@plarq: Berserks are frightening. Longboats are not, if you have Dromons.
Objective: Iron
The Save
IIRC, the only short-term disaster would be to loose the Iron to the Bulgars (which indeed don’t show up in F4 so far!).
Inherited:
Don’t really see the need for Barracks in Athens; prefer to get out another Settler asap. Switch build. Then, we need a couple of warm bodies for MP duty, preferably Vet Warriors from Larissa which could be upgraded in an emergency case. I also prefer to have a minimal cash reserve at hand, for partial rushing a few missing shields, so I turn off research for a turn or two.
Enter.
IBT: Athens Settler -> not sure…
Nothing else, Bulgars still not show up.
Turn 1: 891AD
Actually nothing of importance. Turn on research again.
IBT: Caesarea Rax-> Spear, Ephesus Rax->Warrior
Turn 2: 894AD
Move towards Iron.
IBT: Larissa Warrior->Warrior
Turn 3: 897AD
Zzz…
IBT: Sinope Rax->Spear, Constantinople Horse->Horse; Ancyra’s borders expand
Turn 4: 900AD
More of the same.
IBT: Attalea Rax->Spear, Nicae Worker->Worker
Turn 5: 903AD
Zzz. Wondering why I didn’t found the Iron city? Settler + Spear are in position, I just want one more cheap MP, don’t want contact with Bulgars, and wait for the road there to finish first.
IBT: Ephesus Warrior -> Warrior, Larissa Warrior-> Horse (may be switched to Sword or Temple), Corinth Spear-> Spear, Adrianople Horse-> Horse/Sword.
Turn 6: 906AD
Found Ochrida on top of the Iron, starts a Temple. Switch some cities to Swords.
IBT: Const Sword->Sword
Turn 7: 909AD
Notice ‘Emphasize Production’ isn’t turned on; fix that.
IBT: Caesarea Spear->Temple (vetoable). MapStat tells me the Bulgars have shown up.
Turn 8: 912AD
Declare on Simeon. Change Adrianople to Spear, we’re lacking some defence here.
IBT: No enemies show up. Varna Rax->Sword
Turn 9: 915AD
Start the road towards Pliska (note: Pliska is only size 2, which means it must have spit out a Settler recently)
IBT: A few Bulgar units approach. Ephesus Warrior-> Temple, Const Sword->Sword, ADria Spear->Spear
Turn 10: 918AD
Action! Vet Horse kills Bulg Horse (their only one, btw; starting unit, Bulgars have no Horses on their home turf) unscratched; Vet Horse retreats from reg Bulgar Sword after taking on HP, Vet Sword finish the Sword, Elite.
2:0
A good moment to hand over the game.
Castle Building will come in on the interturn. Considering Pliska (Tar, and the best Bulgar city) is crucial for us, I’d attack asap even if we may loose some units, and wouldn’t wait for Cats. Dromons are really important, to repel Longships and to bombard any units approach along the coastline. This of course depends on the research time for Cats; Pliska is on a hill, so ~15 turns should be worth waiting.
Constantinople will pick up the Forrest upon growing, to get to 10spt again; please don't change that.
We may want to start a prebuild in Ancyra pretty soon: Bayeux Tapestry = Sun Tzu’s, and would be huge. One of two really helpful wonders. The other one is Domesday Book (5% interest, and in this conquest, gpt is extremely hard to earn).
Dot map:
Blue is the insane spot I was talking about. Varna should go 1SE then; but this has time.
Light blue is for the Quarry; this spot is on the river.
White are filler cities for later - corruption is already troublesome, and we may want to delay those until the border cities are in acceptable shape. Exception may be the westernmost one - this will give us another source of Dyes, and the one @Sinope will get pillaged at some point, so it actually may not even be worth it to connect that one with priority.
Techs: MDI. Then, open for discussion. I'd go for Arab Learning after that, for the Libraries. And before someone suggests a Roman Tech: Bulgars and Rus are of Byzantine flavor, so they are forced to head there anyway (but may need around 80 turns), maybe it'll become much cheapre then.
. Would have been 2 NW of Varna...we should abbandon that at some point, IMHO.
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