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

[Magic Science]

Turns 106, 107, 108, 109 - 225 to 150 BC
   
Hey, I got a prediction right for once! Just as I thought, the Orphans retreated and OT4E captured Jacques S without much of a fight. You can tell that it wasn’t much of a fight by the low war weariness between them (at this point it was only 12, if I remember correctly) and the fact that none of the Traumhaft units are wounded. The invaders elected to burn the city, probably because they don’t want to drag themselves into a long conflict with shallow_ru over it.

That brings up a facet of the War on Music that has been very interesting to me recently. That is, that so many cities are being burned after capture instead of kept. RFS-81+haphazard1 have lost six cities to invasion now, and five out of those six has been razed, which seems unusual to me. I mean, usually the point of going to war is to capture cities to improve your position, right? I don’t think that it is simply that the invaders are being dumb, either. From what I can tell, all of the burnings have had fairly good reasons behind them. I find it interesting that everyone seems to be finding good reasons to raze instead of capture in the same war at about the same time.

Also visible in the above screenshot is Tank starting the pillaging campaign I decided to send him on. He started by pillaging the copper mine on Turn 106. Since, with the retreat of the Orphan setter from the area, it didn’t look like anyone was going to settle in the region right away, this hopefully shouldn’t tick anyone off in the same way as if I was pillaging improvements that were about to belong to someone, and there is a lot of gold to be had in those improvements. By the end of Turn 109, Tank has already contributed about 45 gold via pillaging, and he is set to gain more.

   
Meanwhile, on the eastern border, I think I may have identified the location of Canoel, the city with the Oracle. You see, the tile one east of the deer (the one I am hovering over in the screenshot so you can see the culture percentages) is being heavily pressured by Traumhaft culture. However, neither the deer to the west nor the grassland cottage to the south are being pressured culturally with the same strength, so it can’t be from Nobiskrug. The explanation I have come up with is that Canoel is located where my sign indicates and is pressuring the tile with its fourth ring borders. The victory screen does indicate that it has more than 500 culture now, so it’s possible.

I am sure that this little detail will prove crucial when my master plan to blitzkrieg the Reich der Traume with modern armors comes to fruition in a few turns.

The above screenshot also shows that Geneva is building its market the old-fashioned way, without slavery. I had originally planned to whip, but then I thought about it some more and decided that it would take too long to grow up to a good size to make use of the expanded happy cap if I did so. By not whipping, I can have the city at eight population working all of its (pre-Iron Working) cottages by Turn 116, if I remember my math correctly.

   
Then, on Turns 107 and 108, the bells of peace ring out across the world, much to the disappointment of myself, and, I imagine, the lurkers. Don’t lose all hope, though; they were only cease fires, I think. I don’t see “peace treaty for peace treaty” in the diplomacy screen, at least. I expect OT4E to resume the War on Music against RFS-81+haphazard1 soon, if not immediately. He may have offered peace to them just in case shallow_ru didn’t give peace and he needed to focus on them more.

   


I was only two turns away from Judaism when my partners in trade snatched it away from me. I suppose that I shouldn’t have had high hopes, considering how ridiculously late this is for it, but it’s still a disappointment. It forces me to reevaluate my technology choices. I had only invested one turn’s worth of research into anything so far, so I wasn’t really committed to any path. I could switch. However, I don’t think that I am going to. I think that I am still going to head for Monarchy next, but via Priesthood.

This map is fairly food poor, but it isn’t so food poor that eight population is the best we can do, at least in some cities, in the near future. Cuzco, Sidon, New Hong Kong, Almaty, and Quebec City all would be limited by a happiness cap of eight. They have more good tiles to grow on, and I think it is worth it to research Monarchy to enable them to do so. The other cities won’t benefit as much, however. They don’t have as much of a food surplus to work with to grow as of now. That could change, though. Cape Town will have a chance to grow on lighthouse coast once I am no longer scared for my life by the huge armies my neighbors have, and Geneva will be able to grow with farmed rice and more grassland cottages once Iron Working comes in. Even Sofia could grow on lighthouse coast someday. Lhasa is the only city that seems truly doomed to remain at a fairly small size forever. In conclusion, although about half of the League won’t have much to gain from Hereditary Rule, I feel that the benefit the other half will reap is enough to make me want Monarchy anyway, even without Judaism.

