couple of posts ago, but each of the cities:

CarTalk

 
The cap is my settler pump.  5 turn settlers without whipping.  Plan here is to whip the terrace in and grow to size 4 or 5 and pump out settlers.   Right now, my cap is 5 - I think angry citizens don't take up food when building settlers, so it will still be a 5 turns, but I'm not sure.  

WaitWait

I don't yet know how I'm trying to win this game, but WaitWait will be a primary driver of that attempt, either by being a huge unit pump or the builder of pyramids or a huge stack of catapults.  It looks like it's my only inland city and it's basically a 2nd cap, with the grass oasis, cow and gold.  Plus, I dunno, but I suspect horses are down here.

DeliciousDish

Honestly, not a great city, but it blocks off the peninsula and the ivory.  In the medium term, it has cow, crab, oasis and lighthouse lake to grow on, so it should be able to get up to size 7 or 8 and work all it's tiles what looks like will be a commerce city

OnPoint

Short term, making stuff using the copper.   Workboat->workboat->terrace, or maybe workboat->terrace->workboat.  A 3rd workboat after that would get me the whale, or a galley for the island.  Not exactly sure.  Longterm, this will be a formidable moai, particularly stealing the clam and crab and working mainly coastal tiles to grow to size.  I'll likely never whip this, at least not after the terrace and maybe the lighthouse and steal seafood from delicious dish whenever I get more happy. 

Other stuff:

This is, I believe, all the barbbusting I need on the peninsula:



From my understanding, all the tiles on the peninsula are busted now.  I'll drop the scout off the hill to check the approaches from Mr Cairo, as well, giving me about 5 turns of warning for axes. 

Random stuff about the world:

Who knows who.   Krill still at war with GKC and GKC still doesn't know superdeath.   Which is odd, cause they are pretty close.  

Demos

[AutomatedTeller]

Another planning post

While we wait for the never-ending turn 40 to, you know, end, some thoughts:

Caps:

Assuming terraces and calendar, I have health and happy caps of 10.  (fish, crab, clam, wheat, corn, cow.  whale, ivory, gold, spice, silk, sugar.  Those can get up to about 15 each with harbors, freshwater, markets and religion, so I'm in
good shape for growth for medium term.   Not sure the game will go late enough for me to need size 20 cities.

Breaking the economy:

it doesn't look like rapid expansion is particularly going to hurt me, as long as I am careful.   At 9 cities, costs are about 50 gpt.  10 cities jumps to about 60 gpt, but with calendar and currency and not taking into account cottages, I'll bring in about 84 commerce,
so it should be fine.   prince helps as does the 10% city costs savings.  I think I want to be sure to have at least one of currency, calendar, the great lighthouse or collosus before I hit 10 cities.

Expansion:

I have several sites that are not great (green to the west, silver to the north).  Ivory is nice, but not critical and I have 2 sources of whales.  

I'm bad with stitching, so I made 4 maps with the detail.  I think the cap is visible in all 4.

Plans are:

Red - hammer - either great lighthouse or military.  If it doesn't build the lighthouse, the cap will.  Probably will end up a GP farm (fish, corn, sugar), plus hammers to build GLib
Blue - filler, might get rice, but opens up a naval attack on ruff later.   Probably just terrace, lighthouse and cottages
Island - might have no food or anything but gives me extra ICTR.
Southern Yellow - military outpost.   Lumbermills would look very good down here, both from

in some order with red being important.

I'm not sure what my 9th will be.   A possibility is a push into the center, to the black circle in the east.  

If not that, then it's probably ivory, since the happy is good.  10th would be green, which would probably pay for itself pretty quickly.

Tech path:

This is the tricky thing.  Short term, we need hunting, AH and sailing, no doubt.  After that, Masonry (for Lighthouse/Pyramids), Priesthood (for fail gold on oracle), writing (for libs) are all good.

After that, though, I think:

Calendar
Metal Casting (for forges, to help build pyramids)
Construction
Currency

Not sure of the order of those.  Somewhere in there, I want to get archery and probably HBR, too.

Relationships with the others:

I presume at some point, I will need to take out 1 or more opponents.  The natural targets are Mr Cairo and Ruff.   Of the two, I think Ruff is a better target.  He's got nicer land, plus if I take him, I border superdeath and Mr Cairo, where if I take Mr Cairo, I border Ruff, Superdeath and GeneralKilCavalry.  

Also, it seems likely to me that I'll be ready to attack around the time that Mr Cairo has 2 promo crossbows, presuming he builds oracle.  If he does, then clearly ruff will be easier.    That said, I have yet to successfully attack anyone in MP, so it seems unlikely that my target of aggression has much to worry about

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 41, the turn no one thought would come!

Hopefully, done with kittens and misclicks

copper is hooked up.   


Click (I renamed my workers to Click, Clack and Peter Sagal) will move 1 tile at a time, putting down a road to the cap, down to the FP where he'll put down the first cottage.

Clack roads, then moves to deliciousdish to road a forest (for fast chopping) and then pastures the cow.  I'm taking a chance and building the terrace.  It's a risk (mr cairo could show up with an axe), but what the heck.  It's just a game.

PeterSagal will complete the road to WaitWait, then will move to road the forest SW of Waitwait, after which he'll hook up the cow and then the gold.  

With overflow, CarTalk will get 15 hammers for it's terrace this turn, so I'll 1 pop whip it next turn.  
DeliciousDish can make 5 hammers a turn and so will be able to pop whip the terrace in 3 turns.  
WaitWait will grow for 2 turns and then be put on 5 hammmers a turn and pop whip it in 5 turns.  

OnPoint has 3 turns to a workboat.  

Demos:



someone has 61K soldiers!  thats a 12K jump!!  That is either 2 axemen or... ironworking.   Do all techs give you 6 points?  IW is classical, right?   My guess it that either Mr cairo or GKC got IW.   I lost Mr Cairo's graphs this turn - I'm going to put espionage into him and ruff for awhile, I think.  I need to know how strong they are.

[AutomatedTeller]

Huh. It looks like I'm better off growing a little in both WaitWait and DeliciousDish before putting max hammers into the terrace, because I have extra food sources. If I whip immediately, I have to fill the size 1 with 3 extra food in DeliciousDish, which takes 7 turns. This is not really a big deal - it will probably mean a grow a turn earlier at some point, because I'll have 2-3 extra food, but what it also does is put off when I have to decide to whip. There will be some 5 turns in delicious dish where I will be size 1 again, no matter what I do, and in that period, i cannot easily make an axe. When I'm size 2, I can chop a forest and whip the rest in. the danger is that I can't do that at size 1. During that period, I'd be dependent on the cap whipping one out.

[AutomatedTeller]

I'm definitely talking to myself these days, as Merovech has clearly gotten very busy. That's ok, I'm an amusing guy!!

My plans are basically:

1) Cap will build settlers and military in between.
2) Long term, WaitWait will build Pyramids. Until then, workers and military.
3) Red City will build GreatLighthouse. I don't know if it will be able to - if someone uses their cap to build it, they will be able to. Will probably whip in an axe or a spear now and then, maybe a worker.
4) OnPoint will be a navy pump. Eventually, it will build moai after it builds it's lighthouse, but I need to be careful about putting too many cities on wonders at once.
5) DeliciousDish will build units once it has it's terrace, eventually probably building the settler for silver. Maybe black if I go there, too.
6) Blue will build a terrace and then units.
7) Yellow will build pretty much only military.