My name is Ozymandias, King of China: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yeah, you guys need an update.

A few turns ago, my northern axe made contact with Sian's warrior. Actually, my axe had moved onto the tundra hill forest 7 of its current position. On Sian's turn, he moved his worker onto that tile, freaked, and moved his warrior towards my axe. The worker has since withdrawn, and all my axe is doing is attempting to keep Sian distracted.

As for now. As you may have heard, SAT declared on Sian. Yay! Took the city of Toga on the first turn of the war. Multiple things to note. Obviously, the cleared jungle is where Sian settled, in an attempt to steal SAT's fish tile. Like that would ever work, Sian's 2nd ring vs SAT's 1st is a losing proposition unless you have a massive advantage, like say a holy city

SAT took the city on the first turn of the war. I have no evidence that Sian's already teched Iron working to clear the jungle stone. IW's pretty expensive this early, I'd rather go for say Maths. Therefore, SAT's attack wasn't via the land bridge, but was instead via a galley attack. The tile 336 of Sian's city can't have been visible. Especially when the attack happened before Toga's borders popped.

What else? SAT kept the city. So he thinks he can take the city of Chiton ! That scares me, I hope Sian can whip out a proper defence.

As for my attack, my first chariot is staged in position. I have 2 workers who can road and attack next turn. I have made zero hostile moves in this area (which actually makes it even more suspicious ), I haven't threatened Sian's worker. T59, Chlamys had 11h in its box. What will Sian do? If he whips on his T60, there will be 2 units, meaning I can't take it.

Therefore, if Sian doesn't whip (unlikely, considering the hot war and how desperately he needs military), then I will attack with my chariot at 65% odds. Good enough. If there are 2 units in the city, I will have to reconsider. If they are both axes, I will stage my second chariot, and hopefully attack T62. Because Sian is likely to have moved his units out of his city in an attempt to reinforce Chiton (though it could be too late). But that's okay, two chariot attacks is decent at killing 2 axes taking a city, and I'll be able to bring along 2 axes of my own as well. If Sian whips a spear, I do the same, but hope that he moves it out of the city. Unlikely. In any case, I rate my chances of getting a city kill at ~30% odds. But that's okay, SAT just crippled Sian . And I doubt SAT's economy is holding out particularly well.

So what is this course of strategy costing me? I don't regret putting hammers into units. I need them. Tankra's spending EP on me, and he just had another power hike during T59. He's slightly ahead of me on the T59 graphs, but not enough to be scary. I've shown a spear to Tank in Lck, that thing can kill alot of chariots. Not to mention I have 4h in a spear in Lck, which can be whipped at any time.

The real cost is the worker turns. I've had a pair of workers lingering near TCR. They're not doing anything really useful beside roading, in fact, on T59 I had to move both workers onto the stone, and I roaded the stone on T60. Really inefficient, but I've been seeking to hide my workers, and there's not much else they can do. If I can't attack on T61, then they'll move 8 and road an empty plains . If still no attack on T62, then I'll withdraw them to start working on my east coast crabs city.

Cities! All pictures taken at EoT.

Capital. Needs 11F to grow to S9. I currently make 7 surplus food. Therefore, T61, I switch from the lake to a scientist. T62, I will have built a new cottage, and I will work that to grow.

First city to get to work 2 scientists! No improved tiles for it to grow onto, unless you count the capital's tiles, or the lake. I might actually get my food bar to 19/21, switching to a settler, and whipping it so that my food bar shrinks below 19, which would effectively give me an extra turn of growth. Yeah, that's a nice micro trick, is it worth it though?

TCR. I'm considering taking a citizen off the oasis to become a scientist, as I will grow anyway. But I've decided against it, I need food if I'm going to fuel my whips. And I'm going to need to whip out some missionaries from this city to speed my Aqueduct/Hanging Gardens build. And get some culture into Lck and later cities.

City was originally called Zap70, but I've decided to save that name for later. Because I'm trying to keep it as physically accurate as possible . In any case, I will have chopped a forest on the turn Maths comes in. That will go into a workboat, which will be hooked on T63.

Demos and graphs. The demonumbers look pretty nice, but I feel like I'm falling behind. I need more cities and I need more citizens. Great GNP, thanks to Culture of course

F2 screen. ouch, maintenance is brutal on this map. I'm making only 45 commerce right now. Sure, I have a couple of cottage growths coming up, and a gold mine unworked but still, I don't know how many cities I'll be able to afford when I do my pre-HG wave of settlers.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Sian didn't whip!

1 chariot vs 1 25% fortified hilltop axe. No promotions.

65% odds victory

Part of me wonders if Sian's guard was down despite my power spike due to my roading of the Stone. Maybe it looked like I teched Iron Working on my end? I actually have a good guess of where Iron is, due to Sareln's comment about the strategic resource situation. Toga apparently stole one of SAT's strategic resources, leading me to think the tile 33 of TCR has Iron.

In any case, this makes up for my previous fuck-up. And I got a city out of it! With a free forge, though I don't have Metal Casting.

Hmmm, I smell an opportunity to steal the Colossus from SAT. I'll have to mull over the cost and the trade-offs. In any case, I have 3 easily accessible forests to chop. I could whip a granary, overflow onto Colossus, and each forest is 55h after IND, Copper and OR.

Finally, I just want to make the point to the dipshits that get indignant about people who put effort into their micro, thinking it gives them less flexibility: I had a chariot in position 2 turns after horses were connected. Strong micro gives you more power and flexibility.

[Commodore]

Who on Earth says that micro gives less flexibility? I believe they must have "micro" confused with "autism".

[Nicolae Carpathia]

On T62, Mathematics comes in. On ~T65, Iron Working will come in. I expect the Stone to be connected on ~T68, or later.

Food bar will be 18/24 on T62. The earliest I can get the OR bonus is T65.

My goal is to maximise population, Whip and overflow the Aqueduct into the HG.

Aqueduct is 67h. HG is 201h.

How to do this. I'm going to think up of the fastest way to do this, which allows maximum contingencies.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I just made a test, and wow, I underestimated how fast I can build the HG using whip overflow. I can overflow 16h from the aqueduct whip alone. That plus 20 base production turns into 99h into the HG. With the settler whip, I can build the HG before my settler gets into position.

Hmm, maybe I should reverse the order, whip settler, then whip Aqueduct, then overflow absolutely everything into the HG.

[Commodore]

Are you at the point of recouping the investment at 20h/1pop/city, or is it for denial/GPP?

[Catwalk]

Does HG only give you pop in existing cities? Or is the timing important just for sake of getting the new city up as fast as possible.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Are you at the point of recouping the investment at 20h/1pop/city, or is it for denial/GPP?

Oh, easily. I'm at 6 cities after nabbing the one from Sian. I intend on settling the filler cities for the crab and the capital's eastern sheep. If I'm greedy, I can also settle Sian's fish spot, but I'm not sure I can defend it properly, and with the current level of commerce, I'm not sure I can even afford it without losing money at 0% science. There's a reason I wanted cottages at the capital

So, 8 cities, 160 base hammers. With Organised Religion, Aqueduct + HG is 127h. Without, it's 148h. So yes, a profit, and my capital can afford to whip better than my peripheral cities that have yet to get their granaries up. As for the relative value of my population inside my capital? Right now most of my capital's citizens are working cottages, and once I've gone down to 0% science (which I'm on the verge of), it doesn't matter who works the tiles. And both of the filler cities can work my capital's cottages

In fact, everything about the HG is useful. The +2 health from the requisite aqueduct? My capital is going to be my largest most developed city, of course I'll need it. The global +1 health? Few of my cities are settled on freshwater, I'll need the extra food. The GPP? I want to load my capital with Engineer GPP, so as to maximise the chances of a Machinery bulb. Beating SAT to the wonder, considering they already know the location of Iron? Hell yeah.

Does HG only give you pop in existing cities? Or is the timing important just for sake of getting the new city up as fast as possible.

Yep, existing cities only. Hence, I need 2 turns between the settler popping out and completing the HG before I get the free pop in that city.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I've had a play with my Sim, and it turns out that Whipping Settler --> Whipping Aqueduct doesn't give quite enough, even with Organised Religion.

The settler whip at size 10 gives 37h overflow. The Aqueduct whip should give 19h overflow. Interesting, it seems that whipping settler, then whipping the aqueduct, doesn't give the full 56h. Instead, I lost 3 hammers, could it be from the 37h getting divided by the 1.25 OR "bonus", after passing through the aqueduct build?

In any case, if I want to complete it on T68, I'll want to put an extra chop into it. Lucky for me, I have some workers around. He'll need to step onto the forest on T65.

Though I will need to put Organised Religion in my capital. That delays religion to my other cities. That's okay, I can build them from my capital now.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Oh my, SAT just captured the city of Chiton. This is a big deal! Sian built the Buddhist Shrine in there last turn. What the hell was he thinking ?

Sian also lost his source of copper. He's basically dead, down to just his capital. So much for the concern about 'phracts. SAT will capture Stonehenge, and use the Buddhist holy city to culturally dominate the land between us.

What to do now? SAT have a huge army. I'm going to have to look over the last two turns to approximate how much they lost in the capture of Chiton. I'm not one to get bullied, I doubt they will try that against me.

I expect SAT to make a run for currency, to rescue their lagging economy. It's going to take a while for them to absorb their new holdings, though the failgold will help. What I need to do is peacefully grab the left-side of Sian's land-blob. SAT paid alot to capture the majority of Sian's land, I don't think I'm in a position to compete for that.

The downside of settling Sian's west is that I will have to build everything myself, instead of grabbing already-developed cities. While SAT are rescuing their lagging economy, I'm going to need to make a run for the crucial mid-game wonders. What does that mean? I'm now thinking of going Sailing-Calendar after Currency, whip a settler and load him onto a whipped galley at LAT, settle (on top of?) the marble, and then stack some whips, or even chops, into the MoM. TCR is a good place for that, with a couple of remaining forests. After that, a Parthenon run? I doubt SAT are working many specialists, remember that AT picked a FIN leader for a One City Challenge.