[spoilers] - Pindicator makes America great again!

[pindicator]

Turn 064

I spent the first 20 minutes of my time in game talking myself down from quitting this game. I'm really interested in seeing what the process was for making this map, because ... well, i'll just show you:




Apparently TBS gets flood plains while we get a long thin strip of workable land that encourages us to settle away from our copper and our nearest neighbor. So what exactly is going on here that doesn't make a civ a glorified Zulu settler pump?

But I just watched Interstellar for the first time, and that poem by Dylan Thomas is still bouncing around in my head:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And I keep getting these nostalgic memories about the whole Realms Beyond ethos back when it was focused more on variants in single player game: to overcome every obstacle. And while it doesn't quite carry over the same way as it does in a single player game where you're playing against horribly outmatched AI opponents, there is a bit of nobility in the person who continues to fight against all odds, even if that fight is ultimately a failed one. Especially if they are fighting a fight doomed to fail.

So I talked myself down from rage-quitting. Because TBS gets flood plains while I get jungle. Fair? Hardly. But we just can't let ourselves get sucked into thinking about this map as fair, otherwise it will stop being fun.

With that out of the way, let's play the turn

[pindicator]

Turn 064, part 2

Mackoti has been growing tall and teching away, and he continued that with landing Judaism this turn:




And the barb warrior did us a favor and attacked into my warrior on the jungled hill. It could have continued south and been a nuisance by threatening the capital, but thankfully it did not.

I also moved my settler into position to the tile south of the copper, with an archer in defense. A second archer is on the tile east of the capital with a worker moved there to chop out a granary. Really though I need to chop that forest NE of the capital, so maybe I just shift the archers next turn and then chop that tile before hooking up the copper. But yeah, I need the copper too. I'm bringing up a second worker and delaying hooking up the horses.

TBS is pretty much my only focus right now, so it's good news that we have had graphs on him for some time. I'll put them in spoilers for length:

The recent food spikes for TBS are when he settled his 4th and 5th cities. He just 2-pop whipped again this turn, which makes me think that he is whipping a settler to take that flood-plain location that I just spotted (also because he has a warrior out there spotting for it). So while it is tempting for me to say I should try to road northeast of the copper and try to stake some land out there for myself, I'm going to be far too slow to realistically get anything. Maybe I can claim something farther east, but I won't be getting that prime flood plains land.

I really need to think big-picture here and try to come up with a plan that makes this game playable for the next 50 turns (or until I get killed off by TBS).

[scooter]

The recent food spikes for TBS are when he settled his 4th and 5th cities. He just 2-pop whipped again this turn, which makes me think that he is whipping a settler to take that flood-plain location that I just spotted (also because he has a warrior out there spotting for it). So while it is tempting for me to say I should try to road northeast of the copper and try to stake some land out there for myself, I'm going to be far too slow to realistically get anything. Maybe I can claim something farther east, but I won't be getting that prime flood plains land.

Could always try to get an archer over there to screw with his timing of settling the city like he did to you. Actually I would be aggressive in general with archers right now. His power graph sure looks like someone sporting nothing but warriors to me. If he's going to jump you with Impis, he's already made up his mind - so I don't think there's any harm in being a little aggressive in return in this short little window before Impis show up.

I really need to think big-picture here and try to come up with a plan that makes this game playable for the next 50 turns (or until I get killed off by TBS).

I said this briefly by chat, but big picture is settler spam the islands and get a trade route economy going while getting currency asap. The extra commerce from IC routes will be pretty valuable on this barren wasteland of a map. From there, basically hope you spot stone or marble somewhere on the islands so that you can develop a wonder plan around that. I think you can carve out solid economy pretty easily this way.

This is all moot if the impis come calling, but you'll have to watch the power graph closely for that.

[pindicator]

Turn 064, Part 3

Meant to hit preview on the last post, but at this point we should just Regoarrarr this thing up.

Here's everything we know:




Priorities here have to be scouting the south and scouting the contested area with TBS to our northeast. First order for scouting the south is getting a boat in the water.

First big question: do we want a work boat or a galley first? As much as I want an overseas city, I don't want to just plant any junk spot out there - sadly the island in the southeast is barren unless it has seafood in the fog, so I won't just send a settler down there blindly. We need to scout first. A work boat can be built faster and scout out tiles; a galley will eventually want to turn back and pick up settlers. But barb galleys are in the water by now and with the issue we've been having with barbarians so far I don't think I want to risk a work boat out alone in the islands. So galley it will be. Galley can also bring a warrior along to help scout tiles as it moves along. Sailing finishes end of turn (gold is hooked up to the capital, yay!), and I plan on whipping workers in Clinton and Bush over the following turns to help with developing land and roading in the northeast. I think the best way to get a galley out is to build it in Bush after whipping the worker, and to put a forest chop into the galley along with the worker overflow. That will get us a galley at end of t70. (I could get it out a littler sooner by 2-pop whipping it from Clinton in 2 turns, but when you factor in the extra movement time to bring the galley south it only gets us 3 more tiles of explored sea. Not worth the suboptimal whipping off of good tiles IMO, and I also need the worker out of Clinton.)

I'll take the warrior in Sanders along with the galley, and I'm going to build a work boat in Clinton after the worker is whipped so I think that should help with exploration/solve any issues of hooking up food for a city down south.

Now for the northeast, I have 3 more archers coming up from the south. I'll want a pair of them near Sanders at all times; one of them will scout to the east along the coast; and that will leave 2 more near the capital and Sanders for workers and anything else that comes up. As long as I don't see TBS' power spike that should be good for units for now. And I'd really like to get a settler out to set my share of the northeast but I don't know how we'll be able to do that without more workers and units.

