Update: the best micro is actually worker (1t) -> 35h into granary here (effectively we've managed to 1-whip the granary) while farming sugar with the new guy (which allows us to reach size6 by T54, more details to follow), OR possibly worker (1t) -> settler (5t) to get Neapolis running sooner; we should settle #5 444 of Canoel; I don't understand why people are apparently building metal units already; others (s_t, MSci) have been faster to their third cities and someone has a CY of 29 (!)
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[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment
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  I've decided; 1t worker + 5t settler at cap next (we've effectively whipped the 2nd settler here), then grow building the granary. After barracks, build settler for gold asap (possibly 3-whip down from size7). Settle stone, settle western deer, then build Gardens; if we fail, great, we'll turn our forests into 180g. I favour Neapolis with first-ring cows after all; it can get an early granary (already built in this shot); besides, it takes us too long to grab the tile otherwise and missing out on 6-yield will hurt. We'll have spears (or axes, vs superdeath might want axe) on both vulnerable borders (Cumae being able to defend itself). Actually I think Cumae might have to delay the granary, we can easily chop it at Maths, but people in this game are too happy building metal units, it seems. There are alternatives with 1-whipping the granary while using Avoid Growth, but I think this is the best path after all. I don't think we can completely skip cottages but I've indicated where we could make watermills. Probably not on the sugar. This requires our western warrior to turn around now, but I have no problem with that... the eastern warrior will also not go towards superdeath's borders; we need him closer to home. e: I don't like our resulting demographics (barely cracking 100 combined fh/t by T70!) but maybe the map doesn't allow for much more.
Clearly I need to post yet more micro. Here's where the Gardens become visible on the horizon:
  T69 Maths, gold city will be settled on T72 and supported by two metal units, then we settle at the stone (producing two more workers to support the latter plant) either overlapping our extant crabs or picking up the new ones (might depend on superdeath's settlements, but we should get the stone no matter what). Probably better to settle for second-ring gold and first-ring food, chopping out barracks immediately. #8 and #9 would go west (deer and wheat), I think that eastern deer is probably superdeath's... though losing wines/silk isn't nice. Let's see what happens, though. If we can get the gardens with 9-10 cities and thereby work one extra grass mine at each city, they pay back in 250/30 ~= 9t. Yeah, I like the plan. Don't think we'll crash before Currency either (23t away at 60% breakeven in this screenshot, and there will be relevant cottage growth at Cumae for sure, possibly the capital if we add more, and the gold mine addition).
East is East, and West is West. Except on a toroidal cylindrical map, where someone's east is someone else's west:
 That looks like the city MSci had just settled on T41 was autorazed by what I'm assuming is an impi (what, you can see it wasn't me arbitrarily razing first ring cities of my neighbours this game  ). If MSci can hold his capital, great news for us, we have two rivals knocking each other unproductively; if not... let's hope someone dies fast to praetorians. Map layout would be [MSci, us, superdeath] in the top row, and [?, Charriu, ?] in the bottom row. I'm on the fence about making contact with Inca; on the one hand I'd like to have news from the front, on the other hand we can hardly do anything there if the capital falls and it'll alert superdeath to the map layout, if he isn't already aware.Nothing happened at home. I placed a million signs and there's a barb warrior 33 of the "Cumae" hill who might just saunter off anyway. Our demographics are rock bottom because of Antium's slow start added to our size3 capital, but the catch-up's about to begin.
T44 report. Demographics restore some sanity (combined 34 CY/MFG to rival average 33). Once we settle X3 ("Cumae") next turn, they should claim (near-)top positions once again -- one less area to worry about. Except we're last in soldiers at 26,000, but rival best is 32,000, so superdeath can't actually have more than two (3xp) impi yet (in fact this looks like a bad copy of Seven's PB16 impi rush... which was against a neighbour who had moved away from copper, occurred in base BtS where Archery isn't cheaper than Fishing for one thing, and finished by iirc T32 rather than starting on T43...). Can connect Rungholt and X3 to copper on T47, then irrigate the sugar, then chop the granary for X4 ("Neapolis") which will also connect to copper instantly. Could put 5h into axe at Nea, but that's food not going into the granary of a food-starved site... let's see. Ortwin the warrior will try to sentry against impi, problem being that impi can avoid isolated sentries with impunity. Also of note is that superdeath's warrior is heading for us again, or perhaps just cycling the lake, and we're shadowing him.
