[Spoliers] Oxyphenbutazone's Plays with Elephants

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Once I have visibility on the city center, I can track the hammers invested into production by looking at the "sabotage production" number in the EP menu and then running it through this formula:

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

Workers cost 40 hammers and Warriors cost 10 hammers. So when I first come to his capital and idk squat on a good resource like a wet corn, making him have to improve a plains cow instead, I can look at the amount of hammers invested into the build, and if it's over 10, then it's not a warrior. And if it switches the next turn, that means he switched production to a warrior. And I can probably use demos to see how much hpt he has into it, because everybody is working a 3f tile, unless someone settled on a 3f tile.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Found him!




Contested region, my proposed border city is weakish, I want to scout a little more to find something juicy. I really need to capitalize on Joao's traits; my early growth curve will be so much better than everyone else if I play this right and I need to leverage that into getting some awesome land and by extension deny some awesome land to my rivals. And on a map like this, my window of capitalization will not be so long. Come turn 75, I expect my traits to become a lot less useful.




Home front is humming along, this capital isn't amazing, but it's early game hammer potential makes it amazing for Joao. I should get my choice of contested city spots, which means a lot on a map where essentially every city spot is contested...

[TheHumanHydra]

You're Joao? You should read Serdoa's recent thread as him. Eye-opener for a lot of people I think.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Wait, that worker came too quickly, didn't it? Does Retep have a deer somewhere?

I don't speak quick speed...

[Oxyphenbutazone]

1. Find

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Alright, I'm gonna have to break my no-mirco rule for this game to put together something to see if I can get SH. That would be awesome with this leader. Obvious competition is Wetbandit(SPI/IND), but nobody is CRE, so I guess anyone could go for it.

The problem is that I'm already 3 techs away from pottery which is something you really don't want to delay as an EXP leader, when picking I didn't consider the anti-synergy of EXP and not starting with wheel, agri or fishing. So researching mysticism will be annoying.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Here's an overview of my empire:



Turn 29 quick is pretty good for 3 cities, though I am working too many unimproved tiles. I've been limping to pottery at breakeven, the plan is to grow vertical with the abundant available luxuries and try to work as many cottages as possible. The capital is in an awkward position of being the best settler/worker pump and the best cottage cheese site in the empire. I've decided to cultivate it towards the latter, because there aren't many amazing cottage cheese sites in my immediate surroundings. Sealion needs a lighthouse ASAP, it's a pretty good secondary commerce site. Torch was founded to grab copper, longer term it will be a good production city.



Border with Retep, I want to get the horse here, so the green square is my planned next city. Torch is building an axe to take a potshot at Retep's city, which I think is on the desert tile NW of the sheep. I'm gonna push aggressively here to lock down our border with a favorable split of land to myself.



Another screenshot, the green square is planned city #5 or #6, the goal is to grab all of the food resources in a way that let's me settle good and easy to hold cities and simultaneously deny Retep the ability to do the same.



Border with Azza, his capital's borders are just above the interface. Both the ivory and the stone are very important to my future plans. I'm planning for a very early math and that coupled with being Jaoa means HG are both easy to get and very powerful. And of course, ivory is great for broken Ballistaphants. I haven't finalized a dot map for this region yet, but I think it shouldn't be too hard to settle somwhere in the sheep-ivory-stone region.



Border with wetbandit, highlighted tile indicates where his borders show through the fog. Because the border is mostly coastal, I think I can settle for all of these pasture resources. This also bears strategic significance, because I can boat Wetbandits capital rather easily. dump a stack of 6 war elephants and 2 catapults right in Wetbandit's backlines in 50 turns? Sounds like fun



Finally, contested region with Yuri. As I'm trying to quickly fill up my border every other player, I doubt I'll make a large effort here. The land pales in comparison to other expansion opportunities.



Good demos, but I'm not fooled. I think I'm doing well, but as I said before my traits are all about the first 75 turns or so, after that I just get easier GGs and bonus health during the factory age.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

PB11 Spoiler

wtf...

This isn't funny anymore

Still not funny

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Can a lurker gauge interest on the continuation of this game? The turn pace has made me lose all of my interest in playing turns and it doesn't help that every single player has decided to choke me