[SPOILERS] DaveV: The vampire bites! Goodbye level 9.

[DaveV]

Oh, Mr.Elephant! I didn't mean you should move onto the tile I was going to explore this turn! I guess I'll have to wait to see what lies beyond that last floodplain.



News flash: there are good specials to the east! Including a good commerce happy special! That I need two more techs to use.

Thoth is back to max hammers mode:

[DaveV]

The scout continues his counterclockwise exploration of my borders. This turn he revealed a plains tile northeast of the eastern sheep. My earlier city B could go here, although I'm thinking north of the silk is probably better. North of the silk would have -2 health from floodplains, though, just like Bag of Holding. Five floodplains (-2.0 health) is probably the worst possible number to have because of integer rounding: four floodplains (-1.6 health) would only give -1 health, six (-2.4 health) or seven (-2.8 health) is the same as five.




Thoth is still running max hammers. No one else has a second city yet (based on land area).

[DaveV]

Turn 29 exploration reveals: tundra hills. Grumble, grumble.



Demos are the same as last turn, except my GNP jumped up to 19 when I turned research back on.

[DaveV]

Turn 30. No new tiles explored, as my scout sets up for some northern reveals. Demos are starting to look better with the cow tile improved:

[DaveV]

Northern exploration reveals another tundra tile.



Still no other cities; my demos improve a bit more with a road connection between my cities.

[DaveV]

Turn 32: Newt, the intrepid scout, moves onto the fur tile in the (probably vain) hope of finding a useful tile:



Can you say iceball?

Demos:



Now I'm running max hammers to pump out a couple warriors before building another settler in my capital. One of the first three players has built a city; if Ichabod plops one down, I could be looking at barbs next turn. Both of my cities are terribly positioned for barb defense, with important improvements on the other side of a river. This means I'll have to put units on that side of the river to have any hope of defending against pillaging: thus the extra warriors.

[DaveV]

A forest grew NE of the sheep. That means 8 hammers in exchange for 3 worker turns sometime in the distant future.



Demos show a seond enemy city has been planted, so full speed ahead with the warrior builds. I'll lose two overflow hammers to Nationhood this turn, but I'm still going max hammers to maximize overflow into the upcoming settler.



The warriors are going to start costing upkeep soon, but I need a bunch to defend against pillaging.

[DaveV]

My scout exposes the known ice tile 2W of the fur. Fog gazing shows forest tundra west of that. At least it's not more ice.



That's right. My foodless wasteland is so bad that I'm grateful for forest tundra .

Demos show the bad guys catching up on food, and no one else building any warriors. That person with 8000 power may be in a world of hurt soon...

[DaveV]

Still no sign of barbs. I'm having flashbacks to 14, where I built a bunch of warriors to defend against the barb hordes that never appeared (I'm now paying 1G upkeep ). The other players are building some defenders also:



Still only two other people with two cities (from the F8 screen, one of them is Thoth: he named the second one Zamboni).

With no defensive worries, my scout will head down to defog the horse tile. Overview:

[DaveV]

Turn 36 is when the barbs came to join the party:



I moved the scout back into the city, and will await developments.



Here, I'm trying to funnel the barb warrior onto the cows so I can attack him. If I win the first attack, I'll get 6XP, enough for a shock promotion and 96% attacks in the future. If I lose, I'll have two warriors (and, if things go horribly wrong, a scout) to clean up.

Demos show a 4000 point increase in total rival power, and a worrying jump in rival GNP.