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

[Magic Science]

Turn 147 – 740 AD
   
I think something is about to happen. The Orphan doomstack that Tank has been watching is up to an unprecedented size, and it just moved. Also, Civstats indicates that shallow_ru is in a turn split with someone. This does have me worried about a possible attack on Lhasa, but I don’t think that is what is going to happen. If the doomstack had moved north even one tile, that would have put it one turn closer to Lhasa, and I would have needed to act like war with the Unlucky Orphans was imminent. However, it didn’t do that, it shifted one tile to the east. That doesn’t put it in a better position for attacking me…but it does for attacking Elkad.

My screenshot of the situation is a poor one that doesn’t show it well, but the doomstack could be knocking on the gates of NotRome in one turn of movement from its current position. It would take two turns to achieve the same for Antium, but the tile the doomstack is on appears to be the closest tile shallow_ru has to Antium that Elkad can’t see, so there isn’t a better choice. I won’t spend any more time pondering on this now because it might not happen (and also, I really want it to happen, and things I predict have a habit of not coming true ), but I think we might be seeing another war between the big sharks next turn.

   

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

I don’t have an up-to-date military screen picture, so have this graph for now. I will get a current military adviser screenshot next turn for you.

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

About those iron-for-iron deals…no I didn’t respond to either of them. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I put them off for another turn. You are right that I should be thinking about how to take advantage of them, though.

I would agree with you that their most likely targets for war are each other, but we have no border with Charson. If Superdeath was planning an attack on him, why would he have bothered to send an iron-for-iron deal to me, who can’t help? Also, this means that if Superdeath did go to war with Charson and started winning, joining on the winning side would not be an option. It would only be an option if the less-likely scenario of a Charson victory started to occur.

Regardless, it is probably a good idea to send them both iron-for-iron deals back next turn. It could play a small role in starting a war between people besides me (unless someone starts to win ), which sounds nice.

[Magic Science]

Turn 148 – 760 AD
   
The Unlucky Orphans didn’t declare war, and their doomstack moved back to its previous tile. Tank will keep an eye on things, but it looks like there might not be anything exciting going on over here after all.

   
Here’s your military adviser screenshot, Mr. Cairo, as promised (but I just realized I forgot to send those iron-for-iron deals like I said I would, so I’m only 1/2 on fulfilling requests ). As you can see, we have a lot of archery units and are comparatively slacking in the other categories. The league is currently working on another round of catapults, and the plan after that is to build mostly war elephants. However, we are going to be somewhat distracted from that goal due to Optics and Astronomy logistics preparation. We need a few swordsmen for Scythian, settlers for elsewhere, and boats for everything, and the boats will require setting up some overflow trickery as well.

   
Now that everyone is done with their Golden Ages, I took a closer look at the demographics screen. We still have poor MFG, but GNP is surprisingly good. I set science to 0% before taking this screenshot, yet we are still second.

[Magic Science]

To the lurkers: I’m sorry that my recent reports probably haven’t been very exciting to read. Hopefully I should be able to come up with something interesting for the Turn 150 overview.

[Mr. Cairo]

Thanks for the military overview, it certainly looks like we're pretty much safe from attack (or rather, if we are attacked the enemy will have a hard time making any gains), but I'm glad to hear you making more catapults. Around 8-10 would be ideal, both for offense and a more proactive defense. I'd say getting up a decent catapult stack should be a higher priority than the War Elephants.

[Magic Science]

Well, it’s four days late, but better late than never, right? Allow me to proudly present...

Magic Science’s Grand Turn 150 Strategic Review
   
This turn, I did something I probably should have done a long time ago: I did my best to estimate how large the Blessed Lands of the Northern Ocean are. I now know for sure that there are 55 tiles left unclaimed on the whole map. My assumption is that, after 150 turns of city settling and border expanding, there are no unclaimed tiles left on the mainland. My other assumption is that the Blessed Lands of the Southern Ocean are equal, or at least very nearly equal, in size to those of the Northern Ocean. With those assumptions in mind, I estimate that there are 27.5 tiles available for colonization in the Northern Ocean.

