Boff-04 Nice Hat! (Link, Monarch, Cont)

[S.ilver]

So allow S.ilver to put his shoddy dotmapping skills to some use...

Let me explain my questionable logic here...

So we are working under the (correct) assumption that Toku is a maniac and it is not worth trying to live with him. That explains the presence of Yellow Dot. This is an in-your-face gambit to Toku to grab all the worthwhile food in the north. He can have the desert cows if he wants . The city is on the only bare hill in that clump of forests, so there's no wasted trees, and there's plenty to chop monuments and other goodies to get in Toku's face. We also pick up horses for mobile defense. EDIT: Must read more closely, Yellow Dot is Diamondeye's gambit

Purple Dot is the alternate to Yellow. That gets us horses in a safer fashion than right in Toku's face. We'll need some supply of horses, but I'd honestly rather deny Toku first.

Red Dot is Liq's production site. Obvious candidate for HE/WP national wonder combo for the ship spam.

Blue Dot can be profitable solely because there is gold there. This also picks up copper to deal with our metal shortage. It's a perennial 3 pop city until civil, but we can chop out essentials there, and the gold makes it worthwhile, both for commerce, and for the happiness which never obsoletes.

Green Dot looks to be a nice site all around. A nice river and a smattering of hills to produce something, and a minimum of water tiles while still being coastal AND riverside for health bonuses. Levee capable later too. Can basically do anything we need it to.

Orange Dot is a pretty marginal city meant to pick up the incense. Can ignore it basically, as it will suck until Civil.

Teal Dot is filler, but fairly powerful as it has food access and a decent amount of uncontested hills.

Black Dot is the stone city. Can settle it 1 south on the jungle tile to save the forest, but we pick up more jungle and waste A LOT of space between red and black.



My priority would be on settling Yellow in Toku's face in order to limit his options. Blue takes care of the copper, while Red, Teal, Purple, and Green are all very profitable cities on their own.


We don't need to rush to settle Black Dot unless we see Khan coming from south of the jungle band to take it. That's unlikely unless he started IN the jungle band. He's welcome to it to commit worker abuse ahead of us though.


Tech wise... I don't think we need archery. We are not Pro, so archers are bad defense at best compared to metal units. Blue is profitable once the gold is online, so that isn't a huge issue (unless Khan is really close by). And we need Metals to get axes and SPEARS to repel Khan and his favoured horse units (assuming Khan did not get shafted and has no horses).

So well... Get Wheel of course to hook up all these silly strategic resources... We've then got two decent choices. We could go Pottery->Writing and get Libraries so we can deal with Washington's food surplus, or we can dive right into IW to see where that Iron is.

 

[Liquidated]

Really like the Yellow Gambit. That's so crippling to toku if we can pull it off, such that I mean Mys was just handed to us for a reason, screwing toku over is in the cards perhaps?

Also, we all agree toku is simply unmanageable correct? His town dovetails with the dot map perfectly and gives us marble for the parth/pacman er GL.

So tech wise I'm seeing roads and then IW. As we need to lock down the metal locations sooner rather than later.

Chop out a settler at Washington now and have the warrior being built head north on the way to yellow to fog bust/ escort.

Have sparky hang out by the marble for a possible late punt.

benny and jezebel will scout southish.

Sound like a plan?

Oh liq sucks.... DiamondEye already mentioned yellow dot as a town location.. ok that's 3 of us, going forward eheh.

For great justice!

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Grover22]

I'll be pretty impressed if we get a settler up there before Toku founds a second city. I'd love to see it happen, though. Go to it!

 

[Liquidated]

Preturn:2850
So plan is grab yellow dot and stay on roads, tech after roads is either pottery or IW. Prolly IW.

Letting Warrior pop in Washington then chopping out a settler.
Benny pops over a hill to spot a wolves cross river... hmm exp perhaps.

Jezebel spots jungle dye 2 tiles south of stone. More calendar happys.

16]2825 BC
Jew is founded overseas joy. more religions over there the better. Toku adopts slavery hehe.

ok and Benny gets exp from that wolf and is 1.6 health.. move to forest to heal.

Washington pops Hank the warrior and he starts heading north where can see a bear prowling around near the rice. Settler in 14ish workers are running to a plains forest to chop.


[17]2800 BC
O
M
G

For great Justice indeed.

So Sparky puts on his punting cleats and punts for the home team.

yah so can we get that worker to safety... only need to get to yellow dotish and go for the monument chop there so will hook up hank who is running north.

-1 for attacking his friend on khan btw =/

[18]2775 BC
And to be expected...

so Sparky is pillaging the silver and most maybe the corn. worker starts south as khans scout is fog busting for us.