[Magic Science]

Turn 110 – 125 BC
   
I’m trying to get back onto a normal reporting schedule again… and what’s more normal than complaining commenting about the map?

In regards to capitals, since the start of the game I have been assuming that the capitals were pretty much mirrored. I thought that each would have the same number and type of resources, the same number of forests, hills, rivers, and so on, and the only difference would be in their exact configuration. However, now that I have almost completely scouted Exdeath, it seems that I was incorrect in my assumption. Cuzco has a wet corn and a sheep, while Exdeath has a dry corn and a pig. Both have copper, crabs, and riverside sugar. This gives them the same amount of food from resources, but not in quite the same increments. If I had been given the choice, I think that I would have chosen Cuzco’s land over Exdeath’s because Cuzco gets a little more commerce from its food tiles and is able to ramp up slightly faster in the early game (working a six-food tile right away instead of a five-food one).

In regards to the map in general, I can’t do a full analysis yet because there is still so much terrain hidden in the fog. However, there are a few details I would like to point out. One is that it looks like Charson was, like me, unable to find a second city spot that both shares food with the capital and gets a new food resource of its own in the first ring. I guess that it was a deliberate map decision to make it that way, and the other players likely had the same problem. It’s also notable that Charson did not have a chance to settle a city analogous to my Cape Town due to the shape of their coastline. Too bad for them; Cape Town has turned out quite nicely for me, I think.

   
Resettlement of the Musical Wasteland is going quickly, likely aided by the roads. I had thought about trying to settle a city or two down here myself, but I decided not to because it would have required a great deal of military investment in the form of defenders to make it succeed, and, rightly or wrongly, I had decided not to focus on military production during the time period when I would have had to start a resettling project.

Unfortunately, the settling of Antium (no more cool fantasy names now that whatever happened with Coeurva happened) stops me from continuing my pillaging spree with Tank. That had made me about fifty or sixty gold in total, I think. I am not quite sure because pillaging events apparently don’t remain in the log permanently. I hadn’t known that before, interesting.

Also, the War on Music is back on again in its original form: RFS-81+haphazard1 vs. Charson. I had expected them to do this if RFS-81+hapahazard1 was still alive when the peace treaty expires, and they are. I think that OT4E could have taken Golden Void if he has pressed right on after the “Battle” of Jacques S I, but he didn’t (probably for a good reason that I can’t see), so it seems that Charson will, fittingly, do the killing blow to the Warlords. I will be interested to see if this region remains peaceful or not after that. I think that it will, but maybe not.

   
Bonus shot! Take a look at all of the mixed culture on tiles. I think it is kind of pretty.

   
On the border with the Injustice League, culture has been causing me all sorts of headaches. I lost that contested hamlet to The Flash’s Great Lighthouse culture, and I suspect that it is going to be permanent. Furthermore, Green Lantern reached third ring culture before New Hong Kong and it is going to take my wine tile. That one should be reclaimable in the near future with a border pop and a library, though, so it isn’t too bad. Garrisons can make up the happiness until I connect it.

In the long term (as in, post-Construction), the culture situation over here will allow Superdeath to his New Hong Kong from the fog in one turn with two-movers. I have been trying to keep the paranoia at a reasonable level, but it isn’t paranoia if they really are plotting your doom, right, right?!

[Magic Science]

Turn 111 – 100 BC
   
The barbarians surprised me by founding a city in the Blessed Lands this turn. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised; it makes perfect sense that barbarians would start appearing in the Blessed Lands now that human civilizations have fog-busted just about the entire mainland. This has got me thinking about the role that barbarians will play in the future colonization of the Blessed Lands. I think that the barbarian units will be so technologically outmatched by that point that they will pose nothing more than a minor annoyance, but the cities could be more interesting. For example, that city there will likely have 50 or 60 turns to grow before anyone can capture it, which would, even after losing population and infrastructure from a conquest, give it a significant head start when compared to a brand-new city. It even seems to be in the right place for a city (in range to work the fish without settling on the silver). I just hope that the AI workers don’t do anything dumb like destroy one of the unnatural, irreplaceable, pre-improved tiles found in the Blessed Lands to fit their inferior improvement plan.

Also, you can see that I switched Quebec City to a market instead of a library. I did this because it is, for me as an Expansive leader, cheaper than a library, and because it grants happiness for Quebec City to grow onto coastal tiles. Sure, I could ship out a bunch of garrison units to increase happiness, but I would prefer to keep as many of them on the mainland to defend more vulnerable cities as I can.

