[SPOILERS] Commodore, Mist and the Weed. A Farce in three acts.

[Commodore]

So I have to ask, Seven, is this the reason why you felt Byzantium needed the scouting nerf? Although Sulieman of the Vikings or Japanese (starting techs rock for the start) could get here even faster if he so chose, and then set up a bulb of Civil Service too.

[SevenSpirits]

Nice grab.

So I have to ask, Seven, is this the reason why you felt Byzantium needed the scouting nerf?

Mainly that Byzantium is a very strong civ (known to be strong and with the way games have been trending, and the AW setting, even stronger) which is typically weakened by its terrible starting techs, and here they were made nonterrible.

Since they got chosen despite the nerf I will now be smug about my decision.

[Gaspar]

T41 Machinery, nicely done. Any plans for X-bows?

[Mist]

I keep telling him to rough some people up, but Commodore's all farmer mode right now until we get guilds

[Commodore]

T41 Machinery, nicely done. Any plans for X-bows?

Well, we have to research archery still. It's what Mist said though, I'd rather not have our rivals hyper-aware of how terrifyingly close we are to Guilds until we are just about there. Meanwhile, the plan is to get as many cities in position to kill themselves with mass-whips on the turn Guilds comes. I'd like for us to go from "mildly worrisome" to "holy crap, they've got forty cataphracts at our doorstep" as fast as humanly possible.

[Ceiliazul]

I'd like for us to go from "mildly worrisome" to "holy crap, they've got forty cataphracts at our doorstep" as fast as humanly possible.

I'd like that too! :aar:

[Commodore]

So about that sneaky plan. Um, well, last turn the Oracle officially completed and netted us a tech. Note the score before I chose Machinery. At end of this turn, with IW and Archery in the bag too, the score is now 315. Um.



Demos aren't exactly hot right now, either. Techs make us top in soldiers, but only barely, which is why I let MacDonald finish the axe, and we'll be queuing a few archers/crossbows over the next few turns too.



Thank goodness for Serdoa, is all I can say. We've marked him as the clear one to beat from the get-go, and it still looks that way as he finishes the Pyramids and is now running the usual completely broken BC Representation specialist economy. Good thing he's not Phi or something, then it'd be game over.



As also seen in the event log, finally got a free spread of Buddhism, to MacDonald which needs it the least, but even so. MacDonald is growing on the axeman above, and then will dump 20 hammers of overflow into a nice 2-turn settler (plains hill about to be mined as well).



With Trollope down I'll feel a lot better about the eastern borders, and the axe is going to help nail it down further. The whip is getting cracked hard and often out here, as Trollope builds workers and settler to go even further.



There's a great floodplains bonanza site to the NE that will have us locking horns with Lewwyn and Serdoa, I'm sure. Check out the one on the other border, as the explorer tries to completely fill in our map.



That distant land is probably not ours to contest until the blitz, but if we can push thataway, we will. Kipling was happily tootling along, but I swapped to working the bare grass to get the granary (whipped) a turn sooner.



The end of turn 42 confirmed what was suspected, the iron is in the fort. Comforting to have it claimed like that. Once the workers hook up gold I'll send one off to road the iron tile. Crossbows will see us pretty bloody safe this side of Guilds.



Kipling does need culture, like many others of the expansions. To help with that Bronte is growing on a monastery, and will couple that with a monk or five as soon as possible. Thackeray's settler comes first though.



Certainly Bronte will be able to grab capital tiles, as we're about to make yet another really painful whip, this time into a forge for the prophet/engineer gamble to be more of an even gamble. Granary and settler after that, which I'm sure relieves the citizens to no end.



Next task: Survive the dogpile?

[Commodore]

So we need to go back into expansion or the awesome slingshot will have been all for naught. As predicted, with the mines MacDonald is managing a 2-turn settler, which is awesome.



Exploration of Serdoa's ENE reveals that its going to be a very important settling vector. That's a freshwater clams lake there, although clever Seven ensured that we'd need to waste either a flood plain or the sheep to lighthouse them.



We're not actually doing all that well, we just have a lot of bulb/Oracle beakers sitting around. Here's the demos from turn start.



Whipping is depressing. Whipped the capital for the forge and Kipling for the granary, and even though gold came online the demos afterward look much sadder (swapped to 100% gold too, so not terribad).



One good(?) thing about the whips is that scary-strong Serdoa is now above us again in score. Honestly, I think the scores seen here reflect the different positions in-game pretty well. Ah well. Pretty empire at least, eh?



Lets comfort ourselves by looking at crossbows.

[Ceiliazul]

Exploration of Serdoa's ENE reveals that its going to be a very important settling vector. That's a freshwater clams lake there, although clever Seven ensured that we'd need to waste either a flood plain or the sheep to lighthouse them.

Is the tile kitty-corner to the river actually FP? It should be, but hard to tell from the tile appearance.

[Commodore]

Is the tile kitty-corner to the river actually FP? It should be, but hard to tell from the tile appearance.

Yeah, it's a fp. Moot point as settling there would invalidate Carroll, currently planned 2SE of the tile in question.