[SPOILER] Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand

[Commodore]

Ouch, so no road-speeding?

[Grimace]

Ouch, so no road-speeding?

What is road-speeding?

[Commodore]

Ouch, so no road-speeding?

What is road-speeding?

Meaning buildings roads to speed the settler north; looks like a single road 1N of the capital would speed up coppercity (that still the target?) by a turn, for example.

[Grimace]

Meaning buildings roads to speed the settler north; looks like a single road 1N of the capital would speed up coppercity (that still the target?) by a turn, for example.

Ok, that's what I =thought= you meant, but didn't want to assume anything.

Problem is only 1 worker. I actually put 1 turn's worth of road on that tile, but needed the worker for other things. I don't know if worker #2 will get there in time since there's not even a road between my two current cities.

[Commodore]

General thought, then, is that nice as a new city is, another worker (or two!) would be called for first. The 1 city-1 worker rubric is only for bigger empires I find, actually usually not until city counts of 8-12 depending on tiles/growth rates. Not that I'd place a hard-and-fast ratio, but generally I try to plan for every new city having a road connection to the rest of the empire, and improved tiles to work for each new pop point. Those first ideals, coupled with "granary ASAP", will tend to dictate a healthy balance of workers, and worker actions (forests tend to last longer at very first, then get chopped hard once the whip-cycle equilibrium point is reached).

[Grimace]

Hmm. So rather than rush out the settlers, try to keep the worker ratio higher?

It often seems that he who gets the mostest cities the fastest is the one who is more likely to stay on top.

[Commodore]

Hmm. So rather than rush out the settlers, try to keep the worker ratio higher?

It often seems that he who gets the mostest cities the fastest is the one who is more likely to stay on top.

He who gets the mostest *productive* cities the fastest is the one who is more likely to stay on top.

[Grimace]

Turns 27 - 29

Ran into Sian's scout to my SE.



Settler is on the way to new city location. Finished WB in Captain Mal EOT, building another, then a worker. WB will complete in Zoe (2nd city) next turn, then it will build a warrior to grow, then a worker.

[Grimace]

Turns 30 - 40

I'm at 3 cities, 5 workers. Met Adrien to my NE and he offered a map exchanged, which I accepted:


Also found a barb city to the SE with my scout. I'm guessing Sian is somewhere further to the SE past Adrien, and retep is probably to my west.

Currently building a barracks in Captain Mal, a settler in Zoe, and a worker in Wash. I've started mining the copper, which should complete in 3 turns, so then I'll just need to road it and I'll have access to metal. Adrien already has his copper up and running as I ran into a phalanx. Going to suck if he decides to attack right now since my warriors are just so much meat under the boots of those guys.

Next city is going to get the gems, because I desperately need happy help.

[Grimace]

Turns 40 - 47

Well, mostly unexciting turns, but a few twists have occurred.

On T46 I built my 4th city, Kaylee, at the Gold/Crab/Clam location. And this turn, Adrien must have decided to go after the low-hanging fruit of it, because he moved into its culture with a Phalanx, and followed it up with a Phalanx and a Settler.


I'm not exactly sure why he did it...maybe he thought because I just had a warrior as the garrison he'd be able to raze it easily and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it? Which to a certain extent is true -- there's nothing I can do to stop him from razing it. I gambled that he wouldn't start a war over a city that is not intruding on his sphere of influence (no pink dots here!) because my Vulture would not make it there until T48 (and I lack the money for a quick upgrade of the warrior).

To me it seems like a bad decision...a war this early doesn't benefit either of us and he has plenty of options for expansion, but if he razes it I kind of have to retaliate in kind. Anyway, I sent him a peace treaty offer just to see if he takes it...most likely he won't, but what the hell.

So there are a two ways this could go:
- Adrian attacks across the river from where his phalanx is and kills my warrior, razing the city. Hopefully the RNG is kind to me and his phalanx is damaged, and my vulture moves forward to kill his phalanx. Not sure where he will move his second phalanx/settler...probably to wherever he wants to build. Maybe he's planning to pink dot me right where my city is? Anyway, my second vulture is 1t behind the first, so if he does that my vultures have even odds against his phalanxes, not counting fortify odds, and if my first vulture is not too badly damaged I have a decent chance of then screwing his phalanx/settler.
- Adrien moves his phalanx across the river onto the gems hill to get the best odds and sees my vulture, which will move into the city the next turn. Even attacking onto flat land, he has 50% odds, so it's a bigger risk at that point. Even if he moves his other phalanx/settler forward, there's no guarantee he can take the city, and if he doesn't his settler is in dangerous territory.

I'm hoping the second option is what occurs, because I think it gives me the best odds to keep the city (and who wants to throw a settler away?), but he's created bad blood between us for no reason. That really irritates me. It's just such a pointlessly opportunistic attack when there is no long-term benefit to doing so. I can only assume he doesn't think I have better troops than warriors, because that is the only thing that makes this remotely logical, but he has to know I have BW and since this is not a random map and I had 3 cities he has to assume I have access to copper.

Oh well, we'll see what happens!