at last, greenline is playing the kind of game he wants to

[greenline]

Alternatively, I could save one builder charge for a chop, since the only good places to put the seowon for the second city are on forested hills. And that would help finish a monument there quicker.

[greenline]

Arirang grows to size 3. Working the plains hill forest won't finish the settler any faster, so I can work the truffles for a cool extra 5 gold per turn. That will add up fast.




Spotted Whosit's warrior in full retreat from a barb warrior. Seems like he messed up a bit when taking out the camp. Good news for me, since he will not be able to harass the new city without healing first.

[greenline]

A barb horse spotted on the way as well. Since I am running discipline for now, my warrior can hold off the horseman on good terrain. Annoyingly the horse archer is content to just fortify on that hill, and I don't want to risk moving the slinger in range.

[greenline]

Pottery in, writing due in 7t. Will need gold for two seowon tiles.

[greenline]

This is the... fourth turn of today? While I am loving the fast pace for the early game, it's made it hard to keep long term plans in my head.

Because the horse archer moved in range, I decided to attack the barbs. Hit the horseman with my warrior and the horse archer with my slinger. With both barbs damaged, even if they both gang up on the slinger, it should survive.

Mechanics question - I don't really understand zone of control. It seems like my warrior standing where he is should prevent the horseman from zipping two tiles past to hit the slinger. But in practice the horseman always can. Do horse units just ignore zone of control?

[Quagma Blast]

Mechanics question - I don't really understand zone of control. It seems like my warrior standing where he is should prevent the horseman from zipping two tiles past to hit the slinger. But in practice the horseman always can. Do horse units just ignore zone of control?

Yes, to the best of my recollection. It's been quite a while since I played the game but I remember thinking an interesting buff to the anticavalry units would be to let their ZoC hit cavalry.

[greenline]

Mechanics question - I don't really understand zone of control. It seems like my warrior standing where he is should prevent the horseman from zipping two tiles past to hit the slinger. But in practice the horseman always can. Do horse units just ignore zone of control?

Yes, to the best of my recollection. It's been quite a while since I played the game but I remember thinking an interesting buff to the anticavalry units would be to let their ZoC hit cavalry.

I see. That would be an interesting buff - anti cav units are still pretty weak even now that they have a boosting card. I would like to see if the Zulu anti cav UU is any good in MP, since they haven't been played often.




Got a pretty decent result from the barbs - the horse archer attacked my slinger, while the horseman stayed put instead of ganging up on the slinger. That let me move my warrior to block off any further attempts by the horseman to get to the slinger, which continued to whittle down the horse archer. If there's anything to take away from this, it is that you should always build an extra military unit when barbs are on. Handling the horse archer without the slinger would have been a lot more difficult.

Another barb scout of course decided to stop by, so I will need to build more units to deal with that. Thankfully Agoge will be coming online soon.




In the north, Whosit settled a second city. For some reason this didn't show up in the gossip reports - I guess you need higher diplomatic visibility for that. The speed of the settler being built suggests that Whosit skipped a builder. Since he is playing Rome, missing the craftmanship eureka won't even be a big deal with the extra culture. Rome does have fast openings - I will need to rely on science later on to outpace him. He also settled in a direction close to Venice, so I will need to move aggressively if I want to annex the city state.

The geopolitical question - is that worth it? Should I just satisfy myself with capturing or securing Zanzibar and then pivoting to finding and attacking CMF? Need to do more scouting.

[greenline]

Barbs didn't attack in the interturn. Hit the horse archer with the slinger to get the kill.




Happy to get this eureka out of the way. Will need archery sooner rather than later for dealing with the city states.




The loyalty and settler map shows that I won't really have room for a third city to the north settling where I planned. So the river will be a place to dig in against whosit. Definitely makes capturing Venice the first priority.

[greenline]

Settler still moving in place, zzz.

[greenline]

New city will be founded next turn. Question is whether it is worth dumping money right away to buy the banana hill, or waiting for later. It is only one extra food compared to the jungle hill.

Whosit has a scout running around here, thankfully not able to block the settler / warrior pair at this stage. Going to have to keep an eye on what he's up to. He will probably be in Agoge before me.