[Spoilers!] Dave Versus Financial

[oledavy]

Now that you've found a point of symmetry, I think we can do much better map analysis than your previous estimate.

....

But my first thought is that, if I draw a rectangle on the minimap as your discoveries imply - that's actually a pretty small portion of the whole world. There's room for another whole continent - it'd be nice to count tiles and see if that analysis agrees.

Am going to give that a shot sometime this weekend, along with a catch-up on C&D. I'm working on a monster overview post for PB6, so it may not be until Sunday until I'm completely up to speed here.

I think getting at least one of our accessible corners ought to be a priority for intercontinental trade routes and whatnot.

I concur wholeheartedly, getting out a galley at some point will be a major priority.

I assume the plan is still to kill Sian with Conquistadors, not earlier? Just to keep pressure on him early? I wonder if that's the best approach - maybe if we plan to kill him, we want the pressure applied to our other neighbor. Not that I'd turn the archer around, mind, but I think if we need to choke anyone, it's not Sian.

I'm split on what to do honestly. After I produce a HA as our own anti-choker, I have the option of sending it and/or the second one to explore the northwest and find our neighbor in that direction, or send something at Sian. We'll see how things play out with my archer around his capital first I suppose. If I can get to those hills, I'll be difficult to dislodge until he gets his horse hooked up.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 134 (Turn 10)[/SIZE]

..........







Sian declined to accept a 50% battle on the flatland, but instead of moving back towards his capital to counter my choke, he moved farther away. This suggests he either:

A. Does not expect me to camp on the hills west of The Empire.
B. Has a unit waiting for me.
C. He's building a unit to head me off.

I'll find out soon enough, but in the meantime, he's lost his opportunity to kill my archer while on the flat land. In another couple turns, I'll be safe and cozy in defensive terrain around his cities. Here are the scouting moves I have planned out:



I'm planning on moving my scout towards his presumed second settlement and into the center of the map. I need to scout it out eventually and this works out rather nicely. The only things I miss out on are investigating the land to his north (lame!) or potentially occupying tiles he's trying to work.

Meanwhile, on the home front:

Gryphon popped borders, Pindicator IV grew, and I moved the workboat to net the clams next turn. Oh, and I'm finally getting around to farming the wheat

Allow me to explain my logic before I get ribbed in the lurker thread. In the sims I ran, improving wheat did not offer any real advantage. Why? Because I'm in CS. In civ, the old maxim is improve your food first. However, with this start, I kept running into the problem of outgrowing my happy cap and improved tiles by farming the wheat first, and not being able to whip it away. Thus, I settled for the 'chop worker first' option, followed up by chopping out a workboat. Was this a good decision? Not sure, I wish I could have simmed it more.

What is Mack up to?



He farmed wheat first and is growing has grown his cities for a total of 9 pop. I expect them to both get whipped shortly for IMP settlers. I expect he'll be at 4-5 cities by the time we lay down our 3rd. Is that an insurmountable lead? Guess we'll find out!



End Turn.

[Ceiliazul]

Allow me to explain my logic before I get ribbed in the lurker thread.
...
What is Mack up to?

I believe you have correctly identified what Mack is up to, and pointed out a comparative weakness in your delay of wheat. With every city starting with a granary, Slavery is actually buffed. You've gone a different way, and honestly I don't know if the artist will be worth it.

The wheat is worth 5f right? That makes the tile worth >10h if he whips it away at small size. Imagine the artist could have been 13t of working that tile (with you whipping workers/settlers) it's conceivable that Mack could be 100+ hammers ahead of you in exchange for your artist.

So, whats the long term vision for CS after the artist? Will you be going back to slavery?

The Sian front is going very well! Primary goal, even above scouting his 2nd city, is to waylay (capture or delay) workers right? Given Sian's very consistent history of invasion response, I expect him to respond aggressively. He'll attack 2v1 at the earliest opportunity. Watch for him to dangle a worker near the cap in hopes of capturing it back... delete the worker if you arent sure you can keep it.

[oledavy]

With every city starting with a granary, Slavery is actually buffed.

That's a really good point, I didn't think of that.

