[54 Spoilers] Nothing to see here! Miguelito and Rusten's max score game

[Miguelito]

Rolled it, and was very excited for the turn that would see us founding our 4th city, and getting the copper mine and fish online.
So much so that again I forgot to finish the road before founding , and that after being pretty happy 2 days ago when I found out I could  

Now the BIG NEWS, because the game was quick to punish me, in fact, in advance:



What can be done about it?

1. I can move the warrior into the forest NW, where it has a 30% chance of defeating the barb. If not, I can hope the spear gets beaten up enough that the 2 cahriots, one of them C1 but injured, can finish him off. Seems like a recipe for complete and utter desaster.
   
2. I can start an axe in Akritai and whip it next turn. Then we're back to working plains cow. The spear will move in t49, kill the warrior t50, kill a chariot t51, then finally the axe is there t52. Hella costly.
   
3. I move the warrior into the city and pray the spear just goes away (that's also an element of plan 2 ) . If he doesn't, next turn we use 80 gold, that's >5 turns of savings, to upgrade the warrior to an axe. That while we're trying to be first to Mono . Seems terrible, but actually the least worst option?
   

Still doing some chores before I finish the turn. Logged out, Rusten if you want to look for yourself feel free to log in.

[Rusten]

I'll try to log in later tonight. Terrible news.

[Rusten]

If you're looking to play now tonight my immediate thought is that;

-If you move up on him with the warrior the spear also gets a promotion and heals if it wins.
-Are you sure that we're at >3 cities average? Because if not then it will go away I think.

At "NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive" the barb will only enter your culture if it can pillage on the next turn. As long as we're not at "NumCities > 3*NumPlayersAlive" we should be safe.

[Miguelito]

If you're looking to play now tonight my immediate thought is that;

-If you move up on him with the warrior the spear also gets a promotion and heals if it wins.

right, but I already had marked that option as "disaster" so wasn't going for it (although, if he attacks I should have one turn to attack him before the promo, as we established last turn that the barbs play first in turn order?)

-Are you sure that we're at >3 cities average? Because if not then it will go away I think.

At "NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive" the barb will only enter your culture if it can pillage on the next turn. As long as we're not at "NumCities > 3*NumPlayersAlive" we should be safe.

I had also started to consider this already, and the answer is very likely no. But don't spoil my panic!


This is my tally of rival average land. I might be 2 cities short, but that is still well below the threshold of 20. Of Cairo and Elkad we know that they're still at 2, although another IMP player may also have 4 already - we're way ahead on land in the demos though.

Anyways, I was already going to go with the third option (wait for him and upgrad the warrior if needed), which requires me to not do anything this turn but put the warrior into the city. So if the spear moves away, all the better. Maybe the northeastern warrior can even try to lure him towards Cairo. I was thinking whether I should start an axe in Akritai anyways, to have it whippable, or even build it in 4 turns, but went ahead with the granary for now. I did change Frumentarii to an axe though (at 1hpt) so it's a 1pop whip once the city grows. I'll also leave gold at >= 80 until we can feel safe.
Feel free to log in and change it if you think it's better.

So, these two turns have been almost a livestream already, but let's report what has been missed between all the crazy stuff:
In Agentes we had to work an ugly tile:


Luckily, the border pop was incoming already, and this turn we switched to the fish.

I scouted gira's west.


He doesn't seem to have a western neighbour - well maybe overseas - but instead has massive amounts of silver and fur. I'm a bit jealous because he also has reasonably easy access to elephants, so he has 3 luxes and we just 2? Also he may leave us the horses at Frumentarii because he has his own in the backlines.

Charriu I think I mentioned that in PB49 already:


I think I should not see the "Build a road: 1 turn" info. I think it came with BUG, but in general I have no way of knowing by ingame means. Domestically this feature is much appreciated, of course.

Demos, because we look pretty, let's hope it lasts:

[Miguelito]

Rusten, if you're able to before the turn rolls, can you log in and start axes in Agentes and Akritai? It doesn't delay the Agentes granary. Akritai has to slow build, but if there are more of these suckers around/ forming that could potentially be fatal. Might be able to make up for some with a chop.

[Miguelito]

Nevermind, I could do it myself

[Miguelito]

Btw, we could give gira some headaches by moving a chariot onto the hill facing his second city and interrupt his worker who is improving the plains sheep. But I feel like this is pretty much a textbook case of "small injury"? The same with Cairo, a chariot where he is setting up his third city could very much disrupt things (this is a not so small injury). But I've said numerous times here that I want good relations with him in this game. I'm wondering if I flash the chariot and then do nothing, if he takes it as a sign of benevolence, and what his conclusions would be?

To discuss the plan for the workers the upcoming turns... I was thinking A and C would each chop a forest at Frumentarii (4th) after farming the rice to get that granary whippable at size 2. The ivory is not super urgent in any of the cities. But we have to see if the barb will allow us to move a worker onto the forest N of the city. B (at the copper mine) was meant to start the FP farm, now that Akritai spends 4 turns on an axe I was thinking whether to chop instead so as not to delay the garanary as much. It's 4 workers turns for 2 turns worth of the city's production, which seems like kind of a bad trade?


Finally, yesterday I didn't take up your proposal about long term tile development, wit hall the stuff that was happening. In the short term I thik we agree that we need some floodplains farms on this map. I'm not sure how much you want to hold back on cottaging. For example, I was planning to farm 2 FP to share between Mag, Akritai, and stonefish, but cottage the rest, and a good part of the green tiles around the cap and Frumentarii as well.
The thing is, we want to arrive at guilds in a reasonable time, and I don't see where else the commerce is going to come from (note that we don't have any commerce resources).
I'm pretty sure Serfdom in this version is still at Feudalism, it was moved to monarchy only in 1.5 (the PBEM). With it, greenland farms are 3/0/2, which is ok I guess but not really awesome? And while I'm very open to spending some time in serfdom, we still want to cycle back to slavery periodically, and occasionally caste, so we don't get the benefits to their fullest. Watermills and in particular windmills will be pretty good, but they come too late to improve our first cities, so I will still want to cottage there. Finally, isn't there a risk if we go for a foodhammer heavy strategy that we end up with lots of production and nothing to build but ancient units? Once we get to currency that can be remedied with wealth builds, sure, but to arrive there I still think cottages are needed. I also get that you were eyeing at some sort of farms powered pyramids specialist economy? That's worth considering, but will also not get going really before about t100?

In short, I think in the short term (next 40 turns) I'd want to build a few farms more than usual, but still get a considerable number of cottages down. In the mid game (once we're around currency/mids/metal casting/feudalism) I agree to lay increased focus on windmills for new tiles and to a lesser degree watermills, but would still cottage occasionally where it makes sense.

[Miguelito]

t49

The barb spear counted cities as well and decided to stay out of our lands, instead he moved to the hill 1N. Perfect for us to do this:




I hope he wants a fight with our warrior, and ideally goes all the way to Cairo's border (ok this is not 100% the spirit of good neighbourhood I had been talking about, but he'll have to forgive me). Now Cairo can decide that he's had enough of us snooping around and try to kill my warrior, although it would be out of character for him to take that 30%? odds battle. If he does, I feel inclined to move the chariot or both towards his ongoing third city plant. Anyways, in that case it's now his own warrior luring the barb spear towards him.
Also seen: I'm back to being greedy and changed the axe at 10/35 back to granary in Akritai. If all goes well, we gain 9 food in the granary. I think it can only get really derailed if a second spear pops up (if the barb spear now moves straight back on Frumentarii the axe from Akritai would be late anyway if not whipped).
Do you have a strong opinion that we should finish that axe first?

We got naufragar's graphs and city counter this turn. Despite IMP, he's still at 2 cities. He's got Stonehenge to show for it, but it still seems pretty delayed.








So far I'm pretty happy with how it's looking.

We're making 26 bpt at current 100%, with 9gpt deficit. Accounting for prereq boni, we need ~340 raw beakers for Mono, a little over 13n turns. I think it's not unreasonable to restart research next turn, when we can sustain almost 11 100% turns, and hope that economic development can make up for the rest, or almost so. We'll have 2 turns where we can still upgrade the warrior to axe, if absolutely needed. Masonry will be useful soon enough even if we miss Judaism, for OR we'll need a religion , so let's hope we get it right there, but if Judaism falls that's probably the turn to fall back to sailing immediately.


Oh and Ruff apparently is in a turnsplit - continuation of the PB47/49 lovestory with superdeath?

[Miguelito]

I'm sick. Rusten, can you take the turn and make the t50 overview shot that Charriu asked for in the tech thread?

[Rusten]

Sure, np. Get well soon!

I'll play (late) tonight. Anything in particular I should know before logging in?