Screaming Orange Pumpkins - RR16B - It's tax day again ...

Well then that would have indeed been evil

Mids still might be worth it and we might actually get earlier use out of US since everything is so gold based and who know when we will ever get Monarchy

Yeah, I think we need to be careful with settling cities. Need to assume we will take some AI caps. We might need to just leave some spots for backfill for now and wait on Vandal until the last moment. Scouting Rag is important to check the viability of attack and what lies behind. If we meet all the AIs soon this could be a short game.

I built a 4th worker out of Eridu which worked the road to ivory city along with another worker.

If we get Gwall then we could aim to vulture rush, raze most AI cities and backfill later, creative would help a lot in grabbing land for domination. Alternatively we could go for pyramids and rep citizens until writing and play a much more conventional SE type game. Without Gwall barbs would be a pain in the neck.

Got it

Thoughts -
Yes on current settler to ivory marked location. Swap Eridu to settler now. I definitely want a city on the stone. In addition to the reasons others have outlined, I worry that Willem will settle that region, and want a city there soonish so Willie's next city is in the tundra. (And agree on re-DOW when he settles and we are able to extort techs)

We can debate the location when it's done, I plan another short set. If GW is still up for grabs we can plant on the stone and that just might make the difference pulling it in. Even if Rep is out, stone for Pyramids failgold could be useful. Or for HR/USuff as has been mentioned. Another location would be 1W of the stone, picking up the corn it'd be an ok city site. I don't see the western corn/fish becoming our GP farm - no hills. Uruk will be better.

Other plans - yes camp Vandal with our excess Vultures, while finding Ragnar. We actually really need the Rice, our health cap is tight at our first two cities.

BTW Asoka is definitely land reachable, we met him during my TS and I remember seeing a scout of his.

Also, can't resist asking why there is a monument in Amsterdam

I think that monument isn't that bad facing holy city culture

I am not sure you should take peace with Willie, maybe just cease fire so we can redow anytime.

pump out some workers too. 4 is not enough.

V has it right on Normally I would only build a Mon as Creative if up against tremendous pressure like another Creative Civ with a Holy City. I want to push out borders to get those cows. Furthermore, when Amsterdam popped it had 2 immediate unhappies that I could whip right away - they eat into our precious gold and the worker was several turns from completing a trade route. I think it was the correct move in this case. (sorry...meant to explain it in my report)

corn/fish becoming our GP farm - no hills

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you've got a bit to learn, tim

I really don't see Uruk as a gp farm. Great production base city like Eridu. Can't rule it out though if we find nothing better, but I expect we will ultimately capture a gp farm.

I'm fine with settling the stone but lay a road down first. City can work gold for some time and eventually cottages.

I really don't see the value of attacking Wilbert any time soon. Let's think about it and ask what we gain. Despite being holy, the city is not that great now. Plus, we don't get much out of the bargain until we get alpha. I'd rather keep him around. If we keep taking cities he will have no place to settle unless we just keep razing them maybe. I think we have a window to focus on Rag. Also consider we have spots we've discuss settling. We'll hit a wall on positive gold.

the pressure of holy city will be too much even against monument fueled amsterdam.

holy city gives +5 cpt, willie is creative, so base culture output of this "crap city" is 7 cpt edit: and +2 for palace = 9 cpt.

We probably won't ever win the battle over cows. We could hold on first ring tiles and both gold though.

the city has improved wine which gives good commerce and is food neutral + deer. That city will be productive.

Not sure if Willie is big GP spammer, but I don't think so, so waiting on shrine has not much meaning.

The point here was to think about using Will to extort techs later. If we go ahead and take Deer/Wine now we might as well just kill him now since he'll almost have no place else to settle. Taking the city now gets us another gold hog city, a few coins and nothing much else.

Being able to extort and buy techs is a big part of this game obviously, but we won't be able to buy many techs for some time. We need to save gold for key techs like Writing and Alpha short term Thus, we need to leave options open in terms of extorting techs.

I'm not going to belabor this point further and will ultimately do what the teams decides. Just don't want to go blindly into attacking Will again without thinking about the pros/cons, regardless of how good/bad his current city is now.

I get your point and is strong one.

We can give it a turnset or two to see how the things unshape.

To be honest I hoped there will be more land west from amsterdam, willie settling some nice flood plains post, building cottages and teching some and us extorting writing from him since he will be first to Alpha.

But as it seems I will be very disappointed on this matter, but taking Amsterdam the most effective play I think was the right and best thing to do anyway.

If we land Great Wall we will almost 100% get Great Spy as first person...Asoka looks like good espionage target.

Maybe Asoka hits Alpha around 800-900 BC.

If we were to take and raze Jewish holy city but leave the north unsettled and spawnbusted would Willem build another settler to reclaim the land?

I presume people have seen Rusten's comments in the common thread. Could do with some agreement on this (which may not happen if Team A are near to completing pyramids).

If we were to take and raze Jewish holy city but leave the north unsettled and spawnbusted would Willem build another settler to reclaim the land?

Click to expand...

This may not be a bad idea actually. I didn't think about razing the city. Really, the fact that it is holy means little to me if thinking about shrines and stuff. I don't see us getting a GP for that for a very long time if ever.

So razing the city would eliminate the culture pressure on us. We'd get a little gold too. We might try to setup the Vultures to steal a worker or 2 if we see them at the edges. We should expect some losses though against archers on a hill in a holy city.

Willie will have land to resettle then. We just want to make sure create block to the south. Stone city would do this. Originally I did not want to cripple him too much so he gets some techs, but he probably will anyway regardless of how many cities he has.

As for Rusten's comments, I think this SG is already set in its path. I don't want to debate the rules anymore. Mids is irrelevant for Rep anyway. We could use it for HR and possible Police State or US later, so it has some value.

the holy city is last city of Willie... so am a bit too confused with last few posts right now

Lymond - ok gotcha on the monument. Yeah it won't be enough for the cows (besides Utrechts 9CPT, the cows has a lot of "residual" culture accumulated from Amsterdam) but if we had unhappy starving folks to whip away makes sense to get something out of them.

Re: Rusten's comments in general thread
Since we are already underway and don't know if other team is farther than us, I think we should just leave the rules as we decided and accept that we are playing a less restricted variant than Rusten's original. That being said, since I thought the rule of "no representation with Pyramids" came from r_rolo I doubt they are building it.


Official plan: (yeah largely a repeat, will play it tonight)
-2 workers in south road to new ivory city, camp ivory, chop roaded forest, do the pigs when border pops.
-Eridu builds another settler now. Headed for settling on stone. May move it 1W if great wall goes before it's done.
-Amsterdam worker chops on current tile, then goes to desert hill 2SE to road (connect stone city as soon as it's planted)
-Uruk worker goes back to the PH and mines. Since planning settle on stone, makes sense to delay the forest chop until the stone hooked up. If GWall open at time we settle on stone, should be able to chop it then and finish it right away. Fingers crossed.
-I agree with leaving Willie alive for now, so may shift a couple more Vultures south out of Amsterdam, to be sure we have enough to camp Vandal and scout further south.
-probably build workers in Amsterdam and Eridu after current granary/settler builds. (Granary in Eridu can wait, it's already size 5 and isn't gonna grow a ton more in near future, and we still seem underworkered). Also as long as Willie alive there isn't a lot of benefit to growing Amsterdam past 3 except for whips, his culture blocking the other good tiles.


I still have disagreements on the longterm city specialization plans but that's fine for now, all of those presuppose techs we are ages from getting Lymond is right that we may well capture a better GP farm than Uruk.

I'm not sure we have any long-term city specialization plan yet.

@V ...yeah, all that is assuming Willie settles another city first.

Tim....we may lose GW anyway. I'd go ahead an chop that forest - I moved the worker there for that purpose and that is 2 lost worker turns if we don't. We can't rely on stone for GW. It will be good for Mids in Amsterdam and possibly some fail gold magic later - big deal in this game.

With that said, if you chop now next to Amsterdam, make it a pre-chop before moving to road stone city. We'll use all the forest afterwards to get out the Mids, which still has value. I still think Team A will build it.

I'm fine with another worker in Eridu. I'd like to get a Gran there fairly soon though. Amsterdam should start the Mids or Granary now.

Regarding Vultures, let's scout around Vandal and keep an eye on Rag troops, but I don't think there's rush on Vandal for a while. We can do nothing with it. So whatever you do with troops, try to keep them within Sumerian borders. We want to keep GPT at max as much as possible. With the 2 new cities we can move them mainly through our borders.

Lastly, I meant to mention this, but consider a few turns of tag teaming the corn between Eridu and Uruk to get Uruk's next pop faster. Eridu may have food deficit for a turn or two but that is okay. We want Uruk to grow faster to work more mines. Working corn for a turn or two will get that extra pop quick. Eridu is already quite productive for its purpose.

Grr, worst possible timing with Churchill building TGW.
One turn later and we get it.
One turn earlier, and I know there's no rush for stone and could have put stone city 1W. Oh well, our treasury is ever growing.

Whoever called the 5th city pushing up expenses was right. But its borders pop next turn and 2 workers in place to improve its gold.

Willie settler just came into view:


I assume we still leave him for now since no chance of extortion.

BTW there is one more seafood in the north, so a good fishing village eventually:


Pyramids, failgold: As lymond suggested started it in Amsterdam (marked w/sign), the "real" pyramids is at 100/500, we have 5 more forests (200 hammers worth with stone but no Math). Suggest finishing that worker to assist with the chop storm, and having Uruk build it for failgold a few turns until the worker done (we are running out of build options fast). With the superlate great wall, and no other wonders built yet save Stonehenge, we should be lock for Pyramids. I could see having Amsterdam swap off it for a while on non-chop turns for more failgold production.

