Turn Players' Thread #1

[Zeviz]

I would protect the worker to remove temptation. (I know Templars don't sound like the kind of people who would start a war just to snatch a worker, but there is a Russian saying "trust, but check".)

[Kodii]

Is that a grassland marble in Doreen's corner?!

[mostly-harmless]

Protect the worker. I think I remember that animals attack into borders if tempted.

mh

[ruff_hi]

Originally posted by mostly-harmless
Protect the worker. I think I remember that animals attack into borders if tempted.

mh

You must be remembering a different game because Barb animals cannot enter your land.

[regoarrarr]

Well what is our worker going to do next? We could protect it now and then if/when it moves to a tile further away from Templars we could have it go unfog the clammy area

[mostly-harmless]

Originally posted by ruff_hi
You must be remembering a different game because Barb animals cannot enter your land.

Tells you how much I know about the game. ...
But I was certain I read somewhere that animals may attack into your borders if tempted. Was that in vanilla?

mh

[Sullla]

Originally posted by Kodii
Is that a grassland marble in Doreen's corner?!

Good eyes, Kodii. Marble indeed does not appear naturally on grassland. Makes you wonder what exactly this map creator was doing... (I think when we finally see the whole map, we're going to have some real questions for this guy.)

Templars grow to size 3?! You know what? That cinches it. They ARE building Stonehenge. I'd give 5:1 odds that that's what they're up to. It's a bizarre move, to go for a wonder before a worker; the last time I remember seeing that was from Sergei Tiraspolsky, one of our pre-release testers. (He started every single game by building Stonehenge immediately in the capital. Needless to say, we abused him a lot in MP. )

If they are building Stonehenge, they're not doing it particularly fast. The best the Templars can do in terms of shields (with working the grassland cows) is 3 shields/turn, which Industrious turns into 4.5/turn. (Or does it get truncated to 4? Not sure in the expansion.) Even for a dirt-cheap 120 shield wonder, that's still a good ~25 turns of production, madness this early in the game.

*IF* this speculation is correct, we have plenty of time to get our first settler down to that lovely site in the south. Maybe mostly_harmless can run the numbers and try to see if they support or disprove some of these suggestions (?) We'll soon have specific F9 Demographics info for the Templar thanks to Espionage, which will be useful for checking against.

As far as other points go... Move the warrior down into the south too. We'll have a second warrior in 4 turns for the capital, after all. If nothing else, he can help keep a lookout for barbs. More pertinently, we'll have a unit in place to defend our second city that we can quickly back up with "real" units later. (I'm operating under the assumption that we will start a settler as soon as Airstrip One his size 3, in six more turns.)

[Sullla]

Originally posted by regoarrarr
Well what is our worker going to do next? We could protect it now and then if/when it moves to a tile further away from Templars we could have it go unfog the clammy area

Whoops, didn't see this question. (Hate double-posting, but I will do it here.) The worker's next move is to mine the forested grassland hill one tile north of his current position. He can do this because Bronze Working will come in right as he finishes his current mine (nice timing!) The shields from the forest chop will then go towards our first settler too! This is also why there's no need to work the wines tile over a grassland forest: getting Bronze Working one turn earlier has no benefit, because our worker won't be done mining the plains hill until then anyway.

Of course, if we should turn up copper in our city's radius, that becomes our worker's immediate second task. I'm hoping we have copper on the very tile that we're mining right now! (Hey, we can dream, right? )

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by Sullla

Templars grow to size 3?! You know what? That cinches it. They ARE building Stonehenge. I'd give 5:1 odds that that's what they're up to.

My big fear is that the other 1/5 odds are a Quecha rush. We are in a bit of a bind. We have no Horse. Archers are not useful against our nearest neighbor. If Copper doesn't turn up, AND they have successfully lulled us into a false sense of superiority, we could get mowed down.

mostly_harmless,

You've worked wonders so far...is there any way to tell if/when they would complete a fourth Quecha? I'd really like to confirm they are working on Stonehenge before we start a Settler.

