[SPOILERS] Magic Science and Mr. Cairo in Pitboss 40

[Magic Science]

For the sake of transparency, here is the PM that I just sent to Superdeath regarding the turn split situation.

Superdeath, me and Mr. Cairo think that it is best that we start adhering to a turn split again for now. You have the first half.

Have fun.

[Magic Science]

I am a noob who typed the wrong word when I actually went to send the PM to Superdeath. I told him that he has the second half, not the first half.
This is the PM that I just send to clarify what is actually going on:

Sorry, I typed the wrong thing.  
You actually have the first half. If I had the first half, then I would be getting a double-move.
Sorry again for the confusion, I'm not sure why I typed the exact wrong word.

[Magic Science]

Superdeath still hasn’t played, so I just sent another PM:

Superdeath, just in case that you didn’t notice the previous PM that I sent or I failed to send it somehow, let me reiterate that I typed the wrong thing and that you actually have the first half of the turn timer. You need to play before me, otherwise I would be getting to do a double-move on you.

Sorry again for all of this confusion and delay.

Maybe I messed up sending the second one somehow?

In any case, I think that I handled this wrong. I should have just waited for Superdeath to play, then played my turn, then sent a PM explaining the turn split situation. There would be no chance for confusion and delay then. Maybe I should just play my turn and do a double move to move the game along, but that seems like it has the chance to cause even more confusion to me. Well, you live and learn, I guess. The turn pace for this game has otherwise been phenomenal, so hopefully no one else gets too upset.

A -1 “PYFT!” diplomacy modifier is the last thing that this little minnow needs right now

To other players if/when they eventually read this: sorry for holding the game up for so long.

[Commodore]

A good general rule of thumb is to play when you can, and if you want to split, then just take whatever half works for you. Going second has some mild advantages (and going first's best advantage, promos, favors the barracks player), but holding the turn hostage for clock advantage is going to get you resented.

[Magic Science]

Turn 52 – 1920 BC
   
Glorious victory (the first of the game for me)! That Combat I 1.5/2 health barbarian warrior foolishly moved one tile south of the peak by Sidon, and I responded by finishing a road with Worker Two and then using it to attack the barbarian warrior with Axeman Three. Axeman Three won flawlessly.

   
Superdeath’s impis are still holding their ground, so I guess that they will be there bothering me for a while. If they were on open flatland, then I wouldn’t hesitate to send an axeman to take care of them, but the defensive boost from the terrain means that multiple axeman would be needed to reliably do the job, and I don’t have enough units to comfortably sacrifice some like that.

In wider news, Civstats tracking just got a lot harder because people are starting to get land points from their second cities. I will still do my best to keep track, but if I do another overview later, then my numbers will probably not be as accurate.

Also, you may have noticed that I made no mention of religion or wonders in my Turn 51 turn report. That is because no one has founded any religions or built any wonders yet. Is that some sort of record or something? If the Great Injustice of Turn 43 hadn’t occurred, then I might consider going after a wonder at this point. However, as it is I think that I don’t have the resources to spare. My guess is that the sharks will chop them out in a little while when the opportunity cost isn’t very high to snowball further ahead.

A good general rule of thumb is to play when you can, and if you want to split, then just take whatever half works for you. Going second has some mild advantages  (and going first's best advantage, promos, favors the barracks player), but holding the turn hostage for clock advantage is going to get you resented.

The mapmaker speaks! Thank you for the advice (and the map).

I think that the root of the problem last turn was that I valued the rule “Don’t do double-moves” over the rule “Don’t be a jerk,” when it should have been the other way around. I don’t think that doing a double-move and going first in the turn-split would have given either of us much of an advantage, but I surely was a jerk to be the guy who held the game up for 16 hours.

[Mr. Cairo]

I'm not entirely sure about eh double-move thing. I mean, if you had double-moved superdeath, and he wanted a restart, it might have delayed the game by more than 16 hours. It seems it was mainly just a miscommunication thing this time, and when people are one different continents, that can cause some delays.

Back to the game, I like the way things are going. Is that 2 axes by Hittite right now, or is our axe on top of an Impi?

About the floodplains by Sidon, are you planning on farming them or cottaging them? Either way, we should start cottaging pretty soon, and get enough units to defend new Hong Kong and capture Hittite, as well as a settler for the silver city and units to defend that. Shouldn't be too much trouble at all....

[Mr. Cairo]

In an unrelated note, would you be willing to dedlurk me in the new pb game that is being planned in civ general?

[Magic Science]

Back to the game, I like the way things are going. Is that 2 axes by Hittite right now, or is our axe on top of an Impi?

What you are seeing by Hittite is Axeman One stacked with one of Superdeath’s impis. Axeman Two went back to New Hong Kong and is now stacked with Archer One on the city tile.

About the floodplains by Sidon, are you planning on farming them or cottaging them? Either way, we should start cottaging pretty soon, and get enough units to defend new Hong Kong and capture Hittite, as well as a settler for the silver city and units to defend that. Shouldn't be too much trouble at all....

The floodplains tile to the southwest of Sidon already has a partially completed farm on it due to me not wanting to waste worker-turns while workers were running back and forth in the area, so I think that we should farm that tile. However, I think that we should build cottages on the other two floodplains tiles.

