[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[Dark Savant]

Actually, wait, the western peninsula might also be possible.  Here it is for reference:



It's thoroughly sheltered and will be for the foreseeable future.

Except any site there either won't have enough forests, or else it will awkwardly orphan some very good tiles.  The current plan is to plant 3 cities there that will grab 7 new food resources.

[ipecac]

Neither of the alternatives look good too.

Oh well then. It does mean you have to take out Gavagai's city sooner rather than later.

[Dark Savant]

Oh well then. It does mean you have to take out Gavagai's city sooner rather than later.

My best guess is that Gavagai is not interested in conflict (unless we demonstrate obvious weakness), and he will happily fill in the extra space to expand that Krill's initial settler move and cold war with Ventessel is leaving him.

Does that mean you think we should attack him before he develops too strong an economic base to attack?

I get the distinct impression Gavagai, Krill, and GermanJoey are all shaping up to be great powers -- they are all veterans, and will all have extra space to expand, since I think Ventessel's early military buildup is already a failure.

[ipecac]

I don't think Gavagai would normally consider attacking you until about all of the land he can reach is settled, but putting a useful wonder like the GLH on a vulnerable border city would change the equation.

And the GLH is a wonder that gets stronger as the game goes on. After he settles all the land available to him, the primary target would still be the GLH city. In which case, the main possibilities are that he'll invade to take it, or you invade first to prevent him from having a good staging point to hit your city. Of course, Gavagai and Krill could get mired in conflict, diverting his attention from you, but I wouldn't count on it.

[Dark Savant]

I don't think Gavagai would normally consider attacking you until about all of the land he can reach is settled, but putting a useful wonder like the GLH on a vulnerable border city would change the equation.

Okay, that makes sense.

That also sounds like another reason to plant yellow dot next (the intended military factory, immediately west of the plains hill), which I was already strongly considering.  It's the best site a settler can quickly reach from Castle Ironfist, and it will be easier to direct workers there, as the two workers that just built the fur camp will start working their way north.  It will make barbs appearing from the northwest less annoying.  And we probably do want to have it up and running and start producing military sooner rather than later.  A one-move unit produced in yellow dot can get inside Castleview the next turn.

In the longer run, yellow dot also has "chop the Statue of Zeus here" written all over it, if we decide to pursue that.

And the GLH is a wonder that gets stronger as the game goes on. After he settles all the land available to him, the primary target would still be the GLH city. In which case, the main possibilities are that he'll invade to take it, or you invade first to prevent him from having a good staging point to hit your city. Of course, Gavagai and Krill could get mired in conflict, diverting his attention from you, but I wouldn't count on it.

Even knowing that, I think it's still best to go hard for the wonder.  We're going to need stuff Castleview full of military no matter what, anyway.

And the culture from the GLH will actually make the city easier to defend.  That's enough to reach +60% cultural defense early enough to matter.

[Dark Savant]

Also, the longer this stall lasts (yeah, I'm still waiting for t58 to end), the more likely other players are to guess that CML neighbors Coeurva, partly since they can see the normal high level of posts in our thread, JR4's, and Coeurva's, and yet the stall continues.  Especially because Coeurva specifically stated in the tech thread that this double-move included non-movement, which does fit CML.

I can't say much publicly, mostly because that will give people evidence we're Coeurva's other neighbor.  Oh well.

In other news, we're opening up a decent lead on Coeurva in the postcount war.  

[Dark Savant]

Progress is being made towards resolving the double-move situation.

That's pretty much all I know.  And it's all I should know, really.  I shouldn't know where JR4's capital is -- I haven't met him, and neither has Coeurva most likely -- but I know now.

I'm going to recap how I know this:

1. In the setup thread, it was mentioned that Mardoc would be using GermanJoey's tool.
   
2. I happened to start circling around the start position south with the starting scout, and met Coeurva first before swinging north -- which the scout is still doing, 50+ turns later.
   
