AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[MindyMcCready]

Great news,...terrible new. Some turns you're having there.

[MindyMcCready]

So I'm guessing that the new evidence on Jowy's peaceful intentions caused you to prioritize Commerce city. I'm not sure that I agree with this course of action. It's a great city and all, and if you've already settled it then not worth talking about but,.... I still think that landing that strategic location is a super high priority.

If I thought that abandoning that chokepoint and all that food would bring lasting peace with Jowy, then sure, let's make that concession and then target the other side of the lake. But I don't. We're just too close to him and he's got elephants and I suspect he's a bit of a warmonger. He's just being smart and building up his economy before stomping on us.

Right now we've got 2 advantages: Protective Archers on a hill and Dog Soldiers. Until/if he gets ivory and construction the only way that he'd dislodge us from Red Star is by committing his whole economy on a hammer losing proposition. He'd have to go irrationally ballistic to pursue that course of action (and I think that he's trying to play smart). So Red Star would either be a fact of life for him or an economically destroying initiative until he lands elephants/catapults. River grasslands to Jowy's north is likely where he'd expand to while trying to crush us culturally and waiting for elephants. If we prioritize Longbows his window of opportunity might not be that large.

Not seizing a strategic location with this much food while having a military advantage seems like we're not playing to our strenghts, but instead playing to Jowy's. I don't think that we'll be rewarded for this.

Other things:
1. You come across as hungry for commerce. You are financial and have a Great Prophet shrine on the way. Get the cities and food and later the commerce will take care of itself. With this many high yielding tiles, I wouldn't be too concerned with cottages quite yet especially if you can land the Colossus.
2. I don't think that Forges are a worthwhile investment at this point (Colossus city excepted). The city sizes are just too small to get a decent return on this. Workers can chop out way more hammers than a forge will get you for quite some time.

This is a very interesting game. Thanks for all your posting.

[MindyMcCready]

On reinforcing Red Star. If we have your newly proposed Block Jowy 'C' site or the 1SW pigs site we can ferry in defenders via galley.

Overcoming this reinforcement route would require: foresight from Jowy, a production city on that lake, a way to overcome our metal casting/trieme advantage.

Blue Pent also has this advantage.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, I have to say, being blocked off from commerce is causing me to re-think. it's 4 turns, at least, till we can get there.

Course, right now, we don't have an escort that can go out that way, either, so it really doesn't matter all that much....

my thoughts now:

settle lake fish, since we can do that. Clear off the barb swords. get eyes on that area. See what to do. I basically have units everywhere but where I really need them to be....

I think I agree about forges outside of MASH, btw - it's nice to run a engineer, but it's not vital, and a forge is 2 workers. Workers are more important...

[MindyMcCready]

Planting lake-fish might not be a bad choice given the barb constraint. It'll be immediately productive with the sheep + 1 forest chop for a wb. However, we should compare that against 2 other reasonable sites: 1SW Pigs & Jowy Block 'C'

Now let's discuss the pros-cons of 1SW pigs vs Jowy Block 'C'.

Similarities
-both can achieve the result of culturally blocking Jowy or militarily being the first line of defense.

1SW Pigs
-1 extra forest chop (30H)
-pigs 10 turns sooner
-allows the possibility of a Jowy Block 'B' site.
-more lake tiles for faster commerce return rate if Colossus.

Jowy Block 'C'
-causes Jowy 1 extra turn or face 25% attack penalty.
-less boatable.
-has 1 hill for production

LakeFish would be online pretty quick and maybe serve as a worker pump and colossus coasts for awhile both of which we could really use.

Leaning toward SW Pigs myself for the food and forests. So why don't you like SW Pigs?

[AutomatedTeller]

If we are blocking Jowy other ways, the pigs site is clearly better.

If that is our block site, then I think C is a better military city, because the fast way for 1 movers to hit it involves crossing a river.

What I'm most worried about with planting a block site on jowy is then having a 2 front war with cats/elephants on one hand and praets on the other. There's no question that Azza is attacking someone - maybe it's us, maybe it's 2metra or cornflakes. We need more info...

These barbs are killin' us...

[MindyMcCready]

If we're facing a 2-front war against Praets and Elephants we're pretty screwed anyway. I'm not sure that it's productive to be concerned with that at this point since there's not much that we can do to prevent it. Personally, I'd feel a heck of a lot better having a well fortified Red Star if I suddenly saw praets coming from the north. Azza would have to trudge through jungle or come aboating. A parked Trieme would give him a bit of trouble.

Regardless the way that we deal with either of these problems is cataputs which we're on the path to and Longbows which we're contemplating as a priority anyway. So doesn't change anything really, those are both high prioriity techs/units.

Ok so SWPigs > Jowy 'C' in your opinion and mine. It also allows Jowy Block 'B' as a contingency plan should Jowy take that area (but not if Jowy plants on Jowy Block 'A' of course).

Times a ticking on this plan. If you can get the settler up to SW Pigs safely, then I think that you should do so. Get those forests choped into worker/settler and see from there.

If you can't get the settler there safely, then why not LakeFish? It'll be immediately productive, especially with the Colossus.

[AutomatedTeller]

well, the idea was that not settling A or B makes it less likely Jowy starts such a war.

something along the column of the pig site, c or B is basically between us - that seems fair. Site A is Jowy's territory.

I would agree - traits and UB/UU dictate settling in someone's face.... but the map (we have territory that will be undisputed to our SE) and circumstances (collosus falling out of the sky) kind of make me think we are best waiting.

Also, we have unlocked HE, probably well before anyone else - thus, we will have an advantage later, when we can 1 turn maces or knights.

And, these swords are annoying me

I'm thinking our best bet right now is to aggressively, but not insanely aggressive, get a tech lead and crush Jowy (who is our natural first target, i think - cornflakes and azza are across the jungle from us, and so a pain in the ass - cornflakes, in particular, in painful given the mobility of his impis)

Some pics:



That's where everything is. The swords are moving on ATeam - but with a dog and 3 archers, that city is as safe as is feasible. I'll kill one sword with the dog (famous last words), then it will be 4 on 4 and we should be fine.

Events:



Nothing terrifically interesting, other than 2 hindu people - that means they have foreign trade routes need to get a road to cornflakes...

Stupid Woody II scout, down in the tundra and other non-wooded area - my scouting has been... poor, this game.



other scout:



Going to go NE to find Azza/TT.

[AutomatedTeller]

quick update - killed a barb sword with a dog - was hoping for 4 xp, got 3. We have a CII Shock archer, a CG 1 archer, a pretty beat up dog soldier and a soon-to-be-minted archer. We should be fine.

Chopped in a forest into M*A*S*H's forge.

need more workers. and settlers. and workers.

[MindyMcCready]

Well that's good that the barb swords aren't going to be any more problem than they already have been.

Ok, so you definately don't want to infringe on Jowy's territory. Fine Red Star is out. The next best then is a combination of SW Pigs + Jowy Block 'B'. I think that most players will consider that a fairly reasonable defensively minded move. Hopefully Jowy falls into that 'most players' category and he doesn't freak out over a broken dot map or something of the sort. 'B' sole purpose is naval mobility and defensive positioning. Still it has 3 forests + 4 farms + 8 Colossus lake tiles so it'll contribute to the empire. He's less likely to be able to culturally crush us on 'B' than he would be able to do on Red Star so that's good. SWPigs will have to grow onto grassland cottages which isn't a bad thing with financial.

If that's the path you want to choose then landing LakeFish makes a lot of sense. I would still want Jowy Block 'B' before Commerce (or SW Pigs) . LakeFish can support 'B' in place of SW Pigs. I'm not sure that we need the happy from commerce quite yet given our worker/settler needs. Again, if he's not peacefully minded like 'us' we could be awfully 'forked'.

This course of action still means that we'll need to fight Jowy in around 30 turns or so when he has elephants and cats. That's pretty much unavoidable in my mind. We'll hopefully have tech parity with him by then if the Colossus is allowed to do its thing. If we can survive such an attack then we'll be able to outtech him long term. We're definately handing him 3 food tiles + a luxary resource to strengthen his hand though.