[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

So, the short answer is I'll be attacking Mr. Cairo, and I know the "where." I don’t know the when.

The available targets are Rusten, Mackoti, or Mr. Cairo. Adrien isn’t really a target. My island grab was an attack of opportunity. Adrien and I don’t (yet) have a land border, not counting that we share an island. I don’t regret this attack, even if Adrien will never be my friend this game because of it. It was worth it to grab a second overseas trade route and proportionately weaken Adrien, whom I’ll probably have to clash with eventually.

There are two angles of attack into Rusten. One is over multiple hills into a relatively young city with full borders, so that one takes too long. The other is through the Thermopylae-esque pass by Water Garden. (I currently can’t pull up pictures for any of this. Sorry!) Rusten has control of the peak, so he can see an attack coming from forever out. There’s a boatable hill on the coast that could fork two of his cities, but again, he’ll have visibility, so galley attacks are unlikely. You know, every time I talk about Rusten, I start by saying I’m not worried about him because we’ve always had friendly relations and he has a tense eastern border to deal with, so we’re both happy to let our guard down. But every time, I end up getting very uneasy with how quick he could cause problems for me if he wanted…

Mackoti has a hill looking into Harmony Valley, which is where I’d stage an attack from. After Engineering, I can put a stack 1SE of the city out of sight and surprise attack him, but again, that will have to wait until at least Engineering. Plus, usual military doctrine is to consume smaller powers before taking on the big ones, not go for the top dog immediately.

That leaves Mr. Cairo. We haven’t had any interactions one way or another, but he’s the one left holding the short straw. His demos have been a touch laggardly, so I should be able to turn my tech and production lead into a superior force. His power has been climbing; I’m not happy about that, but it still isn’t equal to mine, plus I suspect this was partly due to his scrap with 2metra on the other side of his empire. A couple turns ago, New Jerusalem expanded to 3rd ring borders, claiming the hill ridge between me and Cairo. I can’t road this without suspicion. (There is a sheep, but I think he’d notice if I pastured and roaded a sheep tile that no city was working, so that deception’s out.) My plan is to settle a city in his face. This will be provocative, and I’ll need to seriously defend it, but this is my way of getting a road onto that hill without being super obvious. The city won’t be great. It’s best tile will be a plains hill sheep, but it’ll work. Then, it’s a matter of loading up a stack out of sight and charging. Cairo is Protective, because I apparently only declare war on Protective players.

I don’t have a timeline, and part of my worry about Mackoti attacking Cairo in the previous post is selfish. I don’t want him to take my last realistic avenue for expansion, so I need to step up recruitment. The city will get founded ~eventually~. I still don’t know what tech I’ll use to attack. Probably, I just start building catapults and get a sense if waiting for knights would take too long.

So, that was long winded, but the answer is “Cairo unless Rusten suddenly starts having disasters out East or Mackoti gets abducted by aliens.

[Mardoc]

The forge build isn't totally nuts. It's the best source of happy I have right now. It's 60h for one happy face, so equivalent to 2 colosseums. People's Teeming actually can't even benefit from the forge's production modifier with its base production of 3, but the engineering specialist will be a useful source of hammers.

Forge does apply to   hammers...

[Krill]

Want to know how to live a long fulfilling life in civ4? Don't live in a coastal town with two sources of seafood and no hammers.

QOTM.

[naufragar]

Ha. I'm flattered, Krill. (I'm partial to "Pindicator misses slavery" from that civ6 game.)

The forge build isn't totally nuts. It's the best source of happy I have right now. It's 60h for one happy face, so equivalent to 2 colosseums. People's Teeming actually can't even benefit from the forge's production modifier with its base production of 3, but the engineering specialist will be a useful source of hammers.

Forge does apply to   hammers...

Very true! And colosseums are 80h, not 60, so a forge is even better than 2 of them.   Nothing to see here, folks. People's Teeming can be food neutral while working two plains workshops, a desert hill (blech), and an engineer specialist, so 12 base hammers after Guilds, which isn't completely terrible. We might be seeing some dreaded RtR 3-pop whips from here. I remember it's also produced a horse archer and a work boat. It really is the little city that could.

This is the power graph not from the most recent turn (115) but the one before it.


The two points to take away are 1) Rusten is serious about military. After that dip, he shot right back up and faster than Superdeath. 2) Mr. Cairo seems to have noticed how appetizing his power was making him.

[naufragar]

This turn's (116) power graph although it's pretty much the same.


Notice how fast Adrien's power climbed after I took the island. I don't know all of Adrien's neighbors (for example, I think he borders Xenu, because he got some Judaism spreads), but of the neighbors I know, he could hit 2metraninja, Cairo, or me. I don't care if he attacks 2metra. The only spot where I'm vulnerable is the island. Lincelt is defended by 2 axes and an archer and I can ship over an axe and horse archer the turn he declares war and then another couple of units the turn after, so he'd need at least 3 galleys plus their contents to have a shot at taking the city. If he wants to commit those kinds of resources to taking the island back, there's not much I can do.

