[SPOILERS]Acrid Pinot and other Pindicator anagrams

[NobleHelium]

Ruff DOWed us and moved his work boat next to NHL. I guess that means no trade routes. When our galley appears I assume he'll move 2SW. If he moves 2SE we could kill it but it would delay our landing. His scout is in the south just outside borders.

Let's keep the settler in place this turn, next turn we move the worker stacked with the settler SE and road, settler then settles, and other worker moves 31 and starts farming.

Ruff's scout could move 2NE and sit on our sheep...

[pindicator]

Turn 56

Since this is an important turn I want to make sure it gets it's post.

Noble & I had a big discussion / argument about what to do once Ruff declared. This is the problem with having only 1 warrior: you feel threatened when your opponent declares on you with nothing more than a scout & a work boat. I won't go into the full back and forth and cover the development of the plan or post the near 500 lines of chat, but we will share the plan which is this:



In yellow I've circled Ruff's work boat and scout. Ruff's scout is forking our sheep & pig tiles. If he wanted to he could plant on our pig or sheep tiles and deprive us of their value next turn. Or he could run wild through our lands scouting them. Neither of those are good things.

I've also circled our only warrior in light blue. It's playing zone defense, dominating the scouts movements the way a knight would dominate a bishop on the edge of the board. If the scout advances then will kill it (barring RNG shenanigans). The big change then is that the warrior will not be shuttled to the southwest island ahead of the settler. This brings up two challenges, more on that in a second.

Ruff's work boat is going to be in for a surprise next turn because our galley completes end of turn in No Humble Lie. If Ruff tries to advance that work boat it is going to be destroyed by our galley. So our defense against the tyrannies of scouting will look like so:



Also things to mention: our settler is 1S of the sheep and will found our 4th city next turn. Ruff does not have sight on that settler, and unless he moves back east will not likely see it. He can't even mess with the sugar tile (if he wanted to), as we'll have our workers farming starting next turn as well. Finally you can also see our newly grown forest: it is 3S of our warrior, right by the enemy scout.

As I mentioned above, our warrior will not be joining the settler now that it has to play zone defense against the scout. This means our galley will not be able to scout the western end of the island on its own before founding the 5th city, unless we want to delay the city. Since the warrior will not be able to join, we decided to just bring the worker that is 2N of NHL in its place. Yes, we're hoping there's not a galley loaded with more bad guys in the darkness, but we need to run that kind of risk with how things are. the worker will unload on t59 along with the settler. Then on t60 the worker will move to the far southwest corner of the island and we'll decided whether our settler founds by the cow or if we want to cram 2 cities on that island. i won't get into the variations yet for brevity's sake, but they have been planned out and depending on what Ruff does his next turn we will share that plan.

Of course, Ruff could also accept our more than generous offer and let us expand un-molested:



As a bonus we'll let his scouts live.

[NobleHelium]

Forked by a scout.

[pindicator]

Forked by a scout.

QotM?

[NobleHelium]

I propose Hem Cover for the island city. Your turn to pick of course.

[NobleHelium]

Ruff offers fish for fish. I take that to be a peace overture (not that I would put much value in such a gesture). I don't see a reason not to accept.

[pindicator]

Turn 58

We're up to 4 cities! Welcome to the empire, Brick:




So with the war, Ruff snuck his work baot through and then asked for peace again. Decided to let him have it. We loaded our worker into the boat t57 and loaded the settler t58, dropping the worker off on the fur. Soon we'll be at 5 cities.

And we may have found a spot for city #6...




Demos are good, actually. I like being tops in food

[pindicator]

Turn 59

Settler is unloaded and island is scouted...




Warrior keeps heading south...

[pindicator]

Turn 60

This was a very good turn for us

First off, Scooter got Math last turn!
Why so excited that Scooter got Math? Because I wasn't sure we could tech Math in 5 turns before. But with the known civ bonus, I'm very confident we're going to be able to get math in 5.

We settled our 5th city!



Rego & us are the only people with 5 cities. Everyone else has 3. Rego is expansive, so REX is the name of the game for him. (Scooter's probably going for a quick library & Great Scientist; Ichabod's been chopping wonders; no idea what Ruff is doing...) To stay within shouting distance of him is very encouraging, especially when FIN is about to start showing it's strength for us as we start growing onto riverside cottage tiles.

We met Ruff in the far south:



We can't really declare war on each other for a few more turns, but I may offer open borders once I defog a trade route between us.

Speaking of defogging, our work boat finished exploring the north island. And dot-mapping up here is gonna blow. I'm debating between two bad choices:



Leaning toward yellow right now, but not happy with either set. Another thought is to place the horse city at the red dot, put another city 1E of the gold, and just write off the crabs as not worth it.

And those lovely demos:

[NobleHelium]

Rego's latest city is named Weeden which broke the code for me. His naming scheme is quarterbacks of the Browns.