Turn 23, 3120BC

[vmxa1]

Sory DeepO I should have responded with the answer, I had it written down:

Vox: Catherine (Hunting/Mining)- Cossack Creative and Financial

[DeepO]

thx, both of you

DeepO

[DeepO]

I'm thinking on how to proceed... seems to me that, once we've got 2 or 3 skirms in the field, we can very effectively choke Vox, however we won't be in a position to take them (yet). The main problem with that is, that if we focus on skirms, we will lag behind the other teams quite fast.

However, our capital more or less shields the West of us from their attacks. We should be able to prevent them from leaving their capital with a settler, or at least make it very hard for them. A new Voxian city won't get the 40% defense bonus their capital is currently getting, and as long as we can choke them, they won't have axes or horse archers to defend against our skirms.

For us, the situation is different. We currently can build a settler in 9 turns, 8 if we transfer 4 shields from a previous build. Our West is protected: add 1 skirm and a new city would be safe. I know our East looks like better terrain, but that's hard to defend for the moment, and will ask for more resources. With a fast settler, we should be able to harrass Vox, while not losing our growth... Vox OTOH will.

DeepO

[DeepO]

We might even risk sending an unprotected settler West: Vox will have other things on their minds than scouting us

DeepO

[Ennet]

Originally posted by DeepO
We might even risk sending an unprotected settler West: Vox will have other things on their minds than scouting us

DeepO

depends how far it is going, rather not end the turn outside our cultural borders.. even wolves would prey on our settler.. other than that i do agree with you

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Ennet


depends how far it is going, rather not end the turn outside our cultural borders.. even wolves would prey on our settler.. other than that i do agree with you

Oh, of course, we need some protection for our settler. But a warrior would be enough for the moment. I only intended to say we don't need to spend skirmishers, these would better serve us when choking Vox.

Assume we'd pick a spot near where Spinebreaker is now, something with access to the cow, and 1 or 2 fp. (which in many cases give us access to the sheep as well). We build 2 skirmishers, than a settler, than skirmishers again. Meanwhile, we go for BW so we can chop (we really can use some more hammers). that will give us a second city in something like 20-25 turns... and ~10 turns after that we're producing units in two cities instead of one. If we can improve the cow or chop some wood, we can get two viable units cities up very quickly, while we choke Vox so they can't expand. It might be tense for a short while, but they can't overcome that advantage, and we won't get too far behind compared to the rest of the world.

Once we feel powerful enough, we take out the Voxian capital, and we're ahead of the rest in terms of long term growth potential (although probably not in tech)

I think that's one of our best paths to follow, seeing that there won't be much chance of founding a religion, building a wonder, or use some specialists early on. With Vox so close, the best we can do is to make sure we've got a solid base to start from... we'll make up in tech later.

DeepO

[vmxa1]

It will be interesting to see how other teams are doing things. Many will face the same issues of letting in a religion or not.

Of course if there are any of the prearranged deals, that will conterfiet normal action. IOW if any teams agree to play as one from the start.

It seems to me that religion is too powerful for MP as it is now.

[Theseus]

I like DeepO's thinking in general: Assuming we will choke Vox for now, what else should we be doing?

I would be a big fan of building a second city ASAP at EotS447 (where SpineBreaker is now, I think)...

*Shares a lot of high value tiles with EotS, which is excellent for cottages
*Very defensible from the East, with great sightlines
*Protected from animals until actually built, with exception of cow tile (so if we can see that the cow is vacant, Settler is safe)

Also, don;t forget that BW will bring slavery and poprushing... another reason to consider shared tiles.

[Blake]

For the second city I would actually definitely go with EotS-774, this is the tile above Spinebreaker.
The reason is that it can immediately work the cows without a border expansion needed. Granted it has two wasted coastal tiles but I somehow doubt that will matter. It's really all about how immediately useful it is. We'll be swimming in cash and the difficulty is low enough that we don't really need to worry about the upkeeps of having "extra" cities.

I generally support the idea of 2 skirmishers then settler, in fact I think that it was I put for the original gameplan.

One thing though, we might want to train a scout to go pop the hut and generally scout out the west. I say might, the scout will be in considerable danger of dying to a barb warrior and I think it'll slow down the skirmishers.

[Theseus]

EotS774 is OK too, for immediate access to the cow, as Blake states... tough trade-off, though, as I think EotS447 could be a real powerhouse for being so close.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake
I generally support the idea of 2 skirmishers then settler, in fact I think that it was I put for the original gameplan.

Blake, I wasn't trying to 'steal' any ideas... this is a team effort, and ideas grow because many guys run with them. But, given the new situation (Vox at war and 10 tiles away, us more and more leaning towards choking them), I thought it best to bundle some bits and pieces into a new plan.

DeepO

[Blake]

that wasn't my meaning . I was just saying that when doing the original testbeds I found it was easy and ideal to crank out a couple of skirmishers as soon as we get archery.


Running some more sims, I'd like to reccomend something:
Grow to size 5, mine the Sheep, Plains Hill, Grassland hill.
This gives us 12 hammers/turn which allows sustained skirmisher every 2 turns (we also get a forest chop).

There is the minor issue of the first skirmisher - we could pop a skirmisher out right after the worker at size 3 at max hammers (4 turns), we could let the city grow to size 4 and the mine sheep to complete (they both take 4 turns) then max hammers (7 turns total) or let it complete naturally on just the sheep (9 turns total). If we aren't popping the first skirm out ASAP we should send 2 warriors to choke.


Once EotS kicks into high gear we can park the incoming skirmishers on Vox's good tiles, thus reducing them to below 6h/turn, if they try to secure tiles with fortified units we divide and conquer.

Once we outnumber them 2:1 at their capital, we simply bumrush it. Skirmishers easily beat archers 2:1 (UNLESS their capital is on a hill).

Lacks finesse but it should be brutally effective. If they take ANY unit out of their capital it makes it that much easier for us to get the critical mass to take it. So they'll have to choose between dying quickly (split their forces) or dying slightly less quickly (huddle in capital), they could also whip their city into submission (ie down to size 1) to force us to amass about 4-6 extra skirms, but doing so ensures they lose (because they'll only be able to get new archers every 5-6 turns, at best).

We could easily have 8-10 skirmishers at their capital by 1600BC and end the game for them right there.

Worst case would probably be a copper hill on the river and next to their capital, they could have a reasonable chance of securing it and working it would give them 5 hammers/turn. However since they'd have to split their defenses we could simply take whichever tile is more weakly defended and skirmishers beat axemen at 2:1 odds.

I reckon we should just go for the kill right here. Bury them in skirmishers. Take what is ours (religion).

[vmxa1]

Now your talking, bury them and thanks for the religion.

[Mudhut]

Blake's analysis looks pretty good to me. I just can't see how they can get out of this....

[notyoueither]

Blake's plan.

Why build settlers when there is a civ start to be had?