Benny, while healing is accosted by wolves for his woodie two. 1.7 health so he's healing in the woods again.

Chop begins for settler.

man that toku gift package is just asking for an animal punk =/

really cannot do much. At least khan is helping us out with his scout.

[19]2750 BC
A nailbiter getting worker to safety.

Sparky hammers the silver mine for 16 gold.

[20]2725 BC

Khan Scout leads the way (thanks mate!) and worker is on yellow dot
Benny who is woodie 2 is all healed and about to tear into jungle land. Greendot has Bananas in its home row.


[21]2700 BC
punk Taku's farm for 5 gold and with that, running back to the cover of woods. Toku won;t talk btw.

Taku's donation to our cause is as safe as he can be, hooking up with Hank and all set to chop yellow dot's monument.

Really need a defender in Washington, too bad jezebel is so far away.. ROFL

oh and seems jezebel was attacked... all that punting distracted a Liq.

[22]2675 BC
Chop comes in and settler is in 5 turns. Well not revolting to slavery. Wheel in 3.

[23]2650 BC
Oblation starts pre chopping the silks in yellow dot, this MUST stop in 4 turns. joe the "plumber" is on his way to farm over the wines.

Toku has two archers now. Toku will talk but he won;t take a cease fire hehe. this could be bad for sparky hehe so I jump out of his culture for a wooded hill, can see the town because of the lake... hmm where have we seen this before?

[24]2625 BC
Benny fights off a set fo wolves flawless, bringing his exp to 5.

toku still will not take cease fire.

[25]2600 BC
Toku still will not take a cease fire and well spot our first barb warrior east of Washington.

Wheel comes in and set IW in 30ish.

So this is where it can all fail hehe.

Toku needs to get a cease fire, if that barb beelines for Washington, well looking like we grab map D hehehe.

best play this out rather than hand it to Grover.
[26]2575 BC
Find khan's borders

barb moved north (yay) but toku has 3 archers now in his town hehe. Cannot get cease from him nor peace.


[27]2550 BC
Barb warrior is north again on the rice. Jezebel is heading north to hit Washington and settler pops.

Slot in a warrior in 5 ish, about the time Jezebel will get there.

Benny in the south is woodie 2 and there's a lion south of him, best to backtrack north and west to scout. Jezebel is heading north to cover Washington, best revolt to slavery sometime soonish(tm). I would do it this turn but might as well leave it for the sg.

oblation is done with his prechop of the silk and is building a forever road just to kill time before the settler hooks up.

so mad dash for yellow dot oblation can start chopping the hills woods just north of where he is for the monument but stall him a bit so we fog bust for the settler. Can set up yellow in 6ish moves.

Sparky is as safe as he can be fortified on a wooded hill as a woods one.

This is gonna be a really tight start people

Rather go out in a blaze of glory than bow down to a toku.

Ok grover sorry about that, take 20-25ish turns, you know the deal yea?

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Norvin_Green]

hi, a couple of questions - do you use photoshop for all your pics? if so can you give me some recommendations as to what to get. if not what are you using?

 

[S.ilver]

I use Photoshop, and so does Liq, last time I checked. An actual license for Photoshop is quite expensive though (I'm piggybacking on a business license as I'm their photo retoucher). A good free alternative is GIMP, or so I've heard. I've never used it myself though, so I can't comment, but I've heard glowing reviews from others.

 

[Norvin_Green]

hello again. took a look at the save . . . hmmm. tough being a rookie, don't want to piss off you guys already! not sure i'd play it the same. toku keeps building archers and probably will until cease fire, right? i think if you settled purple dot you could have built chariots fast enough to just pick off any settlers/archer combo's that toku sent out. could have kept him to one city and rexed all the nice cities available plus . . . mejggaf . . . (clears throat) "punted" some more workers. i usually play on normal speed so epic tech's seem slow. in the same 28 turns you could be through pottery and writing and start building up some gp points in our library of congress. plus if the plan is to get the horses online then i would wait on iw. of course i realize i should have spoke up BEFORE. i think yellow dot might lose the wheat to kyoto's culture for a while too. please let me know if there is anything else you want me to criticize!

 

[Norvin_Green]

thanks s.ilver. i saw it online and will give it a go.

 

[Grover22]

Preturn:2850
Ok grover sorry about that, take 20-25ish turns, you know the deal yea?

I'll get home from work in 6-7 hours, and I'll take my turns then. As for "knowing the deal," this is what I've got so far:

We've declared war on Toku, who is refusing a cease fire. We don't have metal or horses hooked yet, nor do we have archery researched, and we are planning on founding a city right on Toku's border so that his army of archers doesn't have to walk so far to get to our warriors.

