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

[Charriu]

I think having access to copper as soon as possible is most important right. That's why I would prefer the desert copper hill city.
I agree that the northern city is undefendable right now and less important. This actually frees up the workers as connecting the northern copper does not net us any benefits right now.
I think we still have some time until we settle towards Ramk.
Now in the east things get a lot more interesting. Assuming that Plemo settles 1N of the fish, I would actually settle 1S of the pig there. This establishs a nice border towards Plemo there and Plemo has no vision on our city. It also closes Plemo of from that part of the map. Lastly it let's us settle the plains hill moai city later and there is even space for another city 1S of the eastmost spice or even on it accessing the northern fish.

[El Grillo]

Thank you for your input, I'm going to think about this for a little bit longer. I do agree that desert copper may be a necessary precaution since I don't think we could hold the northern copper if Plemo were to try and pressure it quickly in the worst-case scenario, and it would really suck to lose hammers in the queue without a Settler on hand. For the eastern city, I think I prefer revised X over 1S of the pigs, since it'll take a turn longer to settle, will require a road to connect, and it delays value from 2 turns of forest chopping.

[Commodore]

We noticed those after the fact. No biggie, if they really offend you there's always workers-on-a-galley.

[Charriu]

Well if you want to keep revised X you might want to consider 1S of the pig later as it opens up a city on the spice.

[El Grillo]

I tested having a Workboat net a jungled fish, which works just fine, but I never would've thought of having embarked Workers try to chop

EDIT: That's another good point Charriu. I had some earlier thoughts of using the marble there to create a cultural buffer along the Plemo border, but surely it would be too late to attempt a 3-chop Oracle at this point.

[El Grillo]

T61:

Uneventful turn as we moved Settlers and revolted into Buddhism. Oh, except our WC at Springer Mtn took 5 hits beating a Warrior, but reached 8xp in the process.

Plemo advances his settling party, and our scouting WC finds what are presumably his capital's third-ring borders. Amsterdam should be 12 tiles away to the north from Tuolumne Meadow.



Demos:

Graphs:

[Charriu]

Looks like a lot of empty and barren land west of Rotterdam, which is good for us.

[Suite]

[...]

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.

[...]

As the city will have three food resources, going for the grass hill is a good decision in my opinion. Do you have other places for Moai?

Plemo definitely has the right answers now. But he also had way more information about you than the other way round: He saw your early horses and your (and Amicalolas) land, you knocked out Amicalola while you knew nothing but the information PBSpy yielded (later graphs too). Short term, you are way behind now, as you traded expansion for the rush on Amicalola. I think it was correct to do so, but you have to catch up quickly. Could you give an overview on when your next cities will be founded approximately?

[El Grillo]

T62:

After what feels like a long time (admittedly I did go for Granaries first in addition to spending hammers on WCs), we settle city #4, Point Reyes National Seashore, a lovely spot just north of the California Bay Area. There are dozens of winding trails along the coastline and to the beach, and you can see Tule elk and sea lions among the seasonal wildlife. Our Worker will farm the wheat and then chop the forests, leaving it in position to support pig hill city in a dozen or so turns.


As tested, this spot does get trade route connections, and hopefully we'll get a passive spread sooner or later. I've shelved the Monastery at Humboldt Forest for the immediate future to let it grow on a WC instead. Given how tough it would be to actually fight Plemo before Construction, I would prefer deterrence by keeping up in the power rating.

@Suite, city #5 will be settled in two turns, on the desert riverside copper. I could've moved the Settler unescorted to speed it up by a turn, but I positioned my escorting units poorly and there ended up being one fogged tile that a barbarian could've moved into between turns.

Our northern WC whacked a barbarian Warrior on a hill, good enough for 2xp. I have hopes of getting this WC up to sentry as well to continue exploring north and west.



Abroad, Hinduism was founded by one of superdeath or Mjmd. Plemo settled city #6 1N of the lake fish, as expected.

Demos:

Ramk has done a really incredible job catching up in food recently, and I don't even think his captured city has come out of resistance yet (or at least the graphs haven't picked it up).

Graphs:

[El Grillo]

T63:

Quiet turn. I took the risk-averse route near Plemo in case he had extra Workers in the fog to snipe my WC with.


That actually revealed that Ramk's cities and mine are both connected via the same huge river, and it's quite possible that Plemo's cities are connected to it too. So if we teched Sailing we could pick up some foreign trade routes. We have enough gold to do it next turn, though I don't think I dare deviate too much from the Mathematics-Construction line.

So let's talk about domestic expansion plans, how we're going to catch up as Suite had asked earlier. The bad news is that we're behind Plemo (though notably not to the field at large, but that speaks more to uneven player skill than anything else). However, there is some good news:

- 1. I think Plemo's economy is crashed for the moment, his GNP has fallen to what I think represents 0% research with not a lot of cottages yet, so I don't expect him to settle anything further toward us.
- 1b. As a corollary to this, I don't think Plemo will prioritize attacking unless we offer up an especially tempting target, since he'll want to be building Granaries and Workers and cottages, not Barracks and Axes and Spears.
Conclusion: As long as I don't try anything cocky like settling the forward hill cities without a solid garrison visible, I can afford to use my next whipping cycles on a Settler and Worker, not Axes. Even if I'm wrong about this and we see a big build-up from Plemo, if we settle to the south there's nothing that he can hit before we can whip and gather defenders. My sentry WC and Warrior will stay at the border to extend our vision a bit.

- 2. Until we reach the next increase in happiness levels, Tuolumne Meadow and Humboldt Forest have all the improvements they need. Sure an extra cottage and some mines would be nice, but they have their bonuses hooked up and decent tiles to grow onto.
Conclusion: Our existing Workers can leave the capital area for now and can be used elsewhere. We can afford to whip a Settler/Worker, or perhaps even Settler/Settler if the two go to roughly the same location so the Workers can support both of them. Furthermore, Springer Mtn is about to come online and it has lots of foodhammers for building Workers.

- 3. Our own finances are starting to look shaky. Math is currently a 10t research at -14gpt and we're saving 18gpt, but that's before settling city #5.
Conclusion: Our next cities need to be commerce-rich.

Putting all of this together, the plan is to use our next whip cycles at Tuolumne Meadow and Humboldt Forest on two Settlers that will be headed south into the floodplains area.



Tuolumne Meadow is working both food resources to grow back to size 6 and will 3-pop whip a Settler as one tick of whip anger wears off.



Humboldt Forest loses a tick of whip anger this turn and will grow back to size 5 over the next 3 turns, in time to take the pig from Tuolumne Meadow and build a Settler at 14fhpt for a 2-pop whip at 42/100, where it gives the pig back.

Now as to where the cities are going, here's what I have in mind:


Red dot is settled next turn, then the capital Settler would go to blue dot which overlaps the most floodplains cottages, then the Humboldt Forest Settler would settle green dot. All cottages all the time, we'll come back and chop in Granaries where possible when Math is in. I need to still work out the Worker micro, but I like the idea of doing this while Springer Mtn starts working on its own expansion options to the south.

Demos:

Graphs:

EDIT: Also, I overhauled the score-tracking spreadsheet with a much more intuitive row index instead of just writing things down like I did before

City founding:



Whipping:



I'm mostly interested by how little whipping some players have been doing. Presumably they have less food surplus/happiness and are working hammer-rich tiles instead for production, and/or are India