[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Fintourist]

Not sure we should have showed our hand, but I'll wait for the screenshots to judge ...

Mackoti took Eridu so Nibur is a lonely Northern post of mostly_harmless currently. He is going to whip everything he can in the city anyways and has no other cities in the area where he could transport his troops so sniping one extra worker seemed like a good idea

[Old Harry]

Turn 120 conclusion

A bit rushed this morning, but mostly_harmless kindly gifted us this worker (ie we declared and sniped him). Mackoti took Eridu this turn (SW of the peak) and could possibly take Nibru next turn or definitely the turn after. Nibru has one PRO archer in but m_h didn't whip it this turn, so we don't expect to see another unit next turn. We have a bow and a spear sitting NE of the city now, our stack is on the Worker I tile and we hope that:

a. Mackoti realises we want Nibru - that's why we've declared on m_h - and won't contest the city.
b. Mackoti does want Nibru but he only has one or two HA's left and they get badly hurt taking the city so that our spear and bow can clear it out easily, allowing time for the rest of our force to get there.
c. Mackoti takes Nibru with a weak force, sees that we have a bow and spear on the doorstep and offers the city in return for peace.

Can anyone say "wishful thinking"?


In other exciting news we're now in Caste and OR. This gives Mackoti an excellent opportunity to sweep through our core burning our empire. But that's okay, because it'll be Fintourist's fault.


And we settled Omduramn. You can just see Nuremburg up north too, for which I saved this little video just for Krill.


Edit: I don't think sharing maps with Ichabod hurts us, although our road network could be better, he's still getting happy from us and a lot of trade, it won't make sense to fight will it? Although who knows what Stupendous Man will do?

[Krill]

I remember watching that game. Shite football, gripping acting.

[Fintourist]

And
d. mackoti razes Nibru and we have to settle it ourself
and
e. mackoti takes it with such a force that we can't take the city from him.

And just to calm Hydra down.. We do have some means to defend our core, but of course now that we have given our opportunity to whip our cities for 5 turns, defending against surprise attack from dtay/Ichabod/TBS or mackoti would be just more complicated and costly.

And the final and.. let's reoffer maps to Ichabod then. Let's try to be friends.. Actually lurkers, Ichabod might well be one of the leaders in the game despite the fact that he is not topping the score board. Victory screen is constantly showing Ichabod as the population leader and I'm sure his demos must be great. We have met plako and he is nowhere near Ichabod's population, damn, despite the suttree crisis we also had more pop than plako when I counted last time. And we have also met fellow contenders dtay and mackoti/yuris so they are also behind Ichabod in pop. Our demos have been pretty close to mackoti's and now we both have 15 cities. Although soon mackoti gets to enjoy m_h's ready-made infra and improvements... Dtay has high MFG and his GNP spikes are big, but in the food category, which still is probably the best indication of future potential he is not running away or anyting.

All the margins are still small and it seems clear that this game won't be won through sandboxing your civ better than others. It's the big geopolitical swings and land/neighbor lottery that decide the game. Due to our central position I would not put our money on us surviving the next 50 turns intact, but I've been wrong before... 20 peaceful turns...

[Fintourist]

Logged in and offered map trade to Ichabod..

[TheHumanHydra]

I feel dumb having written all that doom-and-gloom about plako winning before, without realizing mackoti was on our own continent (I don't remember if I thought it was just yuri, or if I thought mack was just giving occasional advice, but no, apparently he's turnplaying). Yeah, central position + lifelong enemy + mackoti for a neighbour probably means we're screwed. Well, let's at least keep it from being the kind of romp mack's been enjoying to our south ...

For the record, I agree with a peaceful stance toward Ichabod ... until (if ever) we're able to take what's rightfully ours.

[Fintourist]

Turn 121 - starters

- No Taoism spreads..
- M_h added one warrior in Nibru. But he still has not whipped the city. I guess next turn. We could add 2 chariots to the tile and try to take Nibru with 2 Chariots+bow+spear next turn, but I think we need a cover axe to do the job.. So it looks like we have to remove 2 archers and a warrior (I hope m_h finds better use for his money when defending his core cities)
- Brick the bow did not spot anything interesting
- 6 of our cities will grow at the end of this turn! I like that!

M_H has already played, but we will need to wait for mackoti. Here are some comments:

- In our island there is an axe approaching Omdurman. We want to move LordParkin towards the city to have a 2nd defender. This will screw up the worker micro a little bit, but it's not too bad as we are going to net clams as a first improved tile anyways.
- The worker NW-NW of Madrid should first road the jungle instead of chopping? I'm on board with chopping too though. That makes an possible 2-mover attack towards Madrid supported by 2 combat workers a bit more sneaky.
- New worker from Endor heads towards Midway, right?
- What does Endor build now? Wealth while growing back to size 5? And then missionaries/workers?
- What does the ready worker S of Agincourt do? I think BoP could use one new grassland cottage. Heading towards our worker-poor island, supporting Dunkirk & supporting Gallipoli are other sensible options.
- I made the most simple worker moves already and assigned tiles the way I think they should be (preliminary), main points include growing Cannae this turn and getting missionary our of BoP at the end of this turn. Note that Dunkirk will complete its missionary eot122 as planned. It just needs to borrow a mine from Gallipoli or work grass forest next turn in order to get the 1 missing hammer.
- About workers near Nibru/Königgrätz. When we move our stack next to Nibru, we want to have 2 workers with the stack so that after we have taken the city we can road the tile and either start transporting units back to more flexible positions and also hit any units we want around Nibru
- Our captured worker could start roading rice or iron. Iron tile would enable quicker emergency logistics to our core if needed.

I'm not sure about my schedule today. I might be available later in the evening, but it's still a bit uncertain. I will notice any updates in our thread though.