This makes me fairly confident that the number of Astronomy islands in the Northern Ocean is six. For a while I have had this idea in the back of my mind that there might be nine (two within sight of each whale island, then one roughly halfway between each whale island), but three tiles per island seems much too small. Besides, fog gazing already shows that the island with Scythian on it has at least five tiles.

   
I also took the time to reconsider my plan for making use of my Great People. For a little while now, the idea has been to use the Great Merchant for a trade mission and the Great Scientist for an Astronomy bulb. However, using both of them like that has a serious problem: it pushes back the date of the next Golden Age by a very, very long way. It’s hard to look that far into the future, but I estimate it would take until at least Turn 220 to produce the two new Great People needed for the Golden Age. That is a long time to wait before having a chance to do an anarchy-free swap of civics and religion (we do have Buddhism and Hinduism now). Of course, that might still be worth it if the benefit that using them both gives is great enough, but I am now of the opinion that it isn’t.

As of Turn 150, at max research Astronomy reads 14 turns to complete, Optics 3 turns, and Machinery 2 turns. The amount of gold I lose at 100% science is close enough to the amount I gain at 100% gold that I can simplify it to a 1:1 ratio of researching:saving, so the baseline time for Astronomy is 38 turns. In reality, it’s probably a bit less than that due to GNP improving and the game not accounting for overflow when it predicts the time needed to research queued techs, but that’s not the point. Both of the Great People won’t be able to do anything until after Optics, so what we are really looking at is the time to research Astronomy itself, the base for which is 28 turns. The Great Scientist should produce 7 turns of research, which means 7 turns of gold saving is cut off from the time as well, for a total of 14 turns saved. The merchant’s theoretical best is about 8 turns worth of gold saving cut off, but it turns out that I was wrong earlier, and we won’t get full value out of the merchant due to caravel travel delay. It will take him 4-5 turns to get to Aquaman, during which we will be saving gold, and we only need 7 turns worth of gold, so the merchant will only save 2-3 turns on Astronomy. Of course, the beakers obtained from the mission gold would still be valuable for other techs afterwards, but if we are looking at it from the perspective of general economics instead of just how to get Astronomy fastest, I would prefer to save him for a Golden Age.

The last straw is that I do not think that we are going to be in anything resembling a close race for Astronomy. If we were, maybe those 2-3 turns would be worth it, but neither Elkad nor Superdeath appear to be trying for Astronomy right now.

In conclusion, we’re saving the merchant and using the scientist. Almaty will probably take up the task of producing a nonmerchant Great Person for the league, which is why I started this strategic rant with a screenshot of it.

   
On another matter, yes, RFS-81+haphazard1 are still alive somehow. And I still don’t get it. The first question I am asking everyone (except Superdeath) after the game is “WHY DID YOU LET RFS-81 AND HAPHAZARD1 LIVE SO LONG?” Just like that, too. I guess I do understand why they might have lasted a little while holed up in Golden Void after the rest of the empire collapsed. They have a ton of units and cultural fortification in there, so it seems reasonable that people would have wanted to wait for catapults to bring them down more efficiently. But now? The surrounding players do have catapults, and yet they still let this little city-state live, despite the fact that it is situated on one of the best plots of land on the map. As a capital, it has four food resources, so it is an excellent prize to claim.

Is everyone very afraid of having their army occupied away from their lands for even a few turns? Did RFS-81+haphazard1 discover a way to hack a modern armor into the game? I don’t know.

   
I also did some international diplomacy this turn. You see, New Hong Kong recently grew to size twelve, and it encountered the unexpected problem of unhealthiness when it did so. New Hong Kong has one more population point to grow before stopping, so I looked around for a way to solve the problem. This deal was my solution. You may point out that it is a very unfair deal, which is true. I get one food, while Charson gets another happy point for the entire Interdimensional Rift.

