TJS1 -- Going on the Pill-age

[tjs282]

This is important, please be sure to do that as well in your pre-flight, choxorn. At the moment Oslo is growing with +2fpt, but could as well do so with +4fpt. There is still an idle irrigated BG south west of Bergen.

Point of order, Mr. Lanzelot: "there is still an idle iBG south west of Bergen has only just become available" It's not being used yet because it gave only 2FPT last turn, so did Bergen no good: our Worker just finished irrigating it on the IBT, before the Arab Spear 'scared' him off back to Trondheim to mine the Tobacco. But yes, definitely use it this IBT...

The Horse-tile could do with a mine, as well: the riverside Grass where the 2 Workers are currently stack-mining gets the same base FPT+CPT as the Horse-Grass, but unlike the Horse, Trond can share the riverside tile with Bergen if wanted (e.g. so that Cope can have another land-tile), so I mined that one first...

Lanzelot:
Did you read my rationale for wanting Green-dot 1NW?

• It's still CxxC and Dist 4(.5) from Trond
• It still gets the Whales on expansion
• It would still be CxxC from your revised Pink-dot on the Plains NW of the Hill

but

• It gets more Coast/Sea tiles to work for CPT
  
• (I'm pretty sure that) we can then also fit three full Pop12 fishing cities down south (per Spoonwood) -- 2 second-ringers on the east and west coasts of the Tundra, 1 third-ringer on the south coast.

We can't do that last thing, if Green-dot is founded as originally dotmapped; then, there's really only room for 2 full Pop12ers (and the third one would probably have to top out at Pop8-10...). But to do it my way, Arnhem needs to disappear first (plus it's been founded on a BGrass )

I'm not sure I agree. We want a lot of CxxC or CxxxC cities, not the sprawling CxxxxxC layout that the built-in culture expansions allow. ToA is GREAT for taking up lots of space with low population; it's less great for building up a lot of cities.

Just because ToA allows CxxxxxC, doesn't mean that's how we should plant towns: We can just as easily do CxxCxxC, and get even more Culture per turn (and unit upkeep) for keeping those rebellious swine firmly under our thum-... sorry, benign influence...

 

[Lanzelot]

We want a lot of CxxC or CxxxC cities, not the sprawling CxxxxxC

Why? We won't have to set up science farms, and for the unit upkeep, we'll get enough towns, don't worry. Better build Berzerks than so many settlers... The AI has already settled more or less CxxxxxC, so we'll only need the occasional filler here or there and that's it.
ToA enables us to reach 66% territory much sooner, and it also helps with reaching 66% population much sooner! (For every settler you build, you have to spend 2 pop points, but get only one back! So by having to build approx. only half the number of settlers, we safe a lot of population in the end.)

 

[Lanzelot]

Did you read my rationale for wanting Green-dot 1NW?

Yes, your proposed "Green" is indeed slightly better, but if I have to choose between "get a very good first-ring town now" and "get a slightly better first-ring town at an indetermined time in the future", I take the first. (At least in a quick'n'dirty military game that will be over before 500AD.) Speed is everything. If we catch most of the AI with only Spears, it will be easy cruising. If we wait and let the AI grow strong, it'll be slow and tedious.

 

[Spoonwood]

For every settler you build, you have to spend 2 pop points, but get only one back!

That doesn't into account growth of the other city. In the long run, you do get more population by having more cities (even with size 2 max tundra towns, since they can put out workers). But, then again, I don't foresee much of a long run in this game. But, probably enough such that you get that population back and a little more.

