[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37

[RefSteel]

That's great news! Now, anyone want to place bets on where the lion turns up next turn?

Statistical analysis assuming a random walk:

The "safe" imaginary money says we won't see the lion at all when the turn rolls: A chance of [EDIT: almost exactly] 50%! Although being safe also means the imaginary money in question won't be worth a lot of bragging and/or claims to psychic precognition. The most likely places where we would see the lion come in at:

Northeast of the Warrior: Over 17%!
The forest hill directly north of the Warrior: Over 15%!
The coastal forest northwest of the Warrior: Almost 11%!

Any daring bettors? As for me, I'm putting down ten Imaginary Bragging Bucks on the longshot: Our intended site for Muqa itself, at basically 6.5%! ... Because that would be the most annoying spot, and such are the dictates of Murphy's Law.

(In fairness, now that we've taken the forest hill, there's nothing the lion is likely to do that would be very annoying anymore. ... Unless it has friends....)

(Internationally, the demos were quiet this turn, and a more-complete historical analysis is still in progress.)

[JR4]

TURN 27

And the lion is back. This time to the NW of the warrior. I guessed wrongly, my bet was 1N of the warrior.   I chose to stay put with our warrior, as we are a turn ahead of the micro plan atm by taking that shortcut. I really don`t want to give up the forest hill right now. The worst thing for us now would be a cheeky lion move 1S to interfere with our worker movement. If it does (it`s very unlikely), do you feel like a 73 % chance of killing it with the warrior? Our other warrior is right behind, to act as backup if we suffer a disastrous loss in the next few turns.

[shallow_thought]

The Fate of the Üneg

Ooh. Actually made me shiver a bit. Good ending, bad ending, or left up to the reader's imagination? Perhaps can only be understood once the full story of the civilisation is written (and that is not entirely under the current author's control...). Nice stuff.

The actual discussion about the game is pretty good as well ! Really enjoying this so far.

Although analysing the walk patterns of pseudo-lions may be taking things too far... (for what it's worth, I think they have a "smell" for human units - they always keep coming back).

[RefSteel]

[EDIT: This post is in reply to the possibility JR4 raised of the lion moving 1S instead of attacking.]

Hmmm ... the chances of that happening at all are exceptionally low, as you note. If it does though...

I would say in that case, I'd leave the northern Warrior in place, move the Worker back SW to the part-roaded grassland and finish the road. This would require a small reworking of Muqa's microplan and ultimately cost it some food, but wouldn't delay the city itself. Might be my over-conservative thinking again though....

[RefSteel]

Thanks so much for the kind words, shallow_thought! Once I can find one more good picture, I've another story to post as well....

Although analysing the walk patterns of pseudo-lions may be taking things too far... (for what it's worth, I think they have a "smell" for human units - they always keep coming back).

Oh - I have a confession to make: Although the number-crunching I do on the demos is partly motivated by the hope that it will give us some forewarning of our rivals' plans and how they'll affect us, I mainly do it because it's a puzzle that's fun for me. I didn't have even the slightest illusions that figuring out the probability of different lion moves would actually help with anything; I just thought it would be a fun game (and didn't realize the turn would roll in a ~timely fashion for once!) and I enjoyed figuring out the probabilities on the walk to the train and then to work this morning. You may be correct that the animals' actions are different from a random walk even when there's no possibility of immediate attack, but if my assumptions were wrong, it would just have meant an opportunity for lurkers like you to get an "edge" in the imaginary betting.

Next time I make up a silly game like that though, I'll make sure it's about something at least a couple of turns away!

[RefSteel]

Basic international news: Krill's capital grew to size 3 this turn, leaving only DarkSavant at size 2, while dtay got Bronze Working. Next turn or the turn after, you'll see a spike on dtay's Power graphs, because the tech itself counts as 8,000 soldier points. This should mean his power will overtake ours on the graph, but isn't actually scary unless and until he starts turning it into units. A screenshot of the power graph would still be helpful for calibration purposes and to confirm his warrior count though. (I think he has only one so far, but it's possible he produced one on the same turn someone else lost their own to a bear or something. That kind of possibility is one of the reasons demographic snooping is going to keep getting harder, but I'm hoping I can keep it up for at least a while longer thanks to some of the historical information I've been building up in the background to define the range of what's possible and what isn't - still in progress though for now.)

[JR4]

Sure, I`ll post the power graph next turn. Hopefully turn 27 will be finished soon.

I think I`ve read somewhere that lions have a 90 % chance of attacking if a a unit is next to it. If the lion chooses not to, it`ll have 4 eligible tiles to move to and only one of those is bad news for us, meaning a 2.5 % chance of a delay of our plans. We`ll probably have to finish that part-built road and accept the loss of some food if that happens. It`s better than risking the warrior anyway.

[RefSteel]

Found that picture. [EDIT: Also thought I had been misspelling a word I'd been spelling correctly and so had to change it all over and then change it back again because I'm crazy!] And so....

Beneath the shivering branches of slender poplar trees, the Irves clan chieftain huddled close beside the campfire, in part for its warmth, and in part for secrecy: The Udgan of his clan, to whose authority even he must bow, for according to Khatunate tradition, the holy spirits would accept no other intercessor from his tribe until she passed the duties to her daughter or a successor chosen by the holy spirits themselves through her or through the council at the Palace at Borte. Softly, for the ears of the Udgan alone, the chieftain asked, "How long until the Ulamjlal join us here?"