[Old Harry]

- In our island there is an axe approaching Omdurman. We want to move LordParkin towards the city to have a 2nd defender. This will screw up the worker micro a little bit, but it's not too bad as we are going to net clams as a first improved tile anyways.

Sure.

- The worker NW-NW of Madrid should first road the jungle instead of chopping? I'm on board with chopping too though. That makes an possible 2-mover attack towards Madrid supported by 2 combat workers a bit more sneaky.

I'd rather chop - putting a road there is aggressive, chopping the jungle might just seem defensive for now. Then if we want to attack with 2-movers building the road is easy anyway.

- New worker from Endor heads towards Midway, right?

I think so.

- What does Endor build now? Wealth while growing back to size 5? And then missionaries/workers?

If there is a lot of overflow keep it in wealth until it can build a forge. Actually even if not lets do that. Also lets try to get the OR bonus on any overflow...

- What does the ready worker S of Agincourt do? I think BoP could use one new grassland cottage. Heading towards our worker-poor island, supporting Dunkirk & supporting Gallipoli are other sensible options.

He could pre-cottage two plains tiles before cottaging the BoP grassland. Or just head straight to the grassland wasting a turn moving?

- M_h added one warrior in Nibru. But he still has not whipped the city. I guess next turn. We could add 2 chariots to the tile and try to take Nibru with 2 Chariots+bow+spear next turn, but I think we need a cover axe to do the job.. So it looks like we have to remove 2 archers and a warrior (I hope m_h finds better use for his money when defending his core cities)

I don't think we need to take the city from m_h, much better to let Mackoti take it and take the damage from attacking.

- About workers near Nibru/Königgrätz. When we move our stack next to Nibru, we want to have 2 workers with the stack so that after we have taken the city we can road the tile and either start transporting units back to more flexible positions and also hit any units we want around - Our captured worker could start roading rice or iron. Iron tile would enable quicker emergency logistics to our core if needed.

The worker we captured is allowed to road that forest, so I think roading and moving our units like this is best, I'm just unsure about what to do with the chariots:


They could join our spear and 2 bows or wait 1SW of Konigs. Or they could all move to the forest hill tile 1E of Nibru, from where the sentry chariot can see over the forests. The issue here is that Mack could be bringing up a force from the south as well as from Eridu, and so could be tipped off that we are there before he takes the city... Also that the options for each side in a 3-way war split are really tricky! Ideally I'd like to have Mack move his whole stack into Nibru in two turns time, when:
- our stack is already SW of Konigs,
- our spear+2 bows+worker are on the forest,
- the road isn't yet complete
Because then he may not realise what we can do, which is:
- finish the road
- use our stack - spear first, then CII axes, to kill a lot of horse archers
- use the spear on the forest to kill a HA on the other side of Nibru
- use the sentry chariot to discover if there are many more HAs around

Alternatively he may take the city then offer it to us for peace if he sees our stack on the tile 1NE?

In any case we have to wait for Mack to play to decide. Did m_h just add a warrior to be one extra unit for Mack to wade through or was it to stop our axe+spear taking the city?

Unfortunately the game is down at the moment - and I dunno if Sunrise can reload when he's in a different city?

[Fintourist]

I agree more or less with everything, here are the few relevant comments

- What does the ready worker S of Agincourt do? I think BoP could use one new grassland cottage. Heading towards our worker-poor island, supporting Dunkirk & supporting Gallipoli are other sensible options.

He could pre-cottage two plains tiles before cottaging the BoP grassland. Or just head straight to the grassland wasting a turn moving?

Actually when I think more about it, BoP can manage still a while without those tiles and we probably want to ship this worker to western island. There are lot of jungles to chop, we want the road from France to City O etc. I'm unsure what the 2nd worker S of Agincourt shoud do. Probably improving more tiles for Gallipoli could be a decent option too.

However, if you want those 2 grass cottages done for BoP, that's OK too. In that case it could just wast a worker turn. Plains cottages are pretty weak and I rather have Agincourt working scientists so that we get a 2nd GP some day rather than working those 1/1/1 tiles. Of course they mature some day, but they are still pretty low priority tiles to improve I think.

I don't think we need to take the city from m_h, much better to let Mackoti take it and take the damage from attacking.

This is a bit gambly. Mackoti knows that we are in war with m_h and he can count 1+1 meaning that he knows that Nibru is the city we are eyeing. There are no other options.. Consequently, he might not bother with taking the city at all and even if he takes, he might just simply raze it in the hope of creating a better border with us. I guess we need to be prepared to sack couple of units and take the city with full force. I think we still have a decent chance to lose less hammers than the cost of a settler if we face e.g. 2 archers + warrior..

I'm just unsure about what to do with the chariots:

I think as the first thing this turn we want Hykephalos on the same tile with bow+spear. (or are you completely sure that we do not get vision of any new tiles?) (The hill tile gives better vision, but a lonely chariot is quite vulnerable there. Maybe next turn before we move our units to attack Nibru..) If we don't see a threatening Yurimack or m_h force we can start building the road and do not need to move the worker away.

I like your thinking about leaving the stack SW of Königs. We can discuss it more next turn when we have more information and have to make that decision. As already stated before, it all counts on yurimack taking the city and keeping it. Note that the every turn that our stack spends in the south makes it more difficult to reach our suttree front in time. We can't afford to stay in ambush position for several turns and of course we don't want to wait so long that m_h can add new units either..

[Old Harry]

I hadn't considered that Mackoti might raze the city. Will give it some thought, but I guess we just move our stack to take it ASAP instead of faffing around with clever plans...

Hykephalos definitely won't reveal anything new, so I think moving onto the tile is a bit of a risk. We should only do it if we need to take the city immediately and can't wait for the stack.