Hm, I guess we can afford to delay it. Now that we finally get mobile units everything is fogbusted anyways . Loses a hammer to decay if we don't cancel the trade by war declaration, but so what.
Our fogbusting scout met civac's workboat in the west.
Elkad has caught up to our 7 cities; the Colossus preparations have delayed expansion noticeably, hopefully it's worth it. We settle 3 new cities in 4 turns, so I don't feel too bad. (What I do feel bad about is falling down to the second page on the forum, so I had to type up something even if low quality and no pictures)
Elkad is although poking around annoyingly with a warrior and an axe where I want to prepare plants. I'm trying to give him completely not subtle warnings, which he has ignored so far. If he puts a worker in danger I'll have to declare. thankfully with the galley we have great vision on approaching units. Somehow we were world top power this turn (despite building units just between settler/worker whips and after granaries), so that should be sufficient.
On that topic, our resident newbie Joshy reported in the tech thread that he feels tensions are rising, and he also sent me this PM (responding to my PM that I sent a month ago):
joshybravo963 Wrote:...
I've also just realised that I'm on an island and vanrober tells me they're some of the best players in the game! So I feel like my death is a matter of time, but hopefully I'll be able to hold out. Still enjoying it tho!
...
Of course I responded to him to be more careful with spoilers (fwiw I'm not annoyed at him, these things have to happen if we want new blood), but can't unread it either.
So I guess he's in a triangle between mack and TBS ?
Also indicates that we are on a continent with a limited amount of other players - and if Joshy actually scouted that then that's a pretty good job.
(May 7th, 2021, 17:00)Miguelito Wrote: (What I do feel bad about is falling down to the second page on the forum, so I had to type up something even if low quality and no pictures)
Haha, wholly intentionally. I am trying to prod people into reporting here and there since in such a big game its nice to get a wide picture, esp for posterity. It's mostly just me (and klop) doing active global lurker posts since everyone is playing. I suppose i"m also invested in seeing how the game plays out since I made the map and want to see how it gets played and what I can learn for the next map I make.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Rusten is referring to our colossal win in the latest border conflict:
We decided for the blue dot, (sign "found t 81") to be our border city against Elkad. Downside is the 2nd ring pig, but it has the great advantage of blocking any plant of Elkad's to his south, leaving our city in the 5th/6th ring of his culture bombs.
But last turn I saw that settler/worker pair on the signed tile. Elkad had acquired first half that turn, so he would be able to found E of the peak, blocking our dot and making life difficult (I think we would have had to burn it). He was intending to found where his axe is fortifying, but that was not going to happen anyways. So I loaded an axe/spear pair on the galley. If he advanced the pair we could just capture it. I also sent a demand for cows on top, after more conciliatory messages before.
It appears that that was enough for him to cover his settler:
Part of me would have loved to elegantly capture two workers, but surely it's much better to have resolved this without bloodletting.
Oh yeah, we also totally built Colossus!
That fish is lovely.
Although, important question - where is it, exactly?
I'm reasonably happy with my plan. I don't think with just 3 forests we could have gone under 5 turns construction time (2 for the forge - dump hammers - whip for OF - finish). The catch was that research was way faster than I had anticipated. I had expected for MC to finish about t80 or even 81. Well, I wrote above that I'm bad at this, and in the end I got that down to 74, with some sacrifices. So, initially having planned to whip a settler before the build, I now had to go to lengths to even get the capital into a position to make the 5 turns build time that early. Here's what it looked like:
We grew together with the happy cap and beyond from size 5 to 8 within 3 turns (from a full box admittedly), whipped the axe, grew back to size 8 for the forge whip, and finished it just so. I'm pretty content with that. Even found room to not leave that lighthoused fish unworked on the final turn.
Earlier versions of this plan (with later research) had the capital growing back while building the wonder, but that wasn't possible here.
The second PH mine was an error and will hardly ever get worked in the next 30? turns, but an earlier version of the plan needed it, and I had set the worker to mine, so could not tranfer it into a straight chop.
(May 10th, 2021, 17:03)Rusten Wrote: I really want those corn+copper islands now.
Context to become clear once Miguelito posts.
All the islands! They must all be ours!
We should definitely discuss strategy, how to achieve that how to go from here, but it's too late for tonight.
Bit of international news, we found Lazteuq with our workboat, and he has razed a city of Charriu's:
Glad for our peaceful corner of the map allowing us to builder ahead while others fight fruitlessly...
(May 10th, 2021, 00:30)Lewwyn Wrote:
(May 7th, 2021, 17:00)Miguelito Wrote: (What I do feel bad about is falling down to the second page on the forum, so I had to type up something even if low quality and no pictures)
Haha, wholly intentionally. I am trying to prod people into reporting here and there since in such a big game its nice to get a wide picture, esp for posterity. It's mostly just me (and klop) doing active global lurker posts since everyone is playing. I suppose i"m also invested in seeing how the game plays out since I made the map and want to see how it gets played and what I can learn for the next map I make.
It is appreciated ! Our neighbour Donovan's thread title was a shameless lie, but I see he hasn't even responded upon you poking...
Presume we're just moving axe into gold city to counter unhappiness and delaying whip.
There's another furs island city near Donovan, maybe we should prioritize it? Surely that will have seafood too. [1-pop a galley in the city we settle this turn after granary]
Completing La Vai farm to grow eot?
Our commerce is fantastic and will only continue to improve. Early knights for first war methinks. Then draft muskets to supplement further warring.
(May 11th, 2021, 01:30)Kaiser Wrote: Hey congrats on Colossus :D
Nice move to hide its location, I wonder if other players see it though.
