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

[Magic Science]

Aaaaaand we’re back! Buckle up and prepare yourselves for more bad play, incorrect predictions, and inconsistent turn reports! It’s going to be a blast!

Turns 125 through 133 – 250 to 450 AD
   
I think that the mainland is almost completely filled to capacity with cities now, but recently, Charson somehow found room for two more, so I sent Jem to go find them for me. He first succeeded in finding Byblos, the slightly older of the two new cities. It is in a pretty good spot from a developmental standpoint, with decent access to food (bananas, and it may eventually get those spices from Munsalvaesche’s third ring) and a lot of hills for production. From a safety stand point it has the unfortunate downside of being on flatland in between two raging maniacs who have proven to have a strong love of burning cities. Well, I guess I can’t blame Elkad for what OT4E did, so maybe only one. Also, trivia of the turn is that I believe the winery to the city’s south is the only one in the game so far. I have yet to see wine from anyone besides Charson, and I still haven’t connected my wines because the culture war between New Hong Kong and Green Lantern appears to be in equilibrium and the wines are still 50% MarvelDC, 49.9999% Incan.

Jem’s next task is to search for Sandworm, Charson’s tenth city. Research suggests that it may be in the desert, but we don’t know that for sure, which is why Jem is heading into the unknown previously explored to find out.

   
Also in regards to the Interdimensional Rift, they produced a second great person (from the same city as the first one) and used him to start a Golden Age, the first team in the game to do so after me. They seem to be quite well-prepared for this Golden Age, as they have around sixty population (58 that I can see for sure, plus the population in Magissa and Sandworm that I can’t see) to take advantage of the tile boosts and Judaism in every city that I can see to start taking advantage of the Organized Religion boost.

I wonder if they will try for a Great Prophet for the Jewish Shrine? I guess not. It would be fairly profitable, since they have worked so hard to spread Judaism far and wide, but getting a prophet as the third Great Person would take a painfully long time. Maybe they could leave the chance of a low-odds prophet in when they go for their next Great Person? That reminds me, I think I forgot to mention it, but OT4E did go for a Great Prophet and built the Buddhist Shrine. The prophet was produced on exactly the turn I said it was going to be produced on.

I would also like to mention that I still had number one GNP for a turn or two even after the Interdimensional Golden Age began.

   

After the Unlucky Orphans started giving me free stone, I went ahead and built walls quickly in every city. I know I’m going to need them someday and I want to save the hammers. The two exceptions were Quebec City, because I was dumb and forgot, and Almaty, because I had a better idea. As you can see, I decided to use the ten turns of having stone (the Unlucky Orphans cancelled the deal as soon as they could, as expected) to build the Moai Statues. I settled on Almaty because it strikes a good balance between having enough water tiles to make it useful, having enough good land tiles to build it fast, and having enough food to grow onto the water tiles quickly. Also, the culture will be handy in the endless culture war with The Flash. Ten turns was enough to almost finish the wonder, especially thanks to whipping an archer to completion for overflow partway through.

Also, some foreign events are going on in the event log here. OT4E’s peace treaty is done, so Elkad can come back for round two if he wants. For the one turn so far, he hasn’t done so. Hopefully he gives me at least a few more turns so I can start building up a meaningful force of longbows on the border city. I have Feudalism and just finished my first longbowman this turn, with more to come quickly. Elkad also produced his second Great Person this turn. I think that he may have been using an impure pool to generate the Great Person so soon (12 turns) after the last one, which would suggest the plan is a Golden Age. Although, the Great Person production would probably have been started by one of the previous players, so Elkad may have something else in mind. I will be interested to see what he does with the scientist. Lastly, the Unlucky Orphans completed Code of Laws first and founded Confucianism. I could have had that religion first myself by a few turns, but I got distracted and went for Feudalism first instead, leaving the Orphans the chance to catch it. Oh well, even as-is I am coming in close behind them.

   
To round off this report, I have two trivia screenshots. First, this one. The screenshot above portrays what I believe is the first and, currently, only penta-cultural tile in the game. It had an interesting journey to attain that unique state. First, a barbarian city was founded one tile north, which was then burned down before I even learned its name. Then the burner, RFS-81+haphazard1, founded their own city of Black Corridors on the tile itself. The tile stayed at two types of culture only for a while, but then some random Incan jerk burned Black Corridors down, adding a third type of culture to the tile in the process. Now, culture types four and five were added when nearby Traumhaft and Orphan cities were founded and expanded their second rings onto the tile.

   
Lastly, there’s this. Barbarian workers in the Blessed Lands, just as I feared. Building roads isn’t so bad, in fact, I like roads, and having them pre-built on my future lands (perhaps overoptimistic? ) is nice, but this is a dangerous sign. I can just sense that those barbarian fools are going to do something dumb to that beautiful forested silver mine, while I sit here, able to see it but unable to do anything about it. Torture. Maybe I need to accelerate my timetables for Astronomy…

[Magic Science]

Turn 134 – 475 AD
   
I haven’t even been back to reporting for more than a turn and I am already forgetting to include key details. I forgot to mention the peace treaty. The Unlucky Orphans and the Psychedelic Warlords have put an end to their little war, which never resulted in any war weariness at all. I am pretty sure that it happened only so that the Orphans could sail through Psychedelic waters to settle Miserable Mill on the Psychedelic whale island, which means the Warlords were never in any real danger. I am baffled as to how those guys have survived for so long after losing the bulk of their empire. It can’t be that they are surviving merely because it isn’t worth the trouble to chase down their last remnants, as they still hold the capital, and capital cities are very high in quality compared to the rest of the map, so Golden Void would be a nice prize. The garrison of the city is probably quite formidable at this point, but I know that shallow_ru has catapults now, and I’m sure that catapults could make the siege doable enough. What it taking everyone so long to finish them off? Hopefully when they get around to finishing me off it takes a similarly long time.

Also, I would like to point out that the Orphans have some towns now: Quechua Two has spotted two of them. That beats me to my first towns by only a few turns, but I won’t start getting a meaningful number of towns for about 15 to 20 more turns, so they seem to be a long way ahead of me in this area.

   
I also forgot to mention another unfortunate impact that the loss of Geneva had: the loss of horses. Those horses by Geneva were the only ones I had. Losing the ability to build chariots isn’t too bad, but horse archers and knights would be nice to build in the distant future, so I would like those horses back. To make that happen, I had Lhasa build a monument to try to win them back from HillsAreBetteR in a culture war. It is a third ring vs. second ring battle in Elkad’s favor, but Lhasa has had a long head start, and I believe that Geneva’s pile of culture on that tile should still count, so I think I have a good chance of getting the horses back.

Also, in probably more important news, Elkad just launched a crazy Golden Age. He timed it alongside the Pyramids and is now in Representation! Yikes. I will be interested to see how helpful Representation turns out to be for him. He has enough happy sources that I don’t think the happiness boost will be important, and the specialist boost may not be that great on this map. At least in the Incan League, most cities don’t have enough excess food to run specialists very effectively. Still, I’m sure he will get some good use out of it.

   
Here is where the Incan League stands as of Turn 134, with Quebec City off the screen to the north, as usual. With the loss of Geneva, the maximum amount of cottages worked is going to be 27, and we are almost up to that limit now. There is just one more cottage by Lhasa that still needs another population growth before it can be worked. In regards the other improvements, the worker army has finished improving every workable tile to my satisfaction with yield improvements (farms, mines, etc.), so roads are the next thing on the list. I want the entire Incan League to have roads to use in future wars.

In other news, our first religion spread of the game has finally come in the form of Hinduism in Sidon. If it had come before or during the Golden Age, something might have come of it, but now it probably won’t mean anything. A turn of anarchy is a high price to pay.

