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

[Charriu]

That Dutch city is his 4th city or at least Rotterdam is the 4th in the dutch city name table.

[Charriu]

I doubt we can make it to the fish spot. That axe you've found could be a protection for a settler. Good that our sentry WC found it, that way Plemo does not know that we have an WC there, which could open some possibilities for us.

[El Grillo]

Plemo whipped 2 pop on his turn, will be checking if those are units. After thinking about it more, the safe play may be to just establish and defend our border and not get stuck in a tech-equivalent brawl where he's AGG. That way we don't necessarily have to commit our WCs and can even go back to the scouting/meeting neighbors plan, and just fill out the rest of our land while teching to Construction fairly quickly.

[El Grillo]

If he has yet another Settler in the fog ready to settle the fish, and another spear to defend, then yeah I've been outplayed on this front. But reviewing his whips, it seems unlikely, at least not immediately.

[Charriu]

I agree with you, we can establish a nice border against Plemo in our north with enough hill cities.

[El Grillo]

If we're willing to cede the fish entirely, then yeah, we can get a defensively favorable border settling the hills 1NW of banana and 1SE of pig hill, still claiming the gems and marble. I suppose we could call it a concession to having built all those early WCs, and then get back to settling the core floodplains?

As the old Civ saying goes: with luck and skill you can get anything you want, but you won't get everything you want.

[Charriu]

That sounds very reasonable and we still have a lot of land to settle thanks to our early conquest.

[El Grillo]

T59:

Sentry coming in handy again.


That must be a big island to be spawning a barbarian city. Alternatively, it's not an island at all, but rather the other edge of the donut. If we're on a donut to begin with  

While I had the yield lens on, I realize I had overlooked some more coastal forest tiles.


Now I remember REM used to put these intentionally around the map for anti-global warming purposes, but here it looks like the mapmaker just forgot. Earlier in the tech thread Plemo noticed three unnatural floodplains tiles that were edited out, but we shouldn't be surprised to see more tile/feature mismatches elsewhere around the map. In this case, it's like having an extra hammer resource tile that requires a Lighthouse, and definitely makes the plains hill the better site.

I've drawn some signs for the upcoming turns and put the overflow in Humboldt Forest into a Warrior finishing next turn. We'll be settling city #4 by the coast on T62 and the cow/copper hill as city #5 on T63, allowing us a revolt turn while both are in transit on T61. Soon after that, borders will pop at Springer Mtn and then that city will actually start being productive. I set the slider to 50% to facilitate saving gold for an emergency Warrior->Axe upgrade if needed, and we'll have a bit of time to decide what to tech next. There's a small window where Plemo can cause trouble for us by walking some spears forward, but we'll be able to finish a few Axes and then our roads should allow us to reinforce quickly enough.

Demos:

Graphs:

[Charriu]

I think the mapmaker/lurkers should have a look at the submerged forests and maybe Ramk fixes that. This would only be fair.

[El Grillo]

T60:

Plemo's strength in this area is surprising (thanks again sentry WC), and unfortunately I need to react and play with the bigger picture in mind with a change of plans.


Charriu was right and Plemo is ready to claim the lake fish within two turns. Not only that, there are forests in range for him to chop if he settles 1N of the fish, and by how quickly that corn farm was improved, he has two Workers in the area. Needless to say, this makes the original cow/copper hill plant indefensible, as these two cities can whip/chop enough units before I can seriously garrison it. Plemo will have vision of the city at all times due to Rotterdam's' plains hill, and the temptation would be too great. The shock Axe just tips things further in his favor in the short term.

Here are my considerations. I don't need to settle that hill city just yet, it was intended to serve as a deterrent and it needs real defenders in sufficient quantity to actually fulfill that purpose. I also don't need it to mine and connect the copper, it just would have been nice to have been able to work the tile. Yes, the copper mine is a bit vulnerable to pillaging on the front lines like that, but the city or lack thereof really doesn't change that. From the way Plemo's scouting Warrior approached, he might not even have unfogged that tile. What I can do is avoid settling provocatively, keep my WCs around for vision, and prioritize being stronger in the short term at the cost of longterm potential.

So concretely, what does that look like?

First, I've moved the Workers to hook the copper as quickly as possible. That takes 8 actions total, and seriously constrains where I can send the Settler coming out of the capital. One option is to settle on the desert riverside copper to secure a backup source in case everything goes to hell, where it can grow on the pig and whip out an Axe ASAP. I also pre-roaded this area earlier so we'd only need one more road to connect the copper with the other cities. The other option is to go ahead with the hill city towards Ramk. Remember, he's at war with the Zulu and that means I should be able to get away with settling toward him in the same way that Plemo is settling toward me. The Workers won't be able to get there immediately, but once they do they can farm the rice and put down some cottages, and this city should grow pretty quickly with +6f surplus.



Secondly, and this does hurt a bit but I think it may be called for, that looks like moving the Moai city 1N to bring the wheat into range immediately. In a world where we need to be 2-pop whipping Axes and the sooner the better, I really don't like the idea of waiting for a passive Buddhism spread, then waiting 10 turns for the border pop. Look at Springer Mtn, which is painfully unable to contribute much until its borders pop in 6 more turns. If we settle the grass hill, the Worker finishes its chop the turn the city is founded, then can immediately start farming the wheat while the city finishes its Workboat. I believe it still gets the automatic trade route, which means with a 8f surplus it'll be able to start whipping Axes within 10 turns.



So what do you think about this Charriu? We're not committed until next turn, when the Settlers have to decide where to move. I think I need to respect Plemo as a player who is stronger than me in the current game state and a better Civ player overall, supported by half a dozen regular lurkers in the German forums. My short-term goal becomes deterring war in the next 25 turns by fielding a strong enough military to settle the three front cities, while the medium- and long-term goals involve settling the empty land to the south and out-scaling him when I can bring CHM mounted units into play instead of tiptoeing around his AGG ancient melee units.

Demos:

Graphs:

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot. Ramk offered Open Borders (not sure if he researched it or just saw that we had), I canceled and offered back. No benefits yet but maybe the beginning of a demilitarized border.

EDIT2: The turn just rolled, but I'm going to hold off on playing for a bit. Big decisions ahead!