[SPOILERS] yuris125 - Pitboss 17

[yuris125]

Will finish Writing next turn, and offer OB to Jowy. First, to show our peaceful intentions, second, because we have a Warrior stranded behind his borders (where he got bounced when borders popped), and I'd like to get him back in action

We're leading in CY, and catching up in GNP (was 37 against 41 rival best this turn). MFG is lagging behind, but I'm not worried about that

Can't take screenshots on my laptop unfortunately. Mikehendi - feel free to log in and look around if you want. Unless something important happens, I will post new screenshots when I'm back on the 10th

[yuris125]

Writing in, chose Fishing as the next tech - there are multiple seafood resources around, and lack of Fishing is limiting expansion options. We need to consider options after Fishing:

* Maths - there are a lot of forests, and improving chops seems important. Also on the way to Calendar
* IW - mostly to get access to rice at the 4th city and gems
* Mysticism - to start moving towards CoL. Oracle is probably out of the question at this point, and religion is not that important for a Cre civ, but CoL and Monarchy are imporant
* Sailing - to start settling islands in the north

I think Maths is the best option. However, we won't have anything to build in cities apart from units for a while. Not sure how bad it is, just something to keep in mind

[Mikehendi]

I'm afraid that I do not have time to log into the game. I am still reading the thread, however. Anything interesting going on?

[yuris125]

I'm finally on a screenshot-capable machine, so here's what's going on. Nothing too exciting, just normal development

I founded the 4th city as planned. This is how the empire currently looks




Cottages built everywhere. Pity cities can't grow past size 4 with 1 whip penalty. But I work them whenever I can

The Settler in Orleans should be completed in 3 turns with 2 chops, and will go to the fish/clam location




Hopefully these will be the last pre-Math chops

In the west, I'm thinking about founding 2 cities shown on this screenshot to establish a reasonable border with Jowy




I finished scouting the north, and made an initial dotmap for it as well - although I suspect at least the western part of this territory will go to Jowy




There's also Sian's border visible across the northern strait

So, the immediate plan is to keep expanding. Techwise, I decided to go for Math for improved chops before anything else. It does look like we're going to start looking at expanding onto islands in the near future, and Sailing will be a good tech to research after Math, with Calendar after that for extra happiness. Currency may be necessary to keep economy afloat, but it's in a reasonable shape for now

Diplowise, we have OB with Jowy, and the Warrior who was stranded behind his border is back in action now. Nothing major happened otherwise. Espionage is currently on slowcheetah, will switch to Sian as soon as I get graphs

Demos are decent, nothing special

[Mikehendi]

Looking pretty good. About city placement, I'm not a huge fan of that fish/crabs spot in the south. It isn't bad or anything, but you'll need to chop out work boats for the seafood resources before it can contribute very much. It's also an entirely safe city, and your settlers are probably better used at the moment claiming land to the east and west in contested areas. You have CRE trait this game, you may as well use it to grab land on the borders. You've committed to this current spot with the upcoming settler, so I wouldn't change your plans now. Still, I would suggest concentrating on getting the river valley southwest of Rheims with future settlers, that's a very valuable area to control and you could safely backfill a lot of settlers once you had that region. It's harder to suggest anything for the eastern border, since you've continued to crop the minimap out of all of the pictures again.

With regards to tech path, definitely Mathematics before anything else. There's a crazy amount of forests on this map, it's a no-brainer. Sailing is a solid choice after that, especially because it would likely give you a trade route connection across the water to Sian. I would also strongly recommend Iron Working over Calendar tech, as both will unlock a single happiness resource (gems vs. silks) but Iron Working is about half the cost in beakers, and lets you chop jungle, and reveals another important resource. Some combination of either Sailing or Iron Working should be the next tech after Mathematics. Good luck!

[yuris125]

I agree that expansion to the west should be a priority, but I really don't want to found undefended cities so close to Jowy. So I'm going to grow Paris to 6 on Axes, possibly Lyons as well (although it's going to be unhappy at 5 for a few turns due to whip penalty), then triple-whip Settlers for those spots

[yuris125]

What I saw is what we were afraid of




The southern stack is a Chariot covering 3 our Workers Jowy captured. I did suspect he was going to declare, there was some suspicious movement last turn, but hoped he wasn't that crazy. Our power is higher than his ffs. Left the Workers unprotected because they could only be captured by a Chariot, and an Axe would not have helped against that

Rheims is falling. No variants there. Given that, I'm inclined to attack the Worker stack, recapture and delete the Workers. So that he at least doesn't get that benefit. After that, I'm honestly thinking about whipping an Axe in every city and trying to kill Jowy. What he did was pure madness for no benefit other than razing our baby city - but it is going to hurt us. Unless we benefit from this war ourselves

Will think about it further when I wake up

[yuris125]

Basically, if we stack whip unhappiness in Paris, and with careful overflow management, in 4 turns we can have a stack of 8 Axes/Spears. Add to that the Axe who is currently between Paris and Rheims, and we can pull an Axe off defence somewhere (probably from Paris) - that will be a stack of 10 units. I don't think Jowy has too much military besides what we see. Of course, the march is going to be long, and we would only be able to attack in 10 turns or so. That's probably too slow. But I'm very annoyed right now, and really want to punish him

[yuris125]

Went with the last night's plan. Abandoned Rheims. Attacked the Chariot + Workers stack, won at 75%. With hard feeling, deleted the Workers. Queued Spear in Paris and Axes in Orleans and Lyons, will have them at 4 hammers in all 3 cities next turn, so perfect double-whip set up. This is something we need to do in any case, regardless of whether we decide to attack Jowy later - we need these units to defend and re-expand

Maths is coming in in 4 turns, and we still have 4 Workers, so chopping/whipping an army and attacking may not be the worst idea. This war is going to set us back, and gaining land from Jowy seems like a good way to get back in. Azza is slightly ahead of us in power though (we're 2nd atm), and that is worrying

[Mikehendi]

Ah, I see Jowy is determined to continue his streak of never winning any of the games he plays in. He throws away any position he might have in every game with pointless, stupid aggression against his neighbors. This attack is one of the stupidest moves I've seen in some time, especially at this early stage of the game. I'm sorry you had the misfortune to start next to a crazy neighbor.

You're probably out of the running to win the game at this point, so yeah, I would go and ruin Jowy's game as payback. Whip / chop those units and screw him over.