[Spoilers] What, no fireballs?! Team FFH: we're not in Erebus anymore

[Ichabod]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 425BC:[/SIZE]


This turn was very important, because it made me realize that we had flaws in some of our plans. Before we analyze this subject, though, let's take a look at the military situation.

Red dots are Spearmen, blue dots are skirmishers. Bear in mind that we have another skirmisher coming out of Envy at EoT and that I haven't moved some of the units yet (despite ending turn, I'll wait to see what Serdoa does first).

We have enough units to defend the border cities with a skirm each and make 2 attack pairs of 1 skirm + 1 spear, for forward defense purposes. There's also a spare Skirm, the 7/8 xp one, who will be handled with care until we can get him the needed XP for HE.

After I see Serdoa's moves, I think I'll move the spear currently in envy on top of the 7xp skirm in the iron tile, waiting to randez-vous with another skirm next turn. The souther spear will go meet with the skirm 2N of Wroth in the tile 1W of the Silk.

After that, these units will move on to the west.

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In empire management news, our Moai Statues plan is doing great. We have it 50% built already:

I'll probably throw another chop or two to help.

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Things we need to decide is how are we going to settle south and east. Let me show some pictures of the surroundings:

This is the south, with how I think we should settle. Red is the already settled cities/the ones we already decided on settling. I think we should go for blue, which makes a great border with Sunrise.

The big question is when to settle it? We'd need a lot of workers...


The east looks like this:

I have no ideas about dot maps yet... Will have to give it some thoughts...

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Now, I've said our plans had flaws, right, so let's revisit them:

1. The philosophy bulb plan!

We wanted to bulb philosophy without having teched any prereq of philosophy. So, before our GSci is born, we need drama or CoL. Since I don't see us going to the top part of the tech tree this early (no marble ), we need CoL.

That's bad news, but there's also good news. We can get one of the prereq of CoL, currency, with the bonus of 2 prereqs (alpha and maths) + tech bonus from Sunrise + we have already invested some beakers into it. So that seems to be an obvious thing to do.

The question is, do we get Meditation + priesthood to tech CoL with a second prereq (a prereq gives a 20% boost on the research of the tech). I think we should. We will need Meditation to bulb philo anyway, so that's a give. And why wouldn't we tech the 100 beakers of priesthood to get almost the same discount while teching CoL?

So I think we should go: Alpha -> Currency -> Medi -> Priesthood -> CoL -> bulb Philo. I don't think we can get all this in the 11 turns we need for the GSci, but it shouldn't take too much time either. 15 turns is a good estimate, in my opinion, if we don't overdo the whipping. We will get the Currency commerce from TRs too soon and there's a lot of prereq bonus going on.


2. The Wroth development plan:

Wroth won't be our powerhouse production city, at least not for now:

Only a single hill...

Well, so this city could go either way. We could make some farms and whip a lot or put some cottages and help teching.

[Ichabod]

I feel like our team is the Whosit from PB2. Everybody knows we aren't a really serious contender, but at least we are funny to lurk.



....




Anyone brave enough to pick which teams in PB2 the players of this game relate to?

Well, it seems that no one fell to my shameless bait, but I'll post my planned following post anyway:

[Krill]

[Ichabod]

I logged in to change the EP to the Roman Team, like DaveV suggested, and here's what I've seen:

Sunrise managed to get his hand on a horse source. These guys can still make some damage. Hopefully in another player.

[Thoth]

http://youtu.be/GxL1uXwSrdU

[Ilios]

Wow, Sunrise really has a monster capital...

Regarding the Romans, I think we should really push units now. That mountain chain in the west (the Lesser Wall of Mali), is a natural border, and we need to grab all the land to the east of it. If we can hold that area, we can grab the southwestern spot, not worry about the Romans, and seal our border with Sunrise there.

That Stone city is good, but is backline, and should not be an immediate priority.

[Ichabod]

Wow, Sunrise really has a monster capital...

Regarding the Romans, I think we should really push units now. That mountain chain in the west (the Lesser Wall of Mali), is a natural border, and we need to grab all the land to the east of it. If we can hold that area, we can grab the southwestern spot, not worry about the Romans, and seal our border with Sunrise there.

That Stone city is good, but is backline, and should not be an immediate priority.

Do we think we can afford that planned city to the west being settled right now? The one in the plains tile? I think we can, since we have a good number of troops and I plan on build some more. It also pushes our border away from Wroth.

[Ichabod]

[SIZE="3"]Turn 400 BC:[/SIZE]


We teched alphabet, so we can see what our neighboors have teched! Ah, we met Pindicator, by the way:

Moogle (Peter) seems to be going for the Marble Wonders. Sunrise is a clear leader and it'll be hard for others to catch up to him. We will probably sit tight and wait for him to be dogpiled. Then, we can take some of the spoils.

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Rome retreated their chariot. We assembled our kill teams of spear + skirm. Here's how I plan to move them, always enjoying defensive terrain. The one going north will explore a bit more, the one going south can protect our next settler.

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Since we wouldn't have teched everything we need for the philo bulb before the Great Scientist was born, I decided to change Envy's worked tiles in the following way:

We get more research this way, we grow faster and we delay the GSci only 2 turns, with no delay on the Philosophy bulb. We can still change it back, even if I ended turn, but I like this setup. Do you guys agree?

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Sunrise is starting to get a bit worrisome. He assembled 2 WCs near his capital. I hope he's not planning to get agressive (I don't think so, since he wouldn't have much to gain):

So, I've decided to make a plan. I want to know Sunrise intentions with these troops. But while I want to let him know that I know he's gearing for war, I don't want to spoil it to our other opponents, so that Sunrise won't get mad and that maybe he cause them some damage.

So, behold my cryptic message, which I plan to post on the diplo thread:

Hey, Sunrise, what do you plan to do with the 2 missionaries 1N of Luxor? I was wondering if you'd want to make some deal regarding my cities... Something like you settle a city and put your religion on it and then I take it (we would repay you dearly, of course).

Or do you plan on using them for other things? Maybe cities in the west or something?

It's pretty clear that he will understand what Im trying to say, right?

[Bigger]

how do you have vision on sunrise's capital? do you have THAT many ep's on him already?

[Ichabod]

how do you have vision on sunrise's capital? do you have THAT many ep's on him already?

Yup, I've only had contact with him for 75% of the game and I never switched the EPs (kept the focus on him) until last turn. He met people way earlier and never focused on us.