[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

Moved our scouting units, revealed a few more tiles.



Finding the pace of PBEM slow, I went ahead and explored a bit more using flying camera mode. I've never seen anyone do this, don't know if this is cheese or not. If it is I won't do it, but it's in the game and seems like anyone could do it if they wanted to. Here's a probably inaccurate map from what I had time to shadow-gaze and see:



A few assumptions about the map:

1. There are a lot of peaks.
2. Map wrap is toroidal.
3. The water mass around my starting area isn't very large. I can see the outline of a shoreline just a few tiles out of view in the fog (flying camera, force the land tiles to cast a silhouette over the water tiles to get the water layout).
4. There seems to be more land tiles than there should be on a small map with medium sea level - maybe Commodore hand edited in more land? Too early to say if they'd be offshore islands, but a small toroidal map wouldn't leave a lot of room for anything to be too far offshore.
5. From flying around in the dark at ground level I can see there are a lot of trees out there. Maybe not more than normal but you definitely notice when they obscure the view of the scout and warrior as you fly around.

Evidence for toroidal map:



I'm pretty sure that in a cylindrical wrap you wouldn't see the land repeat in flying camera mode as it does in that picture on the right side of the image. That is one map orbit north, the visible land in the top left of the image is one rotation west of my start. I tried to use that isometric view to figure out the globe size, but I think my math skills are too rusty at this point to make it work. There's probably a much simpler formula for figuring out the map's X/Y dimensions.

Anyway, not much to do on T1 except move units and hit enter. I have to do something to keep myself busy. Demographics:



The soldiers number is weird, I guess someone's is different with a different starting tech. Also someone has a lower health rating, I wonder if they settled near flood plain? Would have been possible for us if we had taken the north plains hill. Maybe there are mirrored starts and someone chose the northern hill. That's a lot of speculation, probably enough for one night.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Played T2 quickly before work this morning. Moved scouting units:



Demographics:



Still need a naming scheme. Maybe we'll get 2 turns today!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Played T2 quickly before work this morning.

snip...

Still need a naming scheme. Maybe we'll get 2 turns today!

Did you remember to change to the GFH? Otherwise you're going to delay your worker 1T.

Did you confirm your flying camera information any with your second turn scouting moves? Fun to see you do this for a turn, but if you find the pace of the game slow-ish, might I recommend some Halo? :neenernee

No idea on names. Republican presidential candidates? Then even if your cities eventually get razed you won't mind so much.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Borders popped after I hit end turn so we're still following the plan. I hadn't thought about it before but now but I wonder how the production phase runs in PBEM. Border growth took effect immediately, we'll have to see when the worker completes on T7, if it's as soon as I hit end turn or if it's when we get the save from Sian next time. Since Kuro goes last sequentially I wonder if production runs then. Also need to see what happens the first time we whip a unit. I assume it would complete just the same as a slowbuild. Drafting obviously should be instantaneous.

I didn't take time to look at anything else when I played the save, just snapped the pictures and sent the save to Kuro. Had to go to work.

Not bad on the naming scheme idea. Not only would we care less if we lost a city (ex. "Newt Gingrich has been razed to the ground! I like how that sounds ") we would also get cover for any bad behavior on our part during the game. We could say the war hawk party was running foreign policy and, in a coup d'état, got control of the government and military. Then again, I also like the idea of playing as if Mao was actually in control....Maybe we're Chairman Mao of the Republican Party? We can rename the state, you know. Don't have to be Babylon. That would be an interesting diplo style to take, I think.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I just realized that your plan for naming the cities after Republican presidential candidates works with my idea to name the workers after NPR correspondents. I guess we can save Corey Flintoff to be a combat worker. Actually they have so many correspondents, hosts, and contributors we can name regular units after them too. ("Your Diane Rehm has destroyed an axeman!") A new unit produced gets you: "Ron Paul has built a David Welna", etc.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

On second thought, if I named my cities after these "candidates", I may be tempted to auto-raze.

