[PB48] TBW

[TBW]

T40:



First he settles in my face like that, then he builds Stonehenge without any whips? With IND, that means somewhere around 60 hammers of production went into it. He built his city on T36 and there's no possible way he could have roaded it and hooked the stone up that quickly, since he's at 5 pop in his capital and hasn't whipped anything yet. I think right now he has probably two worked ocean resources, one worked land resource, and he either has a city with no roads leading to it and chopped to get Stonehenge out. Either way, he put a lot of work that could have gone into workers/settlers/warriors into building Stonehenge. Building that in his capital will pop his borders out in 2 turns, finally putting his copper within his cultural borders, which presumably was his plan and the reason he skipped past it. Doing something like that suggests to me that he's not planning an intergalactic brained chariot rush or any early warrior rush, and leads me to believe that me being friendly means I'm also passive and toothless.


I'm going to casually scope out the area around Raskol's second city with my warrior to see what's going on there. There's a possible bear in the area that might complicate things; if my warrior gets killed by it, I'll go scout it out with my axe and kill it. Walking over to that hill lets me peek at what's inside the city and I can plausibly explain it as "I'm checking coast tiles I skipped" or "it's fogbusting" if Raskol raises a fuss about it. Theoretically, after I get my axe out, it'll be possible to rush him with it and hit the city in 3 turns. If I commit to that, the timing will be pretty close on attacking before he has copper hooked up thanks to the Stonehenge border, though he won't be able to prebuild hammers into an axe (warriors tech upgrade to spears, spears get eaten by axes, I don't have to explain this to anybody posting here). I'm squinting at the power graph and I don't see a spike that looks like Archery yet either. I'd take my chances with a flat ground archer in a 0% culture defense city against a C1 axe, if it came down to that.

[TBW]

T41:


I was misreading exactly where Raskol's city was settled. On the stone is still a weird place to settle in my opinion, but it's less weird because does have second ring pigs available, hill defense, and once it grows for a while it'll be a solid production city. I still personally would have settled 1W of the pigs and had access to the same resources with first ring food, first ring copper, and quarried the stone into a 5 hammer tile, but I don't have access to all the information Raskol has or any great insight into his plans.

Also, as you can see, the bear that I was hoping had been killed by a Raskol scout is still lurking and might cost me my warrior. I think it'll have somewhere around 60% odds to kill me on that tile, so I might get lucky here. If I do that's great, if I don't then losing the warrior will help disguise the spear and axe I've built on the power graph a little. I'm going to chop and 2 pop whip my third settler in my capital so I can get my horse city settled ASAP.

[TBW]

T42:

Turned out the odds were closer to 75%. Not only did I not die to the bear, I flawlessed it. Sweet! I'm going to leave that warrior right where he is as a fogbuster and guard for the worker while it roads up the horses now. I'm going to mine the grass hill I already have roaded after I get the horses roaded up and I'm still planning on 2-pop whipping my settler, which I can do in 5 turns. Once I hit 3 pop in Cancer I'll build my fourth settler out of there.


The borders in that city popped awfully fast. He finished Stonehenge on T40 and and settled the city on T35. Did he research something like Bronze Working -> Masonry and settle on the stone so he could build a 30 hammer Stonehenge in that city? That doesn't explain why he's got a 5 pop capital yet, but it does explain that fast border pop. It's not a bad idea to get a nice early culture buffer against the AGG/CHA neighbor at all, since there's nothing I can build to push back against 8 culture per turn, especially doubling to 16 in 20ish turns.


Barring a lightning strike hitting my scout, I can establish contact with Mr. Cairo next turn and mechanically honor my espionage deals with the other guys.

[TBW]

Hello,

I see you have fortified a warrior by the cows north of my cities.  I was about to suggest talking about settling agreement and this is our chance.

I had my eyes on this site but I guess it would be too much. I am ready to concede that cow/siver site if you want, in exchange I would like to be able to settle by the banana a bit south of this area.

Tell me what you think.

Cheers,
Ras

Wow, he was looking at settling there? That's pretty audacious of him. It's a good spot for a city, but it's also four tiles from my capital. The bananas spot that he's looking at is a much more natural expansion spot for him, for like a 7th or 8th city. I wasn't even considering settling there because I assumed it would be gone well before I ever had an opportunity to settle and fortify it properly, especially with the city I suspect has Stonehenge right there.

