[SPOILERS] WillPlunder as Mehmed of Arabia: Noobs meet world

[WilliamLP]

Yeah. Well he is Creative, so it is going to push out a little bit naturally. We have an advantage with Madrassa vs Library being +2 culture fortunately. I'd rather fight a culture war than a war war, that's for sure.

We are a little strung out, indeed. I think in the long run if we can get a couple of cities to the east of Noodle Lake with a road down on the east side, a ferry galley or two on the lake, and HBR we'll be reasonably able to move things around.

[Plunder]

hi might push a but, but he won't be able to steal our gems.
Which makes me wonder why he build that particular city :S

[WilliamLP]

Which makes me wonder why he build that particular city :S

?

I have no idea! It's defensively about as bad as a city can be - we could mass camels in Alfredo and strike on any given turn. It doesn't claim anything other than the FP. It claims no food - Bagration in the desert definitely can't afford to loan out that cow tile. So I'm as baffled as you are.

[WilliamLP]

Doesn't it just give you a warm feeling inside to see others being Touched by His carbohydrate-dense tendrils?




The shrine is up to 16 gpt now. That artist is probably the Music artist. Music is a Medieval tech, so should be worth 18 points of score. And... only Kuro to our north got that much of an increase this turn. Is that even possible? I really must be missing something. Maybe someone was working artists through Caste and just got one through the RNG. That's much more likely I guess, and Oxy would be a good candidate for that as SPI / PHI.

Our tourist boat sees the best city in the world, guarded by a funny warrior:




I'm going to keep sailing him around, hoping to meet the other three players eventually. Well I guess I know roughly where Suttree is, to the SE of Oxy since they're rivals. It's basically certain that contact is possible without optics.

Our next city to be planted next turn:




Our GNP will crash a little but this is a very key location to get started and should be a nice city someday. We also have a settler on the way to the stone site via our galley.

We got Monotheism, and this turn is as good as any to start the revolt. The +25% to buildings will be extremely useful, especially for the run at MoM. Building missionaries anywhere is also an fsm-send.

I think I'm going to 1-turn archery before currency here. I can imagine paranoid scenarios where emergency whipping a defender would be needed, like being boated by surprise by Bandit or Boldly. And we'll need it sooner rather than later anyway.




Bandit is not slowing down. I'm pretty sure we're not his target though, and most of our military is concentrated near him anyway. He's been at war with Azza since the opening game and Molach may be a tense neighbour. I'd like to keep our power toward the upper side of the graph for sure.

[Plunder]

Boldy also has a steep increase in power.

[WilliamLP]

War. War never changes.




So that's probably what Boldly's increase in power is all about! Oxy and Suttree are still at war as well, though I haven't met Sutt yet. I like that neighbours are scuffling with each other, obviously. I think, in AI diplo games, the simplest theory, that you just never want to be the most convenient guy for someone else to attack, is a really good theory.

Turns are taking a long time to play now, which is a shame. But my guess is there may be many complicated dependent sequences of turn orders in this game at the momen.

The shrine is working like crazy! I think we've gotten spreads in each of the last 3 turns.

We met retep (SPI / ORG) this turn. He's the one with the Great Lighthouse which is extremely and massively powerful on this map. We have a trade connection, but I have no idea where we met or where his cities are. His resources don't have much interesting in them: copper, horses, a couple of happiness, I think, gems and ivory. He has currency. He has to be considered on of the favourites right now, just because of GLH. It means he can spam cities and have them immediately pay for themselves with trade routes. I'm not sure of his skill level in a long game though.




Here I had to chance to surprise-attack a spearman and a worker with a W2 axe. It was a 72% fight. I didn't do it because I'm getting a couple nice trade routes with Boldly, I don't want to give him ideas of retaliating with boats, and I would cry if I lost because at 8/10 xp he's the potential HE unit.

Linguini was founded. We now have 3-4 cities that really suck right now, waiting for border pops and worker improvements and some growth before they pay for themselves. We also pretty much have the borders set down, for now. We have kind of a doughnut-shaped empire with some room for filler cities in the middle.

I am going to settle the stone city in 2 turns, though. This is to start Moai asap, and also to get cheap walls in border cities. (See the point about how we never want to be the most convenient one for someone to attack).

I think, with these wars going on, we can skip archery for now and go for currency first, and that's my plan. At current breakeven tech it would be 9 turns but I'm hoping it can get down to 7 or 8 with vertical growth and cottages. Vertical growth is badly needed - we have incredible happiness (gems + gold + silk + sugar + spice). And if that's not enough we have dyes and maybe even incense eventually.

Maybe we should try to sell happiness for gold per turn. I have no idea what a fair price would be. I guess the only problem with that is that the ones who have currency (Molach and Retep) are doing really well in the game and shouldn't be propped up.

[WilliamLP]

The unpronounceable unicode symbol formerly known as Sisu found us with a scouting chariot to the southeast:




I didn't take open borders, mostly for fear of random Buddhism spreads. Can someone tell me if Buddhism can even spread to me from him with closed borders, if I don't have it anywhere in my empire?

