[SPOILERS] Serdoas and Nobles Thread with a little bit of Gaspar sprinkled in

[NobleHelium]

Eh? You were planning to settle the south of Overspark spot? I thought we were setting the National Epic spot and the northeast of Ragnaros spot. I don't think we should settle the south of Overspark spot right now, I'd rather grab more land towards Borsche and we're already setting up the National Epic city with a worker. Also, I'm not sure we can do a work boat at OME because work boats are foodhammer units now which would change everything.

Right now the whip is 3 pop so I don't think we want to do that. We could whip next turn but I'm not sure, since the gold road is not finished and it would take an extra turn to travel (to the National Epic spot) because of that. We'd also lose some commerce which may not be a good idea right now.

Edit: I see you are talking about a 3 pop whip but your turns are off by one then. We'd be back at size 6 one turn after we would normally finish the settler. It doesn't feel like the whip is worth it to gain 3 turns effective settling speed given the road, and Blingtron doesn't quite have enough pop to cover all the whipped tiles. We can also use the extra turns to build the iron mine. I don't think we should settle south of Overspark right now, we might need another unit to defend that as well.

[Serdoa]

Hm, ok, I see your point. I just don't want another city by CH crammed in there - though it probably wouldn't really matter much, would it? With Cow and Clams that's not the greatest spot anyway.

[NobleHelium]

It would be annoying for CH to plant another city there, and he might (southwest of our spot, it would be ridiculous to plant on our spot), but it might also mean he isn't settling the spot south of marble instead (if there's food there which there may not be). I don't think it's a big deal long term since we're going to have to conquer Donovan or CH or both to win this game anyway. We may yet get the spot regardless.

[Serdoa]

True. And in that case, better let them settle the land on the border and have us settle the backfill cities that no one is settling for us anyway

[NobleHelium]

CH brought a settler and a chariot to the tile, so yeah, he's settling there. Also another axeman further behind.

[Serdoa]

Good we didn't whip, would have been a waste then. Also him settling that city makes me think about why he does so. Maybe he has no better land left? If so, we probably should be expecting a war soon - hopefully him with Donovan, not with us.

[Serdoa]

Didn't move the axe out yet, hope that wasn't an error, but I think we are ok for another turn. Also mismoved the 3rd archer by accident.

Towards Borsche is his city-borders now visible. We should be fine with our next city though.

I don't think we did "steal" land from anyone, but it also doesn't look like we lost anything to anyone, so I'm fine with that. We are still behind 1-2 cities to the leaders, but that seems more to be because we settle on a different schedule then them, but not really slower overall. Still, 5 turns earlier can make a big difference and prioritizing those last border-cities makes sense I guess.

We also will have to think soon about how to proceed, apart from teching up. Not now though, and my brain isn't up to the task currently either. I thought I'd have less work by now but we had some unexpected changes so I have actually more. If I miss anything important, just let me know please.

Oh, we also won the fight against the barb and got 2xp. Unfortunately I had that Chariot promoted C1 earlier already, so no +vision for us.

[NobleHelium]

Uh I do think we need to move the axe this turn because you played before Borsche. I will move it when I get home unless you give me a good reason not to.

[NobleHelium]

I gave the wheat back to Blingtron so that we can still finish the library without working the unimproved stone. Hope you don't mind that since I think we were working the wheat at Blingtron last turn and you changed it. I still think it's better to use the wheat as food even though we can't grow for a few turns due to unhappy, it'll still speed up our growth later. Although I wouldn't be surprised if the turn doesn't roll before you wake up, so you can change it back if you'd like. If you do give the wheat back to Pagle then I would give the gold to Blingtron, that setup is still better than working the stone over the oasis.

I also turned tech back off because I really don't think we'll have enough gold to burn without another turn of saving given that we're planting two cities in the next four turns. And this way we don't use a turn of burn before we finish the library.

Also, I'm not sure we actually need to whip the worker before switching to the chariot - can't we just build and whip the chariot first, then whip the worker when we overflow into it? We get more turns at size 5 this way at the cost of starting the whip timer later, but we have enough happy that the latter doesn't matter. I put signs for the workers, let me know if anything doesn't make sense.

[Serdoa]

I was unsure on both the decisions regarding Blingtron and the tech. Having slept now - and this being for two days now the first time not feeling (too) fuzzy - I also realized we would get the calendar resource improved soon + can always whip that pop into something down the line in any case.

As for the tech you also are right I believe. I wasn't sure if the library-bonus from Blingtron would trigger this turn already when the turn rolls - can't remember what is done first, research or the build queues. But I thought better be save and turn it on before Noble yells at you Actually thinking now about it, builds have to happen afterwards as the production is applied to them, else that wouldn't work. Though of course it could be different for food (isn't it, as the Granary "bug" with setting to avoid growth works so production has to come before food at least?) and research.

As for the whip: You are right, we can whip turn after turn as well. Have to see how we do it in any case as I believe we have a turn or two more than planned before the tech finishes.