[SPOILERS]Acrid Pinot and other Pindicator anagrams

[pindicator]

Man, the turn pace in this game is SO bad.

Good thing we didn't choose to play on normal speed

[pindicator]

It's been a few turns, but we have considerably deviated from our plans. When Rego reads this thread, however far in the future that is, I'm sure he will get a little bit of joy from the following:

Turns 74 - 78: Part One

We left off at Turn 73. The plan was to unload our worker/settler pair on the north island on t74 and then settle our next city the turn after we finished Currency. But on t74 we had a bit of a problem to that plan:



If we unloaded as planned, Rego could come NW-NW and unload a warrior on to the island. Well, so we just load up and sail off again. Noble was afraid that Rego would take the chance at a 30% shot to sink a settler & worker, and I eventually relented. There was some talk about dropping on the central island (the one in the east of the screenshot) but I was very much against that. If we were delaying the north island because he might have a warrior on board, then settling the central island with no defense was just suicidal - there's far more opportunity for an enemy galley to drop a warrior off. So in the end we decided to just delay everything a turn, the galley would stay out of sight so Rego didn't even know it was there, and next turn we'd unload and everything would go on schedule.



And here we're right on track. Rego's galley looks like it's going to continue moving west. We've dropped our settler/worker pair off, and they will sit in place on t76 and then found t77. Well, I guess that's a 2t delay now. But if we found next turn and he has a warrior on board then the city is lost, so it's best to just wait a little longer. In the meantime our galley is heading south to pick up some much needed warriors for defending these islands. They would stage on the forest hill, out of sight of Rego who I'm pretty sure would figure out what a pair of warriors on the coast would be for, and I didn't want to clue him in that we were actively settling those islands. At this point we have another settler in production back home -- although I think we were delaying it at this point, choosing to have OAT work the plains hill at size 7 and get some hammers into a Vulture. Pretty obvious we need something more than warriors in the near future.



Then Rego throws us another curve. Well, our fears about him having a warrior were justified, but how do we now 1) defend against possible hostility and 2) keep ourselves flexible to save our unguarded settler/worker pair in the north while 3) getting ready to settle the center island? I was concerned that Rego had bought a chariot along as well, and that he may declare next turn with the warrior and drop a chariot off on the hill. Then there was the problem that the warriors couldn't stage in fog any more; Rego could see every coastal tile.

The above is where we ended up moving our troops to. We still wanted the galley out of sight, so it went E-SE - this also gave us flexibility in the unlikely even that rego loaded his galley and moved N-NE and declared war (Noble's plan) that he wouldn't block us off. The warriors could hide in plain sight - they were set up to intercept his scouting warrior, and could also be picked up next turn. There's a bit of unit shuffling going on as well -- we brought up a fresh spear in the south from SBT, and are shuffling MP units north along roads so we can get another unit for the islands. SBT could whip it's vulture if something went sideways in the south. And finally you can see that we're actually chopping the forest that the next city is going to sit on. The worker had nothing to do, moving it was dangerous if Rego had a 2nd unit, and it was better than nothing. (The forest would give 2h in RUO if you're curious - hardly worth it.



But as we know, Rego can't follow a simple plan when you need him to. So instead of just continuing on or turning back, he's now turned north and spotted our galley. This actually works to our advantage in a way you'll see next turn. But if he turned NW next turn then he would definitely spot our settler and kill it, and we can't found the city because he would see the borders in the fog without even moving, then come and kill the city with his warrior. Rego even offered open borders this turn, which we accepted as a mollifying gesture. Our course of action was to load up the warriors - that was what was holding us back the entire time: not having enough defense for these cities we were pushing out. And we ran with our worker/settler. We can't even chop a forest for 2 hammers in this plan



Which brings us to the turn played last night. I think Rego saw our galley and suspected we had planted a city on the central island, so his galley and warrior went there right away. That tells something about his mission here: he is harassing us instead of exploring, and he is after undefended coastal cities. It also means that maybe our crazy back and forth actually accomplished sopmething (besides delaying our next city for 4 turns). We got our warriors unloaded and moved the settler back to position. Next turn we will settle and we'll have a warrior able to defend the city. Unfortunately we won't be able to cover our worker, so if he comes snooping back he could be an ass and snipe our worker if he chose. Our worker is on the plains hill instead of the sheep, and we'll road that tile to buy some time and see if Rego sticks around or if wants to harass elsewhere.