I'm building way too much infrastructure currently. Getting forges followed by courthouses was just too much stuff. Kid in a candy store feeling. I forced myself to start a horse archer instead of a courthouse in New Jerusalem. It was a struggle.

Commodore offered open borders, and I accepted.


He doesn't have open borders with anyone else I know, but I'm not getting all his routes, so I assume he's picking trading partners that are as distant as can be, so he doesn't give neighbors free scouting. Alphabet comes in next turn for me with 1 gold to spare. I'll offer open borders to Superdeath and 2metraninja for scouting purposes. Don't know who else.



It feels like half my empire is building wealth, although the count probably isn't that high. After Alphabet, we turn off tech for a bit I think. Need to figure out timings. I'm feeling more and more impatient, or more accurately less and less sanguine about getting to knights before the world explodes.

I shouldn't play turns in the evenings. I'm too sluggish. Mackoti founded a city to my north that I forgot to take a picture of. It would've been Aretas' (i.e. closer to Aretas than me). I realize how I screwed up this whole Mackoti situation, and frankly the answer lies in Factory Drift and my piss poor scouting. I was rushing to get borders in every cardinal direction. I was happy with Water Garden and the ocean being my eastern/Rusten border, but I hadn't met southern or western neighbors yet, and I was wary of settling up on Mackoti before I had a military. Basically, I planted south before I had to. If I had scouted better, I would've see that those were my back lines, and I could've thrown those settlers north towards the under-seige Aretas and locked the whole area down. Mackoti took a Rusten city that was on Aretas' border, but the land I could've claimed would've been too far away over hills to do that easily. Lesson learned. Scouting is vital.

[naufragar]

TBS offered open borders, so the state of the known world is now this:


I've offered open borders to 2metra and superdeath. 2metra and I can't trade, so I assume he makes me pay for the privilege, although I did throw 3 gold his way when I thought I'd have to trespass to escape Adrien. Mackoti war-peaced Superdeath and then declared on Rusten, so maybe that's serious? If I read civstats correctly, dtay took a city from superdeath, he must be to superdeath's NE, maybe by BGN? Poor superdeath. Guy's getting it on all sides.

This is the area I've been talking about w/o pictures.


You can see Greenhouse Gate 1-turning a settler which will go 1N of the sheep tile at my western border once I can move over its archer/spear/axe escort. We'll see if this is enough. I might be so inclined to chop walls ahead of a granary, but perhaps I'm being overcautious. Please ignore the garbage micro and tile assignment (e.g., I have 2 workers at Plex Anthill building two separate mines while it works a forest.   Doubling up's for chumps. Also, I don't think you can tell from the screenshot, but Greenhouse Gate is working a forest rather than a plains workshop. Might log back in to change that if I'm not super lazy...) If you only look at the cities, it looks like my defenses are thin, but you can spot the considerable number of units playing zone defense. I'm defending more lightly here because I've just got such excellent vision, an attack of one-movers would take a while, and I have spears for days. (I think.   )

Here's that Mackoti area.


I've placed a sign, so you can see the relative distance between Aretas and my capitols. That city is in a straight line from both. If I were quicker, I could've planted on the plains hill 1W of the peak and grabbed both gems and the cow, as well as have the peak to look at Rusten. That should've been an easy grab, and if I knew Mack's settling plans, maybe I could've even gotten it before he settled the city by Harmony Valley. I was just too worried about his veterans from the Aretas campaign. Also shown in that screen is Mackoti on a size 17 capitol.   When I saw it, I did some math on my cap to see how big it gets, and I'm pretty sure it maxes out at 17??? (This is because I've been giving the cap's 2nd food to Plex Anthill to work all its mines. With the combination of bureaucracy and Organized, this is probably idiotic. I'll have to see if I can reconfigure those two.) I'm one-turning Polytheism on overflow which makes me smile. I had thought about going for Iron Working, because Adrien has now hooked iron, and I was getting worried, but I decided against it. That second island route isn't super critical now that I have Alphabet. I'm still reinforcing it. The tech path is Polytheism to Monotheism to Monarchy, I think. We don't pick up Calendar until like turn 250 unfortunately. It's more expensive than Monarchy, and it's currently only 1 happy, and I do have wines under my capitol. We skip priesthood entirely. I don't think the double pre-req research bonus is enough to justify it, and 80h temples are not appealing with hereditary rule.

Let me know if I'm forgetting to mention anything. The last couple reports have just had demos screens, so hopefully this sates the appetite for pictures of the actual empire.

[naufragar]

Adrien is clearing jungle for a cottage. If this tile gets roaded, we start raising our eyebrows.


