It's turn 54 in PB 54, and since I missed the t50 update, let's try a major one now.
Here's an empire overview:
but we've seen those often enough. Let's look into the cities:
Mag and Agentes (1st and 2nd cities) get posted together because their course is pretty much interconnected thanks to the shared pig, which is the strongest tile we have. I deliberated where to work it this turn - in Agentes it facilitates this turn's growth (into unhappiness), in Mag it speeds growth up by a turn as well. Agentes won because 1) I want to fast track the next project there (worker if Rusten doesn't convince me otherwise, see below) 2) it has less whip unhappy, making me feel less bad about whipping it so soon again. But next turn the pig is going to Mag and going to stay there for the foreseeable future, which means Agentes will have to work the plains forest while at >sz 2.
Feels bad, but the city needs a lot of hammers right now, and it can't all be 2pop whips, as it has to finish the axe and get 2 WBs out. The plan for the new worker is to support that with a chop as his first action, then support the southern plant, maybe getting a cottage down or another whip out before.
Mag can grow to size 5, then whip a settler.
Akritai hasn't really started yet, although it's contributing a lot of hammers already from the plains cow, copper mine, and PH city tile. The FP farm SW of it finishes next turn, giving the city some actual growth curve. I plan to farm S of that as well, shared between Akritai, Mag, and green dot. The other 2 FP I'm thinking of cottaging, as well as the river grass tiles. This makes this initial hammer city mid term one of the commerce centers, which I think it's suited better for than the cap. I feel like I'll get heat from Rusten for that idea
I think this city should never whipped down to below size 3 if we can at all avoid it. If I can I'll take 2 turns to finish the monument after the axe, to claim the row of forests in the north before Cairo does.
Frumentarii, home to our third best tile (fish is better, you can argue if the plains sheep is with 4/1/2) and soon provider of much needed happiness. It got two chops of hammers worth into its granary this turn and will whip next. I've mentioned several times that I hope to make it holy, timing its growth and whips in the other cities with the Mono research. The culture would be very handy as a bulwark vs. gira's CRE, and to radiate into the center of our subcontinent. I'm holding back on building a monument here, is that an error? Development wise I see it being a hammer pump short term - kind of like Akritai but worse, although with better initial food so more whips. Mid term I see some cottages on the FP and grassland tiles.
The tech screen, which shows our current high risk / high reward play:
scooter, whom we don't know, has a leg ahead on monotheism, having founded hinduism. With Gandhi he also has motivation to go for it. We can just check the event log every turn and hope here that he's content with one religion and sets other priorities (maybe even going for CoL like I had been fantasizing - well I'm still thinking of doing that in a few dozen turns). naufragar has sailing, gira writing, we don't know who has archery, although there is a slight indication that it might be Cairo, however weird that would be. Meditation is with Elkad.
Now to the demos and graphs, which are a pretty sight:
We are doing really well in food & hammers, and that is with 3/4 granaries, and 4th incoming
. Also land area. GNP includes 2 holy cities, gira's 6 CRE culture, and naufragar's Stonehenge, while we get just 3 culture/turn with a single monument. The graph also seems to show that the 4 people ahead of us in GNP are all our neighbours, and no one of them seems to be going for monotheism (we had 0 KTB on masonry, and 0 so far on polytheism). Which doesn't mean that scooter can not still beat us.
Of course there is no perfect world:
Cairo got 4k power in t53 (spear), 3k in 52(archer? hunting + pop?), -1k in 51 (whip), and 6k (axe) in 50, when he saw our chariot.
We are now at just 0.80 of Cairo's power, where the number turns red
.
Of course, this can all be explained as a defensive measure so far: The axe was probably planned for barbs/to have some defense, then he noticed that he'll really need a spear. He can't attack with this yet, and it would be quite out of character and unwisely early. He does not show signs of establishing a turn order so far either. But, he's AGG, he may be wary of our early good stats, and may have started the game with a plan to act out of character?
We're getting an axe in 2 turns and I should probably have the next one whippable in Akritai right away (it's quite difficult though to engineer 2pop unit whips in this city with all those hammer tiles, but I guess I can spend a turn working the three FP (one farmed). The problem of course is that our Achilles' heel short term is right on his border, with the copper mine there. A stack coming from the north can first fork Akritai and Frumentarii, then move to the forested hill (I should probably get rid of that forest asap) S of the copper and make us decide whether we defend the city or our metal. As long as all those forests are there (and we have so little vision), this is a real problem.
Our advantage is a by now really good production base. The metal situation will of course be fixed when we settle the southern copper, more on that below.
Thankfully gira's graph is flat.
