[SPOILERS] Chumchu and Cheater Hater winning throughout the ages

[chumchu]

It is a stretch at 8 tiles away from cap but it locks up so much land behind it and is beautiful and I want it.

8 of Iron seem like a good stepping stone, it does not interfer with the dot map, but it is not as good as it can be on this map. I want the wet corn in the first ring. 88 of iron seems like a better defensive city if we do not go for the grand prize.

[Cheater Hater]

88 of iron removes the gem city from consideration though--8 of iron allows that to be next without stretching so far (and the rice should be enough food until borders pop). Any idea if the green border is TBS's capital or second city?

[chumchu]

The green borders are both TBS's cities. Gem site is 8 from our capitol, seven from his capital [5 from our second city and seven from his].  If we do not settle it, I'm fairly certain he will. That's why I want 88 or gem and neither is very far from our second city.

Looking at TBS graphs, he has been ahead of us in production. Without slavery that means lots of chops. He has grassland corn instead of floodplains rice which is a 2 wt advantage. He seems to have ridden it, they were improved before ours and his cities are bigger [already 5 and 3]. I hope that we can catch up to second settler by having more workers, more forest left, and slaving out settlers.

Barbs in the south, and marble. I do not think it will be left for MoM or GLib but still very useful for epics, parthenon and taj mahal.



We have 3 workers and are getting 2 more before settlers. Medina will be whipped, mecca will not as it is already twice whipped.


I let the explorer detour to the north to discover the coast between me and TBS for trade.

[chumchu]

Drawing up plans for a 4-city horsemen rush. The idea is to surprise TBS by producing 8 units in 2 turns and attack 2 turns later. The idea is to precisely double whip horsemen in my two core cities for 2 horsemen each and time it to coincide with 5 chops, mostly in the expands to 1 turn units two turns in a row.

I can have 19 stored up prod per horse in core and 49 in the expands so I need about 6 workers and 2 chops per expand and 1 in the core cities.

Is this a good idea? How would you react if not in slavery?

[Cheater Hater]

If you think it'll work, it's certainly a way to try and win the game.

[chumchu]

What pushes me towards it is the following:

1) TBS is not in slavery and can not react quickly, especially if he does not realize the danger. This is the crucial part: can we sneak it by him? If I see mroe than 2-3 spears it will definately be off.

2) We are close. We will probably share borders after our first cities have been laid down

3) We do not have to commit hard until the whip/chop turn. Horsemen will be useful and so will those chops going into workers/settlers. Later wars are much more expensive as you hav to get by culture defenses, longbows etc.

3) TBS has a slightly better start than us and is setting up to accelerate that gap by academy and bulbing. We will be stronger economically in the later game with fin but we might not get there if TBS leverages that midgame tech advantage.

4) Spi and serfdom first allows access to vassalage for an extra promotion for no cost. His land is great and with Fin it will pay itself back easily. (especially if he puts don an academy as suspected)

[shallow_thought]

Hah. I remember Chumchu urging a horse rush in my SG.

It's certainly an interesting plan if TBS doesn't switch to slavery before you can attack. Has he switched at all so far, and if so, what is he in?

I also wonder what he is researching. If he's heading for Feudalism he may be able to get longbows out, particularly if he works out what you're thinking (I think he can pre-build archers and auto-upgrade?). But if he's doing something else (isn't a music rush common in a medieval start?) this could be fun...

I like the fact that the plan doesn't commit you to much until you press "go", and agree that you don't want to sit back and let TBS work on exploiting a small edge into a big one.

[chumchu]

Horsies are versatile and strong against archers which is what TBS is sporting now.

He is still in HR, Caste and OR. I would assume he is going for bureucracy first since he is in caste and growing his cap. The is probably to get an academy out for a bureaucap and rely on chops and imperilaist for settlers and workers. His land was more wooded than ours so that should work fine for him.

We are pulling quite even tech which means that we should hit feudalism maybe 5 turns before they hit bureaucracy. Ideally I want to time the units so that they come out the turn I get vassalage. Then we could attack him just before bureaucracy, It would be nicer to attack him earlier but I do not think it is doable tech and productionwise.

[chumchu]

The rush is off =(. I do not know how they manged to get it quite so fast. We saw the GNP bulge in the demographics but I did not think it would be enough. Maybe they had trade with two neighbors, or got their gems mine online early, or produced/wealth research or got an acedemy and I did not see the notice of a great person being born. Now they have whipped their capital for a settler while we are still a few turns away.



Our land. The timings have been off due my lack of simming, lacking 1 food to grow in a few cases. I think workboat first may hav been a bad idea with clams instead of fish.




Scouting info. They still have a lot of forest left even after chopping.

[chumchu]

I've been traveling for a week which has meant less time for reporting. Now I'm back and there have been a number of turns. I have almost dealt with the first barbarian invasion: 2 axes, 1 sword, 1 spear. An axe killed my first horseman which I had used to shore up defenses in a threatened city =( I also lost my explorer to the barbs. Apart from that I have got by ok. A significant annoyance was the spearman pillaging my horses while I was building 3 horse men. I had a little to few units to do proper fogbusting. Some of them were drawn back to settle the city near TBS, the others were forced back by the incoming hordes.



Warrior is fogbusting for the 2 new cities coming soon, sheep gold and sheep iron. Marble city will wait until I have more workers and units. As soon as I get a galley (barbs forced me to divert cap into land units instead) I will be going for the island city for the 3 food resources and the trade routes. The fish city on TBS border will be settled soon as well. That means 3 work boats and a galley out of my cap which will be busy for some time.





In the demographics department we are doing OK. TBS is the early leader, already at 6 cities and 2 techs.





Our GNP is rising which has a bit to do with researching bureaucracy at a nice discount from other civs and feudalism.


Prod and food are mediocre, but that is not unexpected since we have no infrabonus and are not in bureaucracy
 





It looks they other have lost some units to barbs as well and are building up defenses.




No suprise that the industrious dutch snatched the first wonder. They are still at 3 cities though which is not good when TBS is at 6 and the land is this great. Gavagai is at 4 as well.






Ot4e has been spending a fair bit of espionage on us which leads me to suspect that he is our western neighbor (which would be so yummy for a camel rush), unfortunately I have not done any scouting since our explorer died and teh barbs invaded. Will get on that asap. The build is basically growing on military units, stagnating on workers and whipping out settlers. Will do that until I am out of good spots, I have 5 scouted at the moment. After that I will switch into OR for some forges, barracks, madrassas in key cities and try to use the marble for any wonders left. I'm hoping for religion spreads here tp make that cheaper.

The tech plan is straight to guilds after bureaucracy as I think cities and units will be decisive early. I could try for a bulb to speed that but I do not think my cities would be ready for knights yet anyway. The plan for the first GP is an academy in the capitol, that takes 34 gp turns which can be accomplished during two periods of caste for border popping. Ideally I want it in the island city that has 3 food resources but not much else, but that might be too slow. I could speed it up significantly with pacifsm and generate it in our second city, Bösvikt, instead. That seems like a distraction, but having the academy before any expensive teching would be great.