Still, can't be too surprising from that direction until Engineering. Galleys are still the biggest threat. Did some rough measuring on the power graph last turn, and I'd say Adrien was at 360k power over my 306k.

2metraninja accepted open borders. (AND I FORGOT TO MOVE MY SCOUT. NEVER FORTIFY, KIDS. ALWAYS SKIP TURN. Time to log in again, I guess.) Superdeath hasn't played yet.

Also shown in that screen is me running around like a headless chicken about tech choice. I have no clue what I'm doing, and decisiveness was never one of my weaknesses. I think I'm turning most of Water Garden off to produce a great person in 17 turns. I think we still revolt to Bureaucracy that moment we land it? Which should be in ~8 turns. Fewer if I am tempted away from unit builds by wealth. Then we pick up Monotheism and Monarchy and revolt to their civics + Hinduism with the aid of a golden age. Idk. I'm not planning far enough ahead. Basically I didn't realize I could get bureau so soon.

[naufragar]

Logged in to some interesting diplo.


I accepted, giddily imagining the output of one extra worked tile in all my cities... Of course, because we recently got forges and gems, none of my important cities (i.e. not whipping posts) are at their happy cap, and none of them will be for a while, so accepting this was a mistake. Oh well. Ten turn cool down before I can cancel it, I think.

Rusten and Mr. Cairo both offered open borders, and I was really stumped as to what to do, and I think I made yet another mistake. I declined both. I don't want Cairo in my borders for whenever the attack comes, and there's no need for open borders with Rusten. I thought about it more, and saw that Rusten didn't have routes with anyone and I kind of want to prop him up in so far as it's reasonable, since he is my buffer from a lot of apparently war-happy players. So I offered open borders to him. Unfortunately, I worry that Mr. Cairo will feel left out and wonder why I'm colder to him. Hopefully he doesn't make much of it, although next turn when he sees I declined open borders and I've moved a settler up to him, he perhaps won't think highly of me... My mistake was offering Rusten open borders at all. I should've just gotten my remaining routes from BGN. (I think? I apparently don't know how trade routes work. I've got open borders with Plako, but no routes from him and I doubt his are all used up? But maybe they are. My cities are small.)

For kicks, here's me building my courthouses too early, apparently.

[naufragar]

Scouting has recommenced. Found Rusten's army.


His power is not much higher than mine, so this stack surprised me. I would have serious trouble fighting this. City Raider 3 on all those axes. Yikes.

Here's an overview.


The main reason I'm showing this is because I found the ocean to the west. See at the edge where Mr. Cairo & Mackoti's borders meet? I'd guess that's a Mack city on an island. I still feel it in my gut when I look at how much land Mackoti has. Oh well. Enough's been said on that front. On my side, you can see how I need to grow my cities. I'm 6th in crop yield but don't have a single city with pop in the double digits. Inexcusable. I've put Fort Survivalist and Solid Domain on wealth builds to speed up Civil Service by a turn. Then back on to catapults. If that Rusten stack scared me, I need many more troops if I'm going on the offensive. You can see in Commander's Keep the Moai Statues get finished next turn. I three pop whipped them because I got impatient.

I still need 15 foreign trade routes. Need to figure out what to do there. Don't want open borders with Adrien/Cairo/Mackoti. Don't know where I can get the routes from otherwise, though.

[naufragar]

Pictured: Rusten about to find out how lightly defended my entire East is.


Oh well. I guess we've both benefited from somewhat amicable relations. I'm stockpiling horse archers and catapults in my core for a response force. ("Stockpiling" might be a bit of a strong term right now. This group is three HAs and one cat.   )

Mackoti connected iron. (Also pictured, Commodore lost his iron?  He just declared war on Gavagai, so I assume he didn't trade it away when he needs to be making praets.)



I was trying to think of a historical parallel for TennFourStar but was drawing a blank. Post-war Berlin? Idk.


The lighter brown is dtay. (There are a lot of good players in this pitboss...) What a tight damn spot.

In miscellaneous news, my neighbors realize I'm spending EP on them. Mackoti, Adrien, and Rusten all increased spending on me. Oh well. The points have to go towards somebody. TBS offered to buy my furs for 5 gold, and after I just said that I made a mistake buying Commodore's silk for that price, this seems like an easy way to fix my mistake. I didn't take the deal though. I'm not sure why. Playing civ by instinct? A couple of my cities (the whipping posts mentioned earlier) are in fact at their happy cap, and since these are coastal towns, I would lose at least 4 gold, but probably more, immediately. I don't know. Something about giving away my only copy of a luxury didn't sit right. This might be a bad move, and in the post mortem, I hope I can give TBS a better reason. I'm not opposed to trading with TBS despite his #2 position (I assume. He and Mackoti are probably close currently, but I think Mack has the land advantage to TBS' population one.) Maybe I'll stew on this and reoffer. Maybe I'll increase the price if I can find one I'm comfortable with that isn't exorbitant.