I'll note that we have been quite passive with our two chariots, which would have been a great headache for either of our neighbours five turns ago. This was a deliberate decision. My gameplan is still to have Cairo as a friend, and while gira is marked as the first expansion, that is up for cataphracts, or maybe horse archers if the opportunity presents itself (but he died to numids in PB52, so he'll take care about that, moreso as pindi who did it is his dedlurker here). Gira's PB52 behaviour gave me the impression that he sticks with a grudge, and this is something I would not want to drag along with us until guilds, even if it meant some short term advantage.
I'm pretty sure though neither of them will honour the sign of friendship, and just see it as us being busy with other stuff / timid. What do you think of my call here Rusten?
In some lighter news, here is a plan for the scout (who has really not profited off his early hunting bonus. In 49 I had a medic scout at this point, this one has killed a single wolf):
Next turn, the workers will road the ivory - Frumentarii will be back to size 1 working the rice, and the road is needed to connect the resource - so he can get to the tile N of where the warrior is. Next, SE of the peak - assuming Cairo's borders have not expanded yet - then try to get through the Cairo/Elkad gap and find new contacts (we're at or over 43 EP on everyone from this turn on, so it's about time). Mind you, the barb spear could pick him up anytime
.
To close this, here is
the empire's war hero in the fight against the barbarians:
If you read the wikipedia article, you see that he eventually revolted against the emperor and was exiled. I should have picked another Byzantine general then, but actually that seems to have been a pretty standard outcome among them. Good thing civ4 units don't rebel.
End of report. We're not done here, as Rusten raised some good points which need discussion:
(October 12th, 2020, 10:30)Rusten Wrote: Where is the barb spear right now? I'm not sure why you're risking the warrior moving it into fog at this point. Losing that means losing 15 hammers as we need them for military police anyway. Could argue that losing it means losing 35 (or 25) hammers as we can no longer produce warriors.
The spear hasn't been seen since he disappeared from the hill 3N1W of Frumentarii 2 turns after we founded the city, so I hope he's somewhere at Elkad's (who I'll note most likely has no copper). My flawed idea with the warrior was to fogbust/protect the granary chop at Frumentarii, but I admit that this wouldn't really work. He's now moving south, as I'm moving the Frumentarii warrior (which can't be easily upgraded anymore, anyways) to the cap as MP.
(October 12th, 2020, 10:30)Rusten Wrote: #2) Yellow dot is terrible. It will piss off cairo (and maybe more people) and contribute almost nothing as it doesn't have a food resource. Big diplomatic hit for a city that takes a long time to contribute. I'd much rather conquer this spot later.
good, let's settler everything else and hope Cairo (or better, Elkad) has taken care of it by then so I don't feel tempted and come back to it.
(October 12th, 2020, 10:30)Rusten Wrote: #1) I would get 0 workers before we get 2 settlers (stone and deercopper). But if we whip 2 settlers (4 ->2) in Mag and Agentes the worker in Akritai is fine. Alternatively worker in Agentes and settlers in Mag and Akritai if you worry about worker turns.
Here we're following different agendas. I was now trying to prepare the double dark blue dot plant in the south. Here's the area again, for reference:
This is why I was talking about getting all those hammers out of Agentes - overambitious? I have to admit I haven't simmed it yet, might try tomorrow. But the worker then makes a lot of sense to me, because whipping a settler in 2 turns would not really be helpful for that plan. The fur would be very nice with all the growth in our cities. I feel awfully tempted to move the eastern dot 1S for Moai, but the much faster fur is probably more important.
So, why would I rather do this over stonefish/copperdeer at this point?
- stonefish very much needs culture, and a granary, and has 3 forests (while we have 3 workers total). The point is, it would benefit tremendously from a t0 missionary if we land judaism (confu will be too late). Then 2 forests give 50 hammers into the granary, and the rest is obtained easily working the (bare) stone for 2 turns (or if we get a third worker in the quarry for one turn - probably overkill). Monument would not be needed. Without religion/OR, the granary comes later, then the monument needs an immediate whip, then we just start the 10t counter for the fish; or monument before granary, which is also ugly - it's all so much slower.
- copperdeer sounds good given my Cairo paranoia above. Orange dot looks really bad to me though - doesn't share the sheep, and invalidates the tactically excellent hill border city vs gira. So again, a city that grows on a 4f tile, needs a monument asap (and the copper would still be inside borders 16 turns after founding if the monument is not straight double chopped in), and would like itself a granary quite soon as well. So again much sweeter with a missionary (while the whole point of double dark blue is that early culture isn't as urgent).
I can be swayed towards copperdeer given the Cairo situation, although if we take that serious this has to mean the hated orange dot. I would also think that the first 2pop whip at Akritai can go into a settler - if we don't need units urgently - to found the first light blue dot and slowly get it started.
As Agentes grows to size 4 this turn, we have to decide on this rather fast.
Finally, new question: barracks? Where, and at which point start growing on them? I can imagine Frumentarii quite soon, while at Akritai I'd rather get a second axe out first.
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