He has only six cities!! How the heck is his score so high then? He's FIN / IND and has Oracle, so maybe is teching like crazy with an academy in his capital. Him having no marble is really good, else he would be the main rival for MoM. Retep is horizontally expanding like crazy (not rocket science with GLH). Sut is warring, though I'd still love to see his info on the F4 screen soon to complete the deck.

Overall, I think we can pretty much write Halvgud / Sisub off from winning this game despite the score. The longer it goes the more land matters. The clear leader would probably be retep (GLH + SPI/ORG + 12 cities I think). Or maybe suttree - I don't have a handle on what he's working with.

While I was playing, Wetbandit birthed a great general and took 2 Azza cities! It's clear wherein his path to expansion lies. At this point I just hope Azza holds on to his marble for a while.

We got a flirtation with 4th place in score. Right now the focus is mostly on vertically growing core cities to leverage our amazing happy cap.

[NobleHelium]

Open Borders does not affect natural religion spread.

[WilliamLP]

Ok, first a rant. We finally have vision of Kuro's original starting site:




Grass forest deer vs hill pig: We'll call it a wash even though deer is cheaper to hook up.
Fish, 2x clam vs 3x clam: Big advantage to the fish, especially starting with fishing!
River corn vs Dry rice: One of the very best starting tiles in the game vs something clearly worse than a flood plain.
3 river grass vs 1 river grass.
2 lake vs 0.
Grass hill + 2 plains hill vs Grass hill + 1 plains hill.
Copper to the immediate N vs way the hell down across some jungle.

Can someone tell me how this is a fair start? Ok, he got screwed on horse but his sites to the immediate south are also far better than what we had in capital range.

They got to start with Mining + Fishing (and fish!), we got Wheel + Myst. It's no exaggeration that we could have been 10 turns ahead with this start and those techs.

Ok, I know everyone was a noob once, and a few of us still are, more than others. But wow, are there a lot of beginner-level mistakes here. David Buick city plant? The plains farm? One could keep going I'm sure.

In that position, there's no way you start by going across the tundra to the E... You go straight south, and push us out. Use that copper and amazing BFC, and lightning fast EXP / IMP techs to eventually even grab our Spaghetti site I bet. So we're fortunate at least that they were beginners.

Whew. Back to the game...




Molach has Civil Service already! Now that is pretty quick, especially since we know he has stuck around for at least currency and iron too. He can probably get construction in like 3 turns if he wants if he hasn't already, and then go conquer one of us.




This is the new city of Pesto. It has an economic cost but it could be worse since it gets an overseas trade route. It's not going to grow until the galley ferries a missionary over there, so it's building a worker for lack of a better idea. Its purpose is to bring the stone online.




That's us using the jungle for vertical growth.

[WilliamLP]

We're playing peaceful growth turns, which is really nice. The rest of the world is anything but peaceful: Oxy razed a city from Suttree (nice!). Suttree did a very large amount of whipping, it looks like two 3-pop whips, a couple of 2-pop whips, and a 4-pop whip for 30 points of score lost! I wonder if Oxy was close to catching him with his pants down or something. Boldly took another city off of Kuro. And of course Wetbandit and Azza are still going at it as they have been since turn 0, basically.




That's our first sighting of a Retep city. The galley suggests it might be an island. I hope he doesn't snipe my tourist boat.




Just... wow. That's all the land Kuro has in his main empire?? And so for the rest of his cities he must have sailed off somewhere? If this start wasn't a geographic predestination to go to early war with us (and surely win, in the right hands), I don't know what is.

If we last long enough and shore up defenses in the south, we'd have a basically uncontested chance to roll over these guys with maces and catapults. Heck, maybe we could do it with only horse archers.




Here's a better look at Wetbandit's starting position. His capital isn't as good as Kuro's but it's still significantly better than ours with the wet corn, 3 river grass, and 2 lakes. He got horse in a great location, so geography basically begged him to hit someone with Immortals.

Oxy has put walls in his border city with us. He also offered open borders and a cow for cow trade. I know this doesn't prevent a war declaration, but his actions really look like he wants peace to continue. I'm debating, when peace runs out, if it makes sense to declare on him and immediately offer another 10 turn peace treaty, as a basically forced 10-turn NAP. It might be good for both of us to not have to worry about that border.

Overall, I think if we can get through the next 10-15 turns without being threatened we're actually in a good spot here! Currency will come in in 5 turns (I think... it could be 6). I have 4 third ring chops for MoM finishing in 2 turns. I haven't done the exact micro for when the wonder would finish but if we can get it it would be a total coup. If we can tech to HBR soon and get a couple of stables and walls out in border cities, we'll be in a fine defensive position with the ability to flank out catapults. Our long term advantages are pretty good.

I'm kind of concerned about where to get 2 more XP from our would-be HE axe. I'm actually considering moving away our fog-busting warrior from our interior to try and farm barbs in there.