[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

T110 - Just wasting away time until the library finishes in One Fish and I finally turn on tech again. I should be able to make it to Currency on my cash reserves, even if the last few turns are close to break even. It would be nice to have some cash to spare since I'm dreading the appearance of my next random event, though.




Coming right up, another work boat for Red Fish. The barbs set me back a ways there, wasting what, 70 hammers? (30 for the replacement WB, 40 for the emergency galley?) And of course another 10 turns of anger. This isn't a bad little hybrid city, I'd have preferred to get a library in there while I was saving cash. Or build units since that's where my barracks is.

My workers are chopping the forest outside the western border of New Fish. Since Serdoa is going to pop borders up there before I do, I figure I may as well get some hammers from the forest chop rather than letting him have any of it. I don't even care if he doesn't like it. He won't be able to do a damn thing about that city being there until he gets catapults, not that that is so far away. But I'm less worried about him taking that city than I am him building up several triremes that I can't counter. I need to get MC soon after Currency to defend my core from a naval invasion. I don't think he'd be so bold as to try it, but if he did and I didn't have the boats to keep him from landing, well that would certainly suck.

I have two forest chops lined up at Black Fish but they'll wait until I get Buddhism spread into town. In the meantime the city can just keep growing as fast as the workers can clear back jungle and farm the underlying grass tiles.



Can I declare a population victory? And I'm beginning to wonder if that 40,000 population civ is Merohoc or Scooticator. I think they're both on the way out.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T111 - My wandering spear will make it back home before Serdoa's borders close off the westerly approach to New Fish.




Serdoa's military power has caught up to mine, and he is walking everything around on this border, meanwhile many of my units are stuck doing HR duty back home. This would be a great time for Lewwyn or Azza to go harass Serdoa in the west, but I doubt that's happening. They're too busy throttling each other (though it looks like Lewwyn has the longer reach). Anyway, still counting down to T117 when our enforced peace ends to see what happens. It's too bad my food resources are on the west side of New Fish, where they're likely to be pillaged the next time unpleasantries break out.

To wit:



He'll be attacking into walls if he chooses to. With PRO archers and whatever else I have laying around (mostly axes). I had hopes for this to be a good city, but when he ends up controlling the second ring of my BFC to both the north and west, that will erase +4 of my food output here, meaning I can't work two decent plains workshop tiles (if I ever get to build workshops). But if Brick can get an invasion together I'm sure the northern city would be his target, I hope that will materialize. He'd probably burn the city and plant his on the hill isthmus tile, a great choke point, and one that would fit nicely with my dotmap. Hey Brick, please?




The granary will finish in New Fish next turn, courtesy of the stolen forest chop. The galley is returning to pick up the Budhist missionary from Two Fish (soon to be whipped), plus whatever unit is nearby. Archer builds in Red and Blue, and finally I'll finish the library in One Fish and turn on research. I don't know what turn I got my last tech but it was a long time ago. I wonder if anyone is tracking techs, and if they thought I got one a few turns ago when I added 4 population? Although that was hard to miss in the population statistic. Anyway, if I'm setting some kind of record for pitboss tech futility I'm sure someone will point it out.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T112 - Well another turn just rolled as I'm still trying to catch up here (it's now T114), but back to work! I don't think I've posted a cultural map ever, or at least not lately:




I wanted to show the cultural map to give a sense for where everyone is in my neighborhood. A few turns back I posted that I wasn't sure where Nakor's city of FG was, and that it he had an option to liberate the city (gift it to me). Now I see why, it's on an island pretty close to my capital. I'm being too slow to expand down there and he's already taken the best spot (3 food resources). He'll probably beat me to the city south of my capital, too, which would be a real pain in the ass for defense, and I'd lose the silks on that island. Currency can't come soon enough, I need to get ready to spam out a few more cities. But then there's the business with Serdoa and I need to focus on being ready for T117. I need more cities so that I can do more things at once.

I got a free religion spread in Old Fish the turn after I finished a monument there. I should have known.... That is the most useless city to get the free spread. Blue Fish and New Fish would have both been more convenient. New Fish to get borders popped sooner, Blue Fish to produce a barracks since it is likely to be my unit production center for a while. Old Fish is going to take forever to build the library anyway, and the borders are already going to pop in 10 turns. Damn this game sometimes.

Noteworthy news in the event log, in addition to Bigwyn building their shrine, someone built the MoM, 75 BC.



That seems quick to me, not that I was even remotely competing for it. As it is an unknown civ who built it I should congratulate either Lewwyn, Commodore, Plako, or Slowcheetah. Slowcheetah and Plako both gained 21 points between when I took my map screen shots to record score last turn and this turn, so I'll give it to one of them. Lewwyn gained 16 points but I'm sure building his shrine granted him most if not all of those points. Since Plako is IND it's probably him, so congrats. I hope it was expensive in terms of opportunity cost but I kinda doubt it was.




With the northern galley back at Two Fish I whipped the missionary. He'll be joined by an archer for the trip back to New Fish. After finishing the library in One Fish I started on another missionary, to go to Blue Fish. Once he arrives there Blue Fish will build one for Black Fish, then I can put in the chops to the Black Fish library and get borders popping over there. That will get the rice tile into play, help the city grow up more quickly, which will let me cottage over the farms on the south and east sides of the city (away from the border with Brick). I thought about preparing a settler out of One Fish for my horse city, but I really need a missionary to send with it, I don't have garrison to spare to send with it, and I definitely don't have a worker available to walk all the way down there right now.

I feel like I'm expanding very slowly and I'm sure I'm going to pay for it in the long run, but I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to be playing this out. I could whip out all the things I need, at the cost of driving my GNP back down just as soon as it is beginning to recover now. I think I'm just moving slowly and steadily, but I don't feel like I'm doing a great job keeping up with some of the other players in this game. Nakor's economy is roaring and, unlike Serdoa's (who is nearly even in GNP), it isn't all culture. Then again, Nakor hasn't had to build a military at all in this game. By my estimation only he and possibly Slowcheetah haven't been involved in any fighting so far, and it's no wonder they're both at the top of the score board. Nakor bears watching in the long term. I'm probably going to have to harass him eventually, before he's an era ahead of me in tech, but I already have a lot going on and I'm not ready to tackle that problem right now.

Speaking of power:



That's Nakor bringing up the rear in this neighborhood. Which isn't bad play, he has the island to himself, why spend the gold on a military if you don't have to?



Aaaahhh, finally, a GNP number that isn't terrible. And I have enough cash to run this for several turns. But this number, as happy as I am with it, is probably break even research for the teams ahead of me. Um...and what's with that food number? Someone has piled it up in the last few turns, likely one of the civs I haven't met because my food graph shows me leading the civs I have charts on. If I'm just guessing I'll give it to Slowcheetah, with Sury he should be growing quickly, and without a war he has no reason not to be growing. I hope the boost from Currency vaults me back into the list of competitors, I'd much rather be in the top half of this game than the bottom half.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T113 - We'll have religion (and walls) soon in New Fish.




You may note that Red Fish is rioting, I was careless with my tile micro last turn. Late in the turn I was flipping through my cities and noticed I could squeeze out enough food in Red Fish to go ahead and grow one turn earlier. Well, I failed to notice I'd be growing it into unhappiness. Oops. A few tiles rejiggered later and now Red Fish will finish its archer build one turn sooner to put the fear back into those misbehaving peasant townsfolk.

I started a galley in Two Fish, I don't have a specific mission in mind for it other than to keep an eye out to the west and to serve as defense if needed. I'll probably use it to ferry a settler down to the horse spot eventually, but I'll have to keep one galley in the bay between Two Fish and New Fish for troop movements. If I can get open borders with Brick one of these days that would be nice, but galley movement is still going to be the quickest route, so keeping transportation capacity available here will remain important.

Demographics describe me well, a middle of the pack civ.



However, I'm doing better than these guys, probably entirely due to my lack of proximity to Commodore:



Ouch, very ouch. Better luck next time Scooter and Pindicator. Their match is in mop up time now. Losing their capital just cost me one of my ICTRs. Somehow I don't think they're worried about that right now.

Well, I will meet Commodore next turn. Maybe he's teched Alphabet, too, and I can get trade routes with him. I need to replace that income, sorry Scooticator!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T114 - For once this report isn't days old, I played the turn and am already going to write it up. Hooray!

So you know how I thought I'd meet Commodore this turn, since the cultural overlay showed he held the barbarian city? Well,
not so much.




It looks like Merohoc wasn't the only team to have barb trouble -- at some point after capturing this city, Commodore lost it back to the barbarians, it seems. I wonder how that happened (and I wonder why I hadn't noticed it before, I guess it happened before I had map visibility in this area, that or I just completely failed to see it in the event log one day). My work boat will keep moving west and will make contact in three turns, unless he gets eaten by a galley first. I had thought about turning him around a few turns ago after Commodore captured In 'N Out, but with the map showing he had the barb city I thought it better to keep moving forward. Oh well.