You've gone a different way, and honestly I don't know if the artist will be worth it.

That makes two of us

The wheat is worth 5f right? That makes the tile worth >10h if he whips it away at small size. Imagine the artist could have been 13t of working that tile (with you whipping workers/settlers) it's conceivable that Mack could be 100+ hammers ahead of you in exchange for your artist.

That sounds about right, but you need to factor in the snowball effect of getting that new city or two up and running faster as well.

So, whats the long term vision for CS after the artist? Will you be going back to slavery?

The current plan I have floating in the back of my head is to revolt back into slavery the turn after the artist is birthed (t138), and start whipping in earnest.

The Sian front is going very well! Primary goal, even above scouting his 2nd city, is to waylay (capture or delay) workers right?

Yeah, what I would like to accomplish here is to slow his early development, pillage whatever I can, and get visibility on his cities for C&D purposes.

For anyone who wants to see what's going on with the game 10 turns in:

[ATTACH]2386[/ATTACH]

PW is still numismatist.

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 136 (Turn 11)[/SIZE]







End Turn.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Should have moved western archer 8 or 7, so he could ambush the scout if it moved any closer.

On the other hand, I'm scared of Sian ambushing our units. It would have been safer moving our archer along the forests. Remember, this isn't just Sian, it's Pindicator as well, and he's a good player.

[oledavy]

Should have moved western archer 8 or 7, so he could ambush the scout if it moved any closer.

Should have thought of that.

On the other hand, I'm scared of Sian ambushing our units. It would have been safer moving our archer along the forests. Remember, this isn't just Sian, it's Pindicator as well, and he's a good player.

I don't think he'll be able to. I've been monitoring rival soldier count and it hasn't show anything beyond pop increases as of yet.

[spacemanmf]

Yeah, there were. I just wanted to try to get more of a cross-section from RB games than just name my cities after all the burned Incan & Dutch cities in PBEM17.

Yeah, I know. I was just teasing... =)

[oledavy]

[SIZE="4"]Turns 137-138 (Turns 12-13)[/SIZE]

When we last left our intrepid little archer/scout pair:



Remember how I said.....

I don't think he'll be able to. I've been monitoring rival soldier count and it hasn't show anything beyond pop increases as of yet.

I should have probably mentioned that I suck at C&D, and I guesstimated that from staring at the demos for a couple minutes and running the numbers in my head. Turns out I was dead wrong:



Sian has gone Gandalf on my ass.



And is not going to tolerate any of my choking bullshit.

I moved the scout back into the forest at the conclusion of the turn. I'm probably going to move him around to get visibility on The Empire, the go check out the peninsula between me and Sian. Sian will need a horse archer to flush me out of those woods. I was hoping to pillage his horse, but it's now impossible to move any farther without risking my archer on the flatland. I'll probably camp here for a little while to tie his archers down, then find a nice forested hill between me and Sian to post the archer on as a sentry.

I really wish I had possessed Nicolae's foresight:



Had I been smarter about it, I could have killed that StN scout. My archer was posted such that they could not slip by into my land, so the scout disappeared into the fog this last turn.

Meanwhile, I successfully birthed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Gryphon:



Next turn, I promptly revolted into slavery, and whipped Pindicator IV for the archer to give me overflow into a worker.



Mozart bulbed music:





And Shakespeare was born in Pindicator IV.

Next up, the Great Library! Also known as: how far behind the expansion curve can Dave put himself? And will the tech advantage he secures be enough to overcome that?



End Turn.

[oledavy]

Oh, and allow me to take a moment to thank the almighty Commodore for placing Mackoti on the opposite side of the donut

While this does mean Mackoti is probably closer to my homeland due to the toroidal world wrap, I will probably not have to worry about his galleons and berserkers for awhile. He'll be perstering StN and Sian instead.

Overall, I'm extremely happy with the neighbors I have - the 2nd and 4th most skilled teams in the draft. I was concerned both of my neighbors would be imperialistic civs. However, only one is, and Sian is likely to be focusing on expanding northwest towards Mackoti instead of southwest towards me. Shoot the Nakor will be pushing toward me, but they're not imperialistic. So yeah: