Turn 21, 3200BC

[Blake]

What I REALLY think we should do is this.
FORGET about religion, it's lame and not needed and we have wines and can just get Monarchy to solve all happy problems, we don't need the holy city to get 90% of the benefit we can even just let Hinduism spread to us after we've vassalized Vox (in other words form an alliance where we have a stronger bargaining position, to offset their intelligence position from being able to see our cities).

While we're not pissing around going after Monotheism or whatever we grab archery and pump out 2-4 skirmishers (using mined sheep + another mined hill) and send at least 2 over to Vox to make a nuisance of themselves, with the goal being to either convince them to ally with us (as the war would DEFINITELY be too costly for them) or hurt them enough to allow us to finish them, or just make it hard for them to bring any fight to US.

After Archery we research to Pottery via Agriculture and we start getting cottages so we don't fall behind in tech, and we'll have enough research power to get Code of Laws or Monarchy very quickly (like 10 turns).
After Pottery we get Bronze Working to reveal copper and enable the whip.
After BW we get Animal Husbandry to reveal horses, and hook up the sheep (we'll probably be able to use the health by then - altough bear in mind THE MINED SHEEP IS A DAMN GOOD TILE)

With all important early techs under our belt we then either go to CoL or Monarchy (possibly via Monotheism if it seems like a good idea), or we can commit to a war, with a tech like Mathematics, Horseback Riding or Iron Working (depending on what resources we have).

Sound like a pretty strong plan?

[notyoueither]

Yes, it does.

We need BW, but everything is faster with cottages (two cottages quickly equal the palace).

I can see delaying BW til after Pottery. Possible modification if we see something strange in Vox land.

I'm still wondering why they are stuck at 1hpt.

I should note that I have seen McM and others in SP PBEMs do settlers waay early.

[Ennet]

Are they maxing commerce or just food? If they are maxing commerce they might be trying to speed up their path to Archery and then switch over to hammers to pump them out real fast. possibly even with a negative food balance, which would explain them maxing out food now aswell. They have an edge on us knowing exactly where we are, how far it is there, and everything about the terrain in between..

It would be hard to imagine that they are building a settler when they only have one warrior, and we might be marching upon their borders with two at this very moment.. OTOH If they are far enought away from us they must know the minimum number of turns it will take us to get to them, and if they know that they can settle a city and get a coupple of warriors to defend themselves they might go for it, hoping to get a production advantage over us..

Oh and if they have gold there is a good bet they are trying to get a worker out to mine it. With a good food bonus from cattle, fish or whatever else, you basically get a second palace with some nice production..

[vmxa1]

That is the most likely scenario. Trying to get archers as they have to be concerned about our UU. I cannot fathom them doing a settler right now, that would be crazy.

Oh wait, moving the scout where they did was close to being crazy. Blake's plan makes sense, until we see some reason to change.

[Blake]

Well in my new KGB thread I have some pretty good spec on Vox plans.

In short? They're giving our skirmishers the proper respect and are BEELINING to BW so they can beat US to THEIR copper.
After all, THEY don't know that we aren't researching Bronze Working, we aborted Poly after all.

For all they know our Warrior ("Grog") is already halfway over and rearing to set up camp on their copper. So they're heading full-tilt to BW, they're going to pray for copper, they're going to secure their copper, they're going to whip axemen.

[vmxa1]

That is betting the farm that they have copper, is it not? Archers could allow them to get some sort of peace deal and try to get more land to find copper.

Having copper will do them little good if it is not nearby. Archers at least means it will hard to take them down.

[Theseus]

Then beeline for BW, building Warriors in the meantime, whilst building up as much of a pop & food capability as possibility, in order to 1) whip Axemen if they have copper, or 2) continue with Warriors while then researching Archery, then whip Archers.

To Arrian's point, well yeah, even hardened Warriors can be a ***** taking down with Skirmies... Doesn;t matter; we will win with a Skirmie-choke in any case.

Blake's plan is good.