Turn 54, 1675 BC

[Harovan]

To be edited by the leaders of the Scholia.

Status:
- Researching Code of Laws at 100%, ready in 11 turns.
- 68 gold cash, -2 per turn

Urgent questions:
- none

Military:
- Both warriors near the incense desert move 4 to get a better view.

Economy:
- Worker #1 begins to chop
- Rearrange laborers in EotS to work 3 FPs (which requires moving the Tempest laborer to an unimproved FP).
- Worker #2 finishes road, moves 2 (preparing to irrigate and road a plains shared between EotS and Hurricane).


Diplomacy:
- discussion whether we continue the GL or not, and how we involve Vox in it

[Aeson]

Can we move the two warriors on the western desert both 4, to check for galley crossings at that point? Then the northern warrior can go 8. There doesn't seem to be anything lost by this, and it could lead to very valuable information.

[nbarclay]

Aeson, nice catch on still needing to check the coast. The threat of barbarians disrupted our last plans in that direction (although at least we got 25 gold out of the deal).

[DeepO]

One problem, though, the most Northern warrior, Grog, is kind of frozen on that mountain, technically speaking he is even in enemy territory. I wouldn't put too much attention on him by moving him, certainly not by moving him closer to the road, or their capital. As long as he sits quiet, we have a good lookout on what passes the Vox road.

DeepO

[nbarclay]

I agree that Grog needs to stay put, but we can definitely check out the coast on the western desert.

[Aeson]

I meant the northern of the two 'desert' warriors could then go north. Sorry that I didn't make that very clear. Grog is in the best place he can be as long as Vox is willing to let him stay there.

[Theseus]

Weren't we also hoping for some barb-farming?

[nbarclay]

The barb-farming idea, coupled with the need to defend Bolderberg, was what distracted me from the desire to check out the coast. But I definitely want to know what it looks like, in large part because I don't think we're very many tiles away from RP in that area.

[Aeson]

Barb camps will never pop up inside the view of a military unit, and I think never within less than 2 spacing from a cultural border (might be just 1 though). If we want to do some barb farming, we need to vacate an area and so does Vox. This may require some form of revenue sharing deal to coordinate, but would also hamper our early warning system on the east coast. i don't think there is enough FOW in the west for any sort of reliable barb farming.

I'm thinking for reliable barbs, we'd have to move Ouch south (all the way to our borders) while Willy was moved to Dissidentville or at least much further north. Hack and Tim would both need to move west. Then a WC would need to patrol the desert and sub-equatorial grasslands.

The formation of barb camps is usually quite fast, and they all come with one 'wandering' warrior. At our settings it would be best to kill the camps and move out, letting another one form, over and over.

This really puts both teams in a bad defensive position and opens up the possibility of a sneak attack. I really don't think the risk is worth what we'd get for either team. Worth discussing though.

A possible solution would be to allow Willy and/or Tim to come south to our borders, while Ouch would be allowed to move up to the eastern Iron area. That would increase each teams early warning capacity but does open up other problems, such as how to properly defend our Workers in the area.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Aeson
A possible solution would be to allow Willy and/or Tim to come south to our borders, while Ouch would be allowed to move up to the eastern Iron area. That would increase each teams early warning capacity but does open up other problems, such as how to properly defend our Workers in the area.

Nah, keep those Vox away.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aeson
Barb camps will never pop up inside the view of a military unit,

Just to point something out that I just saw in a SP game: Barb camps can appear adjacent to non-military units, like Workers and Scouts. This means that any lone Worker is a target. Sorry if you all knew this already. I personally thought that Barbs could only appear in fog of war (or unexplored areas).


Dominae

[Dominae]

When we first discussed the "Barb farming" idea, I believe it was in terms of promoting our units, not in terms of the actual 25 gold. I agree with Aeson that the leaving spots open for camps is dangerous. But if a camp pops up, I see no real harm in using it as a training ground for Elites. Actually there is the problem of gettting an uprising, but we could dispose of the camp before then.


Dominae

[Dominae]

Yet another post of mine. Nathan, are you planning to chop the Game Forest? Assuming so, do you plan to mine or irrigate afterwards? An irrigated Game Grassland would provide enough Food for both Bolderberg and Cyclone to grow at a reasonable pace. And once we get out of Despotism, that tile alone allows growth in 2 turns.

Furthermore, is Eye going to grow to its previous size again, or are we intentionally keeping it small so that Hurricane can use some good tiles? Maybe the next Settler could be delayed a bit so as to have some nice Science going again (delayed using a Temple maybe?).

Sorry if you've thought of all this before, but it seems like something important enough to have to mention.


Dominae

[Aeson]

I was arguing for promotions as well.

The thing is that at low barb settings, barb production from the camps is minimal. At the roaming level, I'm not sure that it ever even happens. In any case, you get a lot more battles by killing the camps and then vacating the area over and over again. Each camp spawns with it's defender and a buddy. The 25 gold every few turns is nice too.

In a recent OCC game (Romans, roaming barbs, Emperor) I'm sure I never saw a second barb head out from any of the 50+ camps that spawned on my continent throughout the game, That's not counting the uprisings of course.

I was planning on the uprisings and so 'herded' the camps up near mountains and then fortified Legions next to them once it got close to the time I'd expect the AI's to hit the middle ages. I didn't want hordes of Horsemen ruining my improvements and overruning colonies so I was rather generous in my dating of the event, and had 1 Legion next to a camp for about 20 turns without seeing any new barbs.

[nbarclay]

Chopping and irrigating the game forest is a key part of my plan to get Cyclone going as a settler pump. With a mined wheat, an irrigated game, and enough production, a city can crank out 4-turn settlers and 2-turn workers. Later, Bolderberg can use the irrigated game in conjunction with mined plains, or we might want to mine the game (for better production in a GA) if by some chance we have a worker with nothing better to do.

EotS is intended to grow back to size as quickly as it can, building settlers along the way. Keep in mind that normally, EotS doesn't have the production to build settlers without sacrificing growth. But after disease, it's small enough that it does get enough shields for a settler before hitting size 7 even at maximum growth. My projection is that growing every two turns, EotS will build its first settler the moment it hits size 6, thereby dropping back to size 4 by the time our turn starts, and the next one the moment it hits size 7, dropping back to size 5 by the time our turn starts. After that, settlers will take 5 turns and end up alternating between 2-trun and 3-turn growth, but we can still build 2-turn workers (and will likely want at least a couple workers before going back to settlers).