Where to will Singaboy steer the Teutonic power?

[Dreylin]

Isn't Agoge a +50% to production - i.e. Prod x 1.5 - not cost x 50%. So 13 base prod gives 19.5 / turn; did you have ~3.5 overflow to give the 22 total?

[Singaboy]

goodness me....my age is really getting to me, you are right

Based on this, I need to slow my second slinger to 3 turns and maximize growth, the city will grow to 4 much faster while producing the settler
Calculating again, it might be better to simply maximise production. Settler would be out on turn 42

[Singaboy]

Turns are moving very fast on Saturday nights.

T33
The horse archer is going after my warrior, but the warrior is still 1 pt away from promotion. I move the warrior another tile back, that should do, I hope. I finally get my second city and immediately buy the iron tile to work it. With this, my science is increasing to 7.8 while culture crawls at 2.2. The monument is now due in 30 turns, but that will surely drop with city growth. There will be a trader moving to the capital in due time as well.
I move both the new slinger as well as the warrior that covered the settler north to go after that camp south of Seoul. It is also to prepare the land for my third settler.



Thinking about production in the capital, I am thinking of: slinger - settler - builder - trader - encampment
In order to get the builder bonus from Ilkum, I will stop Foreign Trade 1 turn before completion and switch to State Workforce. There are 7 turn til Pantheon. Once I got that, I will swap the policy. All that (including trader) should be done before turn 50, when I then should harvest the stone for the encampment. Needs some MM to work out the best path.

In other news, oledavy gained a 3rd civic. TheArchduke's population dropped by 1, he must have gotten his settler now. Not sure how he squeezes that between the barbs. He gained a civic (his 3rd) and a 4thd tech.

[Dreylin]

Looking good!

Maybe TheArchduke has somewhere NW that he's planning to send the Settler...?

[Singaboy]

T34:

The horse archer attacked our slinger which healed in its own territory back to full health. I decide to attack with the warrior first in order to avoid moving forward upon a potential kill of the horse archer. You never know who is lurking behind there and I wouldn't want the heavily injured warrior to be so exposed. The horse archer will be gone next turn unless it runs off.



Writing is done, but I can't lock a campus yet, as it would have to be the tile west of the horses (would cost yet another 60 gold). This needs to wait unfortunately. I decide to go for irrigation at a fast 3 turns. I am planning to follow up with iron working, which still needs its Eureka. It could be done in 7-8 turns (to 50%). I will need swordsmen eventually.
Because the big news is that TheArchduke has 2 Great General points obviously by beelining to military tradition and now using his wildcard for 2 GGP a turn. My warriors would be minced meat against hoplites + GG. Before finishing iron working and connecting the iron, I might want to get 1-2 more warriors out for eventual upgrading.

In the north, my scout finally starts to move a little faster and is reaching the land NW of Seoul for some much needed recon work.

[Singaboy]

T35:
The horse archer had its last attempt to take over Germany, it wounded the slinger, who then ends the barbarians misery. The warrior moves SW a little and promotes to heal. It spots another source of horses in a location that doesn't quite fit into the city pattern. A city west of the waterhole could eventually incorporate it in its third ring.
The issue this turn is, there is ye another scout and he needs to get eliminated before he reaches his own camp. I move out the new slinger and hit the scout. In order to deal with this potential barb threat, I decide to pull back the warrior in the north to go for barb camp hunting here. Here is hoping that the barb doesn't run back SE/SW immediately but stays within my range. I should have enough units in the south to take care of this.

I swap Foreign Trade to State Workforce to time the Ilkum bonus with the Pantheon.

The scout has reached the northern borders of oledavy's land, as I can spot borders (you can spot some bananas way north in the image). I will move the scout on a western path sweeping the landscape for any city states.

TheArchduke's Great General that he would get in 28 turns (or less), urge me to think about my path to swordsmen in earnest. I need to have a credible counter, so he doesn't get the idea, that I am the right target.

A hoplite has a strength of 25, but when next to another hoplite, it will be +10 bonus. The Great General would add another +5. That's a whopping strength of 40. It gets a bonus against cavalry, which means mounted units are pretty useless against TheArchduke and oledavy in the early game. I might keep a few chariots for subsequent upgrading to knight, but horsemen seem pretty useless in this situation.
A swordsman has a strength of 36, but gets an additional bonus of +10 against anti-cavalry units, which means they are effectively stronger than hoplites in formation. Level 1 promotion adds a +7 strength versus melee units and I got 2 warriors at level 1


Scores at turn 35:
1. oledavy:        total 31   3 civics,     2 cities with a population of 5 total,      5 techs
2. Singaboy:      total 28   2 civics,    2 cities with a population of 4 total,       5 techs
3. Woden:         total 27   3 civics,     2 cities with a population of 5 total,      3 techs
4. TheArchduke:total 22   3 civics,     3 citizens with 1 city (has a settler)      4 techs
5. Alhambram:  total 22   1 civic,      2 cities with a population of 4 total,      3 techs

As for output,
oledavy is top for science at 8.5, I am second at 7.8, TheArchduke third with 4.1 (clearly the city state bonus pays)
For culture I am 4th with a measly 2.2, only TheArchduke is worse with 1.9
Military strength. I am leading with 66, TheArchduke has made progress here and has now 50, oledavy only 41 (he had a better score before)
Everyone gets currently 1 faith a turn, which means the Pantheon will be based on whoever had God King first and playing order. Within 5 turns, we will know.

