North Korea Part II- The Final Naming Scheme

[MindyMcCready]

Krill?

Well that does make a lot of sense then. Think like Master Krill for the win!

We're going to have to start swearing alot more in this thread.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Here's why I still think my plan is viable and will help us in the long run

1) Take another look at the pictures of our east and our north. There are a couple of viable city sites very close to our capital, and then beyond that is crap. To the North is the jungle belt, which makes me really doubt that we will have a northern neighbor. And for the west, there is an area three or four tiles wide which is just plains or desert tiles. That land is crap, so we really won't have to worry about people settling up on us. Even if Molach is our western neighbor, I doubt he will attack us, just because wandering a bunch of prats though no mans land to capture mediocre land with high maintenance doesn't make a lot of sense.

2) The land to our east, however, is amazing. Our economic traits simply can not compete with the FIN leaders in the long run, we need ways to compensate. One of the ways is to bulb a lot of expensive techs with GPs, but that will only get us so far in a NTT game. What we really need to do is capture a lot of the land to our east, which will be amazing for cottaging. And obviously, the earlier we expand there the better and the more land we grab the better.

3) Now our chief rival for the eastern land will be Sisu. Thus, any land that he grabs, we can not get, or at least not peacefully. It makes sense to try to slow him down as much as possible, which will allow us to grab more land and become even stronger. That's why I think aggression is warranted, if we try to play this peacefully, there is nothing to stop Sisu from teching up to guilds and rolling over us with knights.

4) It really won't cost us much. The plan is literally just to send a chariot or axe over to annoy him and start settling aggressively towards him with a decent army. I'm not proposing we chop/whip out a bunch of chariots and go take a potshot at one of his outlying cities.

[MindyMcCready]

If you're still committed to HAMMER time.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, in turn news:

We located Molach's scout, who appears to have come from the west:




And Xenu's scout appeared by Sisu's capital




Speaking of Sisu's capital...




It's pretty amazing. Dry corn, plains cows, grassland copper...ugh. However, he seems to have played this one suboptimally. He had the plains hill for a 12-turn worker, but apparently he went double worker? That just doesn't seem like the right call, considering he's not EXP. And now he's either building a settler or Stonehenge with those forest chops. Considering his cap is still size 1, I'm gonna assume Settler. But after all of this, He is only going to get his settler out a couple of turns ahead of us, but his capital will be size 1, while ours will be size 3, that just doesn't seem worth it. And it's even worse if he's actually going for stonehenge. Maybe not, it's not like I have complete information.

Now this whole attack Sisu thing is really under the assumption that he is a good, or at least competent player. If he massively bungles his start and his expansion or tech rate or whatever suffers as a result, that will make our life so much easier. Remember, by far the best thing about our land is the MFG capability, I really do think we can outexpand Sisu and snap up the lion's share of the contested land. I just think some units on harassment duty would help us, without really costing us much.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

If you're still committed to HAMMER time.

Maybe with HA's around t120ish, but definitely not soon, still interesting of course

[MindyMcCready]

Here's why I still think my plan is viable and will help us in the long run

1) Take another look at the pictures of our east and our north. There are a couple of viable city sites very close to our capital, and then beyond that is crap. To the North is the jungle belt, which makes me really doubt that we will have a northern neighbor. And for the west, there is an area three or four tiles wide which is just plains or desert tiles. That land is crap, so we really won't have to worry about people settling up on us. Even if Molach is our western neighbor, I doubt he will attack us, just because wandering a bunch of prats though no mans land to capture mediocre land with high maintenance doesn't make a lot of sense.

Easy to agree with.

2) The land to our east, however, is amazing. Our economic traits simply can not compete with the FIN leaders in the long run, we need ways to compensate. One of the ways is to bulb a lot of expensive techs with GPs, but that will only get us so far in a NTT game. What we really need to do is capture a lot of the land to our east, which will be amazing for cottaging. And obviously, the earlier we expand there the better and the more land we grab the better.

Also easy to agree with.

3) Now our chief rival for the eastern land will be Sisu. Thus, any land that he grabs, we can not get, or at least not peacefully. It makes sense to try to slow him down as much as possible, which will allow us to grab more land and become even stronger. That's why I think aggression is warranted, if we try to play this peacefully, there is nothing to stop Sisu from teching up to guilds and rolling over us with knights.

The heart of the matter: How long with bulbs + early academy do we think that we can keep up with him or even ahead of him? I do agree with your assessment that he'll want to carry a smallish army but I don't see how an uncommitted attack/raiding party can accomplish much unless we really catch him completely unprepared. We'll get the element of surprise only once so we should use it as effectively as possible.

If we think that we can get maces before him (and peaceful signals will make him enter builder or even better, Wonders builder mode. You know that he'll be tempted if he feels safe enough) then I think that a solid, committed, surprise attack is better for us. If he's going to beat us to maces even with bulbs then I totally agree with you that we need to find a way to slow him down.

4) It really won't cost us much. The plan is literally just to send a chariot or axe over to annoy him and start settling aggressively towards him with a decent army. I'm not proposing we chop/whip out a bunch of chariots and go take a potshot at one of his outlying cities.

What costs us little will accomplish even less. What is an annoying chariot going to do other than get killed by a spear? Its 16 tiles from our capital to Sisu's 'Woww' location for an axe to march over there to get obliterated by a chariot. A single archer in a city will blunt any offensive chance that we have with any single unit. So, I do doubt that your harrassment strategy is going to accomplish anything other than putting us on a negative hammer exchange. It's possible that it works out magnificiently in a greens game but it's much more likely to fail to slow him down while costing us hammers. If it doesn't cost us much, its unlikely to put even a hiccup on his expansion plans. If he has an extra worker or two he can repair any pillaging we do very quickly.

And of course, he's prepared for any material offensive in the future.

To me that chariot chop is largely preferrable. Abandon the dot map; push very hard East along the river whle chopping out 6 chariots to kill the 'woww' city. That would set him back enough for us to claim the premium land while costing us 180H. Settle Malacandra; settle Animal Farm for westward security; delay Liberia & Neo-Seoul in favour of planting along the river.

Its looks unlikely that anyone is coming from our north and either a sentry of city 2N of the World State would give us a lot of notice. I know that I keep bugging you about it, but I really think that a city 2N of World State is more strategically located for cutting off anyone to our north.

If we were focused on planting along the river (read NNW of Panem + cow-wheat-fp location) + city raze of Woww then we should be able to clamin the majority of the good land while fighting defensively and back filling our other solid choices.

My biggest point of disagreement is the idea that we can put out the 5-6 cities on our current dot map and still 'settle aggressively' in his direction. If I were Sisu I would plant on 'Woww' or there abouts. The next city would probably also be on the river 'In-the-black' somewhere. If he was planting aggressively he would then nab 2N of World State and fill it full of archers and then land a city south of his fog location to completely cut us out of the area (but force us into war). Or better yet, hold 'In-the-black' river location and wait for us to settle along the lake and try to pick up those difficult to defend locations from us.

[MindyMcCready]

It's pretty amazing. Dry corn, plains cows, grassland copper...ugh.

Gawd. So jealous! Add ample riverside and forests. Not that we don't have them,..

However, he seems to have played this one suboptimally. He had the plains hill for a 12-turn worker, but apparently he went double worker? That just doesn't seem like the right call, considering he's not EXP.

Not saying that that's the right call, but it is the Sulla-recommended start so its a strong start in most of the cases and the best start in some cases. I don't even have CIV installed right now, so I'm certainly not making a real comment on micro. Please ignore.

Well definately looks like a farmer's gambit. That helps the chances of your harrassment strategy but hurts our odds of outexpanding him.

Now this whole attack Sisu thing is really under the assumption that he is a good, or at least competent player. If he massively bungles his start and his expansion or tech rate or whatever suffers as a result, that will make our life so much easier. Remember, by far the best thing about our land is the MFG capability, I really do think we can outexpand Sisu and snap up the lion's share of the contested land. I just think some units on harassment duty would help us, without really costing us much.

Well, he's got corn & copper developed and has 2 workers for chopping and river fp cottage development. So unless he is building Stonehenge he's not going to be behind us by much if at all.

So I'm going to throw out some doubt your way about materially outexpanding him especially as we turn 2 tiles into scientists despite what appears to be solid micro on your behalf. My assumption is that our current dot map strategy will mean those river locations will be gone. That might still be our best move, however.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok, again my skill at civ is still not great, but I think I have a decent grasp of the basics, so here's why I think the start was sub optimal, assuming Sisu went worker-worker-settler and how it differs from Sullla's PB2 start.

1) In PB2, Sullla started with Myst/Mining and had Agriculture and AH food resources. He went BW first, which meant that he could not immediately improve his food resources. This meant there was little incentive for him to grow to size 2, because growing onto unimproved tiles will just result in adding 1 fh to worker/settler production. Compare that to Sisu who could be working the incredibly strong 2-4-0 copper mine, which would add 4 fh to his settler build.

2) There's a reason fast workers are considered to be the best UU in the game. With fast workers in PB2 chops are 3 turns. while Sisu's chops take 4 turns. This advantage builds exponentially as Sullla was able to chop out a second worker with the first at a much faster rate than Sisu probably did. This in turn means that the second worker was able to chop out the settler faster than Sisu will be able to, etc.

3) So Sisu did all that...to get a settler like 4 turns before us, but now he needs to wait far longer to grow to size 3 while we can grow to size 4 and then 1-pop whip a settler to completion eot 47.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Ok then, so the current micro plan produces:

settler 1 eot 36, which will settle the gold-corn city
settler 2 eot 47 which will be sent to settle the double crabs city
settler 3 eot 63 which will be sent to settle the cows-copper city
settler 4 eot 70 which will settle the cows-wheat city

At this point we'll have a compact core which will be reasonably productive. Next the plan calls for two settlers around t80 which will coincide with our research of CoL(caste system border pops). The problem with settling east before this is that all of the cities we want there have all second border food resouces. Rather than chop/whip monuments 10 turns before they become redundant, I think it makes sense to fill out our immediate core, build up a decent garrison force, and then push east. Before, the plan was to take the northern corn city and Green Dot/Panem. Now I'm thinking of ignoring the uncontested corn city and pushing two settlers out for Panem and The World State. With faux creative, this will secure us a lot of territory. What we do after that is largely dependent on how Sisu plays it and how well he expands, though it would probably consist of grabbing territory to the south to seal off any Russian expansion to that territory.

As for my idea concerning harassment units, it really is all about the element of surprise. They way I see it, conflict with Sisu is inevitable, for a number of reasons that I have already discussed. However, I really doubt that Sisu has come to the same conclusion, he doesn't know where our capital is and he doesn't know how crap our other avenues of expansion are. So what do you think the chances are of him guarding a city that is 10-tiles from us with more than a warrior or an axe? Again, he doesn't even know where we are! This is simply a perfect opportunity for a chariot alpha-strike on a city that is settled close to us which we can hit with one turns warning. Normally, it would be pretty stupid to attack an opponent who was that far away from you, unprovoked. But, considering how seriously an attack on a city by Woww would hamper his expansion towards us, I think it would be totally worth it, and the only cost would be a single chariot who might get some useful scouting info anyway.

I'm not entirely sure if we can beat him in tech. Keep in mind, this is all long term planning that could easily change. However, I don't think we could get macemen before him without ignoring other important techs, which just doesn't seem worth it. The one idea I really like depending on how our economy is looking is attacking with hordes of shock HA's around t140-150 as fast moving attacks are far better at calling people on farmer's gambits than slower moving ones.

As for his capital, it actually makes me a little optimistic. It depends on how much Commodore tweaked the starts, but maybe he guaranteed everybody one ancient age strategic resource in our capital's BFC? There is one grassland tile at our capital that is suspiciously unforested that could contain horses. Otherwise I feel like it would be too unbalancing to give only one player not only a crazy good tile to work, but also not to have to plant a second city to acquire copper.

Finally, your proposed city spots, I'm sorry but I just don't get them. NNW of Panem would have literally no food. We would have to build farms on all the grasslands just to get it up to a semi-decent growth rate, and then what we mine the hills? And 2N of The World State- sure it seals off the north, but so what? The land there is crap and 2N is a weaker location over all. Also, it complicates our defenses because we would have essentially two border cities with Sisu instead of one.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Geez, another turn, turn pace is getting ridiculous




We found an eastern ocean close to Sisu's capital, maybe that will give us more of a clue on what map type this is. Our scout will continue to skirt around his borders both to get some valuable intel and because we're much less likely to run into barb animals this close to civilization.




I alluded to some plans of sealing off southern expansion for Sisu, and here is my tentative plan. We'll settle Panem and the World State around t80. Then we'll push quickly for the cows-FP city that can also work the Panem's wheat if need be. With caste culture, we'll quickly assert cultural control over this area. Then we can settle the strong ivory-corn city and eventually the south-eastern cows-corn city. This gives us a strong line of expansion, remember there is tundra to just 3S of the ivory, so the only compettition for this land would either come from Sisu or someone to the south of him.

Oh and while I was playing, Sisu requested diplo window, then immediately exited. I guess he was wondering if I already had a second city??

EDIT: Also it appears that suttree planted an early second city, the score increase for cities is 3, right?