   
I have been talking about power levels a lot recently, but I don’t think that I have shown a screenshot of the graph for a while, so here you go. Hopefully this shows you why I have been feeling so nervous about OT4E recently. Superdeath and shallow_ru both do have higher power levels than me too, but they don’t outmatch me by enough for me to get that worried about it.

However, I think that it is worth keeping in mind how even an attack from a civilization without that much of a power advantage over me could spell disaster, or even doom. It seems to me that dogpiles are very easy to pull off on this map, as the War on Music shows. There aren’t many significant natural barriers, such as mountain ranges, oceans, or barren badlands, between neighboring civilizations on this map. The only thing keeping neighbors apart was sheer distance, and, as the situation on the Injustice League border shows, that distance is mostly gone now. The geography allows any neighbor to feasibly stage an attack on any other neighbor, and everybody has many neighbors. This means that if a civilization shows weakness or is weakened by an attack, they can quickly be attacked from all sides.

Also, note that I no longer have graphs on RFS-81+haphazard1. They have been putting all of their espionage points on me for a while now, and they now have enough to block me from seeing graphs. I guess that RFS-81 has been missing that detail due to how fast he plays his turns, as I think that it would be a better choice to put espionage on someone he is actually at war with. Oh well, having graphs on a civilization that is about to die isn’t that important anyway, and I don’t blame him for playing short turns when there is only one city left.

[Magic Science]

Turn 112 – 75 BC
   
OT4E's new settlements cut me off from being able to pillage any more improvements in the region, and it seems that the shallow_ru versus OT4E front of the War on Music is done now, so I am sending Tank southwest to scout the interior regions of the Unlucky Orphans (Jem is coming from the east to get a look at Golden Void, which I expect to have fallen by the time he arrives). It looks like shallow_ru agrees that their war with OT4E is over, as they are retreating some of their troops from the area. However, they were worried enough to start out with building walls in Jacques S II, so it seems that they aren’t entirely comfortable with the situation over here.

I imagine that shallow_ru is fairly disappointed with how the War on Music turned out for them. They built all of those units, and they were almost rewarded with a well-grown captured city and a fairly strong resettlement somewhere by the ruins of Black Corridors…but then OT4E swooped and in and they ended up with one crappy city for their troubles instead. Jacques S II isn’t a very good city. It requires a border expansion and Calendar before it can get a four-food tile of its own, and taking Duncan Q’s wheat in the meantime doesn’t seem like a very good idea, as that is Duncan Q’s only food as well.

At the top of the screenshot, you can see four of my workers improving Lhasa. It wouldn’t normally seem like a task of high enough importance to require four workers, but almost the entire rest of the league is improved by now, so there isn’t much else for all of these guys to do. Also, I would like them to be in the area when we get Iron Working in a few turns so that I can chop the jungle around Geneva down and improve those tiles as fast as possible. An extra four-food tile (the rice farm) will make such a big difference there, and three more grassland cottage tiles won’t be unwelcome either. I’m scraping together every cottage tile I can, and the current projection has us maxed out working a few more than thirty cottages at around Turn 130-135.

   
Cuzco is the second greatest city in the world!

It’s not like it means that much, but small victories like this are nice to see. Back during the days of doom and gloom, there were some saddening moments when I would look on this screen and see glorious foreign metropolises of 7, 8, or even 9 population… while I followed along behind with Cuzco at size 5 and Sidon at size 4. Now Cuzco is one of those glorious metropolises! It is going to stop growing for a few turns because I want it to work some specialists to take advantage of the +100% Great Person production bonus during the upcoming Golden Age, but after that I plan to let it grow into the teens.

Meanwhile, a new person has reached the top two on the scoreboard for the first time in quite a while: Superdeath, who edged out shallow_ru. Very interesting. He has only gained the lead over them by three points, so I don’t think that he has pushed them out of the elite tier or anything, but it is still indicative of how Superdeath’s fortunes have been improving recently. Of particular note is the fact that his Crop Yield has been contending for the top spot on the graphs. Perhaps he will manage to grow enough to reach the elite tier someday? Events are moving so fast in this game that I feel something like that could happen before Turn 150, so you lurkers may get another giant overview post before then.

