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

[Magic Science]

Turn 160 – 1000 AD
   
The Second Dreamlike-Interdimensional War has begun!

This event may have happened on the other side of the world, but it has the potential to be very good for me depending on if the war escalates or not. I would prefer that it escalate. An invasion from Elkad and OT4E is one of my many worries, and I think that an embroilment with Charson would remove that worry for a time. Elkad’s civilization is stronger than mine or Charson’s individually, but I don’t think that it is anywhere near strong enough to launch offensive wars against both of us simultaneously. Also, it would diminish the threat of an Orphan invasion. Charson is somewhat stronger than me, and I think that is still true despite the razing of Forza. However, I do not think that the difference is extremely large, so I think that shallow_ru would prefer to attack Charson instead of me if he ends up distracted fighting Elkad. That same logic applies to Superdeath as well.

If the war doesn’t escalate, then my situation remains mostly unchanged. Unfortunately, there are some signs that this could be a simple raid like the earlier raid on Geneva. I recall that Schilda is at fourth ring borders, and I do not believe that any of Charson’s nearby cities are. This means that Elkad’s culture should have expanded over the rice and hills that Forza was using. That in turn means that he now has a place to resettle a forward city similar to HillsAreBetteR if he wants to, and that may be all he is after. Also, he is currently in Caste System, Representation, and Pacifism, which doesn’t make me confident that an extended campaign is what Elkad has in mind. All in all, I hope that I find the war still on when I play Turn 161, but I am fearful that it will not be.

   
Meanwhile, Tank and Quechua Two have been doing their patrol rounds on the Orphan border. So far, nothing too scary has happened. There are no knights besides the one from Jacques S II in the area, and the doomstack it is part of is actually looking a lot weaker than it has been in the past. The main cause of this is that all of the Orphan units that left the area by Jacques S II and headed south to the staging by Grim Grotto are still there. That stack is still waiting there, unmoved. I wonder if it will move in to finish off Golden Void and clear space for the settler itself, now that it can’t rely on Charson to do it?

Lastly, all of the two-mover units I have been seeing lately remind me that I should promote the units in cities that can struck from the fog. Right now, that is only Sofia. I had been saving promotions for flexibility, but I would feel stupid if I was surprise attacked and they did nothing, so the time has come to promote.

EDIT: In regards to surprise attack possibilities, I should also remember that Elkad has Engineering. He likely utilized that when he attacked Forza. I'm not sure if shallow_ru has it, but I would not be surprised, and I think that it is better to assume that they do.

[Magic Science]

Turn 161 – 1010 AD
   
This turn was the most fun one I have played in a while. Let’s get right to it.

The great voyage of the INS Moncacht-Ape (named after the original Incan scouting unit) has just begun, and it is already discovering important stuff. Like the fact that the Astronomy island distribution theory I have been running with for a long time now is incorrect. It turns out that there are actually only three Astronomy islands in the Northern Ocean, not six like I have thinking. Each island is nine tiles in size and should be able to fit two cities. Therefore, I will need to prepare five settlers for the colonization effort, with the sixth one coming at the expense of the generous barbarians of Scythian. The required number might be reduced lower if a barbarian city has been founded on the island between Superdeath and Elkad.

Rather or not a barbarian city has indeed appeared over there is one of the things that Moncacht-Ape is going to find out for me over the coming turns. He needs to finish scouting this island here first for dot map purposes, but then he is gong west. He will take some time to scout Superdeath’s coastline along the way, but I can’t dally too much, for a fortunate reason.  I have recalculated my time to Astronomy with exact beaker values instead of turn time estimations, and I expect to have it in hand on Turn 171. Due to the convenient placement of this Astronomy island relative to Cape Town and Almaty, I expect to be settling my first colonies on Turn 172.

   
Now let’s take a look at the sister ship of the INS Moncacht-Ape, the INS Scout. She is doing the same job, but going east instead of west, and she too has made some important discoveries already. One, there are some more advanced barbarian units in the Blessed Lands, such as that swordsman, which could be dangerous to a new settlement if I am careless. I am planning to send out settling galleons with cargoes of one settler, one worker, and one garrison unit, and it is looking like that one garrison unit will be a crossbowman instead of a wimpy archer. Two, Nobiskrug’s defenses are looking weak. Although, it is quite possible that a zone defense force ready to protect the city is somewhere within a turn’s movement. Still, seeing weak garrisons like this reminds me of the fact that galleons can carry units besides peaceful settlers and can be used for purposes besides colonization, should an opportunity arise. Three, the Blessed Land are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING IN QUALITY. My optimistic hope that every tile was a resource tile turned out to be true with only a few exceptions. Oh, and those are floodplains deer too! Seven food when improved! My six cities on these islands aren’t just going to be good, or decent, they are going to be amazing.