[Mr. Cairo]

Did you get construction before feudalism? If we build up some cats we could either be more prepared for the next Roman invasion, or launch an attack ourselves. Remember that catapults don't show up much on power graphs, so it's actually fairly easy to hide a bunch of them.

[Magic Science]

Turns 135 to 140 – 500 AD to 600 AD
   
Jem found Sandworm, which I would like to call false advertising on. Two deserts in the BFC, not even in the first ring, and you call the city “Sandworm”? Really, Charson? I don’t think so!

Perhaps more relevant to the game is the terrain around the city. Sandworm seems to be in the same league of city as Cape Town or pre-One Turn’s War Lhasa (Lhasa is a much better city now that it has Geneva’s rice ): good, but not great, and it has to steal some good tiles from other cities to work. I am curious as to what food tile Sandworm stole, though. It either took the crabs from Wing Raptor or the corn from Liquid Flame. I suspect that it took the corn by Liquid Flame, because I think that Exdeath may be working the corn by Wing Raptor to grow so large, which would make the crabs Wing Raptor’s only food.

I would also like to point out that Charson is building a workshop by Sandworm, so he has Metal Casting for sure. Sandworm looks like it could be a decent production city, so the decision to build a workshop nearby makes sense. As for myself, I don’t think that I will be building many workshops this game. My MFG is awful, but I simply don’t have enough land tiles (only 70) to build many of them without paving over well-grown cottages, which I don’t want to do. Those cottages are enabling me to maintain “mediocre to decent” status in GNP (hard to say now due to all of the Golden Ages), and I would prefer GNP to MFG. If I really need to, I can use Slavery to build stuff fast, but I can’t do something similar for GNP.

   
It is truly a golden era of wonders and development across the world…for everyone other than me and the Warlords. Poor guys.

There have been some particularly interesting things going on in the Injustice League recently. You can’t see it on the event log since it’s further down, but Superdeath built the Great Library and produced a Great Merchant back on Turn 135. Producing a Great Artist so quickly afterwards via natural GPP points is clearly impossible for him at this point, so that Great Artist must be the Music Great Artist. The fact that Superdeath has gone so far down the sissy art track () is good for me, for reasons which I will discuss more later. I do hope that he used the Great Artist to produce the Golden Age and not the Great Merchant, since the Great Artist could be a lot more annoying for me than the merchant could. I think that he would have used the artist, but what do I know?

Meanwhile, Elkad built the Mausoleum. He definitely would have beat my effort in Lhasa, so I made the right decision in stopping the project. This does make his starting a Golden Age such a short while ago seem really weird. Why not wait three turns to try to get a MoM-boosted Golden Age? Maybe he was very worried about someone beating him to it and wanted to accelerate the wonder by a turn with a Golden Age? I’m just not seeing the logic here. Also, note that the Pyramids were built in Malepartus. 

   
The Incan League's first town was finally born this turn by New Hong Kong! Hooray! However, as I recall mentioning a while ago when that cottage reached village stage, I started working that one at an unusually early time relative to the other Incan cottages. Therefore, we won’t have a meaningful wave of towns for another 10 to 15 turns. 

Also visible in the above screenshot is my courthouse building spree going on right now.  It may seem that those cities are all close enough to Cuzco that it wouldn’t be worth it, but this world is so small that courthouses will save 3.5-4.5 GPT in maintenance in all of them, which I think is good enough for me to build them. Additionally, the espionage will be handy for getting and keeping research visibility on my fellow North Ocean players, which I am not that far away from.