[Magic Science]

Turns 113 and 114 – 50 and 25 BC
   
This current set of turns seem to be the Age of Exploration for this game. Tank is finally starting to explore the interior of the Unlucky Orphans, and other units are doing similar jobs. An immortal has explored all the way to Cuzco, and there are two Interdimensional chariots at my borders now, one in the west and one in the east. I have also been seeing Injustice League impis scouting around in various places, although I haven’t granted them open borders to come into my lands. shallow_ru and Charson are enough to provide all of the needed foreign trade routes, and I still don’t trust Superdeath at all.

There is also a bit of a second wave of expansion going on currently. Just two turns ago, shallow_ru settled a new city, Klaus B, in the location that the sign indicates. I think that they are getting ready to found another new city by the bananas, too. There is a road leading to the area, there are escort units lurking around, and there is even a worker of theirs outside of their territory on the banana tile (under the axeman). Meanwhile, OT4E’s new settlements in the Jungle of Ruin has brought him up to eleven cities, and Superdeath has found room for a tenth city somewhere. For the sake of completeness, I should mention that Charson is at nine cities (as am I) and poor RFS-81+haphazard1 is at one city, although neither of them has settled any new cities too recently.

This new wave of settlements is certainly bad news for me. I had managed to catch up to a respectable city count relative to the leaders by slipping cities into the cracks (Cape Town, Lhasa, Sofia), but the leaders had expanded out to more actual territory with their cities, and now, if the Unlucky Orphans are an example to go by, they are slipping cities into the cracks too and pulling ahead of me. With that said, let’s take a look at the demographics, shall we?

   
Note the land category: I am 45 TILES behind the leader, and I calculate that I am 27.5 tiles behind the average if you exclude the Psychedelic Warlords (and you should, those guys are, for obvious reasons, way behind in everything and dragging the average down significantly). My basic stats of GNP, MFG, and Crop Yield are doing at least okay for now despite that, but I’m not sure how much longer that can last. I feel that my recovery from the Great Injustice of Turn 43, relative to the rest of the field, may have peaked sometime back in the 90s, and now the loss of land I suffered due to it is coming back to haunt me. I did end up losing the land grab race in all directions: for The Flash, for Nobiskrug, and for La Venta Duncan Q ().

   
I am going to need to claim more land if I want to even maintain my current position, let alone improve it or win. The trouble is that I don’t have any weak or vulnerable neighbors right now. The title of “weakest civilization” seems almost certain to pass on to either Charson or me after the death of RFS-81+haphazard1, and I don’t stand to benefit from a war against either one (especially that second one ). Therefore, to claim land with violence, I need to start an attack against a superior civilization and hope that others decide to help me, or I need to hope those more powerful civilizations start a war amongst themselves and I can pile in on the winning side while someone else does the hard work.

The other option is Astronomy. If every player has equal access to islands, which seems likely, then there should be at least six islands to colonize in the Arctic Ocean (two near each whale island, of which everyone has one). Six high-quality cities would go a long way towards improving my position, and, due to how small this map is, I think that I could, with proper planning, claim all of them if I reached Astronomy as little at ten turns ahead of OT4E and Superdeath. The trouble there is that I think that both of them will likely have enough of a research advantage over me that they could claim Astronomy first if they wanted to. They might not want to, of course, but that means the “colonize the Blessed Lands” plan is just as reliant on other players doing the right things as the two war-based plans are.

I think that the best approach is probably somewhere in the middle. I should try to build enough of an army to react to opportunities on the mainland while keeping the Blessed Lands in my mind’s eye.

   
Enough of that high and mighty future thought. Let’s go back to what is actually happening now. What is happening now is that the Psychedelic Warlords have managed to get peace with their enemies yet again, and seems poised to live a little while longer. Poor guys. I thought that their suffering would be over quickly after the War on Music started, but I was wrong. Who will finally put them out of their misery? Both shallow_ru and OT4E have a lot of units in the area and seem worried about an attack from the other, so they might not move in to attack Golden Void soon.

Also, OT4E built the Great Wall. I don’t know where. I imagine that it is in a border city somewhere, and he wanted the culture for a culture war. Maybe it is on the Injustice League border somewhere? Superdeath does seem to have an annoying propensity for stealing tiles that RIGHTFULLY BELONG TO SOMEONE ELSE!