 

[choxorn]

Pre-Flight Notes:

-Construction due in 9, but we have 19 gold and -15 gpt, which we can't really keep up. Lowering sci to 50% brings us to -9gpt, Con in 11; at 40%, we have -1 gpt, Con in 14.
-Bergen and Trondheim are doing a Worker and a Settler factory, respectively, and need some MM to make sure they're running smoothly.
-Copenhagen is building Galleys, it should probably start pre-building an Aqueduct soon or it will be stuck at size 6 forever.
-Bergen is still using the tile tjs mentioned, I'll give it back to Oslo. Not sure about the FP prebuild yet- we still need 5 more cities, and we have plenty of other needs. Horsemen or Barracks might be better?
-Reykjavik is building a Library, very slowly, but it can speed up once it gets one of its tiles back. If we're building the ToA with our SGL, though, might it be better to build a Harbor first? We're already getting a culture expansion, which means we don't need the Library as much.
-Next city should go on the White Dot, 1 tile West of where the Settler/Anders Angstrom/Spearman group is now. I take it I'm building ToA in that city?
-The one after that goes 2 tiles S of Yekaterinberg, and we could perhaps follow with Elephantium's New City 1, 2 SE of Arnhem. After that we'll probably have to go into the Tundra peninsula, for lack of space anywhere else.
-General plan for workers: Get cities growing big now with irrigation and a few mines, we can always switch to mines later if we want more production and all our cities are at size 12.
-Any techs we should trade? Who do we want building the Statue of Zeus? If it's Russia, we can more easily get it, but we also have to deal with their Ancient Cavalry before we take it. If it's the Byzantines, they won't be able to threaten us, but we won't be able to use it ourselves.
-Thoughts on getting the Dutch to declare war on the Arabs and hope the Arabs get rid of Arnhem for us?

 

[Elephantium]

Can you scare up any gold from AI tribes with trading? It would be nice to keep the sci slider up...

Barracks in Oslo and Harbor in Reyk both sound good to me.

Statue of Zeus: I thought only Russia had Ivory... I should take another look at the save. I don't care who builds it; if Russia, we'll nab it fairly soon anyway. If Byz, we don't have to worry -- we'll be in the cleanup phase of the game before we face any of them.

I'd prefer not to set up another MA; it's better to have flexibility in when to sign peace.

 

[tjs282]

-Any techs we should trade? Who do we want building the Statue of Zeus? If it's Russia, we can more easily get it, but we also have to deal with their Ancient Cavalry before we take it. If it's the Byzantines, they won't be able to threaten us, but we won't be able to use it ourselves.

Dora doesn't have Maths yet. Nor does Hanni. And neither of them (now) have a Wonder-build in progress. So Cathy should do it, if we're going to 'gift' her up a bit (the gift that keeps on giving -- to us!), she's been building Oracle for at least 10T -- my set -- and I don't know how much longer before that.

I think Lanz is thinking, let Cathy build SoZ (it's only 200s => 160s to an Emp-AI, so she should finish it quickly), and then take it from her before she gets (too many) ACavs from it. If we DoW within the next 2 turnsets after she finishes SoZ, she'll only have 4 ACavs to throw at us, and we'll get the rest afterwards (provided we get Cathy's Ivory too -- this is important!). How many v+rHorses can we build in 20T...?

-Thoughts on getting the Dutch to declare war on the Arabs and hope the Arabs get rid of Arnhem for us?

I like this idea, because given Amsterdam's position and improvements (Galley Red could check out the current state of things up there...?), I don't think Willy will finish GLight imminently, so waiting to DoW him until after we've grabbed (or at least made a good hole in) Cathy and Abu's territory, using our shiny new ACavs, would make sense. By that point, we should be close to Invention/Zerks to take on Carthage and Byzantium, and Azteca if needed...

The question is basically who will finish their GWonder first, the Russians or the Dutch? Whoever does, should become our first target...

 

[Lanzelot]

Barracks in Bergen

I assume, you mean "Oslo"?! Bergen is on Worker duty for the next time to come. But as we have already so many shields in it, we could as well keep the FP prebuild running. The next 3-4 towns we found, should then all build Racks & Horsemen.

Copenhagen needs a few mines now. It'll reach size 6 in less than 10 turns, and then it can't grow further. Perhaps even mine a hill to get the Duct faster?! But we definitely need another Galley ("Homefleet") for shipping settlers. (Too bad we don't have Green now.)

Yes, if we take Artemis, Reykjavik can better use a Harbor first. (Libs start paying off at size 4 or so, so we still have time. Perhaps we can even do the Aqueduct before Lib there?! With the fish and another irrigated BG, it'll grow very quickly.)