[TBW]

T45:

Got another PM from Raskol today.

Sorry, I thought I sent a reply to that. I'm open to the idea, but I haven't thought much about specific tech or resource trades yet. Did you have anything specific in mind?

Regards,
TBW

Ressource: clams are very abundant in my area. Luxuries, I will have several silk down the road.
Techs: I am heading for maths sooner than later. I am OK to trade it (I may be opened to loopsided trade, for instance if you go for IW or stuff like that), or one of the techs it leads to.

Regards

Hello there,

My spies have informed me of a recent rax,spear or chariot,axe building in America... should I be worried?

Cheers

I replied with "Do you feel like you have a reason to worry?". If I'm sitting next to Boudica of America and they've got 2x my power right after I completed a wonder, I'd probably be a little worried. If he's panicking like this, maybe it would be a good play for me to take my axe and spear and march on his second city. On the other hand, he'd have at least four turns of warning right now for any attack I tried to launch with one movers, he has plenty of capital population to whip into archers (if he has Archery; if he doesn't he could panic research it and finish before I got there), and I don't have any armories built so I wouldn't have any advantage to offset thatthe defender's advantage. Better for me to just keep building up, garrison cities, and keep him on his toes a little.

[TBW]

On the micro side of things, I'll be 2 pop whipping my settler in AIDS next turn and finishing my Armoury in Cancer the turn after that. AIDS will get a granary next and Cancer will go settler -> chariot. Thanks to my armoury + CHA, I don't need to build a stable there to get 2 promo mounted units, so I'll have great fogbusting well before anyone else. Tech path is still looking like Writing -> Sailing, so I can get an ICTR city up for city 5. I usually aim for 6 cities pre-Currency to keep from ending up in the Oops Zone economically but we'll see how commerce looks on this map.

[TBW]

T47:


I get one turn of building a cottage in before I start hooking up my horses with both workers. I moved my spearman up along with my warrior to cover my settler; there's mathematically no way Raskol has a chariot right now but you can never be too prepared in these games. In the ongoing PM exchanges, he told me that Gavagai asked him about starting a joint war with me. I don't know if that's true or not, but it would be more sensible for Gavagai to team up with the guy next to me to squeeze me than his proposal to me of attacking Raskol. Either way, it's probably a good thing that I spiked my power up early.

[TBW]

T48:


Third city down, horses will be hooked up next turn, and everything's looking pretty good so far. I'm going with an armoury as my first building in there because, with Raskol's oppressive future culture next to me, it's important to me to start building up culture in there as fast as possible, plus it gets that silver in my borders quickly. Luckily, working cows and horses with AGG will get it built fast. Fourth city is going to be the elephant city, fifth will still be the one with clams/deer/silver on an island, and we'll see how far I need to extend my borders with city 6 or if it can fill in around the coast pigs. I'm surprised that I beat multiple people to 3 cities despite building both an axe and a spear before T50, I wonder what they're up to.

[TBW]

T50:

Got my horses hooked up, and I'm going to pasture those cows without a cover unit on top of the workers. Unless Raskol double moves me, the terrain means it's not mechanically possible for him to attack them without me getting a chance to evacuate them or cover them with the spearman, even if he has a chariot already or if he's playing some insane galaxy brain beardbeard level gambit with two road workers staged on the plains hill 1S of the mountain. It might even build some mutual trust when we both say we're not looking for any early wars.


Found GKC's territory and walked right next to a spear. We'll see if he lets me walk away or kills it, he hasn't taken his turn as of this post.


T50 demographics check. I'm slightly behind the curve on GNP but nowhere near cripplingly far behind, average on production, and tied for 1st on crop yield. Considering the fact that I'm in 4th for population since I've been whipping, that's not too shabby. Top of the charts on power, but when the difference between 1st and 6th is probably two units, that's not a big deal. I shouldn't have any issues with barbarians, at least.

AIDS is working on a granary and will have it done in about 5 turns, pop growing to 4 and working the mine will speed it up. Cancer is going archer -> settler, which will be whipped and chopped (the plains forest 1N of the deer) by one worker. Herpes will swap to working the cows next turn when the pasture is finished, and I'll move one worker to chop the forest 1N of the cows to speed that up too.

[TBW]

Raskol is taking a highly suspicious amount of time to finish his turn right now, especially considering the fact that he's got a dedicated lurker and he's logged in once during the last 40 hours. I wonder what he's got going on.