[Singaboy]

Path to swordsman:

Research
I am currently researching irrigation (2 turns) and want to finish archery (1 turn) so I can potentially upgrade 3 slingers if needed. After that, I will start on iron working to hit 50%. That's 60 beakers and should take no longer than 60/8.5 =7 turns, as Frankfurt will grow to size 3 very fast and Aachen will have one turn at size 4. (Total research time = 10 turns). However, it would be wise to stop one turn short of that to prevent warriors being obsolete.

I need to have the Eureka though, which means I will need to mine the iron (needed to build swords in the first place). The current settler will be ready by turn 42, followed by an Ilkum supported builder (54 production) in 4 turns. That's turn 46. The builder can move to the iron in 4 turns and then connect it. This way I will get iron on turn 51.

Upgrade warriors:
However, this only enables me to upgrade warriors to swordsmen and I have a mere 2 of them. That means after the builder, Aachen should build a quick 2 warriors before getting out a trader. Or I would need to delay iron working to insert the warriors after the trader (I need gold urgently)

What about the gold to afford upgrades. Swordsmen are 50 production more than warriors. I read a unit upgrade is 10+ gold cost diff *0.75. That would mean one upgrade is (360-160)*0.75 + 10 = 160 gold. I would need the 50% unit upgrade discount for that to be viable large scale. Until turn 51 I will make roughly another 180 gold. That's just enough for one unit to be upgraded, but for an emergency defense, it's better than nothing.

Producing swordsmen from scratch:
With Agoge that's a production of 60. That's 4-5 turns, not too bad. I need the encampment for that. I clearly want to build it in Aachen and use a warrior Agoge stone harvest overflow for it. If I calculate correctly, stone would give 41.5 production when harvested by then. I would do this for the stone in the east. Hopefully that tile will be picked up during the next border expansion in 4 turns.


Overall plan:
Technology: Irrigation (2 turns), Archery (1 turn), Masonry (5 turns), Iron Working (6 turns, stop 1 turn short of completion)
Production in Aachen: Settler (7 turns), builder (4 turns), warrior (2 turns), encampment making use of warrior Agoge overflow as well as stone harvest (2 turns)
Tile improvement: Builder moves west after stone harvest to connect iron. 6 turns to mine the iron.

Technology is done by turn 50.
Production is ready by turn 50.
Iron connected by turn 54

The capital could then produce swordsmen as and when required. The third settler will arrive and settle at final spot on turn 47, from then making additional +3 gold. This will help a lot with my current gold shortage. A trader should be out by turn 53, helping even more with that.

[Singaboy]

T36:
Luckily I moved the warrior south too, there is yet another nest of barbarians. Let's hope they don't come with horses this time. I use the slinger to hit the warrior. Not sure how smart the AI will be to enable a double attack, but I doubt it will be that smart. I suspect the warrior will hit the slinger. Depending on its health status, I will either retreat into the capital or hit again (it's at 7/15 exp for a promotion). I will need to get to the root of the problem here and hopefully gain 50 gold in the process. The turn after next, I will gain archery and can decide to upgrade one slinger (not that I fancy the maintenance).
In the north, the slinger runs into a scout just as the warrior does in the west. How many barbarians are there actually, this is really a little silly.



The scout encouters oledavy's capital and I do what he himself did to TheArchduke a bit earlier. I hope he doesn't mind my little intrusion. It is only temporary




In other shocking news, Woden just got 2 civics in one turn and has now 5! He will surely be the first to reach Political Philosophy giving him a big advantage. The 60% discount for Chinese certainly helped him here.
TheArchduke founded his second city and it certainly was somewhere westwards. This is good news, as I might get another city up in the west before he grabs it. It might be my fourth city. He also planted an encampment on a tile in his capital. This means, he researched bronze working and has access to hoplites   My run toward swordmen will get more pressing, but there isn't much I can do about the timeline. I have to lie low for another 15 turns. In the worst case, I need to upgrade my slingers to archers and fight him with that. Having two direct neighbors with hoplites ain't fun in the early game.

[Singaboy]

T37:
Both barbarian slinger and warrior attacked and wounded my units. However, that is surely not enough to get me in real trouble.
Frankfurt grew to size 2 and that gets my science to 8.5 and culture to 2.5 beakers. Slow and important increases. Irrigation is done and archery selected for a 1 turn finish.


I swap both slinger and warrior and then attack, slinger taking out the warrior and warrior redlining the slinger. The slinger is up for promotion next turn. My warrior surely needs some healing. The other units move about, the northern slinger spotting the barbarian camp filled with a spear. I might try and slowly attack the spear. Covered in the woods, I should be safe from a deadly counter attack.

My scout moves away from oledavy's capital and spots the second city borders in the SW.

[Singaboy]

T38:
The barbarian situation in the south is getting worse. A new scout appears south of Frankfurt. I move the slinger from the iron to take that scout on. The SW warrior runs into yet another warrior.  My SE warrior takes out the slinger there. The slinger moves a tile and promotes. No sight of a barb camp though. I wouldn't mind to take them out, of course.

In the north, you can spot that the spear has left his camp to welcome my slinger. The slinger is useless on defense and hence, I retreat across the river. My plan now is to move one of my warrior back into the capital to heal a little and then accompany the settler north. Then take on the barb camp with a warrior and slinger or archer.


Archery is done of course and I choose masonry next hoping that my capital will select the right tile for expansion next turn. The city indicated the eastern and southern stone for expansion randomly and it is anyone's guess which tile will be selected. I would really need the eastern stone for harvesting. Maybe the RnG is in my favor for once.

Looking at the trade screen, oledavy is now making 10gpt, means he certainly gets 4gpt from city state. I really got a double whammy here at the start. Being in the east with city states really far away from me (there are still 6 in the fog) and getting a barb camp by turn 3. Well, that's the risk of playing without a map editor. I am actually really surprised, I was able to spot Hattusa before oledavy.