Next turn the plan is to settle TheStick's city and pick up the spear & settler from the mainland. (Original plan was worker and settler, but if rego's going to harass then we need to be careful.) The worker will hang out by mining that hill, which ends out timing perfectly for the amount of time it takes our galley to do the round trip of dropping off the settler/spear and heading back home. Rego will likely load up and move W-NW, and we'll settle so he'll see our new city's borders, but he shouldn't be able to do much about it.

And that's been one of the most maddenly sequences I've played in a while, not so much by what happened but by what didn't happen.

[pindicator]

Turns 74 - 78: Part Two

Other goings on in the empire were pretty trivial. We finished Currency and our GNP shot upwards. Ichabod didn't go for Monotheism after Polytheism -- Don't tell me he's building Temple of Artemis -- and so we decided we could grab Judaism. Considering we've had ZERO free religious spreads all game, maybe we'd be lucky enough to get a holy city in our National Epic city of R U OK?



Now we're saving up for Monotheism, and after that comes we'll take 2 turns of anarchy and revolt to one of Judaism / Hinduism and also into Hereditary Rule & Organized Religion.

In the south, we did settle another city, bringing us up to 6. No, we weren't the first to 6 either - Ruff and Scooter both plopped down their 6th cities a few turns earlier, and Rego replanted his 6th city (probably on the ruins of the old one as he gained no land tiles for it's founding). This city is one that I was very happy with how the micro turned out, and we'll have a granary chopped into it right as it reaches 10/22 food. First we cleared out the tree on it's settling location for a few hammers:



(You can see Rego's scout entering our lands from the south. Yes, he had a scout ready to come in right as he offered his Open Border agreement. Convenient, that )

And then we planted our newest city with a work boat ready for its fish:



I like to think it's namesake would be proud of how the plan came together here

And that's about it for excitement around here. There haven't been a lot of tech advances internationally. We're at a lull in wars. Ichabod finally replaced Mom, so naturally we're sending a warrior to check her out We also are trading Ruff our only gold for gems as a sign of good faith. Hopefully once we get the central island settled we'll be able to trade him fur for ivory to reciprocate.

I'll end with the GNP & Food Charts, and Demographics, which are all looking good:

[pindicator]

Turn 79

Ichabod wanted 3gpt for Open Borders. Since I'm such a nice guy, I decided to take it. There may have been other factors to consider as well...



Also, he picked up Mathematics last turn. If you were wondering who the 110 GNP was on last turn's demographics, that would have been Ichabod. Great Lighthouse and open borders are doing him wonders in GNP right now. He just needs some cities...

In the north we loaded up our spear & settler combo and headed out towards the northern island. Rego moved his galley as expected, but surprisingly left hte warrior behind. Scouting out a location? Or does he have a settler in route? We should be able to win this race, but we'll see. Next turn we unload our settler.



And then we settled our next city, Hick Test:



thestick, Noble and I were going back and forth between Hick Test and Sketch It as to which was more fun as a civ nam. So you get to play tie-breaker If you prefer Sketch It then we'll swap names.

Global Shot:



First to seven cities!

[Merovech]

Awesome! I would like an anagram city at some point as well! Of course, there aren't many anagrams for Merovech. You could use "The Merovingian" instead, if you want.

[pindicator]

What if I told you that you already had one?

[Commodore]

No Dr. Moe O'Moc?

[waterbat]

WHERE's my citY?

[pindicator]

No Dr. Moe O'Moc?

I've got one in mind for you already...

WHERE's my citY?

We're getting there! We're Imperialistic, not magic.
You can help by telling the other people (especially Rego) that they need to make sure we have room to settle lots of cities so we can get everybody who wants to be included.

[NobleHelium]

You can help by telling the other people (especially Rego) that they need to make sure we have room to settle lots of cities so we can get everybody who wants to be included.