   
On Turn 139, in a move that I find baffling, Elkad declared war, killed my three workers that were improving the horses (which Lhasa succeeded in winning back, just as I thought), and then offered an immediate cease fire. I accepted, but I don’t really understand why he did this. It seems really minor and petty for this stage in the game. I would understand if someone chose to kill three workers 80 turns ago, when the critical expansion stage was still underway, but now? I have literally every (mainland) tile that I am ever going to work improved, and am only a few turns away from having a road on every single tile I want as well. Killing those workers does me almost no harm at all. It doesn’t even harm me in regards to improving the horses, since my workers were so near to being done there that I can swoop in from the fog and easily finish the pasture on them whenever I feel I need the resource. All it does is antagonize me for no gain and, beyond a shadow of doubt, establish your hostile stance towards me. I know I’m weak, but am I really so weak that the diplomatic cost of angering me is equal to 180 meaningless hammers? Maybe Elkad just has such a good read on me that he realizes I am not going to try to get revenge over this. I think making such an assumption would be a bad idea, but it isn’t an unreasonable one to make considering that it has been nearly 100 turns since the Great Injustice of Turn 43 and I still haven’t done anything to get revenge on Supedeath. Perhaps OT4E had something to do with this? I recall from reports I have read that he has a history of crazy stunts like this.

Okay, rant over, back to other stuff. shallow_ru finally created a Great Merchant and started their first Golden Age. As you can see, they revolted into Bureaucracy and Caste System, although I imagine that they will leave that before the end of the Golden Age and are just doing it for the mass GPP production. We may be reaching the point in the game where Slavery is getting weaker and workshops stronger, but I feel that the low food levels of this map make the mass specialist component of Caste System fairly weak, so staying in it seems like it would be a poor choice.

Relatedly, I am starting to think that my early Golden Age was a poor choice in comparison to the later Golden Ages of everyone else (excepting, as usual, RFS-81+haphazard1). It did gain me an early Hereditary Rule, but Hereditary Rule hasn’t turned out to be very useful so far. It hasn't led to very many more happy population points than I would have had otherwise. That is going to change over the next few turns, but if I am only making real use of it now, then getting it earlier in that earlier Golden Age wasn’t very helpful. Additionally, waiting would have given me more commerce and hammers due to having a larger population, it would have given me the ability to do a brief spurt in Caste System for mass GPP production, it would have let me revolt into a religion (I didn’t know at the time that I would have a spread by now, but I did know that I hadn’t gotten one yet), and it would have let me revolt into a wider set of new civics (Hereditary Rule, Organized Religion, and maybe Vassalage instead of just Hereditary Rule). And, of course, having an Academy isn’t bad either. Sidon is a pretty nice commerce city, I think. Well, lessons learned for my next game. This game does not seem to be going my way.

[Magic Science]

   
Tank has been watching the Orphan army down here for a while now, and it is starting to make me worried. They have six catapults and a bunch of hitters (exact amount unclear because some would stay behind as garrison if they attacked), as well as a Great General. I had thought that they were building up to take Golden Void, but maybe they are just that worried about Elkad and OT4E instead, and it’s a zone defense stack…or maybe they are planning an attack on Lhasa. Well, there isn’t much I can do besides funnel more defenders into the city just in case, so I will.

   
Both Quebec City and Cuzco have almost produced their Great People now, so I need to decide which one I should allow to be born first: Quebec City’s merchant or Cuzco’s scientist? Great People and how I want to use them obviously will be a major part of any long-term plans I have, so this means I need to do some more in-depth strategy consideration that I sadly haven’t been doing very much of lately. Well, what’s the plan then? Excellent rhetorical question, self. I’m glad you asked.

The main problem I have right now is that I have no good avenue for expansion. Earlier in the game, in the turns following the burning of Old Hong Kong (), my situation relative to the other players was at least as bad, and probably worse, than the one I find myself in now. However, I eventually managed to crawl back to at least a decent position relative to the rest of the field because there was still room to expand after I was knocked down. In comparison, losing Geneva is a much harder setback to overcome because the city can’t be easily replaced by another one. There isn’t anywhere left for me to settle a new city, and conquering any does not seem likely. If I bordered Charson or RFS-81+haphazard1, then maybe I could try something, but I don’t. Some of the border cities with me are weakly garrisoned (only one praetorian, one archer, and two chariots in HillsAreBetteR, for example), and I think I could probably take some, but holding them in an extended war would be hard. Elkad and shallow_ru both have more power than me already, Superdeath is close behind, and all of them have much greater production capacity. Although I don’t want to discount the possibility of gaining land from war completely, and I will try to be ready to take an opportunity if one appears, that isn’t my main plan.

