[SPOILERS] scooter's Rule of Three

[scooter]

Time to catch up.





I've obviously been angling for Hanging Gardens for a bit. Not sure if I mentioned it here explicitly or not as the pace was so fast that updates slipped, but it was easy to see from screenshots. Barbarians from that hut pop caused problems in landing it (can see here my Sheep got pillaged and was covered right before taking this shot). But I did work towards it. It had good value to me because 1) I had the city lead and Stone/Forge/OR, and 2) the health was actually useful in my floodplains cities. The question was how many settlers I could squeeze out.





I got this one down first. I had the ability to finish HG on this turn (T94), but the 11th city was due the very next turn. So I had a decision to make. Do I delay 1T? The reason it was a difficult decision was that Cornflakes finished an aqueduct a turn or two before this which gave me pause. He shouldn't need the health as he kept a ton of capital forests, so the only reason he'd build an Aqueduct was if he was going for it. Neither Yuris nor Commodore had aqueducts in their capitals, so I knew they weren't a concern at least. Cornflakes' aqueduct was so fresh that I figured I had a couple more turns, so I gambled though and pushed it one more turn. He doesn't whip that city, so I knew he was slow-building it, but I couldn't figure out his timing. My best guess was that he had around 3T to go, so I did delay it 1T. Worst-case scenario I got a chunk of gold at 100% multipliers, and I needed the Aqueduct anyway, so it was a fine risk to take IMO.





Settled this spot next. Ignore the white borders, I accidentally pressed the keyboard shortcut for it when this was taken. This one felt like I was settling it in the "outfield" of my civ, so I went with this suggestion. I badly need that Incense for the happy, so I'll be glad to hook that.





And landed it end of turn. A bunch of cities are a mess as a result of the pop growth, but an 11-city HG when nobody else has > 8 cities feels pretty good. So, what's next is the more interesting question.





Well first off, I reclaimed my Pigs. Finally. But more importantly.





I'm up to 5 Libraries, and 3 more finish next turn. That gets me to 8. I need 9 to complete the quest I got which will give me a third scientist in the capital and +2b on a random Library, so that's what I'm angling for next.





Also got a very timely chunk of cash - got near thet maximum. Ignore Amigos. That is a combination of HG pop growth, shuffling MP forward to deal with barbs, and good old-fashioned dereliction of duties.





The main development was Commodore boxing me in here with this city plant. This lead me to my next question was, do I have enough of a footprint already? It sort of feels like I do.





I'm at 11 cities. I can settle 1-2 more jungle front cities south of Triangle/States, or I could skip them, either way really. I also have backlines for probably 4 more northern cities. I sort of wonder if I should just focus on making my borders large and safe and settle backlines cities, get to 15, and then spam Knights and see if I can be opportunistic, or at least make myself safe. My border with Commodore is extremely stable, while the Commodore/Cornflakes border looks less stable, so I'm sort of inclined to keep the Commodore border stable. This is especially true because my border with Yuris is much less trusting, and therefore I'd like to not invite a second front.


Basically, my current inclination is to accept my borders, settle my backlines, and start growing cities vertically. I am quite happy constrained at the moment which is one downside. However, I could still revolt to HR, and the Music Artist is right there. So one thought is to grab the Music Artist and fire a Golden Age to give me a little development bump, and use HR to grow my cities a bit more onto more cottages. This will also unlock the ability to explode the capital, which is really in need of some exploding.


The alternative idea is to simply eat a turn of Anarchy now and save the Artist. Because there's lots of situations an Artist would come in handy. Such as.


1) Save the GA for when we're closer to Knights and when the cities are all a bit taller.


2) Save the Artist for a strategic culture bomb for a spot where I can setup a raze


3) Save the Artist for a strategic culture bomb when a threatened city needs better defenses


In this kind of game, having one on ice might not be the worst thing? So my gut right now is to eat the Anarchy right now for HR since I'm worker and happy constrained in a bunch of cities right now, and it would help those immediately. I want to start ballooning my capital ASAP, and HR is really the only way I can do it. Academy due in 3-4T, so there's also incentive to start handing these cottages back to the capital, and I'll need happy for that to be viable.

[scooter]

ARE YOU SERIOUS.





This city is going to have to burn. This is tilting enough that I'm vaguely considering culture bombing it. (Don't worry, I'll talk myself out of it.)





Academy next turn.



Oh also, I did eat the turn of Anarchy to get into HR and plan to save the Artist for an opportune moment.

[scooter]

Got the Academy and then got Music Artist end of turn. Tarkeel did concur with me that hanging onto the Artist for a prime opportunity made sense, so that's what we'll do for now.





And then immediately followed it up with the quest completion, greatly boosting the Great Library effect.





I'd love to get National Epic in here, but the lack of Marble really makes it challenging. In fact, I haven't seen any yet this game. In the meantime, I'm handing all cottages over to the capital as it grows. I got into HR and hooked Incense unlocking a few more sizes, and I'll add some more MP to grow it further. Want to get this city to BigMcLargeHuge ASAP.


Also, I feel the obligation to explain myself as to why the only mined hill is the one that's not riverside. The simple explanation is that hill was roaded early for Reasons, which led to me occasionally dumping a turn into it while walking over it. So when finishing Hanging Gardens, it was very cheap to just finish it.






Also got this event. I figured the second one is worth 1.25bpt which takes 85 turns to beat out 105b today, so taking the raw beakers seemed like a no-brainer. The odds of this game lasting 85 more turns seems 50/50 at best.





Speaking of, Cornflakes and Yuris are finally about to have tight borders. I'm working on moving a Scout into Yuris territory now where I'll watch for signs of trouble. The other players have built up more military than me as of late, so I need to monitor. I'm currently trying to get the Barracks/Stables combo everywhere. General game-plan is to get to Guilds safely while growing onto a bunch more cottages and then see where we're at. In general I'm hoping the others will be concerned about Cornflakes. I'm considering offering them some sort of trade indicating I'll give them peace if they attack Cornflakes. However, Cornflakes is such a threat that it might happen anyway, and I'm not so sure I want to offer something for it? I dunno. As it happens, we're all saving gold this turn, so here's those numbers:


Cornflakes: 101gpt
Commodore: 31gpt
Yuris: 62gpt
Scooter: 71gpt


Commodore is in Representation so he's probably closer to myself and Yuris. But importantly, these numbers are despite the fact that Cornflakes' production dwarfs us all by virtue of the Lumbermill/growth spam he's done. I might not seem that far behind, but in reality commerce is all I've got. Under normal circumstances we would be talking about how Cornflakes will win if nobody does anything, but incentives would still make it hard to do anything. In 3-city elim, actually beating him feels achievable. So we'll see.

[Tarkeel]

Also, I feel the obligation to explain myself as to why the only mined hill is the one that's not riverside. The simple explanation is that hill was roaded early for Reasons, which led to me occasionally dumping a turn into it while walking over it. So when finishing Hanging Gardens, it was very cheap to just finish it.

Ahem. My handover to Scooter was leaving a worker on that hill to facilitate roading eastwards from the capital. Three reasons for being on the hill and not the floodplain S of it:
1) The floodplain takes an extra worker turn
2) The hill would give better access towards the iron and further north
3) The floodplain was already cottaged

[scooter]

Also, I feel the obligation to explain myself as to why the only mined hill is the one that's not riverside. The simple explanation is that hill was roaded early for Reasons, which led to me occasionally dumping a turn into it while walking over it. So when finishing Hanging Gardens, it was very cheap to just finish it.

Ahem. My handover to Scooter was leaving a worker on that hill to facilitate roading eastwards from the capital. Three reasons for being on the hill and not the floodplain S of it:
1) The floodplain takes an extra worker turn
2) The hill would give better access towards the iron and further north
3) The floodplain was already cottaged

Oh, to be clear "Reasons" meant I could not remember the reasons, not that I thought it was a bad thing. I thought I had roaded the hill because I also noticed early on that roading the hill and roading the floodplains were effectively the same, so the hill was actually probably better to road for the reasons you stated.





Sent this screenshot to Tarkeel earlier today. Yuris and Cornflakes had closed borders. And then tonight's turn arrived.