I'd been thinking of slotting in Archery (4t) before Writing/Maths, archers can beat impi in the field (due to that -40% vs archery units) to say nothing of cities, but I'm not sure how necessary that is when we have AGG axes and every turn counts on Maths. Would hate to be surprised by chariots though. Don't think we have to worry much about garrisoning against Magic Science under these circumstances, so metal units should head for the eastern regions. If we keep all our EP to superdeath, that'll prevent him from grabbing graphs on us until T50 (we're 2t away from this). On that note, Charriu is putting 4 EP/t into us again, current ratio is 52/48 his/ours. Fun fact: 48/160 == 0.3 exactly; this is arguably a waste of EP; but perhaps he wants to avoid annoying his other contacts. Or he fears us.
T45. Rival Best soldiers is 35,000. If that's superdeath, he has techs for 16,000, two ikhandas (6,000), two impi (8,000) and a warrior (2,000) plus assorted junk / pop (but he has scarcely any pop I think) that isn't impi. Can't be three impi because of that warrior -- that's some relief at least. I'd love to send axes towards him just about now (humour me, I'd prefer to play Civ but if he's not going to let me...), but good luck with the abysmal travel time -- shame we don't have the stupid UU that moves from capital to capital in 6t because we had the bad strategy luck not to go before him in the snake pick. Rival Worst and Average are 27,000 (tied with our 3 warriors + 1 barracks, and I hope it's not Magic Science) and 30,800 respectively.
If this unimpressive rush somehow does end up taking MSci's capital, I suggest swapping our research to Iron Working at once and claiming our right to monomania / trial by combat before superdeath gets to benefit from the extra land. Aim to have 25 praetorians by T90, spend all our forests on them, finance Currency from capture gold or die trying, and to hell with the Gardens. I have no interest in playing also-ran once more due to not disrupting a land neighbour in the process of doubling up his land area -- war would come anyway; it might as well come on our terms. With the founding of city #3 (now named Venusberg), demographics are looking good again: 27 CY ranked #2 to tie Rival Best; 13 MFG ranked #3 behind 15 Rival Best. I'm still not sure where Neapolis (X4) should go, the spot 1S of the screenshot above would pick up as many as eight forests (four more than in-place) but requires costly (hill) additional roading, and is more forkable against the gold city later. Sharing sheep is probably not the answer after all, Rome can't afford to be that generous (but sharing copper is important). None of this might matter.  Quiet progress: we'll finish the pig pasture T47 and add the 4f clams at Canoel on T48. At X4/Neapolis we could finish an archer first (5 hpt from the copper), and I think we should -- granary would grant rather little food anyway (ie we'd finish with 2/3rds of the bar filled); it might not actually cost anything to finish the granary at size2 instead. The barb warrior (on the oasis) isn't worrying me. The wheat in the SW is confirmed as dry (if easily irrigated post-CS) and I feel vindicated in not settling for it -- not much value in +1f over the loss of first-ring forests, first-ring ivory, some hills we could never mine. Nice spot once we hit Calendar, though. If all these bananas weren't all jungled, I'd have argued for Calendar before Currency on this map (no ICTR, and would gain 10c from our spices/incense tiles already while also opening important sources of food). As it stands, no contest unless I'm flat wrong about jungled bananas additionally requiring IW. A nice touch is that we'll finish AH simultaneously with a warrior at Canoel (not visible but enqueued and partial-built), which will appear as a 4,000 soldiers increase and thus a metal unit. Hope our neighbours will respect this bluff. If not, Archery and actual archers will come right after. Nothing new in the demographics (RFS grew back to size5 at the capital). Graphs on superdeath will appear for us next turn (he'll have to wait some more, T49 I think, if we keep spending EP on him, which is my plan rn), but I doubt we'll see much of interest that we don't already know. I'm cautiously hopeful that Magic Science looks to be holding. He should be able to whip archers