I am a bit skeptical about this plan. Is there any reason not to ask for a cease fire on every single turn? I surely plan on doing so unless there is some kind of annoyance penalty involved.

You seem to want yellow dot's chops to go to a monument, but I think several warriors would be more appropriate if we can't get a cease fire. Really, I think we should send the settler somewhere safer and get either horses or metal hooked and then worry about penning Toku in. You know you guys are way better players than am I, but the yellow dot plan just seems like suicide to me unless we can get peace.

That doesn't mean that I'm unhappy about trying for it. Blaze of glory sounds good.

Again, we have maybe 7 hours to come up with a viable plan B before I start my set.

Smiles all around,

Grover

 

[Liquidated]

ok well idea here is toku sucks, the guy will never be diplomatically feasible unless you are an AI.

As such, yellow dot isn;t about the horses per say but rather taking away the best land toku has, forcing him to expand into the crap we didn;t dot map. Hell, that orange dot up north is a total filler town that will never get settled if toku is still alive

As for pottery/writing, look at who we have in the south. Khan isn;t someone you can just ignore and that jungle isn;t going to last forever. Getting a military going 30ish turns earlier is a hell of a lot better than stalling for the butter techs first in this case imo.

Yes the choice was pottery/writing or Iron Working. Liq went for the guns option because of who we have as neighbors, the butter will come afterward rest assured.

This yellowdot start is a total gambit btw, It could indeed collapse on us for any number of reasons but then it could succeed for any number of reasons as well. That's the essence of the Boff-0 line, which btw is 1 for 3 so far

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Grover22]

I use the GIMP. I think it's "GIMP 2" now. It works fine, and it's free. It did take me a while to figure out how to get it to do what I want, though, and sometimes my pictures wind up being too wide, anyway. (That's probably my fault and not GIMP's.)

The three most useful commands are "rectangular selection" (under the "tools" menu, I think), "crop to selection" (under the "image" menu, I think), and "save as..." (under "file"). I use those three in that order for nearly every screen shot, and I rarely use any other command.

Good luck,
Grover

 

[Liquidated]

Hammer toku for any sort of peace every turn , that's what liq has been doing. In the mean time he's spamming archers which are not built for attacking.

Monument is for the culture as Yellow Dot's workable tiles aren't the best in the home row. Then it spams defense hehehe.


As for the photoshop vs gimp, liq has no idea to be honest. Liq uses all sort of fun options from cs2 such that he really does not want to delve into the guts of another program.


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Norvin_Green]

thanks for the gimp info. i have already dl'ed and started messing around with it . . . so far i have no clue.
as to the game - i agree toku needs to go but he is already hampered by stealing 2 workers. you can get chariots with the purple dot city and use hanky panky and sparky lyle to keep an eye on any outgoing settlers until you get a few chariots over that way. i don't think iw is a bad call either its the 28 turns i guess on epic that kills me. it will take some getting used to.

 

[Liquidated]

oh to be explicit grover.. don;t chop the silk woods until yellow pops borders a the earliest. The reason the silks are pre chopped is because the worker was sitting there for 6 turns with nothing else to do.. so why not prechop it.

Want to chop the grass hill just north of the silk for the monument but hank needs to be on the silk to fog bust.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[S.ilver]

Well, Yellow is a very strong site due to the resources, and it's on a hill to boot, so it'll be tough to dislodge us from there. Protective archers aren't that great in attacking cities.

Secondly, the idea of this gambit, and going for IW at the same time, is that we need metal units to clear Toku out. While he's trapped making archers, we can get our metal units out (hopefully). He is unlikely to give us free peace, so he can stay at war and ruin his economy and expansion.

Khan is another situation altogether, and again it is best solved with metal units (spears), rather than lots of archers. Since the copper is far away and in a fairly undesirable spot, we'll need to come up with some iron somewhere. If there's no iron... well then the gambit is pretty much toast. That's why it's a gambit.

I admit that I'd be slightly more comfortable if we weren't in an open war with Toku, but that DOES stop his expansion, and makes him make archers, which will tank his economy.

 

[Grover22]

2550bc [turn 58] (inherited turn)

28 turns to iron working.

The plan is to move our settler north to the hill at yellow dot. Hank, our 0xp warrior, will light the way and act as the new city's lone defender, at least until it can churn out another itself. The worker near there will chop a monument for the new city asap. Then I think the city will build a warrior and then a barracks while waiting for the culture to expand to the horses. Chariots once the horses are hooked.

