There's an archer on the cow, and a warrior in the forest to the SW. The cool thing is that he can't just snipe it out with the archer because it's a quechua. He could take a coin flip and attack with the warrior, but I doubt he will risk it.
Because we've seen it once we can now track the population of the city through the fog every turn, through some powers of Civ-mechanics telepathy.
Well, Retep won a coin flip and beat our scouting warrior!
He set a mini-trap for us, and we couldn't see two units before moving to the obvious scouting tile. Was it a mistake to scout out his city? I'm not sure. It did make it in his better interest to attack: if he wins the coin flip he gets a promotion, if he loses then the archer clean up and gets XP. This is, if he views it as us vs him and not him vs the world.
He has a scout and a warrior, neither of which can do much, and we have 2 quechuas and an archer, with another archer finishing next turn.
That's a +6 spike, which looks like an axe. So... I'm the biggest believer that early war helps the other 16 players the most, and that he won't get anything from it, but it's up to us to prove that to him I guess.
This puts a bit of a damper on the Oracle plan. We need at least 1 axe after the archer, and maybe flashing that at him will convince him he can't make progress and he'll go away, or maybe not.
Maybe Retep's just really, really sensitive to choke threats right now. :lol
Can you post the food-prod-power graphs on the next turn please? Its hard to understand why Retep would come at us while being chocked by Baccus. But the whole 'choked by Baccus' is seeming a little suspicious right now with Baccus' continued 3-warrior army and neither of them having a power drop.
So if that was an axe, which it likely was (archer+barracks?), it was produced on T41 so we may have only until T45 to get Barber fortified up. 4T of fortify is the real tipping point for our archer-Axe battle if we decide to defend the city or that NW forest.
That archer in Turandot looks like it will only just make it to the front lines in time if that Axe is making a beeline for us so we'll need to be careful of taking the bait on that scout or warrior.
Retep's warrior and scout moved back. I offered a 10 turn peace treaty, and whether or not he accepts will say something about his intent. Right now though... I hate to say it but he looks like he's playing either desperate or like he's going all in. I suspect he won't take the deal.
I think it's prudent to build an axe out of Turandot right now. It can 3-turn them which is pretty nice. A settler is what really want, but I can't rule out 2 axes and a bit of support showing up to attack in the next 3-4 turns. Just advertising that we have axes in the graphs might actually deter an attack.
Barbiere is putting hammers into an axe, so it can whip one next turn if need be, and it also has hammers into an archer for overflow.
Sorry, I misplayed the worker coming out of Barbiere - I moved him 1N to chop, but 1NE is a much better tactical tile since a road there allows going from Turandot -> Barber in 2 turns, and the river blocks the move otherwise, pre-Construction.
Bacchus put some more EP on us past 43 (43 is the equilibrium point where both players see graphs of each other), so we don't have his graphs until next turn.
I think Retep's power graph looks a lot like 2 axes. The slight slope change could have been from a pop growth a couple of turns ago, so power increases of 7 and 6, but I'm not sure about that.
Anyway, my reading on this is we have to assume this is an all-in move, at least until he shows otherwise.
So presumably the axe is moving full-steam towards us and we have 3-4 turns before it arrives which means that we have time to either take a shot at that warrior with the archer OR fortify up Barbiere. So archer to Barbiere while archer 2 moves SS of Turnadot.
Note: Retep's warrior can already see that hill SW of the capital.
Barbiere will need 6H invested before it can whip an axe (it will be able to start building an axe on T43 or T44?). If we can't protect the gold that will add a turn before it could be whipped.
A fresh archer's odds of surviving an unpromoted axe is 38%. Same for defending a forest I think.
Assuming that the axe travels the safer path, arriving NW of Barbiere, we won't be able to protect that corn, so don't too attached to that.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:08)MindyMcCready Wrote: Looks like we're ripe for the taking.
We'll see. But yeah it must look like that to retep, with an aggressive city with no defense bonus..
Quote:So presumably the axe is moving full-steam towards us and we have 3-4 turns before it arrives which means that we have time to either take a shot at that warrior with the archer OR fortify up Barbiere. So archer to Barbiere while archer 2 moves SS of Turnadot.
Yeah, it could be two axes toward us since power graphs are delayed a turn.
Quote:Barbiere will need 6H invested before it can whip an axe (it will be able to start building an axe on T43 or T44?). If we can't protect the gold that will add a turn before it could be whipped.
I think it just needs 5H invested? But it puts 6H into an axe this turn, and can whip it T44, to be available T45 so good enough to be a defender - I think that's the soonest he could hit Barber unless he somehow has the worker moves for some combat engineer antics.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: I offered a 10 turn peace treaty, and whether or not he accepts will say something about his intent.
I wouldn't feel the need to offer a peace treaty. It conveys weakness more than anything. Also, I'm sure that his intentions are to harm us if at all possible. Only his estimation of how possible will change his answer.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: Right now though... I hate to say it but he looks like he's playing either desperate or like he's going all in. I suspect he won't take the deal.
Never saw that coming!
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: I think it's prudent to build an axe out of Turandot right now. It can 3-turn them which is pretty nice. A settler is what really want, but I can't rule out 2 axes and a bit of support showing up to attack in the next 3-4 turns. Just advertising that we have axes in the graphs might actually deter an attack.
First I think that Retep is definately doing an all-in. Second, I think that we may be able to be a little more reactive and try to fit in the settler.
May sound crazy, but right now Retep is sitting there with two size 2 cities and it doesn't look like he's in a hurry to grow them with that low focus on food. So he can't whip out an army. He could chop out an army but we could match that with our own chops around Barbiere - which we should be doing anyway. You've made a pretty decent investment in workers so I don't think that he's going to outdo us there.
Barbiere will have the 2 archers + 1 whippable axe which is enough to defend against the power that he's showing right now. If we chop the axe in Barbiere we have the whipable archer for 3 archer + 1 Axe. That'll send the 'we have metal' message and provide a pretty decent city defense while allowing us to build a settler in Turnadot. YOu can save the forests around Turandot for the Oracle or some other future opportunity.
As long as we road and chop around Barbiere we should be able to take this gamble while carefully watching the power graphs.If we do take this gamble, we cannot place the connecting city in your 1E location. It's just way to easy to fork the cities. We could go with my suggested location S-4E of Barbiere or go for the Gold-corn plant or start discussing a manufacturing city West of our capital.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: Sorry, I misplayed the worker coming out of Barbiere - I moved him 1N to chop, but 1NE is a much better tactical tile since a road there allows going from Turandot -> Barber in 2 turns, and the river blocks the move otherwise, pre-Construction.
Yep, that's a better tile. We also want to road the 1NW tile so that we can move onto that forest-plains-hill tile for more visibility. If he tries to hold that tile with only a warrior we'll get free XP with our axe.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: I think Retep's power graph looks a lot like 2 axes. The slight slope change could have been from a pop growth a couple of turns ago, so power increases of 7 and 6, but I'm not sure about that.
Yes - 2 axes. I took that as 7K = axe + size2 second city then followed up by 6K for another axe. The good news is that it doesn't look like he's landed a barracks yet so no C1 or CR1 axes. I'm happy he revealed that archer to the Quecha that he killed. Otherwise the 3K could be taken as a barracks and we'd have to overdefend.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:06)WilliamLP Wrote: Bacchus put some more EP on us past 43 (43 is the equilibrium point where both players see graphs of each other), so we don't have his graphs until next turn.
Sucks. The choke mystery lives on. T35 was his peak food; T36 it dropped. So if he was pillaged he's had 8T to reconnect the food which he would presumably do if its a high value tile. Baccus didn't have a power drop so if he did pillage a tile he must have been chased out pretty quick. Retep had no hestiation on taking a coin-flip on our warrior. Its beginning to look like he choose to bypass the food?!?! for lower food-hammers? Maybe Baccus built a warrior on the same turn as losing one? Maybe I'll never know and should stop reading the tea leaves and just accept that Retep troops moved into our lands.
That Retep is gimping his food while sitting at size 2 is what's making me think that we can defend while still making some investments.
(August 27th, 2013, 10:16)WilliamLP Wrote: I think it just needs 5H invested?
Yeah, not sure. I'm not exactly the game's best micromanager. Better I advice 6H and be sure than advise 5H and be uncomfortably wrong. :LOL:
Just so you know, I have been carefully tracking the power whenever you've posted the graphs. I haven't posted the pictures or any real comments because what you've said in your posts indicate that we have the same understanding. Its being watched.
