Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[NobleHelium]

Okay I got super confused for a good bit because I noticed the land area went up on t20 by 9 tiles which generally means someone settled a city. But the only score gains from that turn were Rusten who we definitely know grew to 3 due to the top cities screen, and Serdoa who definitely teched BW which we can confirm via KTB. And nobody is Creative. But that thinking finally made me realize that Lewwyn's capital is a holy city which has literally never happened in one of our games, so that's what it is.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 23.

Nothing to see about our empire.  Stuff happening out in the rest of the world though.



Bob and Rusten grew to 4, each gaining 7 points. Rusten also finished a tech which is probably Bronze Working, although he researched it in 12 turns which is rather fast. Of course we will finish our BW in 10 actual research turns due to our overflow manipulation, so I suppose that's comparable. Still, it's a lot faster than the 15 turns SD and Serdoa took to get the tech. Lewwyn also got a tech and I'm not really sure what it is? Only 4 turns have elapsed since his last tech. I guess it could be Agriculture which is 59b?

Power went up 14k, BW is 8k. So there is 6k unaccounted for. 2k is Bob and Rusten growing to 4. The remaining 4k is probably two warriors, but neither of them are SD's because we can see from EOT graphs that his power did not go up.

We got 22 land points just like last time for 8 land tiles. Rusten got 19 land points for 7 land tiles. Serdoa and SD got 25 land points for 9 land tiles. Bob and Lewwyn both got 22 land points. So in terms of land tiles in the BFC, players each have:

Bob: 14 land tiles
SD: 16 land tiles
Lewwyn: 16 land tiles
Serdoa: 17 land tiles
Rusten: 15 land tiles
Us: 16 land tiles

I haven't double checked the land numbers to verify them, but that should be correct.

Bobchillingworth - Mining, Mysticism, Hunting t5, Agriculture t9, Fishing t17
superdeath & GeneralKilCavalry - Agriculture, Mining, Bronze Working t14, Fishing t21
Lewwyn - Fishing, Mysticism, Meditation t9, Hunting t14, Mining t19, Agriculture t23
Serdoa - Hunting, Mining, Agriculture t5, Bronze Working t20
Rusten & Hitru - Hunting, Mysticism, Agriculture t4, Mining t11, Bronze Working t23
Gaspar & NobleHelium - Mysticism, Wheel, Fishing t6, Mining t13, Hunting t18

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 24.



It seems we are alternating between something happening domestically and something happening internationally.  This turn we uncovered some new tiles.  There could be some daylight here to another neighbor, or it could just be a few tiles and a resource or two.  But we should have a much better idea next turn.



Nothing happened that we can see.  SD still does not have a warrior.  At this point he might have copper and be putting hammers into an axe instead, but he hasn't completed it and we can't do anything differently from what we are doing anyway, so whatever.  We are already rushing Bronze Working to see copper sooner than we might otherwise want.  And that will be known to us in a few days, at which point our plans may get blown up and redrawn. Perhaps pindicator put copper on the hill that we are going to mine? That would just make everything better and would be the best result.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 25.



Interesting stuff this turn.  It definitely isn't looking promising for us to find a path east in this area, but at the same time there is still land left to explore.  So we'll go north next turn and see what happens.  Not sure about city placements here.  We can of course claim the crab from the mainland, but planting on that tundra tile which would otherwise be useless is also attractive.



Rusten whipped a settler from 4 to 2, confirming our previous C&D. So we may have the first second city of the game founded on t27. SD got a tech, which is probably Hunting which would mean that he still doesn't have a warrior. I figured out how to make the BUG score display take up less space.

[novice]

That tundra tile does indeed look attractive. And shared food resources should be something to aim for when dotmapping.

[NobleHelium]

The game might be moving a bit slower than lurkers for the Pitboss games might be used to, but don't worry! We have lots of #content planned.

We will be posting some discussion and information on possible dotmap configurations once we see copper. And later on I will debut a new column called The Roads Not Taken - where I will talk about lines and strategies that we ultimately opted not to pursue. And yes, it is named after the poem.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 26.  Things are happening.



The northeast definitely looks like a peninsula but we'll keep going to confirm until we run out of land.  If we plant on the tundra tile then we will orphan the plains tile 3E of the corn, unless we decide to adjust the Moai spot which we won't do unless we find two more seafood in the fog which is very unlikely.  Still, the tundra tile is potentially a great spot pending full reveal of the area and remaining resources.



This turn we noticed that superdeath has been chopping some forests.  The tile 1N of the wheat was chopped just this turn.  The tile 2N of the wheat was chopped previously.  We also know from the score that superdeath grew this turn, which means he did not chop into a settler or worker.  We can also deduce from the graphs that he hooked up his seafood several turns ago and thus he did not chop into a work boat.  And actually after updated graphs at EOT we can see that he chopped into a warrior.  Why would he chop into a warrior?  That is a highly unusual move, because warriors are 15h and pre-math chops are 20h.  We also know from the graphs that SD produced 3 natural hammers this turn. So that means if he has more than 7h in the box from previous turns then he is going to lose hammers to overflow.



Anyway, in addition to the fact that he might be losing overflow hammers with this move, there's really no reason to chop into a warrior unless:
1) He is overflowing into a settler (or maybe worker).
2) He is overflowing into a second warrior and the chop is essentially for completing two warriors.



So we must conclude that either he is doing a somewhat normal move of building a warrior (his first) and then a settler, or he is chopping warriors and thus possibly warrior rushing us.  Or maybe he just wants warriors to escort his settler.  Either way I'd say all these possibilities fall under the weird end of the spectrum. In addition to this, due to the fact that he is chopping into a warrior we also conclude that it is very likely that copper is not at the capital.  Otherwise he would have mined copper by now and be chopping into an axe instead.  We will see copper at the end of next turn and we can maybe deduce or guess many more things after that.



Ignore the fact that the demos say we have 6 MFG which is a mismatch with the EOT graph screenshots.  I queued up the settler and the governor swapped tiles to the forested spices for the IMP bonus.  Normally this would also change the graphs (you can see this on SD's graph on the turn where he completed a worker and the governor reassigned his tile from the deer to the flood plain or equivalent), but because the date rolled over (full EOT), it does not.

We also got graphs on Serdoa after EOT, but that's enough graph analysis for me for now.

[Gaspar]

Good post, Noble.

I will post some various flavors of my usual nonsense tomorrow.

[NobleHelium]

We also know that SD's seafood is specifically fish and not crab or clam, because it is 3f better than the plains deer which we know is 2f2h. So his capital is straight up better than ours because he has riverside plains wheat compared to our dry corn. I will be generous and say that pindicator probably thinks the metal positions being more favorable to us balances this out, though.

[Charriu]

Looks like the grid for graphs feature was useful to you and/or saved you some time.  

Great report.