   
And the good news continues in the form of no news. No peace treaties. The Second Dreamlike-Interdimensional War is still on. War weariness increased again this turn, so there must have been a little more fighting, although the increase wasn’t nearly enough to account for another large battle. My vision of the war is still poor, but Jem should be back in Charson’s core before too long to rectify that…assuming that the core in question is still Charson’s in six/seven turns.

Also, Superdeath surprises me by ending another Golden Age without revolting into religion or religious civics. I’m not sure why he is doing this besides fear of boosting an opponent’s shrine, but I doubt that say, Confucianism will ever get a shrine, and neither Hinduism nor Judaism has one yet. Maybe there is another reason that I am not thinking of? It would have to be a good one to justify not taking the benefits of religion and religious civics.

   
Trivia screenshot time! I was looking at the cultural overview this turn, and I was amused at the sight of those two tiles south of New Hong Kong that are surrounded by enemy cultural corruption yet remain pure Incan tiles. Stay strong! We recently lost the winery by New Hong Kong back to Green Lantern after only a few turns of working it. In general, it is sad to see how little area there is that is pure Incan culturally. Cultural pressure against the league is fierce from all sides.

[Mr. Cairo]

Going to the island with the barb city you might want to take a setter and two units, since you'll be able to capture the barb worker. All in all though, things are looking pretty good. Astronomy on its way, no one attacking us, wars being fought elseware. And those islands look delicious

[Hollybombay]

How would you rank everyones chances of winning/ect atm?

[Magic Science]

Turn 162 – 1020 AD
   
Blood for the blood god and Magic Science! This is what we like to see!

This new war against Charson is very good for me, just like Elkad’s original declaration was. Superdeath, like Elkad, does not have the strength to fight two offensive wars at once, and the target he has chosen is not me. Also, like Elkad’s, his declaration makes it more likely that the Orphan knight stack I have been fearing will attack Charson instead. Come on shallow_thought and Hitru, attack him! He’s weaker than you and getting dogpiled! It will be a lot easier than if you try to attack the Incan League.

Of course, I should be careful of what I wish for, to an extent. If Charson does get dogpiled by all of his relevant neighbors and collapses, then I will have no chance to benefit by capturing his cities. All of the spoils will go to others, which could boost their strength by an uncomfortable amount. However, I think that the spoils being divided among some many players would mean none among them would grow too much. Also, it’s not like Charson is as weak as RFS-81 and haphazard1 were in the War on Music. A war of conquest against him probably won’t be easy or cheap, even with multiple invaders, and I have not seen him drop significantly on the power graph yet.

Also, note that Charson gave up on the War on Music. Though really that peace treaty is nothing but a formality at this point. All of the Interdimensional units have retreated towards Liquid Flame, and it’s not like RFS-81 is going to launch a counterattack.

   
Scout revealed all of the tiles on Barbarian Island that we can see from the sea, which reveals that the total barbarian count for the island is: four archers, one axeman, one swordsman, two workers, and one galley. The rough plan for taking over this island is to have one galleon from Quebec City transport five or six offensive units to Scythian, which I should be able to do in two turns via some trickery with the INS Galileo, our galley. Meanwhile, another galleon will take two crossbows and a settler to claim the eastern tip of the island and clear out these barbarians. During the turn itself, I wasn’t sure where I was going to settle the eastern city, hence all of the questioning signs. I was conflicted over orphaning the fish or killing a resource tile. However, I now think that Valetta will be established on the windmills. Settling the floodplains deer would be killing a tile that is stronger than the fish we will gain from doing so. Settling the normal plains forest deer is a closer call, but I still think I like the deer tile better because hammers seem like they will be harder to find in these colonies than food, and that city is also farther out, so it can’t share as many tiles with Scythian.

   
Moncacht-Ape still needs to reveal one more tile, but I think I have the settling pattern figured out over here, too. Ragusa is obvious. That spot gets all the seafood without killing a land resource tile, perfect. Riga is less obvious, but I think I have made up my mind there as well. It is probably going to go on the silver for better tile sharing and a faster start with plenty of available food. A city on the deer will have no food available at first, and it trades three workable tiles for three ice tiles.