Other things:
No "progress" on AI tech front, only Asoka with Writing still.
Ragnar went Pottery->Sailing->IW currently. However he must not have a coastal city, no trade routes. He also sent three archers by the barb city, 2 still there like they are waiting to attack->conjecture he does not have horses or copper, or just got them (if he had a strat resource, probably at least one of those is a chariot or axe). Vandal

This deal is on the table though don't think we need horses


Views of the south:


From border shape we know where Nidaros is. It's a reach (both in distance, and general overexpansion) and will suck until IW but the fish/horse/gems site might be tempting...


Showing indian border in the lower left.

That vulture is stuck until Ragnar gets writing. The workboat on the east coast found Churchill and is similarly stuck until he gets writing as well. The east coast vulture isn't stuck yet.

This fish on the east perplexes me:

I don't think I can see a coast in the fog (like we can west of Amsterdam, kudos lymond a while back as I would have missed it) but the peaks mean the fish is unworkable unless there is another landmass...anyone know the mapmaking algorithm in detail?

Roster:
lymond
LKendter (up) Earliest possible play is Sunday night.
timmy827 (just played)
vranasm (on deck)
pigswill
vanatteveldt

One more thing - I don't know what to do with our vultures. Think we eventually want to extort willie so not him. We could cripple or kill Ragnar, although I probably left too many in Amsterdam for an option against Willie and it will take a while to shift them. And hard to tell if worth it since we can't see his land yet.

In the queue - start offering comments please

well honestly?

watching SVK x SUI ice hockey... now THEM I could send some advice...as for our game... one big MEH...

don't see any reason to go south from this position until economy techs.

we can't expand now...

oh well will give it a bit more thought eventually... can't see the light yet.

I would probably finish the Mids in capital though or at least try.

Good job, timmy! The scouting you did was really important

My thoughts:

1) The idea that we are so far from Currency is perplexing. I think we need to make things happen. We have to control the AIs and do so in logical manner such that we have:

a) Trading Partner after Currency...a friend we buy techs off (perhaps Asoka, perhaps Church)
b) An EP guy to steal techs from, which is now limited early without GW. Rag can do still do for now, although I think we should attack him
c) Whipping boy...Rag and Willie (until we kill him outright) also seems best for this at first glance. He's not liked by known AIs so war decs are no issue. Furthermore, he's the biggest nuisance of the lot so it would be nice to keep him tame.
d) Church is a wild card at present. He's tough to attack earlier. He can be somewhat friendly, so may be a tech partner later once we get alpha/currency. Leave him alone for now and stay friendly as possible. It is an issue that he likes Asoka.

Asoka has Alpha by the way, but that's of little use at present unless we attack

Here is my suggestion:

Attack Rag now for the reasons above and for passage to India. (Leave Rag a city or 2 for tech stealing...keep him neutered) Attack India and extort Writing, Cease fire, Extort Alpha. Good Chance Asoka goes for Currency as well. (Depending on what we capture we might consider liberating back his cities...not sure if we can afford them that early..that's tbd)

Rag is far from Writing at this point and we certainly are.

And yes, I think we can attack them with Vultures (add a spear or two)

If we don't do this then we let the game control us not the other way around. We can't extort anything from Willie until we get Alpha. We will start to get very behind.


General Notes:

1) We might want to get a workboat out of Dam for exploring on the West side

2) Not sure why Eridu is not working the flood plain cottage...I'd rather keep that going constantly and whip the granary.

3) I'm not concerned about Vandal for some time. We certainly can't afford it now and it is of no use without IW. It will be decent eventually and has some commerce. If we attack Rag he is unlikely to take it anytime soon and may pull is archers away - towards us or back to defend. Plus, the fact that we will cripple Rag limits his ability to take it as well.

4) We should start roading south with a worker.

5) Fail gold idea is nice, but we may need to focus on troop production in Uruk and Eridu. Dam can still finish Mids.

6) Copper for Horse with Church may be a reasonable idea simply to have a chariot or 2 for pillaging and picking off strays or workers and possible enemy axes. Plus it will start some diplo with Church who I expect to be peaceful with for some time.

edit: I've been toying with the idea of trying to trade wheel for Archery. It may be too late for it, but we could try a turn or 2 into it. Only reason is for cheaper defense in cities so that we can move out all the vultures. However, we could simply use chariots for now and move back that SB warrior. Archery does affect WFYABTA, but that may not matter too much with Asoka

edit2: If we attack Asoka, we certainly run the risk of a Church bribe. However, our power may be a deterrent. Either way, I don't see a way around it and I don't think it will be much of an issue with the distance.

A simple plan

Kill Rags, extort writing from Asoka, kill Asoka, kill Churchill, kill Willem Once we've secured enough land build up cash then go on settler spree and hope we pass domination before we run out of money. Couple of libraries to research up to priesthood for ziggurats.

^^ not saying it's bad idea... just that I personally have pretty bad experience with axe rushing Ragnar.

We have to switch to total units mode in all cities for now then for a chance to get going this imo.

India is visible south west from Ragnar, it's a little bit darker violet (not sure if I got the color right...it's just the same as rags but darker)

edit:

we keep cities or raze? I almost think we should raze a lot...unless spectacular commerce