[SPOILERS] Khazad-Doomed!

[Serdoa]

Is that the right save Ichabod? I can't see Kyans borders anywhere nor the situation that you described. There is one warrior near borders of another civ, but that's Thoth.

[Ichabod]

Forget the last option. Imo Kyan will be grateful, but that won't change the fact that he will only do whatever does benefit him most. So that leaves either 1 or 2. Now 1b doesn't work as you shouldn't get vision in his capital. So either

a) invade
b) wait for worker-steal

I would wait for the worker-steal. Even if he just builds a scout that will be 2.9 against 3. So you will have winning odds, but its pretty uncertain still. Taking him out completely would not even benefit you at this point (you don't gain anything for that). Getting his worker will.

Since we are agressive, the warrior is actually 3.6 strenght. I think i'll wait for the worker steal and, if that happens, choke/kill Kyan, whatever is possible. Denying him the improvement of the wheat resource will be a serious blow in his development overall, especially since he can't really deal with an agressive warrior choke.

Problem is, after that, he'll try to kill me for the rest of the game. That actually feels pretty dwarven.

[Ichabod]

Is that the right save Ichabod? I can't see Kyans borders anywhere nor the situation that you described. There is one warrior near borders of another civ, but that's Thoth.

Oops, I guess it's Thoth, not Kyan. Damn, the purple misled me.

But the situation looks like what I've described, right? Or am I crazy?

EDIT: That's the save I haven't played yet. I'm actually remembering things by head from the past save, which was some days ago. But I thought I was remembering it right.

[Qgqqqqq]

Err I think I get even more in favour if its the sheaim we're choking and not the amurites. Nevertheless, I agree with serdoa, and will look at the save in a hour or so.

Definitely don't move on dye equivalent if you could be seen.

[Ichabod]

By the way, Thoth actually grew to size 2 before going worker, from what I can tell. So, I guess he has a partially built warrior in his queue, if not a warrior defending his capital. And he doesn't have a worker yet, I think.

So much for all this planning...

[Qgqqqqq]

Bah...
Still, you HAVE to report the turn now

[Ichabod]

Well, the Kyan-is-actually-Thoth situation resolved itself with me going away. Thoth grew to size 2 on a warrior before worker (pretty nice move there, I should probably have done the same - maybe not due to my stroger worker), so killing him was not possible. I could block his wheat from improvement, but that's just unfun. I want to beat him fair and sqaure, not with early chokes. This is a point where Civ 5 is better than Civ 4, early game combat is not just a big RNG roll.

Anyway, one of my warriors met his doom after revealing pretty tasty land (amazing how I managed to dodge all the food tiles in my early turns of exploration.

The plains hill 1NE of the corn is likely to be my third city. I still prefer the wheat sharing city as my second, because it's faster and better economically. I think it'll speed up thing in the long run.

Capital will grow on warriors and build a settler at the happy cap, simple as that. I'm teching Education, as you can see. Why is that? Well, calendar, mining and AH would bring little bonuses through improved tiles and I plan to revolt to agrarianism only together with GK (if I do it at all). So, I plan to get Education first and start working cottages as soon as possible, to boost my tech rate going forward (wheat + 2 oasis + wine + 2 plains cottages at size 6). Commerce > Food in this map and FfH in general, in my opinion.

I'll have the two grassland farmed to boost growth rate and the wines plantationed. After that, the worker will probably stand still for some turns. He works faster than a normal worker (for instance, I made the exact same moves as Kyan until now and I'm more developed than he is, because my worker takes only 3 turns for a farm and that meant I could grow to size 2 one turn earlier than him), so he'll be ready pretty soon.

After that, likely mining, to cut some of the forests near the second city and improve the tiles (I'll likely start by improving the grass hill with a cottage, though). It'll also help to get a faster monument there with the chops.

That's basically my plan for now. Cottages!

[Qgqqqqq]

Bump

[Qgqqqqq]

We are (nearly) last.
This is bad.
Fix it.

[Ichabod]

We are up to turn 24. My build order on the Capital was worker -> warriors until size 6. Now, I'm building a settler:




Notice the unhealth in the city. That's unfortunate and it made growing to size 6 a non-trivial decision, because it wouldn't help building the settler (the unhealth takes away the 1 food gained by growing). I decided to grow because I could use another warrior (I'm up to 4, having lost 2 exploring) and because I valued beakers higher than having the second city up first. By reaching size 6, I managed to get 20 beakers at 100% research, which means 24 beakers per turn into Education, after the 20% prereq bonus. That took a turn of Education, which means faster cottages.

I'll have a tech bottleneck soon, needing mining and calendar fast. So, I decided to grow. I didn't sim this, since I'm playing this game at a leisure pace. It just felt right. I prioritized beakers over expansion. The map looks pretty choke-pointy, so I guess this won't do me too much harm. Maybe I should have stayed at size 5, since I'll be unhappy when I found my next city, due to dwarven vaults. Well, since I've grown, might as well run two turns of gold to get to 100 gold. No unhapiness + chances of events.

Worker is farming tiles that I don't need, just to do something. I'm reaching Education soon for cottages, which I like to place at plains tiles (since there's usually plenty of food around in FfH). After that, either mining (mines + get rid of forests on second city) or exploration (TRs + connecting wheat for health). Need to check timings before deciding it.

After the settler, I could go with a second settler straight away, since worker labor is on the short side. I'll think about it. Second city will go monument while growing, warriors if needed and worker at max size, most likely.