We are also about to see inside Superdeath’s island city of Aquaman. I wonder what its garrison looks like?

Going to the island with the barb city you might want to take a setter and two units, since you'll be able to capture the barb worker. All in all though, things are looking pretty good. Astronomy on its way, no one attacking us, wars being fought elseware. And those islands look delicious

Yes, that is the plan. And I agree that things are looking very nice, better than I thought they would look for sure. “Oh no, which one of these NINE DIFFERENT RESOURCE TILES will I need to give up?” That’s my biggest problem right now.

How would you rank everyones chances of winning/ect atm?

Excellent question, and you ask it at a fitting time. For the past forty turns or so, since the loss of Geneva, politics and rankings have been almost stagnant, with everyone focusing on internal development, but that time is coming to an end. The international situation is in flux again, and the relative positions of the players are up in the air. A great deal depends on how the wars against Charson resolve. Who will get what portion of the spoils? How intact will Charson survive? Also, my own Astronomy colonization effort may have some impact on the rankings, I hope.

So, it’s hard to accurately say how what the chances of each different player at winning are right now, because they could be very different in very little time. That’s not a very helpful answer to your question, though. For now, I would say that Elkad and shallow_ru are still in the lead and about even, and Superdeath is next. One of them is almost certain to win, with Superdeath’s chances being much lower than those of the other two. Then, thanks to the wars, it’s me and Mr. Cairo, followed by a weakened Charson, then RFS-81. Be aware that I hope to revisit this issue before too long, once things have settled down again, so be on the lookout for another ranking sometime soon.

[Magic Science]

Turn 163 – 1030 AD
   
And with this, the dogpile on poor Charriu is complete. I’m calling it the War on Foreigners. As in, foreigners to this dimension of reality. I’m sure you know the drill of what this means to me by now. It is good because it distracts a potential attacker, so the master plan of Astronomy colonization can be brought to completion without outside interference. I believe that this war is occupying all of the Orphan knights, and it looks like they are diverting some units from the doomstack to go help (they’re on the same tile as Tank). The stack by Grim Grotto still hasn’t moved, though. What are they keeping that there for?

Besides the war, some other occurrences in the event log are important too. That Great Artist from Elkad is something to be aware of in regards to a potential invasion. He could pull off some dangerous tricks with Ludwig. In particular, if he captured Sofia a bomb might give him control over the roads between it and Cuzco, letting him advance without delay. Luckily, that isn’t something to be very worried about for now. The new civics being adopted by the Orphans are also important as an indicator of technological advancement. No one else has Banking, and only Superdeath has Civil Service, and he is technologically weak in other areas, so it looks like shallow_ru has the advantage here. I think that they may be edging out Elkad and laying sole claim to the number one spot after a tie (in my eyes) that has lasted since the Turn 50 tear list.

   
More scouting! Scout found Canoel, one of the top five cities by virtue of its incredible culture. I like to think that one of Sidon and Almaty would be a top five city if culture wasn’t weighted so highly in the calculations. Complains about the weighting aside, Canoel is a very strong city, and it only has a one warrior garrison. I would also like to mention that the current plan for taking over Barbarian Island has the galleon from Sofia dropping off a load of units from the crab tile visible on screen a short distance to the northwest of Canoel. I’m sure Elkad will have improved his coastal garrison by then, though. I don’t think that it is hard to see what I am doing now, and it will become completely obvious once I start settling new cities.

   
The trouble with wanting to capture a well-grown, high-production barbarian city is that they tend to build things quickly. I have been lucky that up until now Scythian has either built helpful things that I would like the capture along with the city (granary, lighthouse) or useless things (galley), but now the barbarians decided to be annoying and built walls. It is looking more and more like the conquest of Barbarian Island will take a significant number of units, maybe even some catapults, and several turns to accomplish.

[Magic Science]

Turn 165 Colonization Planning Report
   
This island is near to my mainland and there are no barbarians on it to defeat, so planning for its colonization was simple and easy. All I need to do is set production up to overflow from galleys to galleons in Almaty and Cape Town, then sail the one from Cape Town to Riga and the one from Almaty to Ragusa. The next turn, the settlers, their workers, their defenders (one archer each because there aren’t any threats to contend with) will disembark, and on the third turn of the Renaissance Era we should have our first colonies established. Work boats will trickle in afterward as needed to improve the seafood, but they aren’t a priority because the land tiles are so much better and culture will take a little while to expand anyway.