Meanwhile, Washington has some nervous times of its own, with a barb warrior roaming nearby. Wash should finish its four turn warrior in time to defend the city itself, but I think our pastures might still be at risk. Wash will build another warrior for pasture protection duty after it finishes its current warrior.

After that, we'll have to see how things look.

2500bc

Benny meets a new neighbor, a-way down south...

Jezebel scouts southwest and runs into Toku's drill2/combat1 archer. Jez is at 2.0/2 strength (which I guess is a hair below 2/2) and has no upgrades. At least she's in a jungle tile. But I don't like her chances much.

The barb warrior near Washington disappeared into the fog. That's encouraging, at least.

Toku has a worker out farming his corn.
I try for peace from Toku to save Jez. He won't take a cease fire, and he won't take any price to "bury the hatchet." I move Sparky into his territory to chase his worker, at least, and ask again to see if he feels any more threatened. No cease fire. Note that his marble is roaded and mined. (Yes, mined, not quarried. Odd.)

2475bc

Amazingly, Toku's archer does not attack Jez. And a barb archer joins the party.
Jez doesn't press her luck any further and scoots away to the southeast.

The worker that I chased off the corn is now mining the silver. It's easy to chase him from there, so I move to do so. I don't know that all the chasing is accomplishing much, though.

The barb warrior, or his brother, comes back out of the fog east of Washington.

Washington grows to size 4. I work the forest/plains/hill for 0 food/3 hammers, but we still have a +5 food surplus. Next growth is in 8 turns, and we're 1 under our happy cap. Warrior is due in one turn.

Toku still refuses peace.

2450bc

Toku's worker bounces back to the corn, and Sparky shadows him again.

Hank and the settler reach yellow dot. City will be founded next turn.
The worker there starts chopping the forested hill south of the city site.

Toku's archer either didn't face the barb archer or beat it flawlessly. Toku's archer moved to follow Jez, who will continue fleeing southeast.

Washington finishes its warrior, and we're two below our happy cap with him stationed in the city. He doesn't stay there, though. He heads for the forested hill east of our pigs to try to protect our pastures. Washington starts another 2 turn warrior, with growth in 7 turns.

Washington's worker finishes farming the wine. I start heading him towards the forested plains/hill for chopping there. Maybe the chops will go towards a settler and he'll mine the hill afterwards.

2425bc

Toku's worker retreats back to the silver, and Sparky shadows him again. I think we'll call this dance the Toku Two Step.

We found the yellow dot, henceforth referred to as New York. Hank fortifies himself on the hill. Oh, goody! Another barb warrior nearby. New York starts a monument, 23 turns. I work a 1f/2h forested hill rather than the 2f/1h forested flatland, and the monument drops to 15 turns. If the worker can finish his chopping (4 turns left), the monument should finish in maybe 2 turns after that. But the barb warrior might chase the worker away. Fun.

Jez continues SE. Benny is doing recon of Joao's turf.

2400bc

Toku's worker slides back to the corn, and Sparky slides to pester him.

Both the barb menacing Washington and the barb menacing New York move into the fog.

Washington finishes a warrior who fortifies in the city. Wash grows in 5 turns and can crank out 3 turn warriors. I'll start in on a warrior (or two), but I'll switch out to a settler when the forest/plains/hill chop comes in.

2375ad

Sparky dances another turn of the Toku Two Step.

Barb warrior reappears from the fog near New York.

Chopping continues.

2350bc

Sparky dances with the worker some more. He realizes that the worker has been leading, and he's slightly embarrassed.

The monument chop comes in, and the NY monument is now in 2 turns.

Barb warrior near NY disappears again.

2325bc

Sparky dances. In case you'd like to dance the Toku Two Step along with him at home, I've provided the following instructive diagram:

Washington finishes a warrior. Growth in 2, but I dial a settler (12 turns, nominally) to catch the chop now. I'll insert another warrior before the settler after the chop comes in, so that Wash grows one more time.

The new warrior heads towards Red Dot to see what he can see.

2300bc

Sparky is still a dancin' fool.

New York finishes its monument. I could build a warrior there, I guess, but I start it on a barracks. I move back to the 2f/1h tile to speed growth. The barracks is now estimated in 38 turns, but two more chops should cut that to 11 turns or so. The idea is to have the barracks up and running right around the same time we hook the horses, which we can't do for at least another 15+ turns, waiting for culture to expand and then pasture to be built.

Toku's drill2/combat1 archer appears just outside Washington's southern border. The new warrior that was heading for Red Dot prepares to scramble back home. As does the warrior on the hill by our pastures.

2275bc

Toku's silver mine finishes this turn. Sparky again dances to chase the worker. After he moves, I realize I should have stayed put and guarded the corn, because that's where the worker really wants to go, anyway. Dancin' fool, indeed.

Washington's chop comes in and the settler is now due in 7 turns. I switch out to a 4 turn warrior, and we'll grow in 2. The worker starts mining the chopped plains/hill. Toku's archer stays outside our cultural radius, 2S2W of our city.

2250bc [turn 70]

Toku's archer heads towards black dot.

A different barb warrior appears near NY, this one to the west. The one to the east has rolled back into the fog.

2225bc

Sparky's dance is over. He got back just in time to chase Toku's worker from the corn. The corn farm is one turn from finished, but Sparky is guarding that square now.

Washington grows to size five. Next growth would be in 9 turns, but we're resuming a settler after the warrior finishes next turn. We're one below the happy cap, still.

Jez is going to try to bait a barb warrior into attacking her in a forest.

2200bc

Nothing much to report.

2175bc

Chop comes in for NY's barracks. 18 turns away.

2150bc

A couple of unfriendly archers to the west of Washington.

2125bc

Washington's culture expands.

The barb warrior smells the bait...
Good luck, Jez.

2100bc

Jez wins, promotes woody 1, and rests until healed.

2075bc

Toku's archer passes right by our farmed wine. I guess he felt it wasn't worth pillaging. Maybe our common incompetence at resource management will serve as a springboard for peace. (They mine their quarries, we farm our wine.)

2050bc

The barbs have done us a favor and built us a city right on our "nice spot." Huzzah!

...I'm near my forum-imposed limit for attachments per post, so I'll finish the report in another post, coming very soon.

Grover

 

[Grover22]

2025bc

Washington's settler pops, and I'm going to end my set here so that we can decide what to do with him.

There is a barb archer hovering around black dot somewhere. Teal dot seems reasonably clear for now. We have a warrior up on that hill. Red dot is maybe also possible.
Toku has his drill2/combat1 archer in the area, though. I wonder if he'll attack uphill into the forest across a river.

The north:

Spoiler :

The center:

Spoiler :

The deep south:

Spoiler :

Please note that the settler still has moves left in the saved turn.

I guess the biggest question is what to do with the settler. I've felt pretty hemmed in by the barb warriors, barb archers, and toku's archer, so I've kept most of our warriors pretty close to home. We could make it safely to Teal Dot. Red Dot seems riskier.

New York should finish up its barracks when the chop comes in. The worker can begin roading to the horses, barbs permitting, so that all that remains to do is pasturize them once the culture grows. (I guess a fort could have been built pre-culture growth, but I didn't think of that in time.)

And now it's time for everyone's favorite game, counting Grover's blunders! Lay it on me guys. What should I have done differently?

G

 

[Liquidated]

well worker roading the plains is questionable but otherwise

The amount of archers holed up in kyoto is disturbing hehe.. Five of them and a settler.

Well IW is in 3 turns and we have a settler. Thinking wait for that to pop so we can see the metal we so desperately need hehe.

You are up DiamondEye!

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Liquidated]

ok a few things.. First Liq effed up on the dot city site markers, green is off by a tile hehe

Picked the wrong corner.

So fixing that as a new save.

Also marked a city site south of green dot (east of the rice west of the fish) that is khan's territory most likely but well, you know how that goes when silver is swinging the hammer round and round; non dot map towns tend to go poof.

The Banana Yellow Dot location is a food paradise containing bananas, rice (trivial irrigation post civil) and coastal Fish so that's worth razing khan's crap to found.

Also we have a settler and IW comes in 3 turns. Preferably iron is hiding in our backyard, red dot, or teal dot.

Since IW is so close might as well hold off picking a site for next town until the iron is uncovered. I ask you to play 3 and post the info DE if there's something oddball about iron locations.

If the iron falls within teal or red dot and not capital, I'd say grab the corresponding dot and go about your merry way as both locations hem toku in that much more and are decent locations.

This all subject to silver screaming bloody murder I suppose.

Anyway first round is 20ish turns, by which we mean give or take 20 turns ok well joking there but there's zero reason to cut a turnset off at some arbitrary number of turns if there's a good stopping point +/- 5ish turns into play. Also if one is short on time, ending play earlier is preferred over rushing play/report.


REMARKED SAVE BELOW

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Diamondeye]

I see it. I am now completely sure that Tokugawa is nuts. I will play tomorrow, I might stop at IW if the map is as weird as the rest of the setup, though. We will see!