My main plan is to try to settle the Astronomy islands across the ocean. There are a few reasons I favor this over mainland war. One is that I think it could lead to greater rewards than a mainland war. I am fairly confident that there are at least six Astronomy islands, which is more than I think I could reasonably gain from a mainland war, even if each island only has room for one city. It’s true that mainland cities will be better developed than newborn cities, but the Astronomy islands are pre-improved, and there will be some barbarian cities, so the gap shouldn’t be as large as it may initially seem. Also, I think that settlers, ships and garrison units for the islands will be cheaper than a large offensive force for the mainland.

The problem with that plan is that it is reliant on beating two other players with stronger GNP than me to a very expensive technology. If I get Astronomy too late, then I will need to fight for the islands, which puts me right back where I started with the problems of mainland war. However, I think I stand a decent chance of getting there in good time relative to Elkad and Superdeath. As I mentioned earlier, Superdeath seems to have obtained the Music artist, which means he is quite a few beakers off the track to Astronomy. I don’t have any sign that Elkad is similarly off track, but I think it is likely that he is or will be, at least to an extent. I feel like Elkad and Superdeath are more likely to go for technologies like Civil Service of Engineering than I am, which, while good techs, aren’t on the straight, desperate path to Astronomy that I want to take. I think that players in a better position are more likely to go for a more balanced tech path.

That brings me back to Great People again. I want to use them to accelerate my path to Astronomy. A Golden Age would be nice, but I don’t think it would accelerate my technology rate as much as their other abilities could. Specifically, I am thinking of bulbing the scientist into Astronomy and using the merchant for a trade mission. That means I want the merchant first. If I produced him second, then I wouldn’t get him until Turn 160, which means I probably wouldn’t burn through all of his gold until Turn 175 or so, and I hope to get Astronomy faster than that. It works better to get merchant first, burning his gold along the way, and then use the scientist to finish off Astronomy soon after he is born. We will see how it goes. My current estimation is that I can get Astronomy by Turn 165 or 170.

   
Bonus trivia screenshot! Superdeath built the Colossus in The Hulk, which I can’t see any coastal tiles of. I didn’t even realize it was on the coast at all. However, I can apparently still see the torch of the Colossus in the fog, which I find to be bizarre. Dark magic?

[Magic Science]

Did you get construction before feudalism? If we build up some cats we could either be more prepared for the next Roman invasion, or launch an attack ourselves. Remember that catapults don't show up much on power graphs, so it's actually fairly easy to hide a bunch of them.

Sorry for not responding to you for so long and then forgetting to do so in my catch-up report. I did read your post and consider your advice, though. I ended up researching Feudalism, then Construction, and I do intend to build up a force of catapults as part of my "be prepared for mainland opportunities or invasions" project.

[Magic Science]

Turns 141 and 142 – 620 and 640 AD
   
As I suppose I should have expected based on previous experience, I didn’t even make it one turn before having the feasibility of my Astronomy plan thrown into doubt.

There are two things here that make me say that. One, Elkad revolted into Police State, and he’s there to stay because his Golden Age ended on Turn 142. Police State is not the civic of a player looking to live in peace and harmony with all of his neighbors, and I feel that I am especially likely target for him and OT4E. As I mentioned previously, their worker-killing stunt made their hostile stance clear, and even beyond that it simply makes sense to attack the weak and leave the strong (Superdeath and shallow_ru) alone. I suppose they could reasonably be planning an attack on one of the other two players, but I think I am meaningfully weaker than Charson now, and I think they could gobble up RFS-81+haphazard1 and easily swivel around to attack me afterwards if they wanted, because the Psychedelic Warlords are so weak. A mainland war between now and Astronomy would probably be the end of my plan, so we will just hope it doesn’t happen…and build more units.

