Nobody expects the Chinese Inquisition: Isabella of China

[Gaspar]

I'm not sure why, but Yuri Mamute is possibly the best name ever.

[Gaspar]

I've been a little bit sloppy reporting today. We're at T49. Whipped the settler for the Ivory city. Settler and Yi will set out on the galley next turn. Settler in capital for backlines city will complete EOT50. Math would have completed next turn but lost a few beakers with the whip. Gold is now online, increasing happy caps, so we'll get a few growth builds going shortly and then whip them in.

Sending chariots off toward the west as there should be no barb threats in the N or S. TGW really won't be necessary, though it still might be worth building just for a few extra GPP as a 4T build right now.

[Mardoc]

We're at T49.

It's been what, 5 weeks? That's a pretty nice pace

I hope the chariots are heading east, I don't think horses swim very well when they're in harness :neenernee. Personally I'd skip the Great Wall if we're not going to use it for its purpose, it's not like we can use a Great Spy even if we get one. Who cares if it's cheap? So are monuments, but you wouldn't build one of those where you're not going to use it.

[Gaspar]

It's been what, 5 weeks? That's a pretty nice pace

I hope the chariots are heading east, I don't think horses swim very well when they're in harness :neenernee. Personally I'd skip the Great Wall if we're not going to use it for its purpose, it's not like we can use a Great Spy even if we get one. Who cares if it's cheap? So are monuments, but you wouldn't build one of those where you're not going to use it.

Yeah, the pace has been stellar, averaging 10t/week or so. There are positives and negatives to a 4-player PBEM though. The turn pace is great but the impact of one player doing badly is greater, not to mention it starts to play more and more like a pair of duels on an inland sea map like this.

You're right re: my poor sense of cardinal directions as well as about the Great Wall. The primary advantage of it will be when we settle the more far-flung eastern sites. Still, probably best to leave it to someone else.

T50 report to follow.

[Gaspar]

So its T50 in our Spanish-Chinese restaurant. Thanks for coming today, you could have been anywhere else in the world, but you're here with me, I appreciate that. Here on our menu is an appetizing array of delectable dishes, all served up with a side of pwn.

All pictures are after hitting end turn.

Let's go city by city, shall we?

Arroz Frito, the capital is a bustling little burg, particularly considering its been sharing food and cottages with cities two and three for some time now. Gold hooked this turn means it can now grow another size onto one of the riverside cottages being worked by other cities while it builds a Library. It can now slow-build Settlers in 4T and in fact just finished one.

City two, Croqueta China is currently making a stone enhanced mids run. Math powered chops come online this turn, which means we should finish in 5 turns. Afterwards it will grow a little, though it will never be stellar since all of its food is shared with neighboring towns who as a general rule, need it more.

City three, Agria Dulce is all food, no hammers. Which means whip, whip, whip. Once that lighthouse comes in, which we'll whip next turn, it will be on worker duty until we can get some buildings in there to run specialists. At said point it will probably work the Clams and 4 lake tiles and as many specialists as we have happy cap room for.

City four, Carne Ahumada is the much debated Corn city. Its our first town on the inner sea and provided the settlers for the stone city and the impending Ivory site. Pay no mind to the unimproved forest it is currently working, it just grew this turn. A strong whip hand will continue to be deployed here to continue eastern expansion as the earlier sites transition to infra.

City five, Huevo Foo Young is my border city with mackoti. Unfortunately, with the Creative Mayans involved, it will probably never see its second ring. Bob, who clearly plays too much FFH and loaded us with close-by Calendar resources probably intended this to be the battle ground area between northern and southern civs. Unfortunately mackoti was quicker on the draw. Fortunately, I think I can still beat him.

City six, Wonton Frito is the much-ballyhooed Stone city. It will obviously be the future Moai city. We'll use whip overflow from the mandatory granary and lighthouse to hopefully complete most of it since the site will have no production otherwise. I expect it therefore to be a quite strong city and important to the empire in the long run. In the short-run its basically responsible for giving me +2C trade routes and that's about it.

