[no players] Lurkers' paradise for PBEM3

[Singaboy]

Suboptimal will be in a world of pain, if America can grab those horses. I have seen a thread on a German site, how America quickly took out an initially strong opponent thanks to the +5 strength. Archers can be strong, but a combo with horsemen will be deadly.

[oledavy]

Just wanted to give credit where credit is due, after floundering for a little bit suboptimal seems to be on his way towards righting the ship. Rowain seems to also be beginning to notice the threat posed by India to the east with no neighbor besides himself. We are, however, rapidly approaching the time period for sword and horse rushes, so Arabia is going to need to secure a source of horses or iron sooner rather than later if they want to stay in the game. If he can manage that though, I think he'll be in a pretty good position. 

I still think Shido is in a pretty rough position for Kaiser to defend, but props for getting a trade route headed out of there immediately - the road will make the city easier to reinforce. Still, it will be interesting to see if he can hold the city against Ichabod/Pindicator's planned Heavy Chariot rush.

[Ituralde]

I think loosing that Slinger and Warrior to the barbs will really make it difficult for Kaiser to withstand Ichabods attack. I still don't know enough about early warfare to know whether three warriors are enough to take Shido with Kaiser having at least a warrior there. I look forward to finding it out though.

[Japper007]

I think loosing that Slinger and Warrior to the barbs will really make it difficult for Kaiser to withstand Ichabods attack. I still don't know enough about early warfare to know whether three warriors are enough to take Shido with Kaiser having at least a warrior there. I look forward to finding it out though.

They are, at least if Kaiser doesn't get a lot more warriors out or gets archery. Three warriors can redline a hill city and outright capture a flatland one in a single turn before a City Strenght upgrade.

[Singaboy]

Kaiser seems to underestimate the looming threat. Unless he starts to build units right now, he will be history.

The thing that puzzles me more is the fact that suboptimal is shifting his settler back and forth instead of settling it asap and get a second city going, even if it is not 100% perfect location. He is still stuck at one city.

[Mardoc]

Kaiser seems to underestimate the looming threat. Unless he starts to build units right now, he will be history.

His latest post, although ostensibly all about defense, still seems like underestimation.  He basically concludes that the army he's starting to work on will be able to beat Ichabod's already-existing army.  Which is probably true.  If he had those archers today, he'd be safe, but instead he's just starting to train slingers and isn't even beelining Archery.  Similarly, if Ichabod were to wait to attack until Kaiser has the archers ready...surely Ichabod would be planning to use something more than warriors in that case?

It seems like a fairly common mistake in Civ in general, to compare 'My Planned Army' to 'What He Has' instead of comparing Now to Now or Will Have to Will Have.  I understand that's the information you have, you don't know your opponent's plans the way you know your own...but it's still a mistake.

I think Ichabod will be able to hit him before he gets prepared much at all; it may be 1 warrior + 1 slinger defending his forward plant (which appears to be working on a monument at the moment) against Ichabod's balanced 6-unit force, and I'm not even sure he'll get the slinger built and in position in time.  For that matter, using the warrior as a lookout might let Ichabod clean it up before proceeding to invest the city.  I think Pindicator might be overconfident in his thoughts about proceeding to a total elimination - but then maybe four cities vs. one city is enough to overcome attrition even against an even-tech force defending a Palace city, especially if they manage to wipe out Kaiser's existing units.  Still, they seem to be paying close enough attention that I'm sure they'll modify their plans as needed.

Might be a good chance Kaiser doesn't need to turn over his civ come September. .

[Japper007]

Why on earth is Kaiser hard-teching the Wheel now? He's quite a few turns off from the Eureka (only one Iron mine in -third ring- that I can see? And I suspect he needs all the gold he can get for Archer upgrades...) 
He should be putting science into archery right now, and damn the Eureka! By the time he has his first Heavy Chariot out, which isn't even that great a unit to begin with, Ichabod will be on his way to take him out.

Yeah-yeah, omnipitent lurker perspective and such, except he himself identified the threat a few turns ago!

[Mardoc]

Yeah-yeah, omnipitent lurker perspective and such, except he himself identified the threat a few turns ago!

So I re-read his posts, and I think he's identified Ichabod as an eventual threat, not an imminent threat.  Things like this:

I hope we will be able to land the first Religion before he attacks us as that should roughly equalize his current production advantage for military units.

Looking at his GPP counter, he's on course to land his religion in 24 turns.

Ichabod's planning to attack in five turns, and Kaiser thinks he has ~25 turns to be ready to repel an attack.  Kaiser is also talking about repelling a combined warrior/horseman army, not considering that Ichabod's current army might accomplish anything.

Reading between the lines, I think he's of the opinion that his city can defend itself against a 4-warrior army, so Ichabod can't do anything without Horsemen, and he's right that Ichabod doesn't have any horses yet and can't start training Horsemen for a while.

[Japper007]

Reading between the lines, I think he's of the opinion that his city can defend itself against a 4-warrior army, so Ichabod can't do anything without Horsemen, and he's right that Ichabod doesn't have any horses yet and can't start training Horsemen for a while.

The sad thing is, even if that were all that Ichabods army consisted of, he'd still be wrong. I know from experience that 4 warriors in a position to put a pre-strenght upgrade city under siege is all you need. If you manage to kill someones units and can sorta take your time, heck I've once done it with just 2 scouts and the starting warrior in a Duel MP, much rage was had by my opponent that day

[Mardoc]

Yeah, I think that experience is what he's missing here. If he were right about his city being able to hold on its own against Ichabod's current army, then the rest of his actions follow logically. It would make more sense to keep his main focus on development while getting ready for a classical era push from Ichabod, if ancient attack had no hope.