I went through with this deal anyway for two reasons. One, he has Hereditary Rule, so chances are that the sugar doesn’t make too much of a difference. Two, I have come to see my relationship with Charson in a different light than I do my connections with the other civilizations in the game. Almost every civilization borders almost every civilization, but we don’t border each other. This means that there is very little in the way of hostility or conflict of interests between us. Also, it means that a strong Interdimensional Rift is not my problem. To be clear, I’m not saying that me sending this sugar resource to Charson is very important in the grand scheme of the game. It isn’t going to make the difference between a strong and a weak Interdimensional Rift, or anything like that. I am just trying to explain the rationale behind this small decision and potential future small decisions like it.

Also, I finally remembered to send iron-for-iron to Superdeath and Charson as well this turn.

Thanks for the military overview, it certainly looks like we're pretty much safe from attack (or rather, if we are attacked the enemy will have a hard time making any gains), but I'm glad to hear you making more catapults. Around 8-10 would be ideal, both for offense and a more proactive defense. I'd say getting up a decent catapult stack should be a higher priority than the War Elephants.

I’m also fairly pleased with the current state of our defenses. It should be noted that we have dropped back to fourth place in soldier count recently, but the only player that actually has very many more soldiers than us is Elkad. The other two who are ahead, shallow_ru and Charson, are not very far ahead. That said, I haven’t been fixating on the Orphan doomstack for nothing. That thing has the potential to be a real problem, and I’m sure that Elkad could assemble a stack of similar size if he wanted to.

However, I think that the only city that is currently at much risk in Sofia. Almaty and New Hong Kong are relatively safe because they are on the Injustice League border, which has been peaceful (aside from the culture war ) for a while now, and Superdeath is behind in soldiers anyway. Besides, he will probably wait for his knights before doing anything aggressive. Sidon and Lhasa are slightly more vulnerable because they border a militarily superior neighbor, or neighbors, in Lhasa’s case, but I’m not too worried about them either. An attack on either of them would be telegraphed long enough in advance for troops from the rest of the league to reinforce. The reason I said Sofia is at risk is that I wouldn’t have that warning in the case of an attack on it. Elkad would move in, I would have one turn to react, then he could attack the city. Sofia is one of the weakest cities in the league, though, so I’m not concerned enough about that possibility to spend much effort reinforcing it beyond how it is already garrisoned (it’s the best garrisoned city I have).

As for the catapult stack…I agree with you and I’m working on it. I am going to build a few war elephants too, but the catapult stack should be assembled before too long.

[Magic Science]

Turns 151 to 154 – 820 to 880 AD
   
Charson declared war on RFS-81 on Turn 152, and I think that this time might really be the end of poor RFS-81. I don’t have eyes on the battlefield yet, and won’t until 6-7 turns from now when Jem reaches the area, but there are still a few tell-tale signs that the Interdimensional army has advanced on the capital. As of Turn 154, I noticed that RFS-81 no longer had a sheep available to trade, but he had one the turn before. This must mean that the pasture has been pillaged, which indicates that the enemy army has marched in. Also, three war weariness appeared between them, which of course means some sort of combat must have occurred.

You may think that the screenshot above has nothing to do with what I am talking about, but it does. On Turn 153, Tank spotted an Orphan settler moving east. The thing is, there isn’t anywhere for them to settle a new city in the area, not even the most pathetic of filler cities. At least, no room when the cities and borders are arranged as they are currently. Maybe shallow_ru is simply preparing a combat settler for general purposes and doesn’t have any specific ideas of what to do with them, but I would not be surprised to see them intervene in the Siege of Golden Void somehow, or at least militarily stand up a new city in the territory that will be freed from Psychedelic culture when the city dies.

Sadly, I lost track of where exactly the settler is, since I forgot all about it when I played Turn 154 and didn’t move Tank to find it.

   
Meanwhile, the barbarians of Scythian kindly provided some comedy relief in this uncertain time by building a galley in their ice-locked city. That they did so does have some practical and beneficial effects for me, though. Capturing Scythian should be relatively quick and easy no matter what the barbarians do, but a galley will be much less annoying to deal with than the two archers the city could have built.

   
Both Elkad and Superdeath have started their second Golden Ages, so Elkad gets his first benefit from the MoM.

In regards to Superdeath, this makes me think that there will be a substantial delay between him finishing Guilds and him actually launching a knight attack. Revolting into Caste System indicates that he isn’t planning to do the usual trick of whipping horse archers into knights so you can roar out the gates and attack. Also, it seems to suggest that he is planning to do some starvation specialist fun, which isn’t conducive for putting a bunch of hammers into knights fast. He could use the rest of his empire’s Golden Age production to start building an army, but even then, I think it will take a while.

[Commodore]

Enjoying the reporting, what's the new ETA on Astronomy?

[Magic Science]

Turn 155 – 900 AD
   
Other civilizations are involving themselves with the War on Music, though there have not been any more declarations of war yet. Elkad sent ivory and iron for free to RFS-81, as seen in the screenshot above. I don’t think that this will make any difference because swords are pointless for RFS-81, he probably doesn’t have the tech for war elephants, and he has Hereditary Rule so he won’t go into unhappiness until he is dead anyway. However, the fact that Elkad is offering this assistance makes me think that he probably is not planning to fight RFS-81. I also noticed that the reason the sheep vanished from the diplomacy window was that RFS-81 traded it off to shallow_ru for wheat, not that it was pillaged. I’m not sure if this is a legitimate trade offer for health purposes or if this is some sort of secret, coded message.

   
I find the activities taking place down here by Grim Grotto to be very interesting. Clearly, the Orphans are planning, or at least considering some sort of action related to the War on Music, and I think I know what it is. I don’t think that it could be one too hostile to Charson because one of his scouting chariots, Claudia, is nearby and would give plenty of warning. I also don’t think that they are planning to attack RFS-81, because if they were then they would have brought more units from their doomstack by Jacques S II than they have. This, along with the presence of the settler, leads me to the conclusion that my idea from my previous turn report is correct. I think that they are going to move in and plant a new city as soon as the culture of Golden Void falls away. The units are to defend it, because Charson’s army will be still be right there and a potential danger.

Enjoying the reporting, what's the new ETA on Astronomy?

I’m glad you are enjoying them. The current ETA for Astronomy is Turn 173.

[Magic Science]

Turns 156 and 157 – 920 and 940 AD
   
Elkad and shallow_ru are making me very worried. They both just did a huge amount of whipping, Elkad on Turn 156 (six times) and shallow_ru on Turn 156 (seven times) and Turn 157 (nine times). Yikes. Elkad’s whipping is perhaps explainable in a non-scary way by his revolt to Caste System. Maybe he just wants to get one last spurt of use out of slavery for now, since he will probably be using Caste System for GPP production during the entirety of his twelve-turn Golden Age. Besides, six whips aren’t nearly as many as shallow_ru’s sixteen. I have a hard time believing that all of those were infrastructure whips. I am worried that they might have just reached Guilds and whipped a bunch of horse archers into knights. At least Quechua Two and Tank should be able to see if there are any knights easily, but this still convinced me to switch espionage spending to the Orphans to try to get research visibility.

I will be watching the power graphs closely over the next few turns.

   
New Hong Kong finishes the Incan League’s first war elephant as Superdeath’s first longbowman arrives in The Flash. I made sure to show Superdeath the elephant; maybe it will play some small part in deterring him from launching a knight attack on me. The longbow is a small deterrent to me as well, but not much of one. The Flash’s garrison is very weak even with the longbow accounted for. The real reason I haven’t tried to attack The Flash is that I probably wouldn’t be able to hold the city against a counterattack, and I want to focus on Astronomy and the Blessed Lands anyway.

