Turn 30, 2840BC

[Hot Mustard]

Turn 30, 2840BC (current plan)

Units
Grog: 2/2, 1/2 Exp. Move 1?
Spinebreaker: 2/2 7/5 Exp (W1). Move ?
Thug: 2/2, 0/2 Exp. Fort in EotS

Worker: Mine

Science
Current: Bronze Working (12 turns)
Polytheism 134/143


Cities

Eye of the Storm (Size 3) WF (4,8,88)
Growth: 3/26
Production: Skirmisher (4 turns)

Diplomacy
None

Other
None

[Hot Mustard]

Re: Turn 30, 2840BC

Originally posted by dejon
Grog: 2/2, 1/2 Exp. Move 1?
Spinebreaker: 2/2 7/5 Exp (W1). Move ?

Please discuss.

[Cort Haus]

How about 1,3 for Spiney? We want as much land explored as possible for when Bronze appears. If he can make his way to the Front via new terrain to the south this saves having to explore it later.

Grog 1 back to the gold hill, surely.

[Arrian]

Step 1: promote him to woodyII
Step 2: move him such that he gets two moves in and gets maximum scouting done. I figure that's 4, 2 this turn. Then basically look for more forest

Grog back to gold hill, I figure.

-Arrian

[Cort Haus]

Ah yes, he can uncover one more ocean tile by using the forest en-route to the tile SW of him.

[Krill]

Woody 2 is a good idea, but after that he makes a nice choker, or a nice scout. Both work. Also consider using him to look for spare Vox warrior if you don't know where he is.

Grog 9 works as well, look uncovers 20 of the Voxian 21 capital tiles, and we could still get back to gold hill if Voxmove the warrior out to confront or take the forest tile 2 of their cap.

Ah, it feels good to be back.

[notyoueither]

Couple of things.

There is a lion 3 of Spinebreaker. Suggest we take the W2 upgrade and move to avoid animals since we gain nothing from combat with them now.

Vox warrior is 999 of EotS. Suggest we keep EotS on shields as long as the warrior approaches. We'll have to burn a couple food from the box for a single turn to finish the skirmisher off in time if Vox come straight in.

The worker can start the mine. The skirmisher will come along to protect it.

Vox finished a warrior in The Voice and they moved one out (the one that had been fortified, bait or suboptimal move not sure) 2 so that it is adjacent to the gold hill. We'll have to go back if we want to deny them the tile.

[Blake]

If Vox have been using a research strategy simialler to ours they should have Archers by now but they don't even have Archery.

Everything points to them reseraching something big like Bronze Working.

We should be able to spot if they pop copper along the river within their city radius (this is the worst case) - they'll work it and we'll see the extra hammer on the graphs.

We should probably get a skirmisher in there ASAP because with warriors they wont be able to do much.

I'm not sure what to do with Grog. If we move him back onto the goldmine they might just attack him and would have ~30% odds of winning and then we have no more vision in Vox territory. On the other hand he might win which would be all good.

Here's the "Vox Copper Map"


Thanks to Voxarian Weediness it can't pop under their city - unless it really was a desert tile and not floodplains.
The big brown dots are bad places (for us) for copper to pop, they can mine it and work it and get a free connection for Axemen (Copper hill like where Grog currently is gets honorable big brown dot, since it's easier to defend)
The small brown dots are not so bad places, they can work it, or get a free connection, but not both.
Copper popped elsewhere will almost certainly not be hooked up quickly enough to provide any benefit.

Note that where Grog currently is he monitors all of the eastern dots and also blocks the grassland hill. A 2nd unit on the plains hill would monitor all the remaining dots except the small dot in the south (I don't think copper could spawn there because it's next to the cow).
Note that the eastern copper is worse for us - harder to deny, Grog's position is really quite ideal since he can spot copper workers. Western copper will get more quickly overun by our skirmisher so it's not really a big deal.
So I would tentatively say to just leave Grog where he is.

I'm going to try and confirm what copper can spawn next to - whether it's allowed to spawn next to cows/gold.
edit: That was easy.

Copper will indeed spawn next to other resources.

[notyoueither]

OK. Waiting a while.

