The turn roll saw no change in the power graph. What I hadn't noticed before is that Darrell now has _two_ spears on the NW forest hill. That means he has invested in three spears. He's running contingency against a HBR beeline and rush, and wants to show us the units.
This news could be a lot worse. Spears aren't a phenomenally robust offensive unit vs C1 axes. The threat level is escalated but I think there's a chance to avoid an all out ancient war. Maybe I'm wrong though and what Mindy said is perfectly accurate. Like, this could be yet another game where I have to show the old guard that I'm capable of moving axes around on roads while not being Nakor or Cheetah.
Unhappiness in Silver is a big pain, with the citizen costing -2 food. It throws off micro, but losing a turn or two on settling and getting a new city productive isn't worth a risk of losing a whole battle front. Whip anger wears off in two. My plan before was to double-whip a settler there, bound for the horse site. It probably still is. Looking at three spears though, this isn't a position where chariots are something we have to rush for.
I moved the axe on top of his spear on the hill, and moved one worker off the flood plain site. My plan was to not waste worker turns by building a road there, but that's not essential. I also roaded NE of Silver instead of NNE onto the corn, because it's less threatening and there could be a chariot in the fog.
I think we really need to consider soon the dance of cycling 10-turn declares and peace offers. Implied peace without that is better because you don't lose value on eventual trade and you don't have to reason about covering your butt every ten turns, but it might be a win-win to force non-aggression with a game mechanic. The value there is both the game mechanic, and, forcing him to show his hand if he actually does want war. But again, you probably don't plan for offense and start with 3 spears against someone with copper in the capital.
And anyway, speaking of disrupting micro, a promotable axe on his borders will give Darrell a little thought about tactical puzzles himself.
One key question is how much do we have to worry about a potential galley from Pindicator this soon. I was thinking of leaving an archer fortified in Trigger but I wonder if it's better to get that guy to Darrel's front and make do with a warrior garrison for now.
I could have attacked Darrell's spear with a C1 axe, and had another spear to follow up in case of a close loss. The trouble with that, aside from the diplomatic fallout, is the catastrophic loss scenario where the axe loses at 32% and then the follow up spear loses too. The lower 5% or even 1% of the dice does happen and whenever you make a move you sign up for that, in some parallel universes where clones of yourself exist. Unless you follow "The Secret" and become literally Oprah Winfrey.
I have 3 workers working on the corn now, guarded by a spear. I wonder if Darrell is just going to leave his spear on that forest hill, or what.
There's a school of thought that says "This guy just invested in 3 spears when we don't even have horses. That means we should just whip axes everywhere and Leeroy Jenkins this opening. Time's up - let's do this." And you know, I'm not even going to say that thought would be incorrect.
The archer out of Silver is really expensive, going into whip unhappiness for 3 turns. But again, I'm playing more for the worst case where Darrell is coming in hard with a couple of chariots and axes backup at the same time as a mob of barb warriors shows up. I think showing Darrell an archer or two is very valuable: it says we're not ramping up for offence and also that we're going to be a pain to attack when our front cities are all on hills. But it screws up my previous micro plan: it sucks playing though previously tight moves and finding a few things are off by one now...
Still, Darrell is only at 4 cities, the same as us. We get city #5 on T68 (which finishes a granary EOT 69). If we're at par with Joao for cities that's just something that shouldn't happen.
Speaking of which, The Oracle mass paralysis has officially happened. Even the most half-assed micro plans in mediocre positions can get it way before T65. Fortune would have favored the bold on this one, that's for sure. Maybe it still will. The main bottleneck for us making a stab at something like that is Masonry, since getting to Math and Calendar is so valuable right now.
Over on Pin's side:
He got his border pop. And the work boat wasn't for distant scouting and contacts, it was a pre-build to hook up (presumably) whales. Pin has sailing - we know this because we have a hookup for resource trades. I decided it's most prudent to leave an archer in Trigger fortified. Its warrior is moving west to bust fog and prevent spawns.