Lastly, I finished Monarchy this turn, which means that the Incan League’s Golden Age (the first one in the game, unless someone starts a Golden Age next turn before I play) is imminent. I let it wait one more turn because I don’t need Hereditary Rule happiness quite yet and I figured I would let my cities grow just a bit more in preparation, but next turn it begins. I plan to go for Iron Working first, and then probably for Mathematics, Calendar, and Masonry, although I’m not totally sure on those three yet, and I don’t think that I could finish them all in one Golden Age anyway. During the Golden Age, I will work specialists to get started on the next two Great People for the next Golden Age.

[Mr. Cairo]

Looking good, once Masonry is in I'd build walls in the border cities. We may not have Stone, but Protective makes them cheap enough to be worthwhile. Another thought is going for Priesthood before the GA ends so we can revolt to OR, even without a religion (and one might spread during the GA ).

About other cities, there looks to be a spot to the southeast of New Hong Kong 2E of the Sugar that might be free after ST settles. It might not have much food but every little city is worthwhile thanks to the island trade routes.

Also, if you want better overview shots you can use the flying camera. You need to enable it in the civilization.ini file (in /My Games/beyond the sword), then activate it with Ctrl-Alt-F. Combine it with removing the interface (Alt-I), and Satellite view (Alt-F) for nice wide shots of the entire empire without those clouds.

How are we comparing in the power graphs? As long as we maintain a decent growth in power we wont be seen as extremely vulnerable, and of course, watch out for spikes in power, or suddenly losing graphs because a neighbor dumps EP into us even though we're at an equilibrium.

The economy looks to be doing very well indeed, and will only get better as we grow thanks to HR and our cottages mature. On that front, now that you're getting a look into other civ's heartlands, how do they compare to us in terms of cottages?

[Magic Science]

Turn 115 – 1 AD
Welcome to the 80s!
Err, wait, no, that’s not quite it…. Welcome to the ADs! We hope you enjoy your stay! I, for one, intend to be staying for quite a while.

   
Tank explored all the way to the farthest reaches of the southern coast, and he found two more Orphan cities: Hostile Hospice and Frank D. Hostile Hospice seems to be an upgraded version of Cape Town, pretty much, with nicer tiles and more population. Frank D is the Orphan city on the whale island. I can’t actually see it, but I can tell where it is from tile bleed and which city it is from trade routes (we just started getting Orphan cities among our routes this turn, and Frank D is worth three commerce in Cuzco, so it must be on another landmass).

The economy looks to be doing very well indeed, and will only get better as we grow thanks to HR and our cottages mature. On that front, now that you're getting a look into other civ's heartlands, how do they compare to us in terms of cottages?

This screenshot shows the Orphan heartland, so it seems like a good moment to answer this question (I will comment on the rest of your post as those topics come up).

You are correct that the economy is doing fairly well. It is hard to get a perfect picture of how everyone stacks up economically due to researching vs. gold saving, wealth building vs. not, and known tech bonuses skewing things, but just this turn we were number one in GNP with research off and no Golden Age, so it seems we are doing well. Our discoveries in the rival heartlands have me worried about how well we will hold up on that front in the future, though. As the screenshot above shows, the Orphans have a number of very well-developed cottages (one village is only twelve turns from a town, if I remember correctly), although I think that we are probably edging them out in total number of cottages, even accounting for the lands I haven’t seen yet. The trouble is that they have a lot of room, almost certainly more than us, to grow their number of cottages. Take a look at all of those grasslands north of Austere Academy; those could all be cottages. So, for now we are doing fine, but in the future, it might not be so good.

Also, I totally called that settler.

And now… for the moment you’ve all be waiting for…. drumroll please…

Before (including that number one GNP I mentioned):
   

After:
   

OH YEAH!

So, this is what it feels like to have an unbeatable GNP, is it? Hmm…I like it.

Our Crop Yield looks kind of bad, but it’s being deflated by me working four specialists this turn that I wasn’t working last turn (note that I did all of the micromanagement for the Golden Age before having old Galileo trigger it, so that is why the Crop Yield is the same before and after). And about those specialists, as I think I mentioned before, I am taking advantage of the Golden Age Great Person Point bonus to start working towards the second Golden Age. Cuzco and Quebec City are the cities that are working the specialists. It was originally going to be Cuzco and Almaty, but then I realized that Almaty doesn’t have any particular advantages to producing a Great Person, so I went with a city that’s population growths aren’t as valuable instead. Cuzco is going for a scientist and Quebec City as merchant. I am undecided as to which city I want to produce its Great Person first. Cuzco seemed like the obvious choice so that it could go back to normal growth again, but it doesn’t actually have that many more tiles to grow onto, while Quebec City has a boatload of coast tiles so…I’m not sure.