"Not soon," the Udgan answered. Imitating the style of her grandmother, who had trained at the Palace of the Eternal Empress itself, she was dressed in elaborate ritual costume, with dark paint to emphasize certain shadows upon her face and brighter paint to represent her clan: Fine lines of red for the Irves like the marks of claws. Her hair was bound and bleached so that for certain rituals its color could be changed with exotic dyes, and there was a strange resonance to her voice, as though the holy spirits were joining their voices to her own. "They have markers to place among the fields ere they begin to blaze the long trail through the woods in which we dwell. Ere our paths meet, we may well be called to other duties, as before."

The chieftain nodded, but as he did, he carefully glanced around to be sure they were alone. "I have heard talk of a fear upon them," he whispered, hardly daring to breathe such a terrible accusation against any Khatunate clan. "Tribes coming down from the taiga bring tales of terrible man-eating lions whose roars shake the trees to their roots and make the very stones to tremble. They say that people of the taiga have been killed in the night by these creatures, and I have heard the Ulamjlal are too afraid to venture near."



The Udgan put her bowl aside: Like all the people of the Khatunate, she ate richly and well, even in the wild. Her supper had been a dish of clams from Dood Tusgal Nuur - the lower lake below Borte - cooked and shelled and simmered in a pot of rice and herbs, the rice itself first boiled in a thick beef broth. "The Ulamjlal are a mighty clan," she told the chieftain calmly, in her voice of power. "Their strength is in their bond with the earth and fields and with the spirits who watch over them." Her eyes glinted though and her voice took on a different timbre as she confided, "It is our strength that lies in the arts of war." She smiled as the chieftain ran a loving hand over his heavy club, its head shaped from the jawbone of a bull. "Wild animals," the Udgan went on, more softly, "and violent men who spread wild tales and let the beasts of the untamed lands take the blame for their depredations, are very real fears for the likes of our Ulamjlal. They have served the Khatunate for generations out of memory in quiet ways, with no weapons but the tools of their peaceful trades. The Khatunate is grown large and strong, and much of our strength lies in the wisdom of elders grown too old to fight, and in the potential of the children whom we raise. Even among our clan, though our babes in arms and those of our elders confined to their chairs might take on one man-eating lion apiece without too great a strain," she smiled as the chieftain laughed and nodded happily, but went on, "we must take care at least that none of them must face a whole pride alone. That is the task to which you and I and our people have been born and raised: Not only like our grandparents to put on beautiful exhibitions of masterful clubwork before the Palace of the Eternal Empress in Borte, but to protect those less ready for combat than ourselves from the dangers that lurk in the wild lands beyond these woods."



The chieftain chuckled a little more, but soon fell silent once again, and glanced around him to be sure that truly no one overheard except his Udgan and the holy spirits whom she served. "But Udgan," he whispered softly, "I know we have been trained for this, and we put on our exhibitions still to impress the little local tribes, but ... has a man or a woman of us ever fought a band of men more violent and desperate than a group of teenaged kids who got their hands on some rice wine? Have we ever had to deal with a wild beast more dangerous than someone's ill-mannered dog? We may talk of slaying lions here in the safety of our woods, where the wildlife is nearly tame and all the people pay homage to the Eternal Empress, but what will happen if we truly meet with a pride of man-eating lions? I hear tell that there is a people far beyond this wilderness from a city called Gobwin Knob, and I hear that they train their warriors by combat, so that all they send into the field are battle-hardened already, not in mock-fighting but in deadly earnest, for the winners are well-rewarded as members of their army and the losers needs nothing more, for they are battles to the death! What answers have we - what answers have any of us - to the likes of that?"



The Udgan gave him a telling look, but then her lips curved upward in a small, sly smile, and she answered, "Willing warriors who are still alive, having not fought one another to the death." She set her hand upon his shoulder. "Let not these stories touch your heart. Perhaps the warriors of Gobwin Knob are mighty, and perhaps there really are man-eating lions or desperate humans who use the name of lions and are as bad or worse, but the holy spirits watch over us, and we shall do what we can and must. And if they are to march far beyond their city in this deep wilderness, and even if they are fools enough to leave their elders all to die, even the warriors of Gobwin Knob must bear with them many babes in swaddling cloth. There are enemies abroad perhaps, but fear is ever the greatest enemy - and if the talk you heard of them is true, then it is our task first and foremost to combat and to show groundless - or to make groundless if needed - the fears of the Ulamjlal."

Image credits:

Roaring lion: Photo by Doug Steakley
Montane forest: Photo by Robin Liu
Shamaness: Illustration from Archaeological Finds from Germany, Selected and annotated by Svend Hansen, Booklet to the Photographic Exhibition

(No, that shamaness isn't really a Mongolian Udgan obviously ... any more than Isabella was a Mongolian queen!)

[JR4]

Soon, very soon, the Eternal Empress will have her second city. I strongly suspect that she is jealous that the city of Gobwin Knob is found worthy of a place in the top 5 cities in the world, while the great city of Borte is not. Yet, that is.

[JR4]

TURN 28

The lion attacked our warrior and lost. It still managed to wound the warrior (it now has 1.2 strength). Also, a dtay scout appeared right next to that warrior. That is.. not good news for us. I think we should keep to a turn split right now if he continues southish. Note that we might have a chance of killing the scout with the full-strength warrior if he goes 1SW, thinking the wounded warrior would not risk the attack. So the question is - would we want to attack agg/pro zulu at this stage of the game? My gut feeling is yes: We really don`t want an enemy scout sneaking around in our backlines. Especially not one belonging to a civ that we are planning to settle up on. Also, the power graph showed a huge increase for dtay, as expected.