I hope the Zulu live long enough for me to tech Alphabet at a discount, but I don't think they'll survive long enough for that to happen. I don't know anything about where Commodore's army is, but he probably has war weariness issues that he'd like to put to rest permanently. One sure fired way to do that is to relegate Scooter and Pindicator to the lurker thread. I really want to know what happened over here, this is a decisive defeat for the side that I think initiated the conflict, what could have gone so wrong so quickly???

I hadn't planned to play my turn, I just wanted to see if Scooter had accepted my late turn map trade offer (he did, that's where the updated map came from). But then I went ahead and played anyway. Ooooh, maybe I can sleep in tomorrow morning, since I won't have a turn to play OR a report to write!




As with everything else lately, the focus is on the border at New Fish. I moved the galley into port and had the missionary spread Buddhism to the city, and then whipped the city 2 -> 1 with the OR bonus, with immediate regrowth set for this turn. I didn't mind losing the population since the workers don't have a second tile improved yet anyway and the walls are double speed production with PRO (gzomg it's so OP...two cheap buildings in this city already! ). Next up is a library here, after Mathematics comes in I should be able to chop/whip it fairly quickly to get what assistance I can in the inevitable culture war. I think I'll have to come up with just three base hammers in New Fish to finish the library if I add in a chop, then a whip the next turn when I'm at size 2 again. Or that math could be wrong and I can get it some other way, it's midnight here, what do I know?

I decided to go with a library in Red Fish since I'm wasting some beakers there without it. If things go sideways and Serdoa does attack I may regret not building more units for now, but it doesn't look like he's still building up for war. If I do need military in a hurry, well, I do have a lot of big cities.

Three cities are set to grow again next turn, but I don't think I'll have double second place's geometric population again in this game. I'm pretty close to the limit of what these cities can do for now since I'm out of tiles plus specialist slots to grow into. How about some city screens to see what it looks like to be all you can be?



It isn't like I'm trying to generate a GS here, though that will eventually happen. There's just nothing else to do with this population now other than periodically whip it off. When Currency comes in I'm sure I'll want a market here, at least then I can run a few more specialists. In that case I'll probably keep growing One Fish and let it keep the corn on a fairly permanent basis. Until then, now that One Fish is full grown I've given it back to Two Fish.



I picked up the second specialist here because I'd grow to size 10 the next turn anyway. Not sure if it's a good trade to lose the cottage turn to pick up the +3 GPP but I suspect it is, since this GS will be my first and will be an academy in One Fish. I want it as soon as possible. This galley will probably be whipped because once Two Fish is at size 10 there's no point growing out onto the coast tiles. This is another place I'd love to put a market and run more specialists. If I have turns to build something before then I'll probably start a settler here and start working on a plan to get my horses settled. It's long overdue. Oh, and I learned my lesson from last time, there is an archer ready to enter the city next turn to keep it from rioting.



So, with library builds everywhere am I playing single player, or trying to complete the quest I got a while back? Not really...I don't think I'll get to 9 libraries before the renaissance, I only have 7 cities now anyway and not all of them need a library. But this is a decent commerce producer and has enough food to run specialists, so why not. Every time I think about this city I think how much food it has and how easy it would be to keep whipping things out of the build queue. But then I see how much whip anger is still here and have to stay the whip hand. I think it's at about 25 turns right now. Yay for HR!



I really want to get OR into this city so I can chop that grassland forest into a barracks. Blue Fish will probably be on military duty forever since there is no commerce and not a lot of food here. I can get it more food by taking the river grass farms, which I'll do when Black Fish is grown out, but for now this city is stuck for growth. The nice thing about that is that I can whip this city whenever I need to because it's in a convenient place for that in terms of regrowth and working off the anger. I should have Buddhism here in 5 turns unless I get a free spread sooner, whenever that happens this will be a barracks build for certain. Probably no library here ever unless Brick starts pushing culture in his front city, which I really hope he'll avoid doing. Well, actually as soon as I get Buddhism here, Blue needs to make a missionary for Black. But other than that, barracks once and then units forever.



There's nothing glamorous or interesting about Black Fish, the job is to keep growing until I can get religion here, then whip out whatever infrastructure I need. Then regrow, and then turn the farms into cottages on the backline sides of the city, and then profit! Not much else to say about this one.