Regarding the MA with the Dutch vs. Arabia: I don't think we'll need to make peace with Arabia within the next 20 turns. (Our war preparations and the first gains will definitely take longer. And when the Arabs are under pressure from two sides, they won't have the resources to endanger us.) So we can safely make that MA.

 

[Elephantium]

Yeah, oops. I meant Oslo for the Barracks vs. FP prebuild.

 

[choxorn]

Alright, I'm finished with my set:


Turn 0 (750 BC):

-As mentioned before, switch Bergen from an irrigated BG to a different irrigated BG so Oslo can use it. Working that tile and the irrigated Sugar Plains, Oslo could get 4 fpt, 3 spt, 7 gpt working the unirrigated BG or 3 fpt, 4 spt, 5gpt working the forest. A worker is irrigating the BG right now, so working it will cause a bit of food overrun, but we need gold more than shields there right now, so I work that tile.

-Swap Reykjavik to a Harbor.

-After giving it some thought, swap Oslo to a Granary- it can grow quickly at 5 fpt and has access to fresh water, so getting it bigger faster seemed to me like a wise idea, in the long run getting more citizens quickly should even speed up the Forbidden Palace build, after the Granary finishes.

-I want to get some more gold, but sadly, none of the AI seem to have much of it. Sadly, the richest two are the two we’re at war with.

-The Dutch will declare war on the Arabs and give us all 29 of their gold for either Math or the Republic- I don’t really want the Russians to get Math yet, even if we want them to build SoZ eventually them building it too soon would probably be bad for us. Luckily, the Dutch don’t know any AI’s other than the Russians and Arabs, and the Russians don’t have anything to trade for Math but some gold, so I decide it’s safe to trade the Dutch Math in return for an Alliance vs. Arabs, 29 gold, and an RoP. Just to be sure the Russians have nothing to trade, I take their 6 gold in return for Philosophy.

-Trying to build up a bit more gold, I sell the Ottomans The Wheel for all 20 of the gold they have. I decide to make no more trades- Carthage only has 9 gold and is the most advanced AI, and the Byzantines only have 3. We’re now at 74 gold, -14 gpt, which we can’t sustain for more than a few turns, but we can leave it like that for now.

IBT:

-An Aztec Galley appears to our East.

-Our Military Alliance was successful! Arnhem disappears into a pile of rubble. The Archer near it wasn’t responsible for it, though, which means there’s some hidden units in the fog where Arnhem used to be.

-The aforementioned Archer stays in the forest, and the Spearman heads towards one of our Workers and towards Bergen.

-Bergen: Worker->Worker

-The Russians switch Moscow to the Mausoleum of Mausollos, and finish it immediately. It has the same shield cost as the Statue of Zeus- I’m glad they don’t have Math now, I wouldn’t want them to have the Statue… yet.

Turn 1 (730 BC):

-Move the Settler/Spear/Anders Angstrom one tile West to the white dot.

-The worker in the area heads North, aiming to cut down some trees and connect the eventual ToA city.

-The exploring Galley sees a Dutch Settler pair on a mountain on the body of land to the North of the Aztecs, so that’s probably connected to our island.

IBT:

-The Aztec Galley heads towards Trondheim.

-The Arab Spear heads towards the worker, and is now annoyingly in a Forest.

-The Arab Archer heads into our territory, and 2 more appear from the West, where Arnhem used to be.

-Trondheim: Settler->Settler.

Turn 2 (710 BC):

-I wonder why Trondheim is at Size 4 now, and then I realize that the Arab Archer bumped off one of the irrigated tiles it needs. Crap. I decide to put Trondheim on Wealth for a turn while I get the factory back in sync. Luckily, there’s another irrigated Grass it can use after we get rid of the Archers, although Copenhagen is using it right now. Send the new Settler to the tile 2S of Yekaterinberg.

-Build Stockholm on the White Dot, have it start the Temple of Artemis, and then rush it with Anders Angstrom.

-Have two workers cut down a forest near Oslo to speed the Granary along.

-A worker, threatened by the Arab Spear and lacking other real options, flees into Stockholm.

