[SPOILERS] A threesome becomes a twosome

[plako]

I'm back. Thank you DaveV for running my show.

[DaveV]

plako - my plan was for either Kyan or me to play before you next turn, so we could finish Mining before your turn. That way you should be able to start mining right away. I hope you don't mind me "borrowing" one of your mud golems.

To both teammates: the diplo proposal I mentioned in the banter thread was an offer to teams 1 and 4 to exchange information on giant spiders. I figured we could tell them the location of a spider, and they would tell us the location of a spider near us. If they haven't found any spiders, no deal. It seems like a chance to establish some trust and gain some useful information at the same time.

[Kyan]

plako - my plan was for either Kyan or me to play before you next turn, so we could finish Mining before your turn. That way you should be able to start mining right away. I hope you don't mind me "borrowing" one of your mud golems.

To both teammates: the diplo proposal I mentioned in the banter thread was an offer to teams 1 and 4 to exchange information on giant spiders. I figured we could tell them the location of a spider, and they would tell us the location of a spider near us. If they haven't found any spiders, no deal. It seems like a chance to establish some trust and gain some useful information at the same time.

Sounds good to me mate.

[DaveV]

I played, and we're still five beakers short. Kyan - is it OK if plako plays your turn before his? It doesn't look like there are any big decisions to make.

[Kyan]

I played, and we're still five beakers short. Kyan - is it OK if plako plays your turn before his? It doesn't look like there are any big decisions to make.

That's fine. I'm at work so cant play for awhile. Please ensure that the worker finishes plantation and tiles are micro'd so i'm working both food tiles and the improved incense. Thanks.

[plako]

T23

Done. We've 3 copper tiles between us. Here is also my suggestion concerning the cities before firing my world spell i.e. DaveV's gift city 1W from ivory. City 1 where settler comes either from Kyan or my 1st and lastly city 2 that is either my 1st or 2nd settler. My border pop in 2T will make spices, wine and Corn improvable.

What is the current opinion concerning hammers and carrying them to capital? Is that considered ok. I need to build some scouts for that purpose.

[plako]

Concerning GE here is the relevant parts from the bulbing order:

Smelting (1876b unlocked by BW)
Bowyers (2814b unlocked by Archery)
Iron Working (2814b unlocked by Smelting and Warfare)
Bronze Working (938b)
Archery (702b)
Military Strategy (1124b)
Construction (938b)

So bulbing Bronze working seems best. We probably need couple of extra turns of research to finish it, but it feels best use of that. When should we go for Construction. bulbing seems too hard to arrange and I need it for Wood Golems, Barnaxus and Sculptor's studios.

[plako]

Concerning our safety I think we could research RoK -> Construction -> HBR before anything else. Wood golems standing on vulnerable cities and mobility warriors+Catapults as active defense should keep us pretty safe from fast moving stacks and let us concentrate on economy before beelining to our real killer units.

[DaveV]

I agree with moving the Clown->Gnome gift city 1W to grab the copper. How are you planning to pop borders? Monument, or wait for Sculptor's Workshops?

On RoK: is it worth it? It gives some coins, which will come in handy on this map, but we could grab Cartography for half the beakers of WotE, and get the benefit of vastly reduced city maintenance. If we go for RoK, the next logical step is to spend another pile of beakers on Arete so we can use some great engineers on the Mines of Gal'Dur. If we're going on to Construction and HBR, iron chariots sound pretty good.

Based on what I've seen of the map so far, OO looks like it will be very strong. Plus it gives the advantage of providing culture, unlike RoK.

But my vote is still to ignore religion entirely at this point: my suggested tech path is Masonry, Festivals, Construction, Cartography, Education, HBR.

For economy, I'm going to reverse my earlier arguments and advocate cottages.

[plako]

I agree with moving the Clown->Gnome gift city 1W to grab the copper. How are you planning to pop borders? Monument, or wait for Sculptor's Workshops?

Wait for studios. Only in desparate situation I would build monuments.

Leaving RoK alone might be wisdom.