   
Here’s the southern mainland Incan League in the Golden Age (Mr. Cairo, thanks for the tip about the flying camera. I will use that in the future, but I played this turn before you posted, so I didn’t use is this time). Look at all of those beautiful money bag symbols.  You can also see all of those scouting units wandering in Incaland, as well as my military buildup.

How are we comparing in the power graphs? As long as we maintain a decent growth in power we wont be seen as extremely vulnerable, and of course, watch out for spikes in power, or suddenly losing graphs because a neighbor dumps EP into us even though we're at an equilibrium.

I don’t have a power graph screenshot from this turn (I’ll get one next turn), but I can say that we are within close range of everyone except OT4E, who is a significant distance ahead of everyone. I will keep an eye out, like you say. Recently Superdeath has been pumping a bunch of EP onto us, and I have been matching him, for what its worth.

About other cities, there looks to be a spot to the southeast of New Hong Kong 2E of the Sugar that might be free after ST settles. It might not have much food but every little city is worthwhile thanks to the island trade routes.

You are right to consider putting a little city down there somewhere; there is room. If there is room after shallow_ru settles, then we should probably go for it, but I won’t start anything before then. I think that New Hong Kong would keep the sugar though, so it really would be a foodless wasteland of a city. I guess it could work some jungle cottages.

Looking good, once Masonry is in I'd build walls in the border cities. We may not have Stone, but Protective makes them cheap enough to be worthwhile. Another thought is going for Priesthood before the GA ends so we can revolt to OR, even without a religion (and one might spread during the GA ).

I agree with you on building walls. I don’t think that they are a big enough deal to prioritize getting Masonry earlier than otherwise planned, but after we do get it (which should be soon) we can build some.

Your idea about Organized Religion is one that I have been thinking about too. Organized Religion is too expensive for me to want to revolt too unless we are certain of having a religion to accompany it, but if a religion comes in the next few turns, then I will need to strongly consider that path. I am going to save gold for a few turns after Iron Working, and I believe that Monotheism is only three Golden Age research turns away, so dashing for it will be an option for a little while longer. Surely this Golden Age of glory and prosperity is the perfect time for religious immigration?

[Magic Science]

ALERT! ALERT!
OT4E played last and then logged out without ending turn...what could he be up to, I wonder?  
(oh, and turn report for Turns 116 and 117 coming soon)

[Magic Science]

Turns 116 and 117 – 25 and 50 AD
   
To start, here’s the power graph you asked for, Mr. Cairo. Charson, me, Superdeath, and shallow_ru are all fairly close together and don’t have much of an advantage over each other, but OT4E is way out in front, and RFS-81+haphazard1 is way behind (I can’t see them on the graph, obviously, but I can see the rival worst in power). That reminds me, I have been thinking about why Charson made peace with RFS-81+haphazard1. It seems a bit odd at first glance. Charson’s power rating didn’t go down at all during their brief time at war, so it seems unlikely that it was them losing a battle to the Warlords that made them decide to go for peace. Perhaps RFS-81+haphazard1 still had enough units to convince Charson that an attack was unlikely to be worthwhile, so they called it off preemptively? Charson could certainly wipe out Golden Void if they truly committed to it, but I imagine that the hammer trade to do so, made against fully fortified defenders on a hill behind walls and culture, wouldn’t be very good. That answer seems the most plausible. Another alternative I am considering is that OT4E marched an army up to a dangerous place within Interdimensional view to try to threaten them badly enough that they decided they needed those units back as defenders. Of course, it could also be my favorite explanation for odd things in Civ IV…dark magic.

   
There are two important things going on in this screenshot that I would like to call attention to.

One is that the Orphans moved up the settler I saw last turn (and called like a pro the turn before that ) towards our border. It looks like they must be settling on that jungle hill, as why else would they have moved there? This means that there won’t be room for a little city of ours in the region. Too bad. Maybe I should have thought about this earlier and gone for it then; I could have beaten the Orphans to the spot quite easily if I had committed to it ten turns ago or so.