   
The Scythians and their walls make this island a little more inconvenient and time-consuming to take over. I could probably capture Scythian on Turn 174 by brute-forcing the city with swordsmen and war elephants, but I would prefer not to do that. It is likely to cost more of my limited supply of units than I want to spend, and it could easily fail and delay the ultimate take over if the Scythians complete more archers between now and then, which could easily happen. The barbarian civilization surely doesn’t have that many more buildings unlocked for them to waste their time on, right? The plan is to drop off three catapults on the first turn, then have them bombard down the walls while I send, in two shiploads by the same galleon, two axemen, two swordsmen, and two war elephants. Everyone should be in position to capture the city on Turn 176. Meanwhile, a galleon from Sofia will send a settler, a crossbowman, and an axeman to colonize the eastern end of the island. It’s hard to say how that will go exactly, because I don’t know what tiles the barbarians down there will be on, and I don’t want to attack amphibiously.

   
This island, just discovered this turn, is the most interesting one to plan for because it is so far away. It is five turns away from my mainland as the galleon sails, so I need to make sure to get everything delivered in one trip or it will take too long. That would have been easy if it was unoccupied, but the barbarian city requires more units to capture. The barbarian city has also convinced me I need to build a full five galleons, not four. Without a fifth galleon, I must choose to either delay the invasion of Scythian’s island by several turns or count on a riskily small number of units for the invasion of Uzbek, and I don’t want to do either of those things. In particular, it would be very bad if the attack on Uzbek failed, because it would take me ten turns or so to set up to try again. With the fifth galleon, we will be able to deliver one settler, four swordsmen, two catapults (in case of walls), one crossbow, and one archer to this far island to easily complete the takeover before Turn 180.

Also, this isn’t really related to Astronomy colonization, but I would like to point out something that confuses me about Superdeath’s play that Moncacht-Ape just discovered. There is a crab north of Superdeath’s capital. There is a grassland tile available to found a Cape Town-esque city that uses the crabs on. It is Turn 165, and there is not a city on that tile. What is going on? I feel like I must be missing something here because it seems like such a foolish move from Superdeath not to have settled it, but I can’t think of anything.

[Magic Science]

Turns 164 and 165 Overview of Foreign Wars
   
Elkad sent a sacrificial horse archer to the tile southwest of Liquid Flame this turn to pillage Charson’s only remaining iron mine. Charson does not seem to have any workers in the area to fix it, so it looks like he won’t be getting any more cho-ko-nus. I would send him my iron source right away to help, but I need to finish a few more swordsmen and crossbowmen of my own first. I will be free to gift him iron in two or three turns. Hopefully he still has enough of a production base left by then to make use of it.

Also, by taking Sandworm Elkad has earned the distinction of being the only player to have ports on both the Northern Ocean and the Southern Ocean. That could be very important when he gets Astronomy, but that is still a long way away. I don’t think he even has Compass yet.

   
The Unlucky Orphans have been experiencing great success with their attack. They captured two cities in only three turns of fighting! Low war weariness suggests that they caught Charson’s army when it was out of position and have not faced much resistance so far. The huge doomstack that Jem saw in far-off Liquid Flame in the previous screenshot also seems to support that idea. Also, the capture of those two cities ended my deals with Charson for cows, so New Hong Kong is unhealthy now. Luckily, it isn’t delaying the settler, but I will still need to try to find another deal I can make with someone. Maybe I could try giving a pittance of GPT for a health resource?

   
Charson didn’t have any luck on any front; Superdeath captured another city from him too. Now he has lost more than half his cities (6/11). This looks like the end for poor Charson, but I don’t think that the end is going to be easy or simple for his attackers. So far, all of the cites that he has lost have fallen relatively smoothly into the geographic spheres of the capturers. Sure, something crazy could have happened and Superdeath could have taken Iron Claw (now Nero F), but it seems natural that shallow_ru would take it, as they did. But now the Interdimensional core is the next place that will fall under attack, and what city falls within what geographic sphere is much murkier. Who has the best “claim” to Exdeath? Also, Charson may have lost his cities but he hasn’t lost his armies. He is outnumbered by each of his attackers individually and together it isn’t even close, but I bet that he still has enough cho-ko-nus left to maul someone’s army if they aren’t careful. It’s too bad I can’t see very much of what is going on over here; there should be some very interesting maneuvering happening.

   
There is now a fourth war as well: shallow_ru vs. RFS-81. I think that capturing Golden Void should be easy for them, but I have thought that for the past 80 turns now. It is also worth noting that Elkad has open borders with RFS-81 and has a small stack of units in his territory (the horse archer that burned the iron came from Psychedelic lands). Maybe he will try to do something similar to what OT4E did during the earlier phase of the War on Music and interfere with shallow_ru’s war effort?

[Magic Science]

Turns 166 and 167 – 1060 and 1070 AD
   
Charriu was on the ball about the loss of his iron and asked me for a replacement source right away. I was less on the ball and rejected the deal because I had forgotten that I had two sources and didn’t notice where the interface clearly reminded me about that. . Luckily, I remembered by the end of the turn and sent the deal back, so no harm done. Now that I think about it, I realize that I should have sent it as two trade offers. In one I ask for the pigs for free and in the other I give the iron for free. It achieves the same effect but it won’t get canceled when he loses Exdeath, which could result in lost production for Charriu before I offer iron again. If shallow_thought is particularly astute they could pillage the pigs to cancel the deal even before then.

   
Maybe Elkad is complaining about something else in the tech thread, but the situation with Sandworm does not look buggy to me. The borders haven’t expanded because the city is still in revolt. Even if they do expand, the city won’t claim any more tiles because it is being culturally crushed by Liquid Flame and Wing Raptor.

But it looks like Elkad is about to lose Sandworm anyway. I’m not sure if Elkad missed it or just doesn’t care, but Charson has far more than enough units in range to take the city, and he moves next.

   
Next I moved Jem forward to see what forces Elkad has on the other side of Sandworm and . That’s a lot of praetorians! The stack I have highlighted is the one northwest of Wing Raptor, but the ones by Sandworm are huge too. Anything Charriu moves into Sandworm is going to die. There is a good chance that anything he puts on the tile behind Sandworm is going to die too. If Wing Raptor falls (seems likely to me) and then Sandworm does (guaranteed), then Elkad will be able to hit anything on that tile with all of his visible units thanks to Engineering. Of course, Charriu can see all of those units even better than I can, so he shouldn’t fall for that.

Also, two more minor things to point out. One, Elkad is confident of victory; he is already building roads in Interdimensional territory. Two, wow the style of war elephant Elkad has is the coolest-looking unit I have ever seen in Civ IV. Where can I get one? Mine look boring.

   
The Orphan blitz continues unabated, and Superdeath exits the War on Foreigners. Although the city capture came after the peace treaty, I would not be surprised to learn that Superdeath decided to make peace because he didn’t want to risk fighting the Unlucky Orphans over the spoils. He has scouting impis running everywhere (there is one that has front row seats in Sandworm right now ), so he might have even seen the units coming to take over Siren. The Golden Age from Elkad is also very notable. His second one ended just this turn, so he is going to get the dream situation of 24 continuous turns of Golden Age. However, I don’t think that it will be continuing after this. He managed to get so many Great People out before with Caste System and Pacifism, and I don’t think that he can get four in twelve turns without them.

   

Here’s an overview shot of the homeland. You can see units already running into position for the Astronomy island colonization. Most of the military builds are done, but none of the galleons are (for obvious reasons) and only one of the settlers is. I am cutting it pretty close with some of the settler builds. For example, the one from Sidon will complete the same turn as the galleon that is going to carry it. Sadly, I miscalculated in regards to the one in Cuzco, and the galleon will be delayed so I can finish it on time. Hopefully that won’t matter very much, because the galleon from Cuzco is pretty much just insurance from bad luck in the attack on Uzbek anyway. If things go well, we won’t even need it.

I finally bulbed Astronomy this turn. I have been waiting this past few turns for population growth so I can get more beakers. Not that it matters for the due date of Astronomy (still Turn 171), but three beakers is three beakers.

[Magic Science]

Mechanics question for lurkers: I realize I should have asked this a long time before now, but too late. I know that in single player you can have put enough production into a galley to complete it, but if you finish Astronomy the same turn it will all go into a galleon instead. Is there anything about the mechanics of pitboss that will make that trick not work?