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

[Magic Science]

There sure has been a lot of activity in the lurker thread recently...

It’s making me jumpy.

[Magic Science]

Turn 71 – 1160 BC
What do you want to hear about first? The bad news, or the really bad news? Let’s start with the bad news.

   
The bad news is that Superdeath moved an impi into a position where it can reach The Flash in one turn’s worth of movement. My chariot attack is going to give Superdeath at least one turn of warning, so this action from him forces me to reevaluate my plan. Do I still want to try to burn The Flash or not?

I think that I shouldn’t. The impi means that an attack is less likely to succeed and will take a lot more units than two chariots. I don’t want to put very many hammers into military units right now, especially when the chance of success isn’t that great.

Aborting the plan in Almaty is easy. It hasn’t started building its chariot yet, so I can simply have it not build one and go right for a library. However, Geneva has started building a chariot. I think that having a chariot could be handy for zone defense, scouting, and future opportunism, and I don’t like to waste hammers to decay, so I will have Geneva finish its chariot. However, I will have it finish its archer (what it put hammers into after the terrace was finished and before horses were hooked) first, as I think that an archer would be more useful to have slightly sooner.

   
   
The really bad news is that CoT4E (Coeurva and OT4E) built the Oracle and took Alphabet with it. At least, I fervently hope that they took Alphabet with it. If they researched Alphabet under their own power and then took something else with the Oracle, then… good game? Even if I am correct in thinking that CoT4E took Alphabet, they are still an incredibly scary team and a potential runaway. Not that stopping a runaway would be my business, seeing that I lost the game on Turn 43.

Now that they have Alphabet, I have been thinking about rather or not I want to open borders with them. I am leaning towards not doing so, at least for a while. They killed the sustained peace trade route bonus when they declared war for a NAP a few turns ago, so I will receive no extra commerce from open borders for a while. They are also one of teams that I strongly suspect is going to take part in the Partition of Incaland one day, so it could be a very bad idea to let them scout out the interior of my land. Of course, open borders will let me scout their land too, but the settling races between us are over and I don’t think that I will ever go on the attack against them, so I question the advantage of seeing the exact layout of their interior.

   
In his travels, Quechua Two saw Schilda, CoT4E’s sixth city, being founded. They beat Cape Town by one turn and also seem to have won a settling race with the Psychedelic Warlords. The fact that their borders are so close gives me some hope that CoT4E attacks RFS-81 and haphazard1 before me.

   
I decided to go for one more worker, the eighth one, in Sidon and a library in Cuzco. The library lines up nicely to overflow into a galley to settle Quebec City (the island city), and Cuzco should be working a lot of cottages very soon, so I think that a library will pay off in a reasonable amount of time.

Lastly, some interesting things have been visible on Civstats recently. Charson (Charriu and Zalson) settled their sixth city this turn and Superdeath got a somewhat confusing score increase. He increased his score by one population's worth of points during his turn, but when I checked the diplomacy screen he had the same number of cities as before. I can’t think of anything this could be besides capturing and then razing a city. No other players lost points during his turn, so it must have been a barbarian city. Maybe it didn’t fit his dotmap?

More concerningly, I think that shallow_thought and Hitru are in a turn split with someone. They played last this turn and on Turn 69, and both times they logged out without playing the next turn. On Turn 70, they played before RFS-81, so it can’t be him. They are locked into peace with Superdeath, so it can’t be him. They don’t border CoT4E (although they have met now), so it seems unlikely that those two are in a turn split. That leaves Charson…or me.

I think that I should go NAP fishing when the peace treaty with them expires, which is next turn. I’m not sure that I like people going NAP fishing like that very much, but there isn’t anything in the rules about it, no one has exploded in the tech thread and said that they think doing it is a jerk move, and it is very handy to ensure security. Maybe a future game could ban peace treaties and make only cease fires legal?

[Magic Science]

Turn 72 – 1120 BC
   
Any doubts I had about calling off the plan to attack Superdeath just got crushed. Now there is an impi (and two axemen) in Green Lantern and an impi (and one axeman) in The Flash. Evidently Superdeath doesn’t trust the corn-for-corn deal any more than I do (not at all ). I do wonder why the impi in Green Lantern is wounded, though. Barbarians? 