Also visible is a MarvelDC worker, after more than one hundred turns, improving a riverside grassland tile by The Flash. The dyes remain unimproved as well, and at this point I am pretty much convinced that he lacks Calendar. That reminds me, one of these turns, I should take the time to try to tally the technologies that each player has.

   
It looks like Charson is anticipating and has prepared for the fall of Golden Void. A missionary to convert the city, three workers to improve it (you would think that RFS-81 would have improved every tile by now, but no. Tank got a glimpse of him working an unimproved forest), and a settler to fill in the space. In the Incan League, Cape Town and Sofia are both fed almost entirely with food taken from Cuzco, so I think Charson and shallow_ru’s plan to settle filler cities should work out well. However, I think that there is a good chance it will lead to a tense border like the one me and Superdeath have, with culture fights over first ring tiles going on.

Note: war weariness between RFS-81 and Charson is back to zero now, so I think the city is having its cultural defenses bombarded down before the attack starts. That attack should come any turn now.

[Magic Science]

Turns 158 and 159 – 960 and 980 AD
   
Yes, the Orphans finished Guilds and those whips were for a horde of knights. There are six in this screenshot alone, and I know for certain that there is at least one more over in Jacques S II. I suspect that there are more that I either have not seen or have not kept distinct track of. The jump in their line on the power graph isn’t a mountain; it’s a 90-degree cliff! Also note that they finally committed to a use for their Great General from the War on Music and made an awesome Medic III/Morale knight.

This is obviously a matter of great concern for me. Researching Guilds, and even building knights, is not an inherently hostile or worrying act, but the way they did it, whipping out a horde of knights at top speed, is a clear sign of aggressive intent. If the Orphans don’t attack someone very soon, then I will be shocked. Of course, there are other potential targets for their aggression besides me and my poor civilization, but I know that I am one of the weakest, and therefore one of the most likely targets.

With that in mind, I will be taking a few measures to get ready, just in case. One, Tank and Quechua Two will be keeping a very close eye on the border between our nations along the Lemony S-Duncan Q-Jacques S II line, even closer than they already have been, to give me warning of an attack. If the Orphans cancel open borders to deny me that vision, then they are probably about to declare war. Two, I will keep building units at an accelerated rate. I had some ideas about building wealth to speed up Astronomy or building forges to improve my abysmal MFG a little bit, but I don’t think that I will be able to do so now. Three, I will save gold for potential upgrades of archers to longbows. I’m not sure that this one really counts as a strategic decision, because I was doing it any way as part of process of researching Astronomy, but I guess that it’s worth mentioning.

Attack someone else, please. Just give me fourteen turns so I can go play in my Astronomy island sandbox.

   
The other big news of the turn is about the Siege of Golden Void. Namely, I think that it failed!

On Turn 158, 55+ war weariness appeared between Charson and RFS-81, indicating the city had been attacked, and someone earned a Great General. However, the city didn’t fall, and the Great General appeared in an unknown city (the only city of Charson’s I can’t see is Magissa, the whale island). Then on this turn, my open borders offer to RFS-81 went through, and Jem sees that Sun Tzu is Psychedelic and a bunch of wounded Interdimensional units are camped out east of Golden Void.

It looks like Charson attacked and was beaten, and now he doesn’t have enough units left to capture Golden Void.

   
Here’s the mainland Incan League on the turn after we completed Optics. As you can see, most of my cities are producing units to fend off potential attack like I said, but not quite all of them are. Sofia and Almaty are taking a momentary break to build caravels so that I’m not sailing my settling galleons into the fog. And about that, in about seven or eight turns I will need to start building my settlers and galleys (to turn into galleons) for the colonization effort, otherwise I won’t be able to finish them in time. I will need to sit down for a while this weekend and think about Astronomy logistics. If I am left alone for just a little while longer, I think this long enterprise could work out very well. Wish me luck.