There's even less to say at Old Fish. This little backwater doesn't even have a garrison, which I should probably rectify soon. There's very little risk of attack here, with only a few fogged tiles left at the far NE end of my peninsula, and I can get an axe here from Black Fish in time to sort anything out, or from Red Fish. The only cost would be unhappiness in Red Fish for losing the HR garrison, but as soon as I have time to get a unit over here I'll do it. This city will pop borders soon, the job is to grow cottages along the river and start pumping science. The farmed sugar and banana tiles will obviously be turned into plantations as soon as I can tech Calendar.



New Fish, border town, and probably more populated by military than the poor serfs who wanted to call this place home. The long term prospects for this town really require Serdoa's borders to vanish, granting the additional +5 food that will be missing if I can't control the outer ring of BFC tiles. Ignoring those for now, this will be a small city that doesn't contribute nearly as much as it could have, but it at least gets me marble for when it's time to build national wonders. I'm not sure that I'll beat anyone (particulary the IND civs) to any of the good wonders, but it's nice to at least have the marble around in case I get a shot at one of them. If this city stays crippled by the lack of food (if Serdoa retains control of those tiles), I'll probably either have to build wealth here or just trickle in/slowly build units for this city's defense. At least with the pigs and sugar I'll be able to whip this city frequently.

I'm not pleased with my food number now, that was the one thing I could hang my hat on for the longest time. I am thoroughly mediocre in this game now.



Just look at that massive GNP spike...oh, hmm, not so impressive huh?



But I'll make it up in hammer output....oh damn, well, average among my neighbors



I've already mentioned that the lead in food has evaporated. One thing I'm left wondering about is what Brick is doing. His food production has been increasing more slowly than my other neighbors. I know Serdoa blocked him in so he hasn't settled a city in a while, but he does have backfill land available to settle. I wonder if he's building power toward anything?



Well, he isn't spiking, but he's keeping pace. Serdoa has leveled off the last few turns, maybe that's a sign that he doesn't want any trouble. Of course, if he doesn't want to fight, hopefully Brick does and maybe I can get in a cheap shot while they're busy.



I'll probably check into the game again this turn before it rolls, I offered a few map trades around, I'm curious to see if anyone sends back interesting info.

And I posted a question a few turns back about circumnavigation via map trading. Does anyone have info on what scenarios could take place there, and who would win the circumnavigation bonus if it was completed via map trade?

[novice]

I think in simulturns, if multiple players circumnavigate on the same turn, whoever's first in the turn processing on that turn roll gets the bonus. The processing order is randomized every turn roll. (So one player wins all ties on any given turn).

[Ceiliazul]

Is there any way to see who is "first" on any particular turn?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I can't figure it out. I don't see anything relevant in game setup or in the running pitboss server software. Then again, in my test even with setting the game for simultaneous turns the game may not be randomizing turn order to make it fair for the test AIs I set up, so who knows. I checked the demographic screens in game after I grabbed a civ and none of the five turns I played had turn order randomized (judged by ending turn, checking F9 for population. With all 5 civs in the test game having equal population I should have seen my civ's ranking rise or fall depending on where I was in the turn order, if the turns were randomized). I'd have to test again running two machines to be sure that having only one human player wasn't affecting the game behavior, but I don't feel like setting that up right now.

Anyway, in case I'm overlooking it, a sample of the pitboss game settings and the running interface.

Also, this post may get me points in the contest for "the most head-scratching posts" (the Catwalk award?)

[novice]

I can't figure it out. I don't see anything relevant in game setup or in the running pitboss server software. Then again, in my test even with setting the game for simultaneous turns the game may not be randomizing turn order to make it fair for the test AIs I set up, so who knows. I checked the demographic screens in game after I grabbed a civ and none of the five turns I played had turn order randomized (judged by ending turn, checking F9 for population. With all 5 civs in the test game having equal population I should have seen my civ's ranking rise or fall depending on where I was in the turn order, if the turns were randomized).

I think humans win all ties against AIs.

But you won't see anything in F9. The ties there are broken by player ID, which is static. It's just the turn processing that's done in a random order every turn. If you wanted to test it you should just let all civs complete a wonder, reload, and see different players completing it from test to test. Although you'd have to use human players.

[spacetyrantxenu]

In that case the answer to ceil's question is no. We only see who is earlier in the turn order in the event of a tie. I'm going to guess that this isn't really information the player should have access to during the turn anyway, and it isn't worth modding the pitboss server software for it (is that even possible? I don't think Firaxis released anything regarding modding the server, just the game?).