   
In related news, Superdeath’s power is taking a significant hit for unclear reasons. He hasn’t been whipping nearly enough to reduce power by that much, so it can’t be that. I can’t think of any reason besides Superdeath losing units. If my earlier hypothesis of him attack and razing a barbarian city was correct, then maybe he lost some units in the battle? He isn’t in a war with a player I know, but I guess that he could be fighting and losing units against Charson. I don’t know. Whatever it is, I am glad to see it happening. Keep up the good work!

   
I settled Cape Town this turn, which caught me up in city count to CoT4E, Charson, and shallow_thought+Hitru. It also caught me up almost all the way to the Rival Average in Crop Yield, but I forgot to take a demographics screenshot this turn, so you will just have to take my word for it.

You can also see that an archer is leaving Geneva to garrison a city in the western part of the Incan League. I’m not sure what city that will be yet, though. I should have moved him out already, but I didn’t think of it until this turn. CoT4E, the only team that could plausibly attack Geneva right now, are locked into peace with me for a few more turns. By the time the peace treaty expires, I will have completed another archer in Geneva, which will stay there.

Also, I realize as I am posting this that I forgot to declare war and offer peace to the Unlucky Orphans. Oops. I will have to rectify my mistake next turn. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me.

The more I think about it, the more worried I am about a potential strike from them. They have the second half of the timer, so a force of immortals would be able to attack Sidon before it could whip out a defender. I also don’t have any spearmen built yet. I will need to make sure to fit some spearmen into the build queues soon.
…
Man, the paranoia really starts to gnaw at you in these games, doesn’t it?

[Magic Science]

Turn 73 – 1080 BC
   
Quechua Two had been going to skirt around the north side of Schilda, but this turn I decided that doing so would be a bad idea. Fog gazing and the cultural overview clearly indicates that there is another Traumhaft city north of Schilda, so Quechua Two would be sandwiched between Traumhaft borders if he went that way. He wouldn’t have time to make it all the way through the culture-free passage before the peace treaty runs out, so CoT4E could easily kill him if they wanted. Sure, they might not, but I would rather take it slowly and safely, so Quechua Two is retracing his steps and is going to go around to the south instead.

Also visible in that screenshot is gold () and the way a city should be founded. Schilda has existed for less than five turns, but it is already linked by road and has three workers swarming around it to improve tiles.

Contrast this with the Injustice League’s approach to new cities...

   
If I’m not mistaken, Superdeath’s third city still has an unimproved food resource.   I can also see that Green Lantern is working an unimproved tile (grassland forest dyes) and The Flash’s corn still isn’t improved after fifteen turns. To state the obvious, those things are not good.

I am beginning to think that Superdeath could slip back towards the minnow category of civilizations in the future. Sure, he had a strong city lead for a moment, but that lead is rapidly evaporating (he is now tied with shallow_thought+Hitru and only one ahead of me, CoT4E, and Charson). If the area I can see is indicative of the rest of the Injustice League, then those cities are small, isolated, and badly under-improved.

   
His economy is lagging too. Maybe I am wrong and Superdeath is about to turn around his civilization for the better, but if he doesn’t, then the Injustice League could end up as a large and indefensible snack in the future. It is worth noting that Superdeath borders both of the big sharks and the average shark.

Of course, some of the same things could be said about me, but I am somewhat optimistic. I think that intercontinental trade routes combined with eight workers spamming cottages can turn the economy around before too long.

In other news, the Unlucky Orphans dialed my paranoia down a notch by playing before me this turn, so I didn’t declare war and offer peace. I wonder if they were in a settler race with someone?

[Magic Science]

   
Attention lurkers: I have a quick rules question for you. It’s about Quechua Two, seen above.

I played last on Turn 74, so I went ahead and played quickly on Turn 75 (for this question what matters is that I played before RFS-81 on Turn 75). I did not want to leave Quechua Two vulnerable to an attack from one of the Psychedelic axemen in that stack, and I knew that it would be unfair to do a double-move to get by them safely, so I left Quechua Two fortified on that desert hill for both turns.

My question is: now that I have ended my turn, would it be acceptable for me to log back in and move Quechua Two later after RFS-81 plays Turn 75? By doing it that way I would get to start scouting again this turn. I think that it would be fine, because I won’t have done any relevant double moves and I can’t think of any other problems it would cause, but I would rather be sure first.

