[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[Jowy]

Yes we should build The Colossus when we have copper. It's good thinking to shift our focus to the present, but we can't give up everything just because we might or might not be wiped out if he comes back with a larger stack. With him taking our inland spots, Colossus is a bigger deal than it was before. We do need to keep an eye on his techs (specifically: when does he get catapults), his power rating, and also we need to have a sentry or two. We should know if he's planning to attack us anytime soon, in which case we obviously shouldn't be putting hammers into a wonder. You are right, we're not gonna win this game, but that was always very unlikely against 17 other teams. Stronger economy will let us deal more damage to dtay long term

When is a good time to build Colossus instead of new settlers/workers? That I'm not sure about

[The Black Sword]

He offered another peace, which I was very tempted to accept. Here's the only reason not to:


His injured axe is on the plains hill btw. He hasn't seen these units yet. I figure we get a glimpse of his city next turn and then decide about peace. With the extra axe for him and a chariot down for us, I doubt this will be successful though.

New Tachyon is founded:

Probably grow to size 3, then work pig and two mines before whipping the Granary. Hope for a free spread in the meantime.

[flugauto]

Why didn't you settle 1S of New Tachyon or on the ruins?

[The Black Sword]

Our capital is now so crippled with unhappiness that the pig would only be worth 2hpt over a mine while building a settler. So I figured it was better to turn that into 2fpt in New Tachyon instead. Settling 1S would mean no clams in the BFC though, and I'd still like to work them.

[flugauto]

If you settled 1S, you could settle the ruins with another settler, both cities would have 1st ring food.

[The Black Sword]

I don't think we have such a surplus of settlers for that, a couple of other sites will get priority. And we can always settle the plains island to work the clam.



Chariot and spear in New Xerxes, so I offered peace. We might have to show him the other two chariots first, that we can kill anyone sniping that guy.

[The Black Sword]

He accepted peace then next turn offered this:


Which I assume means that he really doesn't want any more fighting. I accepted, even if we wanted to whip HAs, better that he thinks we're peaceful for a bit. I'm leaning against that though. Anyway, we have 10 turns at least of peace where we can do some planning.

I also got a curious offer from scooter:

Yes Please! Looking back on it, he probably had our Ivory in the other half of the deal and that trade couldn't go through when I traded it away. He can declare war again in 5t and cancel the deal. If he does, we can't make any extra use out of the happiness, because our capital is finishing the settler for the copper site, which is unfortunate.

Anyway, quick run through our cities:

I'm not too sure what to build here, whip counter shows 22t still. This is probably the best Colossus spot though, so I think we should put the hammers into the forge, while growing to size 5, then slow build a settler while waiting for whip counter to decrease, whip the forge. Try to complete the Colossus with whip overflow and mines. We need 100 base hammers for the Colossus here.

New Tachyon:
Grow to size 3 on pigs, cottage, then work pigs+ 2 mines and whip in the Granary.

Jetboy:
Finish settler(4t), grow to 5 if we think we can keep the gems, build worker/settler.

Fortunato:
Finish Granary(T92), then either Galley or axe. If we don't build an axe, then we only have 1 archer here when the peace treaty runs out. Keep some hammers into the axe for emergency whipping in any case.

Copper city:
Founded T93, have 3 of our workers around here to get it in shape. Can fortify 2 archers(1 CG) and axe. Hammers into emergency whip axe, then granary.

Possible city locations:

Cow+shared clam city is good, also quite defensible on the hill. A city for that Ivory would also be nice, we could probably get a luxury off someone else for that and we need happy. Might be a better idea to use the cow for that?


I have 1 chariot using the peace to poke around dtay's land, I'll send another down here to scout. Very good production spot, farm and mine everything.

Possible island choices:



Need to decide what comes after the copper.

[The Black Sword]

The reload was due to our trade deal with pindicooter. So I declined dtay's Ivory trade and accepted Copper+gems for Ivory. They will presumably have a second gems available soon, so the deal favours them but gems gets doubled by the forge so I'm happy with it. So I think we can probably just 3 whip the forge in immediately in Sleeper.

I offered dtay marble for free to say we accept the peace idea. I don't think he can have any use for it in the next 10 turns. He's still 7t from currency.(He got a great scientist recently btw, so I presume the early academy accounts for his good tech rate).

What do you think is the best way of getting this Ivory under our borders?


We could really use the extra happy after losing the gold. Settling for cows+Ivory on the hill seems like the only option, but it's so easily forkable with the copper site.

There really isn't a lot of food around here to settle off the copper and work it.

[The Black Sword]

Commodore offered a map trade, just to push home how screwed we are:


That's twice our number of cities.

He met us on the north island, so that's certainly out now:


I'm thinking about offering a map trade to dtay. It would be in his favour but it would be good to know more about our own continent. He already knows the location of our cities, or he can find out the location of Fortunato in the 10 turns peace.

[The Black Sword]

I switched Fortunato to a galley. We can still get the full granary bonus by completing it afterwards and I decided to wait till the rice is available to grow.

We'll get out settlers 6 and 7 from Sleeper and Jetboy in 8 and 9 turns. So an island city will be worth 7gt, I figured that should be one of these. Galley can skirt the south island then return and pick up the settler.

New Tachyon:


Some international news:

I'm moving back towards the shrine, depends on whether dtay really means peace I suppose, his power graph has stayed pretty flat at least. Bacon is a Lewwyn city and before dtay killed Dr Tachyon Judaism managed to spread to Nakor, which is a bit unfortunate.

I went ahead and offered dtay a map trade.