IBT:

-The Aztec Galley unloads a Warrior near Trondheim.

-The Arab Archer pillages the road and irrigation on the BG , and several more Arab Archers appear- I count 5 now that I can see. The Spearman runs across the river onto a forest- I think heading to the currently undefended Oslo, or perhaps towards Bergen.

-Bergen: Worker->Worker

-Stockholm: Temple of Artemis -> Barracks

Turn 3 (690 BC):

-vArcher kills the Aztec vWarrior (1-0), is redlined in the process

-Switch Trondheim back to Settler. Sadly, I’ll have to attack some of the Arab Archers to keep the Settler factory from being disrupted again, even though that means attacking them in Forest. rArcher kills rArcher on Grass, avenging our pillaged farms and promoting to veteran, vArcher dies to rArcher in the forest (and it promotes to Veteran after only taking one damage, of course), vArcher kills the now vArcher and our vArcher is now a 4/5 eArcher. Hopefully it’s still alive next turn… (3-1)

-Drop the sci rate down to 50%, Construction slows down a turn, but gpt improves from -15 to -8.

-The exploring Galley confirms that there’s a long peninsula to the East of the Dutch, which doesn’t quite reach the Aztecs’ island.

IBT:

-Arab rArcher kills our vArcher, though is redlined in the process. (3-2)

-Copenhagen: Galley->Horseman. I want to build Barracks, but we need more military units, and we need them now.

-Stockholm expands thanks to all its free culture.

Turn 4 (670 BC):

-The Arab rSpear is threatening several things- it’s right next to Bergen and a worker and it’s on its way towards Oslo- and really needs to be dealt with, so I decide to attack it. It kills one of our rArchers, but the other kills the Spear. (4-3)

IBT:

-The redlined Arab Archer retreats, and the other two Archers still alive head towards us.

-Bergen finishes a Worker, and the factory gets disrupted by the incoming Archers. I decide to build an Archer there, and try to reset the factory in a few turns after I can rebuild the military a bit and get rid of the Arabs in our territory.

Turn 5 (650 BC):

-vArcher kills vArcher, eArcher kills rArcher (6-3), and we’re for the moment safe-ish from the Arabs- the only unit of theirs in our territory is a vSpear to the south of Stockholm.

-Found Birka 2 tiles South of Yekaterinberg, and have it build a Barracks.

-One of the benefits of our several lost military units: We’re now breaking even on gpt. That’s good, right?

IBT:

-I finally see some Dutch units heading our way to help out with the Arabs.

-The Arab Archer fortifies outside our borders, and the Spear heads Northeast, probably towards Oslo.

Turn 6 (630 BC):

-Move some units around- Workers will move to chop a forest to help Reykjavik build a Barracks after it finishes its Harbor, and others will mine the hills near Copenhagen to give it more shields to build an Aqueduct in a few turns.

IBT:

-Carthage and Arabia sign peace. Oh well, that’s not a huge deal right now.

-The Arab Spearman continues heading East- it’s definitely going for Oslo.

-Trondheim: Settler->Settler

-Reykjavik: Harbor->Barracks

-Oslo: Granary->Archer

Turn 7 (610 BC):

-MM Bergen to keep it from growing to Size 7 before I can finish the Archer and then build a Worker.

-I note that Birka hasn’t stolen a tile from Yekaterinberg, which means that it must have built some culture just before we did. That sucks.

-Decide to send the Settler up north into a gap in Russian and Dutch territory to the North of Oslo and Stockholm- that area might not be there forever, but the peninsula to our South will probably be unsettled a bit longer (and if not, we can more easily send our Berzerks there)

IBT:

-The Arab Spear heads onto our Horse tile.

-Bergen: Archer->Worker

-Most of our cities get a culture expansion from their free Temples.

Turn 8 (590 BC):

-Can’t let the Spear pillage the Horses, so attack. vArcher kills vSpear, and we promote to Elite. (7-3)

-We’re relatively safe for the moment, so switch Oslo and Copenhagen to Barracks- Veteran units later will be more helpful than Regular units now, now that the Arabs aren’t as threatening as they were a few turns ago.

-The exploring Galley finds water between the Ottomans and Aztecs- looks like they both have an island to themselves.

IBT:

-The now-healed Arab Archer heads into our territory.

-Copenhagen: Barracks->Library (will switch to Aqueduct after Construction finishes next turn)

-The Carthaginians beat us to Construction by a turn.

Turn 9 (570 BC):

-eArcher kills rArcher (8-3)

-Have some workers move to build a road in Dutch territory- they’ll get some units here faster to fight the Arabs, and we can trade resources with the Dutch once one of their workers finishes a road in a neighboring tile.

-Turn sci rate down to 0% and put a scientist in Reykjavik, Construction due in 1 turn, +31 gpt.

IBT:

-A Dutch Archer attacks and Arab Spear in the forest West of Stockholm, the Arab Spear survives with no damage.

-Research Construction, start work on Currency.

-Bergen: Worker->Worker

-Birka gains some tiles from culture expansion, then immediately loses a couple of them when Yekaterinberg expands at the same time and steals them back. Well, that’s annoying…

Turn 10 (550 BC):

-Switch Copenhagen to Aqueduct. It’s currently scheduled to finish 1 turn after it gets enough food to hit size 7, but it will speed up as workers build mines in the hills.

-On the subject of switching, Oslo could either continue building a Barracks and more soldiers, or switch to something else and get back to prebuilding the Forbidden Palace. Birka could perhaps benefit from a Library- it currently appears to have exactly the same culture and culture per turn as Yekaterinberg does, so even a little more culture should flip a few tiles to us (and make it slightly more likely that Yekaterinberg culture flips to us, heh heh heh)

-Currency due in 11 turns at -9 gpt at 50% science. Currently 43 gold in the bank.


Handoff Notes:

-The settler is heading with an Archer to that group of hills circled in the pic below- somewhere in there is where we should build a city, not sure exactly which hill though.
-Other good city locations to our West and South are marked by dots. I'm not totally sure about them, though, they might be better placed in slightly different locations.



-Trondheim and Bergen should continue building Settlers and Workers for a little while- they still need some MM to make sure they're working the right tiles, and maybe the next player or two can do a better job than me of keeping the Arabs from messing things up. Other cities should build Barracks and military units, or Aqueducts, or perhaps a Library or two. Oslo- maybe FP prebuild?

 

[Lanzelot]

Nice work! I bet it was quite nerve-racking, to suddenly have to fend off an Arabian force of 5 archers and 2 spears or so, after they hadn't even been sending a Warrior towards us for ages... But you handled it quite cooly.
Good that we signed the MA with the Dutch: if the Arabs hadn't been delayed for a turn by Arnhem, the situation for us might have become critical?!

Granary in Oslo is a good idea. Yesterday I reread a few things in the "Asterix" story, after I saw that the recent forum software switch had eaten all my attached pictures there, and noticed that in that game as well we had a discussion about whether or not the FP is useful in a quick'n'dirty military game. The general opinion was, that on the lower difficulty levels and with a favorable map, where everyone can be reached quickly, the FP rather slows down than helps. On higher levels and further away opponents, where the game can be expected to last longer, the FP may pay off.
In the Asterix game, I played without FP and reached domination in 30AD. Not exactly sure, where the "break even point" is, but my feeling says that this game here is also a case, where the FP is not needed. It is Emperor, like the Asterix game, and the map is even more favorable: Berzerks in ship-chains are much faster than Gallic Swordsmen on foot...
Also: at the moment, because of being under pressure from the Arabs and still having other important infrastructure to complete, we definitely can't afford to spend 200s on the FP. And later, when we are safe enough to build it, it will come too late to have any significant impact before the end of the game. So I'd say, we completely forget about the FP and rather spend those 200s on 10 Archers...

Only thing I don't quite understand: why did you send that settler so far away, when there are still better less-corrupted spots to settle, for example Green? Was Green still under fire from the Arabs, when that settler finished? And why have three(!) workers been building a road in a desert in Dutch territory? There is still so much important work to do in our core. If you want to trade their silks, one worker would have sufficed, as the Dutch road on the Oasis isn't yet finished either. And Oslo urgently needs more improved tiles.

I would say: 5-6 more settlers from Trondheim, and then we let it grow? The remaining settlers for the Tundra down there can be built in the fish towns. They can't build much useful anyway.

What happened to our Warrior who was supposed to scout west of Moscow?

We can enter the Middle Ages in the next turn set, if we collect some more cash for outdated techs: approx. 140 gold are currently available.And I think it is safe now to sell Math to the Russians, they don't have a prebuild runnning, and Moscow is only size 2. If they don't start SoZ soon, it won't get finished before we roll over them...

 

[tjs282]

Excellent, Choxorn. Sorry not to warn you about the possibility of pillage-ment -- completely forgot that the AI-Civs (as opposed to the barbs) will waste time doing that as well...

Though I am also puzzled as to why you Settled a remote 2nd(3rd?)-ringer way up there, I'm kind of glad you did, for 2 reasons:

1. Providing it doesn't flip (which it shouldn't), it will give us a quicker path to the Russian and Dutch cores, and
2. I've just done some fiddling around with your dotmap, and I can now confirm that if we move green-dot 1 NW, we can found 4 Tundra cities: 2*2nd-ringers, and 2*3rd-ringers, rather than only 1*2nd-ringer + 2*3rd-ringers (as marked on your map)

See the foodmap below: solid lines indicate (approximate) tile-allocations if we move Green and Blue (and Orange) to the yellow-ringed positions, and one proposed additional town (Black, yellow ring) has been inserted :

If we don't build our FP, these towns would basically just be for extra unit-support; to get them over Pop6 (giving us 4*3 free units rather than 4*1 free units), we would need Harbours (for 2 FPT from the water-tiles; 30s + 1gpt maint.) and Ducts (100s + 1 gpt maint.). Above Pop6, unhappy citizens could be made into Specialists: Taxmen or Clowns, whatever we needed just to keep order.

OTOH, if we did build our FP to help de-corrupt them, these 4 Tundra-towns would not only give us the unit-support, they could also be quite productive of both CPT and SPT in their own right. If we don't want to sink shields into a hand-built FP, maybe we could just use an MGL to rush it -- we're probably going to have quite a few MGLs, after all! So I think we could spare one from Army-building...

In addition to the Harbours + Ducts, if we were then to also give them Courthouses (80s + 1 gpt maint.), and Markets (to stay happy; 100s + 1 gpt maint.), all 4 towns would be able to work at least 9-10*2-FPT tiles and 2*1-FPT tiles (or the equivalent), for 22-24 FPT. Most of those 2-FPT tiles would be water-tiles + Harbour food-bonus, but to reach Pop12, NewBlack would also need 1 iGrass from Reyk's BFC (Tundra-tile allocation is flexible, and does not have to conform exactly to what's shown above). If Reyk can't afford to give up that tile, we could also just let NewBlack top out at Pop11, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be necessary.

All improvements in these Tundra-towns would be built using Forest-chops + cash-buys, while the towns grow naturally to Pop6, and then by Worker-joins to Pop12. (If we can obtain Engineering quickly after gifting up the SCI-Civs, we'll be able to plant+chop Forests on the Tundra-tiles that don't have them yet, then replant for the shields)

(Idle thought: it occurred to me that while a fully-loaded Zerk-Army isn't Galley-transportable, we could transport a 1-Zerk Army + 2 vZerks in 2 Galleys, then finish loading the Army once it comes ashore in the first overseas town we capture...)

Final edit:

(after deleting my first foodmap-upload because I realised I'd messed it up, then my subsequent edits, cross-posting with Spoonwood):

Since Red currently has so many water-tiles available (far more than it actually needs to feed itself at Pop12), if we just stuck with 4 'fully-developed' Tundra-towns, then Red could move 1NE and still get the Fish and enough water-tiles to feed itself, but be slightly closer to Trondheim (distance 10.5 instead of 11.5) for possibly lower corruption.

Alternatively, we could go with Spoonwood's suggestion: provided that NewBlue can use Reyk's Fish (and more Forest/Tundra) without stunting Reyk's food-supply (pretty sure it can), we could almost certainly fit in another 3rd/4th-ring Pop12er (using OldRed's Fish) 1S of Chox's blue spot. Red could then be moved 1NW, and just left as a 5th-ring Pop6-er (if that)...

 

[Spoonwood]

The Carthaginians beat us to Construction by a turn.

When this happens, you can often purchase the tech for a mere 10 gold.

If the blue dot gets placed one tile north, but still on the tundra, that would allow for another city in the tundra area at ICS spacing.

 

[choxorn]

Only thing I don't quite understand: why did you send that settler so far away, when there are still better less-corrupted spots to settle, for example Green? Was Green still under fire from the Arabs, when that settler finished?

Yeah, there were still Archers in the area when that settler finished, which made sending the settler to the Green dot a non-proposition. It might be possible to send one there now, if we have an archer or two to escort it over there.

So basically it was between the one up there and the tundra peninsula spots, and my reasoning for picking that one over those was basically the same as tjs's:

Though I am also puzzled as to why you Settled a remote 2nd(3rd?)-ringer way up there, I'm kind of glad you did, for 2 reasons:

1. Providing it doesn't flip (which it shouldn't), it will give us a quicker path to the Russian and Dutch cores, and
2. I've just done some fiddling around with your dotmap, and I can now confirm that if we move green-dot 1 NW, we can found 4 Tundra cities: 2*2nd-ringers, and 2*3rd-ringers, rather than only 1*2nd-ringer + 2*3rd-ringers (as marked on your map)

And also, I figured that the spot I sent it to won't be available for as long as the spots in the Tundra will.

And why have three(!) workers been building a road in a desert in Dutch territory? There is still so much important work to do in our core. If you want to trade their silks, one worker would have sufficed, as the Dutch road on the Oasis isn't yet finished either. And Oslo urgently needs more improved tiles.

They were already over there improving Oslo after fleeing from the menacing Arab spearmen, and moving them in there to build a road seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, yeah, I probably should have had one build a road and the other two continue improving tiles around Oslo.

What happened to our Warrior who was supposed to scout west of Moscow?

It's currently a bit north of the settler/archer pair, I had it move around in the gap and go through Dutch territory a bit. I didn't realize it was intended to go through Russia, and without an RoP with the Russians, I couldn't really send it that way anyway.

 

[Lanzelot]

So basically it was between the one up there and the tundra peninsula spots, and my reasoning for picking that one over those was basically the same as tjs's

I see. Makes sense.

I didn't realize it was intended to go through Russia, and without an RoP with the Russians, I couldn't really send it that way anyway.

That's why I suggested to include a RoP with Russia in the Math deal. But we can do it next turn.

BTW: who's up?

Regarding the tundra towns: a fish can support 4 forest tiles, so we would get quite a bit of production down there: 9spt before corruption. But still I suggest to not build any improvements down there, except for our excellent half-priced harbors. It'll take ages, before a Market+Duct (200s!) will pay off. We should better use these towns for Galleys. (200s are almost 7 Galleys, that'll be a better investment. The core can then concentrate on the Berzerks.)

 

[Speedbird 95]

I am up

Edit: I meant I literally got out of bed at 2:30 PM and checked in the forum to see what I missed , but I haven't yet got up to speed on the state of the republic. Tomorrow night is my day off work.

 

[choxorn]

I thought Elephantium was up, unless he's still busy with the Mayan game.

 

[Elephantium]

I'm up, but I'm still knee-deep in the dead in the CCM game. I might be done by the weekend, so it's probably best if you play next, speedbird

 

[robbus]

Very impressive turns choxorn. Considering our limited military you did well. What surprises me is AI Aztecs attacking with 1 warrior? Seems kind of futile.

I am still struggling to keep up with the food maps and shield distribution that the team is providing. But this is the essence of the game, isn't it. I played some of your turnset at home and had similar tile management so I hope I am "catching on"...

 

[choxorn]

The AI almost never does amphibious attacks with enough troops, sending one Warrior across the sea in a Galley is very par for the course for them.