I will be back with the real report in a little while…

[Magic Science]

Turn 74 and Turn 75 – 1040 BC and 1000 BC
   
The workboat I built to scout the tundra island didn’t have anything to do until Almaty’s borders expand on Turn 82, when it will improve some ocean fish, so I sent it to check out Nobiskrug. It didn’t find anything surprising, although those resources are a little annoying in hindsight. If the lions had moved slightly differently all the way back on Turn 10, then Moncacht-Ape might have seen the cow, which could have prompted me to have him investigate the coast to see the fish, which might have caused me to send my third city to a different spot (one tile east of the cow looks fairly nice), which would have left the game and my position in it in a totally different state by now. Or maybe it wouldn’t have, who knows?

   
Also on the scouting front, I decided that the best use for the quechua recently finished in New Hong Kong for overflow purposes was to send him scouting to the east of the League. Sadly, I thought about this only after I had started to send him to the west on Turn 73, so he is two turns behind where he could be.

The above screenshot also contains a rare shot of a MarvelDC worker in its natural habitat. I think that this one is the first I have seen all game. Maybe this heralds the arrival of another worker at The Flash soon? They often travel in packs stacks, or so I hear.

   
Based on the graphs, I think that Superdeath is the other person with a very low GNP right now, which makes sense considering his pattern to expand with poor worker support. RFS-81 and haphazard1, on the other hand, are certainly doing worse than me and Superdeath in general, but it’s hard to drag down your GNP with maintenance costs when you only have two non-capital cities.

My low power rating is worth noting, but I’m not too worried yet. Even the top power doesn’t have much more than me, and it is possible that whoever has the top power actually doesn’t have more units. All the Aggressive players have barracks everywhere that add to their power, and a high population count could also add to power without meaning more units. I will begin to get worried if I start to see rivals with 20,000-30,000 more soldiers than me.

Lastly, the random fact of this turn report is: CoT4E revolted to Buddhism this turn, they just did so after I took that demographics screenshot. It occurs to me now that one reason for wanting open borders is to try to get some free spreads.

[Mr. Cairo]

About that warrior, I can't say one way or the other if what you wanted to do is ok, but I will say that you might be being a little too paranoid. I highly doubt anyone is going to kill a scouting warrior just for the fun of it. It's simply not worth the damage to relations and the general impression such an act will engender in other players.
Maybe if you were threatening workers of something it's a possibility, but to my eyes, keeping that warrior still on that hill for a couple turns is more threatening/suspicious than just scouting with it. Also, there's no way that RFS is going to move one of those axes off of his settling party stack just to kill a random warrior.

Beyond that I agree with your assessment of Superdeath. He's looking quite vulnerable, more so than us. Perhaps we can vulture a city or two off of him if someone else attacks? It's certainly something I think we should be prepared to do.

Looking around, there's another filler/crappy city spot 4 tiles to the east of Cuzco, which at the very least will establish our borders with Coeur.

Also, I'd imagine a barracks is of more use in Almaty than a Library, since we'll probably just use that city to whip out units, it doesn't have much commerce potential.

[Magic Science]

About that warrior, I can't say one way or the other if what you wanted to do is ok, but I will say that you might be being a little too paranoid. I highly doubt anyone is going to kill a scouting warrior just for the fun of it. It's simply not worth the damage to relations and the general impression such an act will engender in other players.
Maybe if you were threatening workers of something it's a possibility, but to my eyes, keeping that warrior still on that hill for a couple turns is more threatening/suspicious than just scouting with it. Also, there's no way that RFS is going to move one of those axes off of his settling party stack just to kill a random warrior.

In retrospect, I agree with you. I now think that there is more risk of CoT4E killing Quechua Two because he is still in the way of their workers when the peace treaty expires than there is of RFS-81 killing him to farm experience, so I should have moved Quechua Two. Really, I think that I need to work on lowering my general level of paranoia a little bit.

For the record, you were right earlier when you suggested that scouting with scouts was best. I should have taken you advice. I was worried about barbarians, but I haven’t seen a single barbarian with Quechua Two, and a scout would have revealed so much more terrain by now.

Beyond that I agree with your assessment of Superdeath. He's looking quite vulnerable, more so than us. Perhaps we can vulture a city or two off of him if someone else attacks? It's certainly something I think we should be prepared to do.

I think that there is a good chance that we will have an opportunity to scavenge some cities from Superdeath someday. I plan to build a few chariots and other assorted units to be ready, and it is worth considering going after some military technology after Sailing.

Looking around, there's another filler/crappy city spot 4 tiles to the east of Cuzco, which at the very least will establish our borders with Coeur.