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

Ok, so finally somebody sees sense and suspects that the Templars are religious fanatics on a mission to conquer the "infidels" with the sword! :-)

I looked closely at the data we know from the Templars.
Here is a reassessment:
The Templars with the cow tile took quite a long time to grow to size2. They only have grown to that size in turn 15.
So there must be a stretch of time when they emphasized production over excess food.
We know about their 2nd Quecha from turn 8.
We know about another Quecha finished ca. turn 17.
It depends a bit on the tiles they have available to work, but the hammer and food numbers would have allowed them to produce another Quecha around turn 13. Unfortunately I have not much data from that period to strengthen that hypothesis, but the excel table allows for such a scenario, in fact makes it very likely they spend 15hammers on something in that period.
Now why would you sacrifice growth for hammers?
One scenario is that they spotted the yellow civ around that time and became scared. According to this reassessment they had already four Quechas around when we met them!

So in a worst case scenario, we are already facing 4 Quechas!
As for their current build, I cannot say what that is. According to my table we won't see a fifth Quecha built in the next 3 turns. Furthermore there is the possibility of them building Stonehenge as Sullla suggested.
There is also the option, that they researched Fishing as their second tech and are going for a working boat.

I really hope darrell and me are overly cautious.
We should look at the situation again after we know about copper, have our second warrior finished and hopefully met the yellow civ.
Their one-move units need at least 11 turns to walk up to a sensible attack position (we are shielded by a river towards the south). They have not scouted our whereabouts yet. We will pop our third ring in three turns time, giving us 20% more defense and more warning time.

mh

[sooooo]

The idea that the Templars are going to quechua rush us is, frankly, ridiculous. I will honestly eat my hat if they do so. Just forget about it.

They are building quechas because they have nothing else to build. They persued religion so have no worker techs and no point in building a worker. They emphasised production presumably because they wanted short term prodution to build enough defence before they started on stonehenge. They really wanted stonehenge so built it before a worker. It's not the world's best plan but they really want that wonder I guess.

[mostly-harmless]

Your word in the Templars ear!

On the other hand, if I have 4 Quechas running around, meet a guy with three(!) scouts and a worker ... it sure is an opportunity.
I get paid to be paranoid. :-)

mh

[darrelljs]

Originally posted by sooooo
The idea that the Templars are going to quechua rush us is, frankly, ridiculous. I will honestly eat my hat if they do so. Just forget about it.

Mole !

Seriously though, even if a Quecha rush is only 1/5 or 1/100, wouldn't it be prudent to build a few extra Warriors before starting a Settler? Cleary the Templars aren't building a Settler and without improved tiles or forest chops there is no way they can beat us to our chosen second site.

Darrell

[mostly-harmless]

Also consider, that we want to settle aggressively in their direction. A spot that sits closer to their capital than ours. Defended only by a couple of warriors.

Just because they macho-saved our scouting girl does not mean they will let a good opportunity pass by.

The Templars start with Agriculture, so do know a worker tech. Their south could hold farm resource, although I doubt it.

Also with Meditation and Mysticism, monasteries and obelisks are available as buildings. Sure, there is no need for obelisks with having a holy city, but a monastery to boost science and culture?

I tend to take your word for it soooo, that their is no immediate threat, but nevertheless I like to point out possibilities.

mh

ps: I like how that game becomes much more interesting already.

[sunrise089]

Normally in MP play Quetchas are difficult to deal with early but little real threat. They are difficult to deal with because they can choke quickly and are hard to remove with archers. Remember however that they are no stronger vs. warriors and other warriors are. In always-war MP play (where on a map like this you will always build a worker as one of your first two units), Quetcha rush isn't scary with two warriors already built. The difference here is that no one is choking the enemy (the default MP play), and so we're theorizing they will simply walk into our borders with five strength 2 units. If we really fear an outright attack there is still little we can do. The anti-choke strategy is to choke ourselves while chopping our own forests (you always go Bronze Working first in always-war MP). But to avoid a straight attack with 5 enemy units all we really need is to see them coming 2 turns out of so. As long as they can't walk in from the diagonal giving us only one reaction turn, we can whip a pair of defending warriors as soon as bronze working is in. 5 quetchas vs 4 warriors in an easy victory for us.