As for what we should do next, I agree with your ideas. If everything goes according to plan (I know, I know, that is hoping for quite a lot considering how things have gone so far…), then La Venta (silver and wheat city) will be founded on Turn 61, Hittite will be captured (and rechristened Hattusa ) on Turn 66, and adequate defenses will be maintained throughout the process. I think that settling another city besides those before Turn 70 is also reasonably achievable, although I have not done any simulations that far in the future yet, so I’m not entirely sure. I hope to have started placing cottages in earnest by Turn 70 as well.

EDIT: 

In an unrelated note, would you be willing to dedlurk me in the new pb game that is being planned in civ general?

Yes, I would absolutely be willing to be a dedlurker for you in the new game. It should be fun.

[Magic Science]

Turn 53 – 1880 BC

If everything goes according to plan (I know, I know, that is hoping for quite a lot considering how things have gone so far…)

Hoping for things to go according to plan really was hoping for too much. Things just took a rather severe turn for the worse.
To set the stage, take a look at the Turn 53 demographics screen:
   
Yes, our Crop Yield is still awful. In other news, water is wet. The really important thing to note right now on this screen is the Soldiers statistic. Someone now matches us in soldiers. I think that I know who it is…

The power graph after the turn roll confirms it:
   
Superdeath. And that isn’t even the worst of it. The Turn 54 demographics screen shows that he has gained more Soldiers that haven’t appeared on the graphs yet.

   
6000 more soldiers than us! Yikes!

That is concerning, but it will take a few turns for impis to reach New Hong Kong, so it isn’t an immediate threat. However, the immediate situation is rather threatening all on its own. This is what things look like after I made all of my moves:
   
Superdeath moved his southern impi in an incredibly threatening manner: to New Hong Kong’s diagonal on the turn before war can be redeclared. His northern impi stayed in place. Oh, and the barbarians decided to join the party too by sending in a warrior from our south (it is full health and unpromoted). I thought about what to do for a while before responding.

I responded, as you can see, by moving Axeman One and Two away from where they were fortified to go next to the impi. This way it will be forced to move from its uncomfortable spot. If it doesn’t, then I will declare war and attack with the axemen, who each individually have a better than 80% chance to win (I think that I would favor attacking with Axeman One if I have the chance, as Axeman Two would be put out of position to defend New Hong Kong if he won). Also, Quechua Two is on the rice, stacked with Axeman Two.

Axeman Two’s move puts New Hong Kong and the nearby workers under no additional risk, as the impi can’t reach either of them in one turn. Axeman One is also not too far out of position to do his job of interfering with any attempt from Superdeath to take Hittite, if that is what Superdeath tries to do. Also, it puts him nearer to New Hong Kong, which could be important if an impi horde comes from the fog and its defenses need to be bolstered.

And on that note, I’m debating what to do now that Superdeath suddenly has so many soldiers. A lot depends on what he does next turn, but I still want to think about it before then. Ideally, he will leave us alone enough that Operation Swheat can continue unhindered. Everything related to it is going on farther east then he has reached, so I think that such a scenario is plausible. Operation Bronze Age Collapse will likely have to be delayed again, though. We need more units in the area to counteract the threat of more units from Superdeath in the area, which will take time to build. Operation Bronze Age Collapse may not even be viable at all. If Superdeath comes with 3 or 4 more impis (which his new power could allow, although I think that there is an ikanda in there too), then he could take Hittite, and Axeman One wouldn’t be enough to interfere. Axeman One might abandon his job and come south to New Hong Kong anyway, if I feel that the garrison needs more units in it.

Lastly, after the turn roll, the barbarians moved around into the position seen below:
   
Another warrior! Axeman Three should be able to easily win even if both warriors attack him, so I think that I will leave him in place, have Worker Two continue to road, and hope that the barbarians suicide and cause no more problems. With how things have been going so far, I fully expect to see a barbarian tank roll out of the fog next turn…

[Magic Science]

Turn 54 – 1840 BC
This is what I saw when I joined the game:
   
Superdeath didn’t do anything directly hostile. All that he did was move the southern impi to join the northern one by Hittite. That isn’t to say that his move was ideal, though. It did deny me the chance to kill the southern impi, and it left me some tricky decisions about where to move units to. Specifically, I had to decide where the axemen should go.

This turn, deciding how to move Axeman One and Axeman Two was a balancing act between defending New Hong Kong and the nearby workers and being in position to participate in the Battle of Hittite, which seems imminent based on Superdeath’s moves. After some thought, I decided to move Axeman One to participate in the Battle of Hittite and Axeman Two to defend New Hong Kong and the nearby workers.
I think that the potential threat to New Hong Kong (as many as three or four impis beyond the two we can already see) is too great to be adequately defended against by a single archer, which would be the only unit in the city for several turns if Axeman Two went towards Hittite. Additionally, Axeman Two probably won’t make very much of a difference at Hittite right now anyway. If Superdeath wants to raze the city, then he can. I can’t move fast enough to stop him, even if Axeman Two does go to interfere. If Superdeath wants to keep the city, then there are almost certainly more impis coming to reinforce it, and I would need to wait a few turns for more units anyway, so Axeman Two might as well stay back. The reason that Axeman One is still in the area is that I want to see what is going on, and I want to have the chance to kill wounded impis (the impi that razed Old Hong Kong is there! It needs to die!).

After I did all of that, this is what the Incan League looks like:
   
You can also see that I tried to guess where horses are before we got Animal Husbandry.

It turns out that I was wrong, after the turn roll you can see that the nearest horses are off to the east.
   
Lastly, I didn’t need to worry about Axeman Three. He won both barbarian fights flawlessly.