I hadn’t thought about that spot, but now that I look at it I think that it could be worth it. A city three tiles east and one tile north of Cuzco could take the crab workboats and grow onto mines and/or coast and lakes. It wouldn’t be great, but I think that it could be somewhat profitable. It would also be very nice to have a bit of crumple zone against CoT4E. A city three tiles east of Cuzco would be foodless, but it would be on a hill for defense, so that is an alternative worth thinking about.

Also, I'd imagine a barracks is of more use in Almaty than a Library, since we'll probably just use that city to whip out units, it doesn't have much commerce potential.

Almaty is building a library because I plan to get a Great Scientist out of that city. Maybe I should have had another city focus on Great Person production, but that is my reason for the library.

[Magic Science]

Turn 76 – 975 BC
   
I am a complete idiot.  
Somehow, I got it into my head that the jungle-covered ivory couldn’t be improved until Iron Working, so I haven’t bothered to improve it yet, despite the fact that my empire is desperately starved for happiness resources. Who knows how I got to thinking that, considering that I know that furs can be improved without chopping down the forest they are in, that I noted that the Unlucky Orphans have improved ivory and the tile still has the jungle graphic, and that the tile itself reads “Needs: Camp” not “Needs: Iron Working.”

To repeat, I am an idiot.    

Things could be looking significantly better now if I had remembered to improve the ivory twenty turns ago when I could have. At least I remembered this before I did anything incredibly stupid, like growing cities into unhappiness or stagnating them when the ivory was sitting right there, waiting to be hooked.

You know, I did anticipate that this game would be a learning experience for me. I had just hoped that the things I would be learning would be a little more advanced than basic game mechanics that I should have already know from single player games.
  

Okay, rant over, I’ll have a worker go and hook the ivory soon, let’s move on.
   
A barbarian spearman is advancing towards the Incan League. I sent an axeman from Geneva to deal with him. Hopefully the savage will move onto the marble so I can finish him off. CoT4E hasn’t acted aggressive at all, and Quechua Two has seen that a significant amount of their power is down by RFS-81 and haphazard1, but I still feel uncomfortable with the axeman not in Geneva. I feel less uncomfortable than if I had to take an axeman out of New Hong Kong, though. Superdeath can see into the city itself, and we have a fairly tense border over there. Those garrison impis could easily turn offensive if Superdeath wanted them to.

[Magic Science]

Turn 77 – 950 BC
   
Interesting and possibly beneficial things are going on in the equatorial region of the map right now.

The Psychedelic Warlords finally founded their fourth city “Space Love” this turn, and I must say that I love their choice of location. I’m not why they settled their city where they did instead of by the pigs and copper to the southeast (maybe there is something one or two tiles south of the city in the fog?), but I am glad that they did. The spot they have chosen seems much more likely to spark border tension with CoT4E than the spot further southeast, especially considering that a Traumhaft settler appeared in the area this very turn, and border tension between those two sounds like good news for me. It could keep them distracted from me and give CoT4E another close target besides me to choose from when they go conquering.

The barbarians seem to have had the same idea that RFS-81 and haphazard1 had in settling the jungle. I’m not sure if that recommends the idea or not. The barbarian city happened to appear on a tile that I was considering for a future, post-Iron Working city, but I don’t think that my chances of capturing the city are good. It is probably defended by archers now, and it would be almost useless without Iron Working anyway. I expect the Unlucky Orphans to capture around the time that they get Iron Working (probably much sooner than me or RFS-81+haphazard1 get it). I will just have to be content with Lhasa.

   
In related news, the barbarian spearman did not go onto the marble. The grassland forest hill that he did go on isn’t really that bad of a tile for him to go on, though. He could suicide either against my axeman, who I left on the plains forest hill, or against the fortified archers in Geneva. If he moves onto the horses, then my axeman should be able to mop him up easily.

   
This turn the rival top power spiked by 15000 soldiers, which is now high enough to get me concerned. I feel that it is likely that whoever has so much power is building up for an aggressive move of some kind against someone. It doesn't seem likely that barracks, population, and garrison units could account for so much power so suddenly. Being last in power is amplifying my fear about the situation.

   
The delay in graph updates means that the power graph isn’t yet helping to identify who is increasing so much in power. Once I see who it is, I will declare war and offer peace. I will need to build more units no matter what, but if I can get a peace treaty then I will feel more comfortable building a settler for Lhasa in Geneva and a settler for the unnamed eastern filler city in Cuzco.