Maybe name your nation chickenhawks or something generally disdainful and pejorative. That's funny to me. I hope no one gets their feelings hurt.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'd name the capital "Come at me bro", except that might entice someone to come at me when they see it in the top 5 cities. As for the chickenhawk idea, I don't think Chairman Mao, our glorious leader, knows what that is. But he knows about the Party, so we can be the Republican Party. When we do diplo, it's going to be signed

Chairman Mao,
Republican Party

I find that amusing enough on its own.

[spacetyrantxenu]

We're now officially the Republican Party. Neal Conan the warrior explored SE to find a nice potential site for city number 2:



Steve Inskeep, our intrepid scout, continued exploring northwest in what is looking like a fairly inhospitable tundra climate. Commodore has several blocks of ice visible floating in the water, and there are several more out in the black in the water north of our land, it seems. I hope we're close to the N/S wrap, otherwise there may be a fair bit of low yield tiles for us to work with.

Top five cities, just shows everyone has settled and that Newt must not have done well in his last debate as he's last in the current straw poll:





Current demographics:



I'm not sure what to make of the land area reading, I can't figure out how we ended up with 20333 unless that somehow because we're 3/4 of the way through this turn. I can get a value of 20250 if only 1 person has no water tiles but that's as close as I can get for now. How does this work?

We're #1 in MFG thanks to getting the EXP bonus, but with everyone else just at 2 hammers and 5 food maybe no one else is opening with a worker, they may be growing population first. We'll see soon, especially if someone's soldier count goes up showing an additional warrior.

Boldy, what do you think about having Neal (warrior) continue scouting and try to meet our opponents sooner or possibly go for circumnavigation? We could get another warrior in our capital but it isn't a very safe move considering we want to build 2 workers at the start. Any thoughts about the potential second city site? It's further from the capital than I'd like but that's a good location with cottage ready flood plains and good hammer potential. Maybe a hybrid commerce/hammer city? That seems to be what our capital is. By the way, name for the next city...Rick Perry or Herman Cain before everyone forgets about him? :neenernee

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We're now officially the Republican Party.

snip...

I'm not sure what to make of the land area reading, I can't figure out how we ended up with 20333 unless that somehow because we're 3/4 of the way through this turn. I can get a value of 20250 if only 1 person has no water tiles but that's as close as I can get for now. How does this work?

snip...

Boldy, what do you think about having Neal (warrior) continue scouting and try to meet our opponents sooner or possibly go for circumnavigation? We could get another warrior in our capital but it isn't a very safe move considering we want to build 2 workers at the start. Any thoughts about the potential second city site? It's further from the capital than I'd like but that's a good location with cottage ready flood plains and good hammer potential. Maybe a hybrid commerce/hammer city? That seems to be what our capital is. By the way, name for the next city...Rick Perry or Herman Cain before everyone forgets about him? :neenernee

@Republican Party... I mean

@land numbers on demos: I have no idea on this one. I'm going to defer to others, as I don't get that into the numbers.

@scouting vs. garrison: A question first. From the screenshot you provided, can you (through flying camera or tile bleed, etc) determine with certainty that SW of Newt is coast and not an avenue to another land mass? My guess is that it is not, but we cannot rule out to the NE, so you have one potential route of access which would leave you very vulnerable to a wandering warrior. How long until another cultural expansion? As is, we would have exactly one turn of warning in worst case scenario (NE, NE) and would not be able to garrison if needed. Do you want to hedge and almost build a warrior? If that is the case, you may as well just build one.

All in all, I'd suggest keeping that warrior at home for the time being.

@second city: I agree with your placement. That will be a very strong hybrid site. Will have to move fishing up in queue. It is not super close for a MP game, so you will want to keep an eye on reinforcements.

City name: since Herman Cain is out of the race and figuratively wandering in the desert, that may be a suitable site for him. We're reading way too much into these names.

[spacetyrantxenu]

If we go with Herman Cain next our lurkers may wonder if our naming scheme is for presidential candidates or for politicians who have had infidelity scandals. Zing!