Overview of the current empire:

Right about now, we've largely maxed out the nearby sites. A settler will plant in the semi-crappy backlines desert hill location next turn. I could divert east, where strong sites are plentiful, but I'd prefer to get Currency in before I start going crazy over there, so with clams and cows it will be productive quickly and grow in strength once Monarchy is researched to utilize the wines.

Here's the aforementioned east:

We'll be settling for Sheep and Ivory in 3T. There are quality sites for Pigs, Fish and Clams in the north as well as the floodplains bonanza further east. Once we have Mids and Currency done, we're going to grow out that way like a weed. Hopefully the eastern neighbor - Commodore or TT, we still don't know - won't be able to keep up and we can grab the lion's share of what I assume is the midpoint between us for ourselves. I'm virtually positive I was first to 4 and 6 cities, and I'm hoping to be first to 8. The expansion has been naturally slower due to the lack of great commerce tiles in the first ring of settlements, but I'm assuming that hurt everyone equally.

Its too early for most of the advisors to be especially exciting I think, though if you disagree please do ask, I'm happy to post anything you might find interesting. Techwise we've discovered the following in the first 50 turns:

Agriculture, Mining, Fishing, The Wheel, Hunting, Mysticism, Sailing, Pottery, Masonry, Bronze Working, Writing, Mathematics.

Currency will be next, which takes 5T @100%, followed by Code of Laws. After that we'll either do Calendar -> Iron Working or go clean up Polytheism -> Monotheism en route to Monarchy for the wines. In any order, those are overwhelming likely the next 7 techs. Metal Casting for sure after that.

The T50 demos look like so:

Keep in mind that first place GNP is researching nothing, so we're really in pretty good shape there. I've been consistently in front in CY save maybe at the very bottom of a whip cycle. Production is pretty mediocre, but again, we've used Chops and Whips to largely sustain production to this point. Looks like a few folks are beefing up on military in the east, mackoti and I are roughly dead even. Right now the Chinese military consists of 5 Warriors, 2 Chariots, a Spearman and a Galley. FEAR ME! I'm on 6 workers for 6 cities, which would normally be a little light but with the degree of overlap has been just fine. We'll naturally be looking to get a couple more out in the near future.

Any questions/comments/concerns would be quite welcome.

[Lewwyn]

The Sheep/Ivory site should be a priority for happy/strong frontier city. If you plant that you can wait on planting the double banana site on that isthmus since no one will be able to get past the further city to settle it. That way you can take your time and settle once we do have IW/Calendar.

The North arm with the fish and Pig sites looks really good though too.

Also the chariot maybe hops on the galley and gets ferried past the barb? This way you get that chariot moving towards our real opponent instead of wasting time with barbs that are ALOT of tiles away. Don't engage them until they're A) closer and B) we've scouted our opponent and done something to slow them down.

[Mardoc]

Nice T50 report, Gaspar. About the only thing to add is that I'm very confused how we have both most cities and most GNP, without being Creative. I always thought it was one or the other

Also the chariot maybe hops on the galley and gets ferried past the barb? This way you get that chariot moving towards our real opponent instead of wasting time with barbs that are ALOT of tiles away. Don't engage them until they're A) closer and B) we've scouted our opponent and done something to slow them down.

Scouting would be good. That troop count suggests that there's not much we can do to slow our opponent even if we want to, though, so I don't think there's much of a rush to get there. And that the other pair has decided to fight (or at least posture) which would be great for us. But it also means we'll likely not be able to do anything drastic to 'our' opponent until we get ahead on tech or at least production/logistics.