I'm surprised Yuris did not try to get across the river first. The amphibious penalty is going to sting. However, I'm thrilled at this development. In fact, my military is falling behind in size quite a bit. My large Creative borders and jungle belt give me quite a bit of advance warning, though. I sent a message to Commodore attempting to imply to him that I would give him peace if he declared on Cornflakes. I made no such promises to Yuris. I'd love to see Cornflakes lose a city or two while giving myself an opening to burn that Pig city that's been a thorn in my side.

[scooter]

Game is in a delicate spot right now. See, when Yuris kicked this off, I sent diplo to Commodore that attempted to signal that if he went in on Cornflakes, I would give him a safe border.





He replied with this. This was 3T ago, so I'm expecting him to join next turn. But Yuris is doing most of the work really.





It does not appear that he took many losses. So Cornflakes is 1/3 dead.





Undeterred, Yuris is going for the throat. This looks like a mistake that will get his 2-movers wiped, but Yuris surely has better vision than me, so it's hard to say. However, if Yuris gets one more raze, Commodore can KO Cornflakes with just one more raze. And I guess I'm left wondering if I actually want that?





I benefit almost 0 from Cornflakes dying. I benefit a lot from him losing a city, perhaps two, and whipping hard. But if he actually dies, Commodore and Yuris get to take all his well-improved land while I'm left on my little peninsula. What I really want out of this is for Cornflakes to be weakened and be brought to his knees while remaining in the game. I'd like him to remain in first place, but be easy to take out later by virtue of being 2/3 eliminated. And I don't really know how to thread that needle, though I have a few ideas. Interesting game!








Two marginal events. Sure why not.

[scooter]

I've been building towards an attack on Yuris for a little bit here. I need to intervene to some degree on Cornflakes behalf.





Particularly because Commodore joined in as expected and also razed a city. That means Cornflakes is down to his last life.





I've been tracking Yuris' sole Scout each turn attempting to keep him from seeing me moving east, occasionally moving into weird places. So I was thrilled on this turn when he moved down to this area.





Placed the Tenors up here on this same turn.





Here's my move incoming which Yuris will finally see this turn. The key thing is his supply lines are long. He's got nothing behind Frankfurt at all, which I've been watching for a bit. Importantly, 1-movers from Berlin cannot make it in time. My goal is to burn Frankfurt, retaking cultural control over the area while also burning Colossus. This will knock Yuris out of the war and leave CF to a 1v1 with Commodore. We'll see what Yuris is able to get into the city. I don't have a totally overwhelming force, but I think it'll be enough. (2 more Chariots will join as well.)





Demos have swung in my favor as Cornflakes whips himself pretty hard. I've whipped my eastern cities quite hard too, but with way more cities than everyone else, I'm a bit of a target now myself.


Of course, if Cornflakes dies, his well-developed land will be totally up for grabs for the other two players.





I think Cornflakes will hold judging by this power graph. But I don't really have eyes on his west front.


Edit: As I type this, Commodore logs in, and it occurs to me I may be about to see Cornflakes die on PBSpy

[scooter]

I wonder if Yuris didn't see my stack somehow?





No whips empire-wide, no new units, and no attempts to reinforce. So, in we go.





Frankfurt is 100% toast, it's just a question of the casualty count. Less clear is whether or not I can also burn Cologne. I was hoping to avoid another round of whips in my pretty tapped-out eastern cities, but a few crossbow whips might be enough to get me over the top on a second raze.


Cornflakes is still alive. Trying to get my Chariot over to his front with Commodore.

[Zed-F]

Good luck on the attack! Assuming you are able to raze Frankfurt at a mild cost, when would you be able to hit Cologne?

[scooter]

Good luck on the attack! Assuming you are able to raze Frankfurt at a mild cost, when would you be able to hit Cologne?

No real plans. I did a medium build-up rather than anything large-scale, in part because this little mini-stack is sort of technologically backwards as-is. This is pretty much just me being opportunistic and reducing Yuris' HP by 1/3 while permanently reclaiming the Pigs and burning Colossus. Also potentially relieving pressure on Cornflakes so that he can stay alive and be a useful counter-weight. I think if he dies first, I'm next.