[SPOILERS] Ceiliazul and Timski go To War: Brennus of Spain

[timski]

My gut reaction was "bring a Warrior home soon", but that might not be the best play: The Warrior next to Commodore is currently keeping 2 of their Warriors busy, rather than letting one wander. Meanwhile GingerEagle will need to be careful, since they also only have 2 Warriors last time I checked. Dazed and Kyan have Warriors in the wild, but we can be fairly sure that all are in the south still. Hence the worst scouting force we can expect soon is... a Scout. While a Scout could block a Worker, it wouldn't be merely so dangerous as a Warrior.

Added: Note that Commodore is still working the Forest Plains Hill. That may be for a Settler. But it could be for Warrior #3. With the road, they could hit our Warrior next turn with 3 attacks, or at least try, and fail safely. Tempting to start backing our Warrior out, while still somewhat threatening their stack.

The Green site ("B1") is slower to get started, because we need Iron Working a turn or 2 before settling, rather than a turn or 2 after - the Pig Pasture has to go onto an already cleared tile. At B2 we can improve the Cow Pasture alongside settling, with no significant lose of food potential. Or to put it another way, it's clearly city #4, not city #3, and won't be founded before turn 50, probably a little later, regardless of micro.

With B1, the C2 Moai site can move 2W, unless there is seafood in the fogged NE, so likely no lose of useful tiles. Alongside the lack of hill, B1 breake the neat (post-Engineering) diagonal that allowed one stack of 1-moves to reinforce any of our 4 cities from one central point. Finally don't over-rate early Beaver: Nice, but not required urgently, since we can manage roughly size 10 cities with the 'Henge, metals and Forges, 12 with religion. I doubt we can even grow that large pre-Calandar.

Likely we can leave this decision until around turn 45, by which time the map may look very different!

[Ceiliazul]

New Naming Scheme

Added: Note that Commodore is still working the Forest Plains Hill. That may be for a Settler. But it could be for Warrior #3. With the road, they could hit our Warrior next turn with 3 attacks, or at least try, and fail safely. Tempting to start backing our Warrior out, while still somewhat threatening their stack.

Commodore needs to be working on a settler. If he's building another warrior, or if he has to stop and build an axe before settler, that's a huge win, and worth the price of the warrior. In that event, we'd still have about 8t warning to stand up our defenses.

As discussed, the new names are in place. The warrior near Comm is called "Goomba", the one near GE is called "Koopa". These names could be lots of fun!



Meanwhile our settler is on the move, and will found Duck Hunt as planned next turn. No one yet has a 2nd city, will we be first?! Oh, and that "half stonehenge"? It's actually two-thirds. :neenernee

We whipped for the 2nd time last turn. Comm has whipped once, no one else has whipped at all. Each whip is a 4h boost over the others (too simple, but you get the idea) so I'm loving it. Spiritual is nice, yo!

[timski]

I'd completely forgotten that Commodore whipped a Worker on turn 14... Needless to say, Commodore is now not working the Forest Plains Hill. Could still have half a Warrior built as insurance.

Dazed is the only competition for Henge now.

Dazed would only land Stonehenge before turn 31 if they delay Settlers, which is about as insane an Imperial rushing Kyan. Erm. Sure, they get Settlers out quicker, but based on C&D, they have invested far too much in the wrong places already, for a cheap Settler to make up the difference:

• They've built one Warrior more than us,
  
• didn't get a Work Boat out until at least 10 turns later,
  
• have grown at almost half our pace,
  
• likely wasted their earlier Worker turns on roads to Kyan,
  
• are last to Bronze Working.

And that's before we consider that they must now be high on Kyan's hit list: Without something to counter Kyan's Axes or Chariots, they'd just be building the 'Henge for Kyan. Dazed took an early gamble on a Warrior rush and failed. They are too good a player to gamble again on an early Wonder.

Land:

Everyone has 2 water tiles in their first ring, but based on the score changes, the second rings are not even:

• Dazed and Commodore- 4 water.
  
• GingerEagle and ourselves - 5 water.
  
• Kyan - 6 water.

Mountains appear to count as land, nor can we split coast from inland, so we can't say much about the starts without further information. However, we see GingerEagle has an inland lake, has water south of Crystal Palace, and 2 tiles water tiles on our border to the east. 4 tiles known, 1 unknown. If the city is coastal, the missing water tile is due south, and hence GingerEagle only has one inland water tile. If the city isn't coastal, the water 1S of Crystal Palace could contain to Clams (to balance food demos), but that seems unlikely, since it changes Submarine-era balance dramatically (should the game last that long).

Likewise, I don't see a layout that would allow Commodore more than one inland water tile, 1SE of Bear. That suggests there is a southern route out of their capital onto the mainland, which is worth knowing for tactical reasons.

C&D:

On Turn 22 Dazed teched Bronze Working and Commodore built a Warrior: Dazed went from 15 prior, to 23 power leader. There are only 2 points adrift here, and we know those are Commodore's Warrior. Rival worst and best powers are one of Dazed and Kyan - we can see see Commodore isn't at 19 any more (Warrior), and GingerEagle can't increment from 22 to 23 easily. Kyan could only reach 23 by building a Spear, which would mean they had Copper at their capital (unlikely for balance, and if that was the case, they would have been building metal units 3 or 4 turns ago), while at the same time Dazed teched Animal Husbandry and built a Warrior. That combination is exceedingly unlikely. Instead, Dazed just got Bronze Working. Added: Dazed could have teched Archery and built a Warrior, but such a move makes no sense at all.