[Gaspar]

Thanks. And I agree with Mardoc's thoughts vis-a-vis the east. Its highly unlikely a couple of unpromoted chariots are going to do anything by the time I get contact. I suspect the better play is to hope they're occupied with one another and I can aggressively settle east. At that point its highly irrelevant whether or not they have strong military as I should be able to get enough units in play to defend the territory. With that, I owe you a report from a fairly eventful turn.

T52:

The big question of the turn was when a barb warrior showed up one tile south of my settler/warrior pair at Ivory/Sheep city. I had basically 2 options. I could take the 50/50 shot at the warrior with my warrior and if I lose reload the settler on the galley and wait for the trailing chariot to come by and clean up the wounded barb. Or I could settle and take the +25% city defense and have better odds of keeping my war but a non-trivial chance of losing the city. Fortune favored the bold and I won the 50/50 battle and settled Pollo Kung Pao this turn.



My intent is to treat this much like Reaper from 14 and use it as a second capital in the east, so its building a worker first. I'll eventually get some additional workers from the core over, but right now it'd take about as long to ferry them as it would to slow-build, so we'll go Worker -> Granary and wait until CoL comes in to pop borders. That means a little longer than I'd like for the Ivory to get online but the Sheep tile is the superior yield and riverside cottages are pretty vital to this city supporting itself in the short-term.

In the NW, I settled the mediocre village of Sopa Huevo:



These two plants were quite expensive in the short term, but I'm hoping that they can make themselves productive relatively quickly. Anyway, if you're not limping to Currency you're not doing it right. You can see the gory details here:

Overview:

More specifically, you can see the requisite hits to my GNP and boosts to my CY and MFG. I'm not 100% positive til I can really see the eastern Civs but even with mackoti's landgrab north, I can't help but feel like I'm in great shape - there's just so much more land east/west than north/south that getting boned a bit there isn't the end of the world.

Pyramids is 3T away. If we lose at this point it'll be pretty crummy but there really isn't a lot I can do. The specialists are still a bit away from being a big influence but there's no doubt the extra happiness will be huge. Its a big investment that could have gone towards settlers but denying Cre/Phi mackoti is worth a lot as well.

Adventures in Dotmapping, part eleventy-billion:

Here's the part I really need some input on. My first dotmap in a while. I'd like to get out east aggressively to take advantage of the mackoti NAP. I'm unsure of almost everything but Red, which makes an excellent choke point, only way it'd be better is on a hill, but there's nice flat killing fields all around it and there's only one way in. My current preferred settling order is Green, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Maroon, Black. Obviously it will be changed a bit as we discover more of the south portion of this picture, but I suspect the floodplains bonanza in the north is worth aggressively pursuing.



Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[novice]

I could take the 50/50 shot at the warrior with my warrior and if I lose reload

Pretty sure that's frowned upon.

These two plants were quite expensive in the short term

Actually they don't look that expensive - their commerce almost cancels out the city maintenance, so the expense right now is the increased #cities maintenance and increased civic upkeep (but reduced unit costs).

Anyway, if you're not limping to Currency you're not doing it right.

So true.

[Gaspar]

novice you had me do a double-take there. Did I really say that? You're quite qualify to talk about football for an English tabloid I think.

Yeah, my reference about the cost of the new burgs was more in the jacking up the # of cities maintenance, etc. The real pain was how much it dropped the tech rate, but can't stop expanding for silly things like the slider.

T53 was pretty quiet. I shuffled exploration units to heal/get barbs in better positions. I think I need another galley on the inner sea, would make the ferrying process more pleasant.

I've got to say, wet corn to share between 3 cities is some good stuff. If I had a few more happiness resources it'd be golden. I'm hoping the turn gets around again in which case I'll talk more about us, but instead I'd like to focus on something from my main rival:



This is the 3rd straight turn I've seen mackoti's worker fortified on that hill. Surely mining it would be a better choice? I assume he's working on IW and is maybe getting ready to farm it? Though even then it would make more sense to sitting chilling on the jungle rather than the hill. I'm calling .