Two, I have research visibility on them now, and it is not showing nice things. Machinery is dangerously far along the Astronomy path if you ask me. This one isn’t as bad as the Police State point, though. I still think that it is likely they will go for something else besides Optics, something along a more balanced tech path, after finishing Machinery, but I will just need to wait and see.

   
In other Traumhaft news, Elkad made the interesting decision to empty HillsAreBetteR of all units besides one fully fortified Guerilla I archer. I spent a while in-game thinking about how to respond to this development. My axemen in Lhasa are capable of overpowering one archer, and it only takes one turn to set them up in attack position. In the end, I decided to send out a small force from Lhasa to leave my options open next turn. The axemen are there to attack, and the spearmen are there to protect the axemen from any chariots in the fog.

However, I’m not sure that I will actually attack HillsAreBetteR, even if the opportunity is still there next turn… and as I type this, I realize it almost certainly won’t be. I have a Turn 141 screenshot, taken after Elkad played, showing the garrison as it was before, with a praetorian and two chariots in addition to that archer. Elkad has only played one turn since then, which means they must still be close enough to the city to go back into it in one move. Well, even ignoring that fact, after having thought about it more I am feeling less inclined to attack than I was in the game. Didn’t I just say how bad a war would be for my plans? And now I want to provoke one with the greatest military power in the game over a weak one-population resettle? It doesn’t sound like such a good idea when you put it in that light.

   
The other thing I spent a while thinking about this turn was my Great Merchant’s trade mission. Against AIs, sending a merchant deep into rival territory for a lucrative trade mission is trivially easy, but this game isn’t against AIs, and humans may not let him go through so easily. I don’t trust any of my neighbors enough to rely on their good will alone for the merchant’s safety. I will need a plan for conducting the trade mission successfully.

The first idea I had is to send him to Superman by sea. I would wait until Optics, get a caravel right away with overflow trickery, then use it to transport the merchant to Superman. I would only be in Superdeath’s sight for one turn, and there would never be any danger, since the merchant could disembark and do his mission all in one turn before Superdeath could react. There are two large problems with this plan, though. One is that Superman does not seem to be a very nice trade mission target. I will need to look up the exact mechanics of calculating merchant value, but I recall that population has something to do with it, and Superman is small. It may grow, but I expect it to still lag behind other cities like Exdeath and Bad Beginning (14 population each currently). It also isn’t very far from Cuzco. The other is the scheduling. With this plan, I’m not getting the merchant’s gold until 5-6 turns after Optics. That means I might not burn all of it into beakers by the time I have Astronomy, which isn’t very efficient for the goal of getting Astronomy as fast as possible. It might not be too bad, though, since excess gold could go into galley upgrades to accelerate the actual settling of the islands. Hmm…

   
The other idea I had was to send my merchant to Bad Beginning for his trade mission, which has some advantages over Superman. Bad Beginning is farther away and bigger than Superman, so the payoff will be greater. Also, I don’t need to wait until Optics and a caravel for this plan, so I can get the gold at an earlier, more convenient time. However, it is also much more dangerous. Going the overland route exposes the Great Merchant to all sorts of nasty, bloodthirsty units that might try to kill him. It’s not just Orphan units, either. Currently Charson and Superdeath have open borders with the Unlucky Orphans, and Tank and Quechua Two have seen some scouting units of theirs running around. The scouting unit problem is easy enough to solve, though; I will just have to send the merchant with a small escort squadron. The Orphan army is a much bigger threat, obviously. Sure, if they declared war the merchant would get teleported away, but there’s no assurance that he would go somewhere safe (remember, teleportation rules in Civ IV are dark magic), and it would mean the failure of the trade mission even if he survived.