As I'm not sure if you're joking: it should be there! We got robbed of the best part of building the wonder, which is having a 15 story sized golden guy greeting us on every login. Fwiw in civ 4 everybody who has contact with us can see that we built it in the F9 screen, although I'm not sure if they see the city unless they have it uncovered (nobody has)? It will also definitely show once our cap is back in the top 5 cities, which I expect after some growth.
(May 11th, 2021, 14:11)Rusten Wrote: Presume we're just moving axe into gold city to counter unhappiness and delaying whip.
- yes
(May 11th, 2021, 14:11)Rusten Wrote: There's another furs island city near Donovan, maybe we should prioritize it? Surely that will have seafood too. [1-pop a galley in the city we settle this turn after granary]
- yes - I was thinking after the lighthouse, but most probably you are right
(May 11th, 2021, 14:11)Rusten Wrote: Completing La Vai farm to grow eot?
- yes
(May 11th, 2021, 14:11)Rusten Wrote: Our commerce is fantastic and will only continue to improve. Early knights for first war methinks. Then draft muskets to supplement further warring.
I hope Colossus proves the big swing that I feel it should be. We are pretty far behind rival best in CY, and significantly below average in MfG:
which should worry us, but we also have a lot of potential, immediate and mid term.
I agree, knights seem like the evident path to convert the commerce advantage into power, and early draft together with a Taj option is the logical step after that.
Rough tech plan:
mysticism - I think we need it now, for the Elkad border city, otherwise his third ring will eat into our 1st soon (although the tile isn't relevant, and he can look into the city anyways, so might as well delay?
IW - just for the gems and associated +2 forge happy. Extra hammers will also be nice of course.
writing - maths - currency - calendar (swap those 2 optionally) - masonry - construction -
feudalism - HBR - machinery - guilds. GA upon reaching feudalism?
Possible distractions:
CoL if Confu is still out there after we reach Currency?
Literature, although that should normally come after guilds. We might get an engineer though, in which case TGL could be tempting?
I'm waiting for Elkad to play so there is no semblance of anything improper, although it should be unnecessary. he can take a <5% chance to kill our settler under the forest hill fortified axe, but I doubt it. Meanwhile I'll ramble a bit more on my ideas for strategy for the next phase.
I have been lacking with player analysis again, and will not likely catch up. I also don't think an analysis of Charriu or Lazteuq will be relevant for our game, although maybe entertianing. But we should have a look at our southern neighbour, whom we met some 10 turns ago:
Donovan Zoi playing Sitting Bull of Spain (Pro/Spi/fishing/mysticism)
It isn't sitting, but it's half a pun at least.
Donovan seems to have been around since forever. In the PBs he has not been too successful though, sometimes getting into a good position with some early military action, but then not following through and ultimately falling behind. Most recently in civforum PB88 he had a very discouraging start - BTS Toku of Japan on New Zealand, facing Genghis who had all of Australia for himself, barring Don making an early move to settle there himself. I think he put up a valiant defense there, and only fell to the Australian with galleons.
However, I would not rate him as a more intimidating opponent than our other direct neighbour Elkad. Both are no pushovers, but at the same time they're likely to not develop to their full potential and become a valid target for expansion.
The pick has the obvious synergy with the cheap citadel, which in CtH also gives +2 XP on boats. That sounds concerning at first, but we can counter it with vassalage. However, being Pro Spain might motivate an early move for engineering and the construction of many citadels, which we would not like at all for a knight attack (however, musketeers don't care). With Colossus we might be at guilds significantly faster than he gets to engineeing though. He either did not go for the Spanish early religion play, or lost it somehow, or has it in fact and just hasn't converted yet. We can worry about conquistadors if he ever gets close to them. I recently learned in a civforum thread that their main advantage is not actually about the melee bonus, but the fact that they get defense boni.
I'm not sure how much of an impact Phi will make. I guess leveraging it requires a lot of planning ahead compared to other traits, and I don't expect too much in that regard from Don, although of course he'll make himself some sort of bulb list. An engineering bulb would be my main worry, but he went for writing over MC, so it doesn't look like an early engineer. He can bulb himself to gunpowder through education to speed himself up towards conquistadors I guess.
Overall, I think it's more likely that we attack him first than Elkad. Elkad is very paranoid about knights, he'll have lots of culture and can turtle. Of course we have to see first how Donovan plays this. I think we get graphs this turn, or next.
Speaking of, we have to decide for a suitable isthmus city for the Donovan border. If we want a hill it will be foodless. I'll post a shot once I play.
In general plans, the next turns will require a balance of
city growth, as we're currently not managing to work all good tiles and we have some happy cming in as well as more cottages
expansion especially as we want to secure some possibly contested islands - which we are in a good position for with early triremes
growth projects, mostly just forges, which I want as early as possible because they make everything afterwards easier and more efficient, but otoh there is a real risk of holding back the first two points of empire growth for too long.
I'd appreciate some input there how you think we should approach that.
. Loses a hammer to decay if we don't cancel the trade by war declaration, but so what.
? 
I really want those corn+copper islands now. 
! Our neighbour Donovan's thread title was a shameless lie, but I see he hasn't even responded upon you poking...
![[Image: LLAMO-AL-TORO-DE-ESPA%25C3%2591A-Poema-d...A1ndez.png]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CtFTot-4Yjc/VfliSDE3O6I/AAAAAAAACz4/vcEe9-9jsvI/s1600/LLAMO-AL-TORO-DE-ESPA%25C3%2591A-Poema-de-Miguel-Hern%25C3%25A1ndez.png)