GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[thestick]

What kind of attack are we preparing to defend against? I see your point if you expect Cairo to move a big o' stack of death towards Pink Dot, since it will probably devolve into a stack battle, but I'm imagining more of a lightning HA/knight strike, to try to isolate Blue Dot and the barb city. Then hill terrain is meaningless for defense. I think that Lodi's holy city culture will give us enough warning to defend against a stack of death against Pink Dot.

Though musketeers are a wrinkle in this analysis...

EDIT: Plus even if we miss the HG, we get Stone and Marble for potential Parthenon/MoM fun.

[thestick]

Err, small wrinkle, we'll want Masonry by ~T78-79 to get started on that Aqueduct after the Settler finishes. We'll also want to grow to Size 5 and mine the grass hill 2N1E of Arcole for more hammers.

Let's see, Aqueducts are 50 base hammers for Expansive, HG is 300 hammers without Stone, 200 with stone. We have 3 forests for 90 hammers. At Size 4, we make 2 center + 5 iron + 3 horse + 4 mine = 14 hpt, and we max out hpt at Size 5 with another grassland mine for 17 hammers. So back of envelope, it'll take us 7 turns to finish the HG after we get Stone, assuming we pre-build the Aqueduct as we should and work the Size 5 hill. This isn't including the (nerfed) Krillmod whips, especially since we'll want the HPT.

Let's see, back of envelope, it's T74, Ney finishes cottaging T75, can move onto the forest 1S of Marengo T76, chop finishes T79, Barracks completes T80, borders pop T90, assuming we insta-quarry, HG ~T97.

Alternatively, we bite the bullet and one-pop whip a Barracks when Marengo hits S2 on T76, borders pop T86, HG ~T93.

...that border pop is killing us. If we don't get lucky with a Hinduism spread, we're probably going to be too late. Then again, even if we had the Stone, we're too busy right now with Settlers/expansion to futz around with the HG, which is almost certainly the right play.

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So settling order is island -> pink dot (exact location TBD) -> SD frontline red dot -> Cairo incense blue dot?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

MESSAGE FROM MR. CAIRO:

Hello, I want to discuss how we can agree on settling the border area between us. Right now we've each settled 1 city towards eachtoher from our respective caps, and there's no room left to each have 2 cities between our caps, and I don't want one of us to have 2 layers of cities and one to have 1 layer. If we can split the land up evenly, with one of us getting the northern bit and one the south, then I'd feel a lot more comfortable about our border.

https://i.imgur.com/HhgCZpt.jpg

I was hoping I could settle on the blue dot, and you would settle somewhere near the red dot? Or the other way round since you're going to be settling that little peninsula?

Or we can leave it empty if you'd prefer, the land isn't that great.

Mr. Cairo.



Thoughts?

[thestick]

Wow, we need more scouting... we had no idea that Cairo settled east of the Incense already.

Angry, primitive thestick wants to bash his head in for the 'we've each settled 1 city towards eachtoher from our respective caps' line, because our cities are 3-4 tiles from our cap while his cities are 6-7 from his cap. Angry primitive thestick is also tempted by the knowledge that his city's top defender is a Warrior. Regular thestick suspects that fighting Cairo isn't in our best interests until later, especially while there's empty land and we still have uneasy relations with SD. Besides, we need at least 15-20 turns for Currency/HG before potentially going for Construction.

I think we want Blue Dot, that incense is the only good happy resource we have for miles. Given Cairo's borders it looks like we have to bite the bullet and settle on the Iron to get Fish (offscreen)/Sheep/Horses/Incense.

Only problem is that I don't think we should let Cairo have Red Dot, since it forks Lodi and Abukir.

Honestly have no idea how to play this. Suspect that if we can push for Blue by being indignant about his 'first level' city being 7 tiles from his cap, we do that. Otherwise, we split Blue by letting us have the peninsula entrance, and him have the Incense. I think we want to keep Red empty-ish. I don't think that under any circumstances we should let him settle Red. It's just too close to our core.

[thestick]

T75 Report

We approached Sakae, the barbarian city. It has 3 Archers, on flatland. We have 1 praet and 1 Axe. As long as we don't get unlucky or nothing weird happens with Galleys or something, we should be able to take the city by slowly lopping off Archers with our praets. We'll have to wait for it to grow to Size 2, though. We should probably scout to see if the city has any food...

   

The area in question with Cairo, from our perspective:

   

[thestick]

Upon thinking a bit more, if Cairo won't budge and won't give up on setlling Red, I think we should just let Blue stay empty as a buffer zone to try to get him to not settle Red. I think we simply can not let Cairo so close to Abukir. He's Creative and Abukir is on flatland, and we can not afford to be worried about losing one of our best hammer cities to a two-mover strike for the rest of the game.

...what in the world is Raskol doing over there that Cairo can push cities so close to us?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I'm also weighing strategic considerations more heavily here. It'd be curious to see whether that warrior in Cairo's city is actually there - walking a single chariot in could change the balance of power tremendously here. I would lean towards securing the incense. If cairo plants a red dot, that city will be surrounded and we can hit it from the fog in many directions (albeit, it'll be able to fork us - we'll have to gamble). I think quickly pushing @Cairo might be our best bet. I'll sleep on it.

[thestick]

Nah, he probably has enough HAs/can whip enough that Chariots are useless except for MP. He probably strategically moved his garrison offscreen or something.

Yeah, was temped to let him settle Red with the understanding we try hit him with praets/cats/jumbos before he masses HAs/pops the borders too much. But don't know where we'll be in 30 turns, and whether we'll be ready for war, or still expanding/consolidating. We need another ~10 turns to figure out how we look after this spurt of expansion.

We get 1,000 more beakers to receive in tech trades on T100, maybe we could line up a Construction for Calendar trade with Gav, then use the Incense/Silks to whip out an army.

[thestick]

...can someone explain what's going on with Cairo's resource screen? Apparently, he doesn't have Horses or Ivory hooked up?

If he doesn't have Horses, that would explain why he was so eager for Blue Dot...

Of course, I might be misreading this, but if he really doesn't have Horses, that somewhat changes the calculations.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I think we should let Cairo have Blue - we'll never be able to secure the sheep there due to creative borders engulfing it.