As to whether to stand on the grass or move to the gold...

We have to survive attack no matter where we are, don't we? Wouldn't it be better to deprive them of the gold?

[Blake]

No... we should let them improve the gold if possible, it's going to be ours, after all. More dangerous would be them hooking up copper - I'm not sure if they'd actually be able to before our skirmisher gets there (they don't have a worker yet), but if they have it hooked up for even a single turn they can immediately poprush 2 Axemen (zero-hammer poprush at 4 pop, 2 pop killed, 60 hammers generated, only 10 hammers needed for the 2nd Axeman - if they work Cow and plains forest they'll get both Axemen in successive turns).

If I were Vox I think that would be exactly my plan at this point - distract our first skirmisher with their warrior (play chase the warrior), get a worker out, hook up copper (pray for it) and poprush 2 Axemen to drive off our skirmishers. It's a gamble, but I think gambling is their best bet.

[notyoueither]

OK. Will wait to hear what others think.

[Mudhut]

1. Plan for Grog in their territory
If they want to attack us with a warrior at minority odds, then we do have to survive an attack - either on the gold hill or the current hill. But it's not exactly the same - we have a 5% fort bonus if we stay where we are.

Still, I'm really torn -> I would like to block the gold hill if everything else was equal.

Blake, I understand what you're saying re: them developing the gold hill and us taking the proceeds. But if they were to develop it and get all that research happening... it just opens up more options for them, doesn't it? We want to keep them under the thumb and all.

So my vote is the move back to the gold hill, but I understand if I'm outvoted. I actually don't think they'll attack us if we move back to the gold -> its a low percentage shot for them, they'd probably wait and get two warriors to do it if they thought this was a good idea.

2. Defence of our territory.
I'm actually somewhat pleased that their warrior is now entering our territory -> very predictable. As I understand it, if we don't burn food from our store then they will have one chance to attack us from across the river and about a 3% chance of success. I'm fine with allowing this, so I say we should finish building the skirmisher but not burn food to do so (which means 4 turns, yes?)

3. SB and the lion.
Yeah, explore and keep away from the lion sounds good.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Mudhut
Blake, I understand what you're saying re: them developing the gold hill and us taking the proceeds. But if they were to develop it and get all that research happening... it just opens up more options for them, doesn't it? We want to keep them under the thumb and all.

I agree with Mudhut here.

70% odds are good enough, especially since there's a very good chance that Vox will never attack in the first place. I would like to keep an eye out on that Cow, to tell you the truth, it's their best tile and we do not want it improved.

Assuming they are researching Bronze Working, they might do one of two things at this point: one, build a Worker and hope we do not show up with more troops; two, spam Warriors until they have effective control over their lands again and cover the Copper.

Warrior spam is a scary option because it makes our choke that much more expensive for us: ideally we only want to send a couple of Skirmishers over there to deny them Copper. However, the Worker plan is also scary for us depending on the ETA for our first Skirmisher. If they have a Worker online for even a couple of turns when all we have is a Warrior, they could get Copper and that would be very bad.

In short: let's get a Skirmisher over there already!

[Hot Mustard]

Looks like good input here!

NYE, please go ahead and play the turn. I haven't had more than a few minutes at a time to get on the internet what with family, friends and colleagues all wanting a slice of me.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Dominae
In short: let's get a Skirmisher over there already!

In the mean time, a Woodsman II makes an excellent choker. We really should consider sending SB to Vox asap. Can he arrive in Vox territory before a skirmisher can?

As to Grog: if we want the gold hill, we need to act now. Later, it will cost us too much.

If we would want to explore, and move to the North, their warrior will follow us, at which point we will be roughly contained to the forest there (and what may lay beyond). We don't want to attack warriors on hills or forests, and we don't want to venture in the open with 2 warriors nearby able to kill us. While there is some appeal in scouting all of their territory, I wouldn't want to hold up our only unit in Vox' territory for the next 15 turns.

The grass hill looks a nice spot to hold for now, however I agree the gold is better: it's not so much the cow, but the vicinity of forests. We need to be able to retreat to multiple tiles, to keep the threat real for as long as possible.

DeepO