The alternate universe where we settled Trigger 1E and 1-turn chopped Oracle in there for a culture push is interesting to imagine.
I wonder if anyone is having barb troubles and if the barb zerg rush has happened yet. Surely it must have. It's funny though, to our eyes barbs may as well be turned off. I've never had any trouble with barbs in any game before, maybe I'm just lucky or maybe it's because I have a pretty conservative attitude to reasoning about fog busting.
The corn is improved. I'm deliberately showing Darrellbod an archer, to say attacking is going to be a pain and we're not building up for an offensive takeover right now. He retreated his forward spear as well. The relationship is uneasy obviously, but I'm hoping he'll want to play for mutual self-interest.
It's still a little disconcerting that he has spent EP on nobody else but us!
MYKI settled his 4th city. Our fifth goes down on T68, and sixth should settle on horse on T72. Then chariots will let us get better awareness of our land mass, I hope.
We're at the point where it's hard to break down the minutia of the power graph. We're basically at parity now. I'm not sure if Darrellbod recently teched archery or if that's an axe, or some other combination of things.
Oh and I wonder what that large dive in MYKI's power is. Maybe an unlucky barb combat? He seems to be having a particularly bad time of it with the barbs, anyway. Or is he actually at war with someone? We do know he's spending EP somewhere else, but don't know with who.
Things are boring again, just the way I like it! We settle next turn, Darrell is still at 4 cities. We get Math in 2, and 4 chops will immediately benefit from that. The next two cities go down T72 and T77 or so.
One of Darrell's spears is going SE, either as a pre-guard for a settlement, a sentry against us settling out in a line to the east, or maybe just scouting. He and MYKI might finally meet.
Black Beauty was founded. It's job is to chop out a granary and library immediately, claim resources, work cottages, and produce a scientist.
Oracle being still open is beyond crazy. We could have delayed it for a much coveted Currency or Calendar bulb, even! I'm almost tempted to get Masonry in 3 after math and try to triple-chop it. There's no way it would last 4 more turns though, right? Right?
Oh, and why is my sandbox letting me make this move?
I don't have construction, and that sure looks like the settler would be crossing a river to me. So he should only be able to move 3 squares, right?
I have no idea if the actual game will let me do that, but it might be a bug. The code for dealing with rivers is absolutely and positively mental. If you're a programmer and you don't believe me, check out:
FAssertMsg(eIndex >= 0, "eTeam is expected to be non-negative (invalid Index)");
FAssertMsg(eIndex < NUM_DIRECTION_TYPES, "eTeam is expected to be within maximum bounds (invalid Index)");
if (isRiverCrossing(eIndex) != bValid)
{
if (NULL == m_abRiverCrossing)
{
m_abRiverCrossing = new bool[NUM_DIRECTION_TYPES];
for (int iI = 0; iI < NUM_DIRECTION_TYPES; ++iI)
{
m_abRiverCrossing[iI] = false;
}
}
I've seen some code in my life that makes me ask what the actual fuck, and this is something. Note all the weird differences between specific directions that look to naive eyes like they ought to at least be the same for every direction, even if convoluted.
often the path shown for a go to order is not the path the unit would take. in this case, thats a legal move if the settler moves SW, W, SW, SW. If you actually executed that move I suspect the animation would go that way.
Ah, never mind, we couldn't get Myst + Meditation + Priesthood in anywhere near enough turns anyway.
For the river move, manually moving SW-W-SW ends the turn. Manually moving W-SW-SW-SW one tile at a time works.
Playing with it:
It doesn't allow that path changing where the river corner is.
Nor when adding an extra segment to the NW.
And this one behaves like I would have expected... All I did here was deleted and then added the river segment N of Beshbalik, and cleaned up the extra segments that the UI always likes to add.
So here I have two saves, which both look identical to the real game, but one has screwy phantom river movement... So I guess I can't rely on being able to make the move in game that I can in my sandbox. (Which is a shame because it speeds up settling that city by a turn.)
Unless you follow "The Secret" and become literally Oprah Winfrey.
