[SPOILER] And now for something completely different: DaveV is Hannah

[shallow_thought]

Can a small, technologically advanced empire triumph over a larger one? History, unfortunately, says "probably not."

I dunno. You might want to consider the fate of the Marathas, Qing Chinese, Aztecs, Incas etc. In the absence of moral judgement (this is a game, after all),   .

[DaveV]

While it's a pleasure to play in a game with a brisk turn pace, it means that it's easy to fall behind on reporting. Here's a report that skips a turn.

The big news: my traits finally changed.



I'm very happy with that set. Creative should be very useful; Financial is currently worth 5 gpt and will only get better; Spiritual can save me a turn of anarchy if I can keep it long enough.

Here's an overview:



I've added a couple workboats to the build queues, to take advantage of popped borders. One of the drawbacks of the Lanun is that you have to keep sinking hammers into workboats; the return on that investment is pretty good, of course.

You can also see the new city of Dead Parrot (a name which shouldn't be a surprise for anyone who recognized my avatar). This is probably the most famous Monty Python sketch.



Now that I'm Creative, I gain +8 in the GNP row of the demographics page, which may cause some gnashing of teeth for my opponents.

[haphazard1]

Nice set of traits. I assume your opponents can see your current traits by checking your entry on the score list or the diplo screen? So they should (if they think to check) recognize the impact.

That is a nice ranking on GNP. Or a scary one, looking at it from the others' POV.

[DaveV]

Yeah, score mouseover will show my traits. I don't check that every turn (though I need to remind myself to check on turn 71 for the Adaptive guys), so the other guys might not spot the trait change right away. I'm hoping my low score and low number of cities will avert a GNP-envy based dogpile.

[DaveV]

Here's another 2-turn report. Turn 65 had a crime rate event. Crime rate was supposed to affect events and maybe some other stuff, but was never implemented (although each cities' crime rate shows up when you mouse over it).



So, that's a null event. Better than a bad one, not as good as a favorable one.

Turn 66 started with another event, free money this time:



Borders popped after end of turn, revealing some more terrain:




The cursor highlights a griffon in the north, and a sea serpent in the south. Sea monsters are why it's not a good idea to explore with workboats. There's also a barb warrior skirting north of Aurorarcher's territory. The elephant to the east of Bruces is strength 8, but will only defend, so as long as it stays out of my way it's just a spawn buster for me.

That southern sheep looks like a 1-tile island; the copper looks like it's connected to land to the southeast. The plains hill SW of the copper appears to be connected to three land tiles to its south.

More good city sites available. Careless typo "Dead Parror" is embarrassing. I'll try to remember to fix that one.

[haphazard1]

You do seem to have some decent possible city sites near by. What are your plans for future expansion?

Sea serpents can be a pain. So are griffons. Elephants are usually OK, but sometimes they just insist on being in the wrong place when you need to go some place.

[DaveV]

Sea serpents can be a pain. So are griffons. Elephants are usually OK, but sometimes they just insist on being in the wrong place when you need to go some place.

Yeah, sea serpents and giant turtles make oceanic exploring very dangerous. Which is the point, I guess. Elephants can be useful as spawn busters, and even as involuntary defenders if they can be herded into the right tile. But they can be a pain if they're standing where you want to walk.

You do seem to have some decent possible city sites near by. What are your plans for future expansion?

Something like this:




The numbers are just for reference, not settling order, although #1 is my planned next city. After that, maybe "?" if Auroarcher hasn't put enough defenders in his new city  

[DaveV]

Turn 67: I built another cove in the north by Bruces, moved warriors into position to take out the barb warrior and workers into position to road the pigs.




If I'd been thinking, I'd have moved the warrior out of Dead Parrot (typo now corrected) last turn instead of this turn. Then I'd have had a stack instead of an AI-style conga line. I switched back to a warrior in Cheese Shop, rather than finish the workboat a turn early and pay maintenance on it.

In the north, my scout exposed a few tiles beyond the crab lake, and verified that the three northernmost forest hills are spider-free. The warrior is on his way to set up shop on the hills, where he should have odds on just about any AI unit. The griffon is still standing off, which is good.

[haphazard1]

I was confused about your proposes city #1, until I saw the later screenshots and realized the corn had been cut off the initial picture. I was thinking "Why there first?" but then it become obvious.

Checking for spiders...I hate those things.

[DaveV]

Another start of turn event. This is a very nice one that converts a three hammer tile (four hammers with five turns of worker input) into a three hammer/two food tile.

Checking for spiders...I hate those things.

Yeah, that's why I try to keep some scouts around. Scouts are also very good at spider herding, since a spider will run away from a scout in the right circumstances. In this case, I moved the scout to the target hill first, to look for spiders. When he found none, my warrior followed. That city looks even better now.



At end of turn I finished Sailing, which enables me to improve the whales and makes pearls (another water resource that gives happiness and commerce) visible. I expected to see some pearls, usually they're much more common than whales, but there are none visible. I'll keep looking.

An aside here: it's possible in EitB to build a cove on top of pearls before they become visible. This wasn't possible in the original FfH, because pearls were made visible by Seafaring, a Lanun exclusive game starting tech. This made pearls an exclusive resource for the Lanun; I think it was a good design decision to make them universally available, but it causes this potential complication of having to tear up a cove to build pearl nets. Moot for this game, but a flaw in the design as it stands.

In the south, the barb warrior disappeared, moving either into Aurorarcher's territory I guess. I made my stack of three warriors; they'll move out next turn.

Someone popped a great sage: the Philosophical Mr. Cairo, no doubt. He now has a huge score (because of land points from his world spell), and decent demographics.



It would appear he built an Academy, and closed the GNP gap substantially.