any turn now; I'd be astonished if the Inca didn't switch research to Archery at once when attacked. Roads and copper will get pillaged, and they're PRO but not AGG, so axes not only cost a lot more, but should even get worse odds due to potential Shock on the impi (Cover is only 25%, and superdeath probably chose Shock to whack warriors in the first place). In this case, we might have to watch for superdeath throwing impi at us instead in despair. Diplomatically, I think we should make MSci amenable to us (reasonable expansion, but no opportunism, in the west while he's trying to recuperate) in order to try and conquer superdeath later, who sacrificed his opening to live the dream of an impi rush. Still not decided on whether to move Neapolis/X4 1S for more forests (but X6 + the "at Calendar" sign, which only has bananas for food, would pick up these forests anyway). Problem would be roading towards the city. Both get forked by 2-movers but that's not an issue, if 2-movers penetrate this deeply we probably have lost anyway. Also feel free to suggest a different dotmapping before I bork this. I'm also willing to put city #4 anywhere else but I think overlapping copper and improving cow is what we want -- gets the most out of our citizens and it's a good production base to settle gold city and the east from. WHERE IS THE BLOODZONE. e: also the signage is wrong regarding the road to Venusberg. We can finish that next turn and then move to irrigate the sugar, that's strictly superior (trade route, and also moving V's warrior NE if the barb goes straight north) 
Neapolis is fine where it is. Some forests it will get from border expansion. Very early they are not required because we are short in workers, later we will plant better cities.
Banana/wheat city is bad, I wouldnt plant till very late. WheatFP site can be ok though. To the west I'd plant this [img] http://imgur.com/tv76H91[/img] , because of possible improvement for the lake. Sharing 3 food resource doesnt seem to be enough. Cow+deers city is better imho and there is no need to plant very close. Btw it could happen that superdeath made 2 impis and just sent them into both directions. So may be it is not a dedicated rush on MSci. So we need to keep it in mind too. Dont relax, but dont panic too. Is it his warrior on screenshoot? In case if he succeeds an captures MSci's land I dont think it is good idea to throw everything on him and sacrifice all we achieved so far. He will have problems with economics he wont be able to solve in timeframe we come for him with the best stuff.
Oh sorry, the screenshots are lacking -- at Ravenna, there is a sadistic second-ring ocean fish that all cities off the coast will orphan forever (border pop is T75-ish, and this is also why I want it earlier). Don't think we can afford this with food so scarce, but if we can, deer/cow is definitely the plant in that area. Re closeness: there's benefit to overlapping all these mines (and sheep) with Canoel, especially while we're happiness-constrained. We can plant closer to MSci though if you'd prefer, the fish would still be there 1W of the cow iirc. Or we plant on the cow. (psyche) Can't see your image for some reason.
Wheat city doesn't even have an X-number yet. Agree that there's no sense in settling that before Calendar, even the stone filler (alternate X7) is stronger. Maybe Charriu is close though, but that's more of a concern with the gold. I think both impi are near MSci because of when I suspect it was produced. It won't have been going for us while on the peace treaty, that's just wasteful (though I suppose he could have kept one at home). But the next impi could indeed be gunning for us. superdeath's and our warrior are on the same tile (should be signed), but his has yet to move. I'm shadowing him, so that he doesn't know exactly what this warrior's purpose is (if we turn back now, that might look like "weakness") and must assume it's a sentry / explorer. I'll go with your judgment on what to do if MSci falls -- merely didn't want to make the same fatal mistake two games in a row. e: We could chop an archer in Venusberg, at the expense of delaying the cottage somewhat (2t). That would make Neapolis safe from impi as well, though I believe that with two warriors inside this is not needed. I don't like chopping military this early, though. |
