Game Thread

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Finally getting interesting.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Agreed.

What is our best-case scenario outcome with our merry war in the south? Positioning our warrior between them and their likely bronze resource is good denial strategy for a short while and will cause them to waste hammers dislodging our unit at little expense to us, but is there any chance that this can be exploited further for a larger gain in the future? Obviously the economic setback from having to waste hammers on units now vs growth now is a good long term benefit here, I was just wondering if there was anything else potentially on the table. City #2 getting razed, is that the grand prize?

[Krill]

Settle the horse city, we get better city sites and a more defensible border, we force them to jump around with their workers, and most importantly of all, we potentially stop them from building the Mids or GLH. That last one is game over for the Trolls.

[Lewwyn]

2 things before I end turn.

Archery is 5Ts
Pottery is 6Ts
We were going to tech Pottery originally but we're likely better off going archery if we want to hold the horse city as our 3rd city. I will set tech to archery unless anyone can come up with a good reason not to in the next hour.

Second, our scout ended movement next to a Gillette Worker/Warrior pair. He's on a hill. This means Gillette can likely kill it next turn. If we want I can throw a peace treaty at them and they'll have to accept or decline before they see our scout. If they accept, the scout is safe. 10 turns later we can reinstate the Jihad. Would we like to do this? I'm leaning toward yes. Just because we do a peace treaty doesn't mean we have to diplo or stay at peace.

[Lewwyn]

[SIZE="7"]Turn 33:[/SIZE]

Turn opened with Trolls offering peace. I declined. Then I moved the scout:

Not good. As I said I debated sending Gillette a peace treaty but decided against it ultimately. Maybe it was a mistake and the scout could have been saved, but I think they would have likely just declined the peace treaty anyway to see why we offered it without diplo. Better to stay Jihading and take the 10% shot or so that the scout has of defending successfully.

Also, wtf with the roads to nowhere? They must be trying to pink dot M3 as well!

The situation In Trollland:

I'm betting they moved both warriors NW, though 1 could go NW and 1 SW or both SW. In any case they are in motion. If they appear on the forests South of our warrior we'll have a decision to make. I think if they put one warrior on each forest we send the warrior SE onto the hill where only one of their warriors can attack. If they send both warriors onto the forested hill we risk sending the warrior SW on to the forest, or we retreat. The southern warrior can go SW onto that grass since the river will provide some protection. Either way I think they are building more warriors than they had planned.

Home:

Warrior finished EOT so if the scout moves onto the mined hill we can take a shot at it. Settler went East and will land on the hill next turn. Next turn we swap into slavery. I set tech to archery and I set tech to 0% to save gold this turn. Archery may take 4-5 turns depending on beakers from 2nd city.

STILL No one has a second city...

Demos + Power:

Pirates are going to need some military... They made contact with M3 last turn. I hope they have a settler there.

[Krill]

OK, points, that either southern warrior needs to move 4 next turn to threaten the Troll capital, if we see two warriors on the forests, but I agree that we move the northern warrior onto the hill if possible because that allows us to check if the southern warrior move is safe.

The trick with choking isn't to attack anything, just to force them to build a bunch of warriors. We need to keep our units alive, that is our primary aim.

Other point, I suggested the current tech path to Lewwyn, saving gold this turn so we could decide to get archery next because if Trolls only have warriors, then an archer in that horse city will be safe until we can hook our copper, provided we don't skimp on units.

I still think we need to revolt to slavery and slave out a worker at pop 2 from the second city to hook the wheat, because that allows us to use another two workers to road and improve the horse city, and we really need that horse improved for chariots. Get a few chariots out quickly, and we should be OK in the long run IMO.

[Lewwyn]

[SIZE="7"]Turn 34:[/SIZE]

I caught Krill online as I played this and we agreed that when presented with this:

We'd send the North warrior onto the Forested Hill. That showed us no units, so we went ahead and sent the other warrior SW:

Here you can see the war situation in full. The EP ratio is in the corner. Also the Pirates swapped into Slavery and we did as well this turn. Last turn Gillette killed our Scout at 95% odds and only got a scratch. I think its very possible that that hill the scout was on was the site of their planned second city (Deer, wheat, ivory + a road leading straight there).

At home the scout is annoying:

Demos:

Oh and STILL no one has a second city.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Looking good. Any news from M3?

[Krill]

None, but only because they aren't initiating any diplomacy at all AFAICT, because of the shortfall on team numbers.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

So could we end up being the first team to get two cities?