If I want to send him to Bad Beginning, then I would probably need to go NAP fishing with shallow_ru first. That will nuke our trade routes, but I have trade routes with Charson too, and I think that Interdimensional cities should be able to fill in all of the two-commerce Orphan routes, so I would only be losing four commerce from the four Orphan three-commerce routes (their two islands and their two really big cities). I don’t know exactly how much more gold I will be making on a mission to Bad Beginning than to Superman, but I suspect it will be enough to make 4 commerce/turn look insignificant. The bigger problem with NAP fishing is that they might not want to give me peace right away after I declare war, or they might refuse to give anything except a cease fire. Now that I think of it, that becomes more likely after my merchant is born, since they might suspect what I am trying to do and not feel like letting me do it. I should have settled on a trade mission plan before now.

I need to look up the exact mechanics to help me decide.

[Magic Science]

Turns 143 to 145 – 660 to 700 BC
   
As expected, Elkad moved a significant garrison back into HillsAreBetteR on his turn, so I turned my units around and sent them back to Lhasa to resume their duties as defenders without further incident. It is notable that Elkad moved more units into HillsAreBetteR on Turn 143 than can be seen in Turn 141 screenshots of the city. This makes me suspect that there is a small zone defense force nearby, either north towards Nobiskrug or south towards Antium, and the units he moved out of the city went to supplement it. Even if there wasn’t, there probably is now. I doubt Elkad would leave HillsAreBetteR vulnerable after he saw my troops advance on it, but as of Turn 145 the garrison is back down to one archer, which means most of the potential defenders must be stationed somewhere else. It looks like that one archer will get to live in peace, then.

   
On Turn 144, Sofia’s borders expanded to third ring, which claimed far enough out into the ocean that I can finally see into the barbarian city that cropped up in the Blessed Lands so long ago. I was surprised to discover that it was founded on a deer tile; I didn’t think barbarian cities could appear on resources. It is also notable that the only way to claim the fish tile is by settling on a resource, either deer or silver. This seems like an odd thing for a mapmaker to force a player to do, and since the Blessed Lands have been heavily edited, it seems unlikely that Commodore would have missed this spot. Optimistically, I am taking it to mean that the entirety of the Blessed Lands is comprised of resource tiles, so settling on them is the only way.

I am also pleased to see the large size and weak garrison of Scythian. A strong city that is easy to capture? Sign me up! We just need to get there…

   
The cultural deadlock on the border with the Injustice League has been shifting recently. New Hong Kong finally overpowered Green Lantern and reclaimed my RIGHTFUL WINES TILE, so I’m sending out a worker to improve it. He is guarded by a small force because no, I don’t trust Superdeath. However, other things haven’t been going my way. I think that The Flash expanded borders again, and it has been starting to push the MarvelDC cultural percentages up on New Hong Kong’s rice tile. New Hong Kong has already built every cultural thing I have available to build, so it looks like I may lose the tile in the long term. At least Almaty should be able to hold onto its tiles thanks to Moai Statues.

In other MarvelDC news, Incan spies, after literally thousands of years of effort, finally figured out what Superdeath is researching, and it’s even worse than when they figured out what Elkad was researching! Guilds! This is bad, bad enough to make me consider diverting to Engineering and/or Civil Service before Optics and Astronomy. Knights are scary, and I would feel a lot better if I had pikemen and castles to defend against them. Researching Engineering would delay Astronomy by at least ten turns, though, so it’s a hard price to pay when me getting Astronomy in good time is already seeming so difficult. At least Machinery is along both tech paths, so I don’t need to decide for a few more turns.

Also, I would like the point out that Green Lantern’s dyes and bananas are still unimproved. I think this means that Superdeath does not have Calendar, which could help explain how he reached Guilds so quickly. That’s no excuse for the other unimproved tiles, though. It’s Turn 145 and there is still a riverside grassland tile by The Flash unimproved!  What’s going on?

   
Speaking of that, Charson seems to be lacking some technologies as well. Note that both the spice tile and the sugar tile are unimproved, which seems to indicate that they don’t have Calendar, and that they have a trebuchet but I haven’t seen any catapults, which seems to indicate that they lack Construction. That second one could be explained away by them making odd production choices, but I don’t see any bridges over their rivers that would come with Construction.