3. Only Krill moved his settler; everyone else settled in place.
   
4. I scouted aggressively enough to determine Gavagai's and then Krill's start positions.
   
5. It became clear that my and Krill's start positions were precisely equisitant (6 on X-axis, 14 on Y-axis) from Gavagai's.
   
6. ipecac pointed out that this is likely the result of regular tiling, complete with illustration!
   
7. I started to aggressively continue to scout what was apparently the direction of more players, which then got us contact with Ventessel and GermanJoey.
   
8. Before, CML let slip publicly that he had done something wrong with respect to dtay -- so those two very likely border each other.
   
9. I built a work boat actually intended to turn into a fishing boat, but it became an extra scouting unit.
   
10. It turned out circumnavigation was much closer than I originally thought, and the map's size -- 57 wide by 63 tall on a toroid -- permits close to perfectly equidistant capitals.  It'd be 3 off on the X-axis somewhere, and perfect on the Y-axis.
    
11. That is all enough to provide strong evidence everyone is almost exactly equally spaced, with exactly 2 land neighbors each.
    
12. Then Coeurva lets slip that he's in a double-move situation with someone.  This has to be with one of the three unmet players.
    
13. Then he says that it IS, in fact, the result of a decision made after the other's turn has ended.  I can see this has to be CML, who has done this before.
    
14. So CML borders both dtay and Coeurva.
    
15. That means JR4 is next to GermanJoey -- there's only one player left to fill to satisfy "GermanJoey's mystery neighbor" and "dtay's mystery neighbor".
    
16. And that means JR4's capital is 12 east and 28 north of where Ventessel's capital Anchorage is (up to 3 tiles off on the X-axis).
    

It's pretty amazing what you can infer with limited information.

JR4 seems to be doing pretty well starting next to GermanJoey and dtay -- that's one of the more alarming neighbor draws.

Also, I bet that Coeurva isn't moving his axe towards us, it's being moved towards CML, the neighbor who is probably actually showing an alarming power spike.  Coeurva has sight on our first two cities, and if he's paying attention, he knows we whipped a granary in each city, so he knows for certain we aren't going to axe rush him.  Oh, we did consider it to be sure; it's just a better return on investment to acquire land peacefully for now.

That does mean we can have just a single axe wander towards Coeurva's position.  I'm sure he won't mind us checking his border security with state-of-the-art military technology, as he did to us.  

[ipecac]

People sometimes leak quite a bit of info in the tech thread

Which is why the banter thread no longer exists.

[Dark Savant]

People sometimes leak quite a bit of info in the tech thread

Which is why the banter thread no longer exists.

I suppose there's also unauthorized stealth diplomacy in the common threads.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 59 (1640 BC) - Part 1

Turn 59 rolled; I've logged in but haven't had the time to do much yet.   The barb warrior attacked our hill defense warrior and won at ~20% odds (barely) ; I'll need to think about what to do to cover that.

I think it's best to kill it with the warrior in Castleview; that leaves it undefended, so I have to whip a metal unit there this turn.

I think leaving the south uncovered is increasingly dangerous, so my inclination is to whip an axe in Castleview (and I can whip the spear there too if REALLY necessary), move the axe we just finished south, and move the spear to be finished soon in Harmondale north.

Also, I'm baffled by this:



What is CivStats doing there?  I don't know how Ventessel lost 2 points when he wasn't logged in.  That looks like he somehow lost a pop point before the turn roll, and regained a pop point during it (he had 7 pop points; losing 1 would have cost 2 points).

• Coeurva still has no contact with Ventessel (I double-checked), so he can't have razed a size-1 city of Ventessel's.
  
• It's not the middle of the turn roll (that doesn't happen for 3 more minutes), so the barbs can't have done so either.
  
• Ventessel still has two cities, anyway (I double-checked that too).
  
• Also, we've seen two axes and a chariot for his two cities, and he can easily have more; that's a lot of military this early for two cities.
  

What could possibly have happened?  Any lurkers can chip in here; this is a game question.