[SPOILERS - El Grillo & Charriu PB51] One step at a time

[Charriu]

Mh I would have tried without a Ind leader in the game.

[El Grillo]

Fair point. I actually was able to rush Oracle in front of two IND leaders in PBEM 74a, but in that game it was my goal from turn 0 playing Asoka

I think I’ll proceed with settling and improving both cities in the pipeline, and if the option is still there, it could be worth taking a look at. Denying Colossus to one of our FIN neighbors is a worthwhile consideration too.

[El Grillo]

Apologies for double posting, but Plemo just settled city #5 on T56. He may be keeping up in Power, but there's no way that represents a real defender covering all of those cities and tiles. We have three WCs on the way north, one with Sentry and one with C2/Shock, and may soon have an opportunity (or obligation) to inflict some harassment, or at the very least force some defensive Worker moves and Spear builds.

EDIT: I simmed out the lake-trade route question and surprisingly enough, the game registers trade routes without any roads at all. I'm not entirely sure why (I think it has to do with the adjacent coast?), but sure, I'll take it.

EDIT 2: I took a look in-game at what an ASAP Oracle attempt would look like at this point, and it isn't pretty. Lacking mines at the capital (which is where our Workers/chops are) makes finishing the thing in a reasonable amount of time pretty tough. Pass.

[Charriu]

Do we have graphs on Plemo?

[El Grillo]

T57:

Yes, we do have graphs on Plemo:

This turn brought three bits of spicy info, in order of increasing interest:

1. We have stone to the west, but in a somewhat tricky location to secure from Ramk.



2. We have marble to the east in the area that now appears to be connected to the north. Ah, if only this sentry WC hadn't taken those extra hits and needed to heal, we'd have known about this a couple of turns earlier and that might've convinced me to try for Oracle. No matter, it'll be very useful, and more importantly, easily claimed by settling right on top of it. In any case, I think we can be among the first to Calendar, which means the Mausoleum is going to be on the menu.



3. Hi Plemo! When I wrote in the pregame planning that I wanted to border FIN players and Amicalola, I didn't mean having 3 neighbors to deal with! Guess you have to be careful what you wish for... if we hadn't eliminated Amicalola, then we could have been in a real tight squeeze for land.


No way to tell yet if this is his fourth or fifth city, but it strongly suggests that he started 10-12 tiles to the north. As tempting as it would be to declare war and move next to the city, he has to know that we're close so I would expect a Spear defender. However, what I can do is keep moving north and probe for weaknesses, especially with the help of the sentry WC. Plemo can't have much of a road network yet, and can't be well-defended everywhere. We need to look to apply some pressure and force him to slow down his snowballing a little bit. Plus, I will want visibility on his core cities for later planning.

Abroad, Ramk captured and kept a size-2 city from vanrober's Zulu. I'll tentatively pencil them in as further north and perhaps west of Mali. While it would be tempting to poke around Djenne with one of my WCs while I know some of his forces are occupied, I don't want to be at war with both neighbors simultaneously, and Plemo is the bigger fish.

Domestically, we got a free Buddhism spread to Tuolumne Meadow, very nice for happiness since we're delaying claiming any of the happiness resources for a little bit. A barb Warrior showed up at Springer Mtn's plains hill mine, but it's not the biggest deal if that one gets pillaged.

Demos:

[Charriu]

Looks like the border to Ramk will be the peaceful border in the future. I think we need to make sure that Plemo does not settle the gems which are clearly ours.
I think the next conflict will arise against Plemo. But for now we want peace, we should only engage in conflict with Plemo if the benefit is huge enough. For example if we get to capture a city for cheap from him I would do it, but if it's only a worker, I would not risk it.

[El Grillo]

I was thinking about declaring war once the 3 WCs are all in position to enter borders and harassing, but not committing to combat unless I really catch him at a disadvantage and can raze an undefeated city. The goal is to force Plemo to slow down a bit, not just continue to chop/whip Workers and Settlers. If those are Spear whips and road builds instead, that’s all I’m looking for.

Do you think it makes a difference to him if we just threaten outside his borders and not actually declare war, when the intent is clearly hostile?

[Charriu]

I think we need to know more about his land and cities before we decide anything. I think we have a few turns of scouting until all 3 WCs are in the area, right?

[El Grillo]

Yeah, I think it’ll be 3-4 turns for the sentry WC and maybe 1-2t more for the C2/Shock one.

[El Grillo]

T58:

Got a look at Dutch city #4, Rotterdam, along with an escorting Axe/Spear. Clearly we won't be able to do any damage here with WCs (though we could delay the corn farm for a bit), so I'll send it further north after our city is established.


I agree Charriu, this part of the border will be worth fighting for. I think we'll have to settle for a walled city 1S of the lake fish, though this sadly rules out a city directly on the marble. Would love for it to have a hill, but it can't be forked or 1-moved on the diagonal thanks to the peak and coastline. Now the bad news is that this city makes setting for the cow/copper hill as originally planned a bit dicey, but we can plan to have the copper hooked and roaded as soon as the city is founded, with the capital capable of providing an Axe reinforcement in 2t, as well as saving up gold after Writing for an emergency Warrior->Axe upgrade. Also, if we take a turn to heal the sentry WC and Plemo advances the Axe forward a tile, it might be worth picking off cheaply on flatland.

I decided to whip the Settler for city #5 now instead of accumulating more overflow, we'll want it founded earlier for a number of reasons, including that we want it to have more opportunities to get a passive Buddhism spread.



Here's Plemo's scouting Warrior from earlier. Shame it didn't end up dying to barbarians, though I don't think it would be worth it to go to war just to kill it.



Abroad, Giraflorens settled city #3.

Demos:

Graphs: