Turn 51-100

9 from Gold is probably the better long term location, but having Agg Impis so close makes me feel that we NEED to settle on the hill for the defense bonus. That really trumps all other considerations in my mind.
 
Here's a picture of that area for reference:

Spoiler :


It's just us and the Germans left to end turn again, so we should go ahead and get that taken care of. We've decided everything important, and the turnplayer can decide the scouting moves.
 
I noticed that with this forest chop, we have the option of whipping the granary in Terasvin to completion next turn. We can then lend Terasvin the Corn to grow back to size 3 in 3 turns. We won't lose any turns on Indira's Settler as long as we give the Corn back after 3 turns. By that point we should be able to have the Cow pastured so Terasvin can work the Cow, Wheat and PH Mine for 9 Mfg and +4 food.
 
Can anyone log in and tell where the barb moved in the new turn?
 
9 from Gold is probably the better long term location, but having Agg Impis so close makes me feel that we NEED to settle on the hill for the defense bonus. That really trumps all other considerations in my mind.

By settling 9 or 6, all other tiles being equal, we swap the following tiles:

2 floodplains, 1 desert, 1 grassland cow, 1 mountain and 1 riverside plains hill

for

1 floodplain, 1 riverside grassland, 1 non-riverside grassland with forest; 2 plains and 1 green hill

this means that we swap 1 floodplain for 1 riverside grassland (-1 food), 1 grassland cow for 1 non-riverside grassland with forest; a riverside plains hill for a green non-riverside hill and we get 2 plains more in case we settle (6) of the gold.

So overall here are the pros for both places:

settling NE (9) gold city pros:
- we are able long-term to work grassland cow swapping with Mantra
- we are able to work 1 flood plain in the first ring

settling NE (9) gold city cons:
- we will need a monument chopped to be able to work any of the food strong tiles (-30 hammers or half a granary) and even then we have to wait 10 more turns for border pop


settling E (6) gold city pros:
- our city is settled on hill for +1 hammer/turn
- our city have 25% more defense (50% more if we defend with archers)
- we can start working the pigs the moment they are improved
- we have 1 more forest for chop (1/3 granary)

settling E (6) gold city cons:
- we wont be able to work the cow tile if we need it
- the city's floodplains are in the second ring and we will still need border pop-up to work those

So as a bottom line, I could say long term potential they are about the same. But settling (6) is much stronger in the short term (20-30 turns and size 5-6) where we can start the snowball effect. I strongly recommend we settle (6) of the Gold.
 
Bad news, the Barb did move in closer :(

Spoiler :


Looks like we have to send Alan up to Indira and Ainwood down to protect the hill. After our Granary in Terasvin, we should get another couple Warriors out to defend against all these damned barbs.

As for our Gold city, is there anyone who does not think the hill 6 from Gold is the best location? I've only seen support for this location since we met the Spaniards.
 
Yes, the new worker (Calanthian? - he signed for Team Apolyton :) ) will finish the road 1S of Indira this turn.
 
BTW, assuming we're against Impi the hill defence is rather significant plus. Against Impi we'll want to defend with axes (though we should prepare at least some spearmen against any joining equesterians). Assuming no upgrades except for aggressive bonus for the Impi, we have roughly 50 % chance beating three Impi for each fully fortified Axeman. On the other hand, on level ground we have approximately 50 % chance beating two Impi for each Axe. So to have equal defence, we'll need to have 1.5 times the axes on level ground compared to the hill.
 
Played the turn, will post screenies tomorrow, going to a party tonight.

Bad news are I (we) overlooked to see that there is a river crossing south of Indira too and Ainwood was unable to get to the hill due to watering his shoes and stopping on the other bank of the river for them to dry (wearing wet slippery shoes when fighting on life and death is not a good idea indeed). Next best plan is to try when there is a unit in direct contact and a mine to destroy under his feet, what the barbs prefer to do. If they prefer to attack the unit, no harm done, we still defend with warrior on hill against barb warrior. If he decides to pillage, well, mines can be rebuilt easily :)
 
Right before leaving (waiting for my lady - yeah, women are always slow to go out) found this info about barb behavior:

Important things to keep in mind:

Barbs will ALWAYS enter your borders if they can attack one of your units directly (--> watch your Workers!).
Once they have entered your territory, they will consider the following options for their current turn

pillage an improvement (50%)
attack somebody
depending on conditions A and B move to another tile to pillage or attack a city (or target a city)
patrol --> here they always prefer to move into unowned tiles (this is why they don't enter in the first place; if possible they will move out again; if they somehow get boxed in by cultural borders they might also "have to" enter your territory with this mission)

Hence they can also change their minds - if they enter to pillage on their 3rd turn, they will choose to attack somebody on their second turn if possible (if you move a defending unit to an adjacent tile).

and

Barb units do not differ from other AI units in general, they also have a certain courage to attack. They just behave more erraticly and have lower inhibition thresholds on average.
The decision to attack a unit or not is made via a comparison of the unit's AttackOdds vs. a threshold individually specificied for all mission test calls (AI_anyAttack, AI_cityAttack). There are a lot of calculations adjusting the odds and thresholds depending on the situation of the combatants. What I read from all this is, that the AttackOdds are similar to the well known combat odds (depending on the strength, damage and bonuses of attacker and defender) + a "dare-devil offset", the AttackOddsChange. Each AI leader recalculates his/her AttackOddsChange each turn during CvPlayerAI::AI_doMilitary() according to:

AttackOddsChange = BaseAttackOddsChange + RNG(AttackOddsChangeRand) + RNG(AttackOddsChangeRand)

IIUC this value should vary around an average of BaseAttackOddsChange + AttackOddsChangeRand-1. As you can read from the Leaderhead-xml (or my converted spreadsheet ) the barbs have BaseAttackOddsChange = 0 (it is 0 for Gandhi ... 6 for Ragnar), which would make them cowards, but their AttackOddsChangeRand = 16, that is double the value of all other leaders (8), so on average they should attack more often than Ragnar (0 + 15 > 6 + 7).
The great variation of the barbs' AttackOddsChange (0...30) is responsible for their erratic behavior -- they will often shy from combat on one turn and move pass your defenders only to attack them on the very next turn. As mentioned above the thresholds used in CvUnitAI::AI_barbAttackMove() are especially low (20, 15, 10), so that the barbs might attack regardless of the actual combat odds during certain turns, when a very high AttackOddsChange might bring them over the relevant threshold alone.

Oh yeah, and they of course have a very advanced radar to detect all your units, cities and improvements. SearchRange = (Range+1)*(BaseMovements+1), with Range being the other parameter passed in the mission test calls besides the thresholds --> a 1 unit will scan a circle with a diameter of 9 tiles at the minimum (Range = 1).

Edit: It's not a circle but a sqaure area of 9 x 9 tiles.
 
Played the turn, will post screenies tomorrow, going to a party tonight.

Bad news are I (we) overlooked to see that there is a river crossing south of Indira too and Ainwood was unable to get to the hill due to watering his shoes and stopping on the other bank of the river for them to dry (wearing wet slippery shoes when fighting on life and death is not a good idea indeed). Next best plan is to try when there is a unit in direct contact and a mine to destroy under his feet, what the barbs prefer to do. If they prefer to attack the unit, no harm done, we still defend with warrior on hill against barb warrior. If he decides to pillage, well, mines can be rebuilt easily :)

Thanks for playing the turn. I can't believe we all overlooked that river, but like you said it's not too big of a deal to rebuild that mine. We have the other mine and should be able to pasture that Cow by T58, so there are other tiles to work. We need to move both workers in the area to the Cow next turn to get the pasture out. Then one can finish that forest chop, but we'll put it towards Indira's Settler, which will finish on T62. This should let us settle our Copper city by T63, so I think we'll be safe without Archery for now. We'll be able to send Axemen towards the Spanish border and Spearmen to the RB border.
 
The Barb has moved onto our Mine. Unfortunately, this means that our Granary is going to complete one turn later. :( I also don't like that Terasvin is unprotected...

Spoiler :

AH came in and we have a couple sources of Horse that are clearly within our sphere of influence, but unfortunately not where we're planning on settling our next few cities.

Spoiler :

I also had the thought that it might be good to bring Thunderfall back to finish exploring that land to our north, and then camp out between us and RB until we can get a city out there.
 
I also don't like that Terasvin is unprotected...
This is a very valid concern. Can we whip a warrior if need be in Terasvin, or should we work a turn on warrior, so we certainly can? Also, whipped warrior is not an adequate defence. Fresh unfortified warrior has only 75 % chance to win. Not nearly good enough odds to ignore the threat IMO.
 
Yeah, I think we might need to move Ainwood 3 (across the river and toward Terasvin). If the barb attacks us across the river, we get the same defense bonus as we would from a hill. Hopefully the Barb just pillages a turn or two to give us time to fortify. Best outcome would be if the Barb moves towards Indira pillaging both Mines on the way, since we could probably have two full strength warriors to protect, and the mines can be rebuilt without too much lost.

Ugh, I really don't like this situation. I don't want to delay our Granary even more. Are we ok to finish the granary and then get out a quick Warrior if Ainwood is heading over to protect?

Also, we can borrow Indira's Corn for two turns without delaying the Settler build, so we might as well do one turn now while we don't have any other improved tiles to work in Terasvin.
 
I was thinking about moving Ainwood behind the river too, but from what I understood about the barb behavior is that most probably he will pillage (50% chance) or attack Ainwood with next highest probability.

Will log in to check and assess the situation.
 
So, here is how I think we must proceed:

Nabaxo finish chopping the forest and chop goes in Terasvin. Granary there is 50/60 finished and Terasvin makes 6 hammers now, so 20 more hammers will get us a warrior in Terasvin next turn and graranary done on the second (still good just as if built the next turn as the food bin will be just half full on the second turn).

We move Ainwood E across the river on the plain. If barb attacks, we hope we win at 75% odds. If barb wins, we build road where the forest is now and follow attacking with the new warrior from Terasvin. If barb win again, we send Alan H to fight (he will be at some 1.7 health next turn). If all 3 warriors fail, we whip a warrior in Indira to defend.

If barb decides to not tackle Ainwood, but move on the green mine near Indira, we garrison Indira with Ainwood too.

If barb decides to pillage plains mine next turn, we soak up the loss and watch out more next time :)
 
I'm fine with this. Let's see if we can get a worker or two over to the forest 4-4 from Indira to still get a chop to speed the Settler to finish on T62.
 
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