Agreed that on Turn 23 Commodore teched Animal Husbandry and GingerEagle got a non-soldier point tech. Again, the max power is 23, which excludes GingerEagle from Animal Husbandry, since they were already at 22. 19 rival worst remains Kyan. Without slaving and chopping, Commodore couldn't have built another Warrior in one turn (and in any case, we should have seen it), so did score the 2 soldier points that balance the average power with a soldier-point tech, of which only Animal Husbandry is sensible. The Beaker information confirms GingerEagle with Pottery.

Kyan hasn't teched anything in 5 turns. One option is that they did tech Wheel on T18, alongside losing a Warrior, and are now teching something lengthy, like Animal Husbandry. Risky to maintain a single Warrior in the face of Daze's aggression, but maybe they have one part-built, while Dazed decided to go home?

Summary:

• Commodore - T22 Warrior, T23 Animal Husbandry.
  
• GingerEagle - T23 Pottery.
  
• Dazed - T22 Bronze Working.
  
• Kyan - Nothing since T18.

[timski]

For anyone else lurking, who can't see out Warriors clearly on the screenshots:

Goomba



"Goombas are physically weak and are not much of a threat to Mario, since a single stomp usually defeats them." (Super Mario Wiki)

Koopa



"... Their Japanese name, ノコノコ, Nokonoko, means 'unconcernedly'." (Super Mario Wiki)

[Ceiliazul]

nice!

[Ceiliazul]

[SIZE="4"]The Pindicator Theorem - The success of a team is directly correlated to the number of posts in their spoiler thread.[/SIZE]

Global Spoiler Post Count
--------------------------------
[COLOR="Pink"]Ceiliazul 61
Timski 58[/COLOR]
Commodore 53
Gingereagle 53
Kyan 44
Nicolae 16
Pindicator 12

The Nintendo Entertainment System turned 25 a few months ago. Why it was the BEST EVER!

[timski]

(Kyan's getting a lot of views, presumably due to their story. I was worried about the lack of activity in the lurker thread, until I realised that almost all the highly active lurkers are either playing or appear to be ded-lurking...)

Since the turns are coming in fast now, I'll post what I think is the concensus micro for the next 10 turns. The next 10 are fairly inflexible unless you are planning some dramatic change you haven't discussed yet. After turn 35, the options really open out, especially at Duck Hunt.

Tech path Agriculture -> Pottery -> Animal Husbandry -> Archery...

Mario Bros City

T25 - Stonehenge continues. Works Fish and Deer.
T27 - Grows to size 3. Switch to Worker. Fish, Deer and Rice.
T29 - Worker #3 whipped (2 turns till completion). Fish and Deer.
T30 - Worker #3 completes. Stonehenge continues. Fish and Deer.
T31 - Stonehenge completes. Build Granary. Fish and Deer.
T32 - Size 3. Fish, Deer and Rice.
T34 - Size 4. 2-pop whips Granary. Fish and Deer.
T35 - Granary completes. Build Worker. Chop (via Mine) into Worker.

Mario Bros Workers

T30 - #3 moves to Forest Plains Hills WNW of capital.
T31 - #3 Mines (and automatically also chops) Forest Plains Hills WNW of capital.

Duck Hunt City

T25 - Build Scout. Flood Plains.
T26 - Switch to Axe. Copper.
T28 - Switch to Scout.
T30 - Scout completes. Build Granary. 2 chops into Granary.
T32 - Granary completes. Switch to Axe. Flood Plains Cottage.
T34 - Size 2. Whip Axe. Flood Plains Cottage.
T35 - Axe #1 completes. Build Axe. Rice.

Duck Hunt Workers

T25 - #1 completes road 1N of Duck Hunt. #2 Mines Copper.
T26 - #1 moves to the Copper and Mines. Copper online.
T27 - #1 moves onto forest 1NE of Duck Hunt. #2 moves onto the forest 1S.
T28 - #1 and #2 chop.
T31 - #1 and #2 move to Flood Plains 1N of Duck Hunt and Cottage.
T33 - #1 and #2 move to the Rice and Farm.
T34 - #2 moves 2SE towards Cow. #1 continues farming.
T35 - #2 Pastures Cow ESE of Duck Hunt.

[Ceiliazul]

(Kyan's getting a lot of views, presumably due to their story. I was worried about the lack of activity in the lurker thread, until I realised that almost all the highly active lurkers are either playing or appear to be ded-lurking...)

Since the turns are coming in fast now, I'll post what I think is the concensus micro for the next 10 turns. The next 10 are fairly inflexible unless you are planning some dramatic change you haven't discussed yet. After turn 35, the options really open out, especially at Duck Hunt.

I was wondering about that, but you're right! Ole Davy, you're sorely missed 'round these parts.

Yep, we're locked down on the next 10 turns. Even if Commodore pushes and axe, it won't arrive until around that time.

Job well done, Timski.

[Gaspar]

[SIZE="4"]The Pindicator Theorem - The success of a team is directly correlated to the number of posts in their spoiler thread.[/SIZE]

Completely wrong. I'm pretty sure I've had top posts in the majority of my games. And uh... you've seen the outcome.

[Ceiliazul]

Completely wrong. I'm pretty sure I've had top posts in the majority of my games. And uh... you've seen the outcome.

I'm interested in competing theories, or collaries. Honestly, you've been playing some stiff competition lately. You're better than your palmarès indicate.