The other important thing is that I am starting to lay the groundwork for a little project of mine in Lhasa. I want to try for the MoM there. Using marble, math-boosted forest chops, overflow trickery off of units, and starvation production, I think I can get it built in decent time. I haven’t done the exact math for it yet, but I estimate that we could start around Turn 124 and be done around Turn 135. Not the greatest time, so someone could beat us if they tried, but I think that it is worth a shot. Getting it would be great for our second Golden Age forty or fifty turns down the road, and failing would mean it becomes an extra-efficient wealth build, which wouldn’t be too bad either.

One last less important thing to note about that screenshot is the iron; we have Iron Working and two sources appeared in the desert near Lhasa. Those are our only ones. I will connect those sources as quick as I can and start building some swords in my cities that are producing military.

   
The Hanging Gardens are built in a faraway land…right next door. That was OT4E, they were just built in Rungholt, which I haven’t seen before. He has eleven cities, so going off of the basic calculation of 1 population = 30 hammers, that is worth 330 hammers. He has stone and is Expansive, so it only cost 250 hammers to build. A decent trade, I think, especially because it is essentially transferring hammers from where they can be more easily acquired (the capital) and sending them to still-developing places like Not Rome and Antium that need them badly.

In other foreign news, Charson revolted to Judaism recently, but I forgot to mention it on the turn it happened. I took a screenshot and everything... They ate a turn of anarchy for this revolt, as they aren’t in a Golden Age. That reminds me, I should go over their cities with a close eye next turn to see if I can spot an Academy to explain what they have done with their first Great Person. The Orphans might have an Academy as well, as I think that they produced a Great Person too.

[Magic Science]

Turn 118 – 75 AD
   
shallow_ru did indeed settle a new city, named Proximate Peril, on the jungle hill where I saw his settler last turn. It’s relatively close proximity New Hong Kong guarantees a culture war between the two cities, but I don’t think that it should be too annoying, at least for me. New Hong Kong has such a large head start, and it doesn’t seem likely that Proximity Peril will catch up and surpass New Hong Kong to enough of an extent to start threatening it second ring tiles. shallow_ru, on the other hand, might end up a little annoyed about the difficulty they will face trying to claim Proximate Peril’s first ring tiles from me.

In regards to the other culture war going on in this screenshot, the longer and more important one between me and Superdeath, I am making some headway for once. New Hong Kong has finished its library and is starting to reclaim the plains hill wine tile that Green Lantern took when it expanded to third ring borders. Now that I have Hereditary Rule I don’t really need it for happiness, but I would still like to have it instead of Superdeath, and it isn’t that bad of a tile either. I might build a monument in New Hong Kong after the spearman to secure my current position in the culture war. I would hate to lose any more of my nicely grown cottages.

Lastly for this screenshot, I am paying close attention to the Orphan worker on the banana tile. So far, I have only seen him chopping the jungle, but once he is done with that, I will be interested to see if he starts building a plantation, which would indicate the Orphans have Calendar and are a rival for the MoM. They don’t have marble, but Lhasa’s build time for the wonder isn’t really that great, and it is possible they could beat me with a bunch of forest chops or a head start.

   
Tank and Quechua Two have revealed almost all of the Orphan cities now. I should have deleted that sign by Evil End before taking the screenshot, but I forgot to. Beatrice B is the Orphans third city and their Moai Statues city, and it is, for reasons beyond the comprehension of a mere mortal such as myself, working two coasts instead of the two lakes and a silk forest instead of a water tile (although I guess that the citizen on the silk could be from Carnivore Carny).

Also, I did what I said I was going to do and looked around for academies in the Orphan and Interdimensional cities. I found that both Exdeath and Bad Beginning had academies in them. After the game, I would be interested to see what lurkers and other players think of my choice to have a Golden Age vs. their choice to build an academy. In any case, this confirms that shallow_ru was the one to produce the last Great Person from earlier (if you remember back to my Turn 100 report, I wasn’t sure), so OT4E is the only one to not produce one yet. This makes me strongly suspect that he is waiting to produce a Great Profit Prophet at a 100% chance from Canoel, the Oracle city, for a shrine. If he is, it should be coming in very soon, on Turn 121. I will be watching…

Lastly, this turn I found the first gems resource I have seen on the map so far. The fact that it is still jungle-covered despite being such an awesome tile seems to indicate that Superdeath doesn’t have Iron Working yet, as he would want to clear it off as quickly as possible if he did.