[SPOILER] PB37: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most aggressive of them all?

[Thoth]

Settling for the double silver is what all of my instincts are screaming.

In terms of build order....how does the growth curve look if 2nd worker comes before 2nd quecha? And improve corn before plains cow?

If I'm interpreting correctly, your build order requires settler at size 4 without working either silver. Earlier 2nd worker means more worker turns to use and food before production means faster growth curve.

[Thoth]

T3 is up.

I moved the scout onto the forested desert hill as we discussed.  




Settle on plains as planned?

Quecha or worker 1st?

[Krill]

Poor Ventessel. Wang Kon of China, the only other player without Hunting, Fishing or EXP. The best neighbour I could hope for.

If he changes to a warrior then he looks to be 8 turns from the capital, so we need to use the scout as a sentry from 5 turns from now, can scout around until then but need the scout to be about 2 tiles north of current position. Then we swap to the plains hill forest then and build a Quechua. We have agg so odds are in our favour.

If he tries to camp one of our resources we improve one of the other three and recall the scout to sit on the improved resource, and we sit our scout for a period of time on his rice to stop him hooking it.

He is screwed tech wise, needs to get both Hunting and Fishing or he'll fall behind everyone else. We can't choke his clam but that is irrelevant as any plan that involves him hooking it up precludes him building a warrior first, or at least precludes him as a threat. If he goes straight BW, then he has nothing but the rice to grow on and I'm not worried, but it's a reason we have to go BW third.

I don't see any advantage in building a Quechua first because now he knows we are here he can react to demographics changes and keep the scout as a sentry. So we'd have to commit to a 65% battle, only to leave us in place to heal and choke. Not worth it imo.

I'm figuring that dropping a holy city on that northern grass hill is the most aggressive move we could realistically make, and I don't particularly like that idea right now. We are really going to have to think about rush back to the southern chokepoint equivalent to what we are about to settle, but in a defensive manner. I expect that we started in a squareish box, NE and SW leads to opponents, NW and SE lead to coast and islands. I want to lock off our box get an island for trade routes and by that point Ventessel may be marinated in despair and tenderised by slow.expansion enough to be edible.

BW is 193 beakers. Mining 79, Hunting 96. We make 11 base bpt until T22, when we work the pig for 2 turns and don't have the river commerce. Then we make 11 then 12. We could grow higher than size 4, in that case improving the corn is better than plains cow, but if we stagnate at size 4 then plains cow is better as it improves 1 turn sooner. Tech Hunting eot11, Mining eot18, then BW eot33 or 34, not quite sure. The timings for the food hook up suggest that we can only go for a settler at size 4 otherwise we spend time not working a 6 yield tile which is inefficient. We finish the first Quechua just after growth to size 3. We need at least 2 though, but worker at size 3 takes 5 turns with alot of overflow, and 3 turns growth to size 4 and we finish the worker with 4 improved tiles. At size 4 the worker takes 4 turns and overflows enough hammers for that 5 turn settler with the chop. If we decide to grow to size 5 before the second worker, well, that 3 turns, 5 turns total to size 6 but not enough worker turns to hook all the tiles. Settler at size 4 appears most efficiently enter, but I figure Ventessel has more influence on what actually happens. Immediately after the settler we can hook the second silver whilst one worker starts roaring to second city, then the new city steals a food rest, and the capital works 3 food res and both silver from about T42.

If we go with worker at size 2, then that is pig t22, grow eot23, cow t25, corn T30, worker eot29, plains cow t32 And to be clear, Quechua is at 6 hammers whilst building the worker. Grow@3 eot32, grow, grow@4 eot34, grow@5 eot36, settler@4 eot39 with 1 chop and micro'd overflow.

Tldr most efficient play through involved working the 6 yield tiles asap so growth to 4 is best, safest and most flexible.

[Krill]

Ultimately Ventessel can't fight use with warriors and archers as we have counters to both in AGG Quechua. He needs copper or horse, we only need copper to then counter both. If he tries to build up to three cities then we should probably match him due to better​ capital even with the delay. And we don't need to grow towards him. So I figure with his position his best hope is to try and stop us hooking copper if that is within his reach and then hit with axes, or to try and hit via a HA rush.

Our counter to a HA rush is that we hold a choke point so he can't manourve through us like PB27 and to fucking get copper asap. First settler should realistically be thrown at copper, unless we have it at the capital which isn't impossible as high resource choke points on mirror maps usually have everything at them to make them so contentious. Which is why BW third is my preferred option. If we get a forward city though we may still be protected from a HA rush but open Ventessel up to such an attack.

[Krill]

Also he is PRO but the general playstyle of planting an obnoxious front city we can't destroy easily is irrelevant to us, given we have this capital, and we don't need to settle further forward. Inviting him to plant a weak economic city towards us early is fine, it can make a later attack easier if we have to fight fewer units.

[Thoth]

Went ahead and settled as planned:

[Krill]

Cheers Thoth. Scout to grass hill?

[Thoth]

t4 played:




Looks like 8 tiles.

[Krill]

Nothing to fight over, no reason to warrior rush. Full steam ahead to BW via Hunting.

Poly fourth to pop second city borders? Copper dependant but who knows who has what on this map.

[Thoth]

Poly 4th sounds good if the timing works.

Copper is probably back at the original start location.