[Magic Science]

Turn 146 – 720 AD
   
This turn, both Charson and Superdeath sent me iron-for-iron deals like the one shown above. Both offers are probably intended to mean that they want to go to war with someone soon and think that I might be interested in joining on their side. I’m not sure what else they could mean (besides Superdeath’s message potentially meaning nothing and merely trying to make me feel a false sense of security before he attacks). Charson and I mutually neighbor, and could therefore team up on, Superdeath, shallow_ru, and Elkad. Superdeath and I mutually neighbor only shallow_ru and Elkad. It is interesting that Superdeath may be planning an attack on one of the top two civilizations, but he is a solid third place at this point, so he isn’t too far behind them that such an attack is crazy. Charson, on the other hand, is a more distant fourth place, so it seems more likely to me that he is planning an attack on Superdeath instead of one of the big sharks.

This seems like a good moment to mention that Elkad send a crab-for-crab deal to me last turn, which I accepted but forgot to mention in the report. In that case, it probably doesn’t mean anything. It was likely sent because my advance on HillsAreBetteR was mildly annoying and he would prefer I didn’t do that in the future, but I’m sure Elkad would declare war again despite the deal if he felt that it was beneficial for him.

   
There are a few things going on in this screenshot that I want to point out.

One, I can see an Orphan horse archer, so the Unlucky Orphans have Horseback Riding now. I need to watch out for horse archers from them. However, that is the first horse archer I have seen, so I don’t think they have had the technology for very long, which means I probably have enough spearmen to counter what they currently have. Two, Elkad built the Shwedagon Paya. I think he may have built it for the culture and/or GPP, because he is already in Organized Religion and you would think he would have timed the wonder to finish during his Golden Age to revolt if he wanted it for a religious civic. Three, RFS-81 is a monarch now! Congratulations! I’m sure his research rate is bad with only one city, but it does make sense that after such a long time of being left alone he would be getting somewhere, probably somewhere in the direction of Feudalism. Four and last, Almaty continues to make a mockery of my effort to build a courthouse there by deciding to pay no maintenance regardless.

   
I thought more about both the Great Merchant and the research questions, and I think I have answers to both.

The Great Merchant is going to Aquaman on a caravel. I looked up the mechanics and did some testing of my own, and apparently the value of the trade route the city the merchant is going to would have with my capital is the only thing I need to worry about. Aquaman is Superdeath’s island city, so it should have a trade route value of three commerce with Cuzco, which translates to 1100 gold. Bad Beginning is worth the same amount, but if I went NAP fishing to perform the mission safely then I would lose the sustained peace bonus and the mission would come out to only 700 gold. I considered trying to do the mission in Bad Beginning anyway for the sake of getting the gold earlier, but 1100 gold will only take 7-8 turns to burn. I expect Astronomy to take at least that many turns of researching to finish, so I will take the safer naval-based route to Aquaman and I shouldn’t experience any inefficiency due to it.

As for technology, I want Horseback Riding for war elephants, then on to Optics and Astronomy. War elephants are only slightly worse against knights than pikemen, they are slightly better against most other stuff than pikemen, and the detour to obtain them is much shorter. Horseback Riding should only cost me 2-3 turns on my Astronomy completion date. It is concerning that I am reliant on only one source of ivory that is in a vulnerable spot by New Hong Kong, but I think it is the right choice anyway. Even if the ivory is cut off in a war, as long as one of my neighbors remains peaceful I think I could trade or beg for another copy from someone interested in seeing whoever is attacking have a worse time.

[Mr. Cairo]

Did you respond to either of those Iron-Iron deals? It seems most likely they plan to attack each-other, so if you signal to both that you'll join them, there might be an opportunity to see how the first engagements go and pick the winning side

edit: also curious as to the state of the military, could you show the military screen?