Reasons for optimism; demos aren't actually that bad:




GNP is kind of hard to judge with all the culture mixed in, but I have been watching score close enough to know how many techs everybody has:

Me - 10 Ancient (11 at end of turn)
Commodore - 6 Ancient & 1 Classical
TBS - 9 Ancient
Old Harry - 9 Ancient
Mackoti - 11 Ancient
REM - 12 Ancient
OT4E - 11 Ancient & 1 Classical (from Oracle so Metal Casting? He is PHI)
2metra - 9 Ancient

Poor Commodore must have felt forced to tech Iron Working early on; I'm quite tempted to tech it myself in this situation (hope for a safer source of metal; be able to farm that sugar tile). But otherwise we're all pretty similar still. Makes sense as maintenance costs won't really ramp up for people until the 5th or 6th cities.

And we're right up there in food and mfg, as well as tops in power and the owner of a wonder. Yet I still can't help but look at this as an unwinnable game, unless there is some honestly good land in the south. (Watch me find mackoti instead.).

Sailing finishes at end of turn; need to think about what I should target next for tech.

[pindicator]

The recent food spikes for TBS are when he settled his 4th and 5th cities. He just 2-pop whipped again this turn, which makes me think that he is whipping a settler to take that flood-plain location that I just spotted (also because he has a warrior out there spotting for it). So while it is tempting for me to say I should try to road northeast of the copper and try to stake some land out there for myself, I'm going to be far too slow to realistically get anything. Maybe I can claim something farther east, but I won't be getting that prime flood plains land.

Could always try to get an archer over there to screw with his timing of settling the city like he did to you. Actually I would be aggressive in general with archers right now. His power graph sure looks like someone sporting nothing but warriors to me. If he's going to jump you with Impis, he's already made up his mind - so I don't think there's any harm in being a little aggressive in return in this short little window before Impis show up.

I really need to think big-picture here and try to come up with a plan that makes this game playable for the next 50 turns (or until I get killed off by TBS).

I said this briefly by chat, but big picture is settler spam the islands and get a trade route economy going while getting currency asap. The extra commerce from IC routes will be pretty valuable on this barren wasteland of a map. From there, basically hope you spot stone or marble somewhere on the islands so that you can develop a wonder plan around that. I think you can carve out solid economy pretty easily this way.

This is all moot if the impis come calling, but you'll have to watch the power graph closely for that.

Cross-posted, but yeah I pretty much agree with all this.

I keep making pb19 comparisons, but this game has one big advantage over my situation in pb19: I have graphs on TBS and can watch his power closely. Thoth hit me before I could get graphs on him in 19.

By the way, Thoth posted in the lurker thread after TBS did earlier today. Paranoia level rising!

[pindicator]

Turn 065

Impi sighted, right on time.



At least it isn't a rush ... yet.

Also, I have to say, bravo to this play:



That was Commodore, who has only researched 5 technologies TOTAL all game, which means he literally went Hunting/Agriculture -> BW -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Metal Casting. I figured he was doing Iron Working early with how long that tech took him, but it did seem a bit too long even for IW. But when you have a map like this one, wonders mean more because tiles are crap for new cities (unless you're Zulu apparently).

Speaking of new cities, I also started the settler for city #6. Need to be careful with these for a little while as costs went up to 17gpt with the last city (breakeven is just under 50%), but I definitely want to get an overseas city going. Apart from that, do I want to try and settle by the clam to my northwest? That area is looking more and more like 'my' peninsula, but it's all jungle and seafood right now. Still, I don't want to give TBS any ideas that it's free game. And maybe the exploration out east will uncover a spot worth racing towards.

[Thoth]

By the way, Thoth posted in the lurker thread after TBS did earlier today. Paranoia level rising!

[pindicator]

Turn 066

This sheds some light on TBS's aggression:



Note: TBS has his impi and another warrior on the same tile as my warrior

Looks pretty clear that city #6 for him will end up being 2W of that gold tile to claim it and the flood plains. And it's all his - look at the land between my capital and that gold. Not a single food tile. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to settle that Ivory. At this point I may just put a city right on top of it, have it build a granary and a lighthouse, and then just ignore it for the rest of the game. That's the more disappointing part to me: that there is so much barren land out here.

As much as I want to scout northward, I think I keep my warrior on defensive terrain here. I'll send one of my 5 archers out east to scout the coastline. I still have a chance of getting to any good land to the east, so let's make sure we're not missing out on any gems or some as such.

Speaking of which:




More islands. And more jungle. I really need some boats in the water. Whipped the worker out of Bush this turn; it will chop a galley out next. Next turn we'll whip a worker out of Clinton and follow that city up with another boat. Actually, a chariot may not be a bad idea to team up with the galley. I'll have horses hooked up in 2t. I'm hoping to find some more seafood off the coast here; as it is I'm going to build a city on that jungled hill on the north coast to get the fish & clam, but I don't see another good spot to settle in the near term. A lot of jungle work to be done here.

Big Picture Idea: with how important wonders can be, and how we're a spammy type of civilization, maybe I do want to go for bulbing Theology and building the AP. Did some quick napkin math, and the cost of all the technologies needed to bulb Theology is 524 raw beakers (total cost divided by pre-requisite bonus). For perspective, the cost of Math is 311, and Currency is 499.

But at the same time, Build Wealth is gonna be YUUUUGE.

[pindicator]

Just realized TBS could potentially snipe some workers with a galley in the fog. Well, cross your fingers that I didn't just blunder!

[scooter]

Just realized TBS could potentially snipe some workers with a galley in the fog. Well, cross your fingers that I didn't just blunder!

I'd be pretty surprised if he's built a galley by now. Between the land rush, workers to develop it, and Impis, he's got so many other more useful things to build. You're only building them now because you've been screwed into having no choice.