[68] Miguelito's famous last words, and Amicalola's sighs

[Miguelito]

Nah, that sounds cooler than our own . I'll stay with Kroth.

[Amicalola]

Kroth (haven't found a better protmanteau) are peacefuller than expected!


It can't even be that they would try to block the corn, because they've seen the worker. Anyway, the plan was wheat all along.
I also moved away our scout. Surely that secures peaceful relations until samurais . It's also important to scout Comm's horse, thankfully we can do that even without having to walk behind his capital.



last in everything!



Interestingly, one of Comm or yuris did not take mining for their first tech. Either it's Comm rushing archery (but that's too early), or yuris also went fishing. I found that 3 strong food sources for the capital alone is too much, so I went with worker->warriors>settler->(axe/WB/...). What would be your guess Amica? Kroth and Comm both went WB first it appears. But they are just now starting the worker with 9 fh per turn, 10 after BW.

My guess is that it bodes ill for us. fishing is possible but I don't know how likely it is. Archery is pretty plausible in always war. Do we have any realistic defence against an archer choke?

Edit: I like the smilie. Civforum has a few gems. I'm partial to the grumpy one.

[Miguelito]

In the end Kroth couldn't let my misstep pass without revenge:


The question now is if they want an eye for an eye and leave after a turn, or if they stay until the warrior comes out.
The good news is that even in the latter case it doesn't set us back even a bit. We were due to work the oasis for a few turns anyways in order to get BW in time, so that just comes earlier. Just when the warrior comes out (and the worker goes for the corn), we have to find a way to both improve corn and shield the wheat and bananaforest from his scout. But I think that's possible.

My guess is that it bodes ill for us. fishing is possible but I don't know how likely it is. Archery is pretty plausible in always war. Do we have any realistic defence against an archer choke?

We have copper under the capital from t22 on. Also I've come to the conclusion that AW is still pitboss - it's never a zero sum game, and just because war is declared doesn't mean you have to be pressing all the time. What I mean is, Commodore probably has better things to do early on.
What is scary is the dogs/spear choke a bit later.

[Miguelito]

Driving that Roman scout away.
Both Comm and Thoth have grown to 3 so, so still not building workers. I don't really know where that is heading, but should probably scout towards Thoth because surely a warrior could appear anytime and we want to farm & eventually settle in that direction.
At the same time I really want to uncover Comm's horse tile while it's still safe, so doing that first.
The plan has us getting 3 warriors before the settler, we'll see how well that works out. I still think very early axes are unlikely, as it's 35h that would be missing in own development, and with capital tile copper the response is too easy.

[Miguelito]

BW came in way faster than in the sim thanks to KTB, and Thoth's annoying scout went off north finally. Have to watch out for axes from his direction though, but with copper under the city tile the worst thing that could happen short term is getting a farm pillaged and the micro messed up. Still important to avoid of course.

I held off on ending the turn because we haven't discussed what to tech next: I think Mysticism -> Meditation makes a lot of sense, because making the second city holy would solve our problem with the Cre neighbour. And well Oracle has to be fit into the plan anyways.
AH for quick chariots would require an unattractive early horse city (we'd need to found S of the gold or SE even, and likely lose fish and furs). With a holy city SW of gold we'd have horses in borders on t48. Pottery - with gold cottages are a secondary priority, and it is questionable if early granaries are advisable considering we have to compete in settling races in all directions.
We could also just save gold for a turn, as we will have costs soon enough.

[Amicalola]

BW came in way faster than in the sim thanks to KTB, and Thoth's annoying scout went off north finally. Have to watch out for axes from his direction though, but with copper under the city tile the worst thing that could happen short term is getting a farm pillaged and the micro messed up. Still important to avoid of course.

I held off on ending the turn because we haven't discussed what to tech next: I think Mysticism -> Meditation makes a lot of sense, because making the second city holy would solve our problem with the Cre neighbour. And well Oracle has to be fit into the plan anyways.
AH for quick chariots would require an unattractive early horse city (we'd need to found S of the gold or SE even, and likely lose fish and furs). With a holy city SW of gold we'd have horses in borders on t48. Pottery - with gold cottages are a secondary priority, and it is questionable if early granaries are advisable considering we have to compete in settling races in all directions.
We could also just save gold for a turn, as we will have costs soon enough.

I agree with the religion plan! I don't hate saving gold for a turn though, it's slightly better to do that before we settle the second city if the tech won't matter either way (I think?). Not super sold on AH, because I don't think an axe rush is very likely (for the reasons you've identified), and the holy city is better for getting horse, and chariots are only super amazing for that.

[Miguelito]

Well chariots might be the best thing we can do about Commodore's dogs, but it's hardly worth moving the city and beelining a tech over it, or is it? He also starts with Hunting after all and can just build spears. Btw yes, Hunting for spears might be another thing to research. We have vision on both Thoth's and Commodore's horse tiles, to check when they get AH and the tile in borders.

I set the research with a bunch of BW OF to Mysticism, but did save gold for this turn.

Commodore and Thoth have both whipped for 2 pop what I assum were settlers. Apparently with AW we don't get city count, which makes sense as there is no diplo window.
Thoth at least also got a worker and has farmed his wheat as of this turn, but not the corn. With Commodore I'm not sure, I think we can't see if the deers are camped without having Hunting.

Anyways, for a short moment our demos are fantastic:





The whishlist, in the order red-blue-yellow-pink (the latter with little priority). As we have seen no settler from Thoth (and we are watching the whole lake coastline with a warrior) I think red goes through. If we hold it we can also settle E of spice or on it, and steal the fish if we get a really strong culture source (Thoth's Cre capital is about to pop borders). I think Oracle goes to blue dot however.
But a city to split off the corn might still be nice. In that case yellow has to move 1N, if Comm lets us. Another variant is to move yellow 1S and share the corn that way. Again depends on how Comm settles, and what happens with that fish.

[Amicalola]

Great! I don't hate moving yellow 1S fwiw, particularly (obv) if comm gets the fish first.

[Tarkeel]

Apparently with AW we don't get city count, which makes sense as there is no diplo window.

That's the separate "city count tied to espionage" option that was voted for, which makes sense when there's no diplo/city-trading and scoring.

[Miguelito]

Apparently with AW we don't get city count, which makes sense as there is no diplo window.

That's the separate "city count tied to espionage" option that was voted for, which makes sense when there's no diplo/city-trading and scoring.

yes but normally you would get the count once you get graphs on the player, but given that there's no trade window here it apparently was disabled altogether. I suspect this is original BUG, in the spirit of not giving information that wouldn't be attainable otherwise.

yuris apparently doesn't understand the concept of a "natural ally"


Well I guess 1XP is 1XP. Last thing I saw was the axe 1SE of the wheat, and a Commodore archer (!) on the FPH.

We are about to found our second city:


Meanwhile it seems that Thoth did not whip a settlerbut rather a worker (our settler can't detect a city of his, and in fact it seems unlikely that he grew to size 4 and slowbuilt a worker - and his wheat is farmed.
I also believe that he has an axe:


That uptick 1 turn after ours seems to be one. However I haven't seen it yet, so I think we can be hopeful that he went north. Either way, if we spot one of his on the western coast of that lake we will still have enough time to whip our own in the capital.
We need two workboats, how do we get those?
Also need to figure out if we should rather mine the gold first or connect the cities. I suspect the former, as the corn has the new city growing in just four turns.

Worst demos evah: