The Way of the Civ Player - Ichabod and Wetbandit's PB13 Spoiler Thread

[Ichabod]

New Island City: I think it's worth a turn to scout in all directions to see if we can squeeze two cities there. The Jungle Hill 1S of the horse would be a good forward defensive city against Fintourist, which should factor into the decision here since we're settling up on them. Scout SW with galley, 1NE with Phalanx, and take a 1 step peek 1SE with Settler.

Plako: Just so I'm clear, I don't think it's worth trying to hold that stone if Plako is going to make a determined effort, but a sail-by razing isn't terrible if it's low cost to us. We don't know what Plako's plans are, but I'm guessing he's making a run at the 'Mids or at least HG if he settled on the stone right there. I don't know where the armada is or how many turns it would take them to get there. Don't call it off if you're 3 turns away.

We aren't exactly settling up on FinHarry. That spot is less than 10 tiles of our Capital, though it's in a different landmass. They are settling up on us with those cities, which are also off shore for them. If I recall correctly, you get the Liberate city option if your Capital is closer to a city of an opponent, right? Because we had that option on one of FinHarry's cities. I liked your suggested moves, though. It's a matter of getting benefits faster vs. making a more informed decision... That city would give us 15 commerce in 1 turn. But a first ring fish would be a very good boost to the city, so my proposed place isn't so great... Decisions, decisions.

We aren't that close to attacking plako. The problem with the attack is that it'll coincide with the ending of our peace with both Slow and WLP. So, those 4 to 6 units will be away on a time we can be caught with our pants down. So I think its wiser to just focus on Slow for now. After all, that plako city is pretty close to his core too, it's not like he really stole our land. Either way, I'm getting a second galley on RatT and units on other cities, so we'll have time to think this through.

Also, we have routes to dtay? I don't remember seeing them on the map. I believe it was Dhalphir who drew the unfortunate honor of starting next to Plako.

Trading maps made all kind of strange things happen, like us getting TRs with unmet players. Not sure where dtay is, really. Like you said, Dalphir is down there near plako.

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What about tech? I think we should go Masonry -> Construction -> HBR. There aren't any economic techs that would give us a big boost. We'd make little use of Calendar (few improvable tiles with it), Alphabet (like you said, OB won't give us that much commerce compared to overseas TRs), religious techs (we'd need a significant investment to spread religion, which I think is not worth compared to the Slow attack) or CoL (no religion avaiable, no use for Caste, no hammers to waste on Courthouses).

I can see a case for Aesthetics, if we would want to pursue some Marble wonders, but I don't want to go the builder route, more like the Warlord route. MC too, because forges would be decent with triple happy (though silver is only avaiable on trade, gems we'll have our own source soon) and trirremes will be needed soon. IW is also a possibility, since we have some jungled land to improve, we'd see iron (and I promised you that we have a strategic resource in our Capital, right ) and we could build some Swords to attack with (but I have a hard time seeing how they'd help us more than phalanxes/spears, seeing that I doubt Slow will have many archers -> what's your opinion on swords, by the way?).

[wetbandit]

Ah, when I said "settling up," I only was trying to say that we were settling close to their cities. I definitely agree that's our rightful land.

Fifteen (+4 new city +11 other cities on the mainland?) immediate commerce is no joke. Since that spot is close to the capital, those cities will be extra cheap maintenance-wise and easier to defend. I think that makes settling more and faster developing cities a better option. If you don't find anything, I think 1NW will be better as it will have a food bonus 1st ring and allows cities 3S of that spot and 1S of horse. Plus, you can settle 1NW next turn anyway, getting the commerce.

Ideally, you find seafood either N or NE of the Jungle so the NW grassland becomes the best plant and future Moai. I am a fan and routine beneficiary of the Hope and Pray Method.

We'll let Plako build the Pyramids for us. Seriously though, still surprised they're still around. Plako with MoM and the 'Mids...

Masonry-Construction-HBR sounds good to me. IW is next. I guess swords could be a palatable option as a higher-str city attacker, but we can build WE which makes Swords useless IMO. After typing that, though, aggressive makes the decision somewhat more interesting. Our swords do start with C1 and we could have 3 for every 2 WE. That might make 2-pop whips actually feasible for We want cats though, so construction is obvious. WE are Keshik defenders which means we wouldn't need to bring as many spears along as if we attacked with Swords/Axes.

Hm. I don't have a strong opinion on this either way. Skipping HBR "saves" us some tech turns on IW and other development techs. We'll eventually want HBR, at some point, but it may not be critical now. We'd also have to have Iron, which is probable given the span of our empire. WE are useful up until the Renaissance.

In the end, more phalanxes and spears with cats will probably get the job done fine. A mass of cats will collateral everything down enough for mass phalanxes/spears. We could skip HBR then, for the time being.

Watch that we have Oil/Uranium in the Capital.

Philo is still out there, right? Alphabet is still an option if we don't want to help WLP with his religion. Spreading any religion around will provide so much in terms of happiness and the OR bonus, whenever we can make time for that. After IW, there's MC and then clear out the bottom half for Monasteries, OR, HR, and Vassalage. I don't think CS/Bureau will be as helpful for us and Vassalage might be a better mid-game civic.

[wetbandit]

Logged in because I could!

WLP settled the desert hill. He's going to be our main rival.

Someone built The Great Library this turn. Mids and HG were built some turns ago.

Didn't move anything, but nice find on jungled pigs.

[Ichabod]

Logged in because I could!

WLP settled the desert hill. He's going to be our main rival.

Someone built The Great Library this turn. Mids and HG were built some turns ago.

Didn't move anything, but nice find on jungled pigs.

Yeah, that WLP city is unfortunate, but I don't think we should push the issue right now. We could settle a nasty city near both of his new cities, but I think it's better to send the new settler in HP to the jungled pig spot. I'm thinking of settling the current island settler 1NW, getting the first ring fish (1t a WB in Capital), and leaving space for a pig city. So, I think IW should be our next target tech, to enable that pig and the rice in TFB.

Another possible place for that settler is here, as a front line city against Slow (since DP is currently not using its corn). It's a fairly bad city, but it has a gold and strategic purpose. We could also secure the pig while we can and settle this later.




Some other shots:

OB with FinHarry, gave us quite a bit of commerce! FinHarry are playing an awesome game, good power, food, GNP, techs...




WLP nasty little city, which will be conquered by us one day. You can also see the 9xp phalanx, waiting for the final kill.




The island with fish and pig:




Random city shot:

[wetbandit]

That Gold city that can share corn is a decent city. IW->Construction. IW also gets some food freed up on those Ivory camps, which is a nice fringe benefit.

Currency and now +3 routes with OH can fund further expansion. Looking good.

[Ichabod]

Told ya, bandit, my friend:




Capital iron!

[wetbandit]

Even better that it wasn't under one of those hamlets.

[wetbandit]

And wow that's quite the map, what happened?

[Ichabod]

And wow that's quite the map, what happened?

We met Pindicator and co. and they offered a map trade, which I accepted. Someone circumvented the gole recently, so I guess the value of maps went down. It was quite a nice trade, since we can see Slow's cities now and FinHarry's too.

WLP offered corn for corn. I understood that as a "let's keep peace" message. I'm fine with it, so I accepted it. No reason to fight him right now, I think.

[Ichabod]

Got some gold and the HE unit, by razing the barb city to our north. It's nice to take that little problem out of our way.







We have two iron sources, by the way. One is in a pretty awkward spot, unfortunately.




As you can see below, we will finish masonry only with overflow from IW, running 0% science. We need 3 turns at full science to get construction and we can fund one turn of full research with one turn of full gold, so we'll need 6 turns, including this one, to finish it. I'm growing the cities while building phalanxes, so as to prepare to the attack. Slow has mostly hill cities, which is unfortunate (stupid me forgot to take a shot of his now revealed land), but he's pretty underdeveloped. There's always the possibility of taking some of his cities, reorganize, and take the others. We'll get access to another decent island by taking Slow, though I think FinHarry can also reach it. The other massive thing is getting silks and furs (we get furs from WLP, but I don't want to depend on them, especially since we are giving Ivory for it) from Slow land - that means 3 luxes doubled by half-cost markets, which is awesome (at least based on my impressions). And we have 3 forge doubled luxes too (only 2 of our own, though)!

I'm shipping 2 extra phalanxes and workers to the big island to the south. We'll have 4 phalanxes defending 2 cities. Probably getting a few more units there is worth it, since FinHarry may not like this...

I think a decent plan is taking out Slow and than massively growing our cities. We lost some good spots to WLP, but we also have some good land already settled. DP, BoM, TFB, Slow's Capital, HP can grow very big, if we have the happiness for it.

After that, reassess the situation to see who's going to be attacked!