[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[NylesStandish]

Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice.

However, when I said

I had been assuming that the upright workers with the white circles had just done nothing and skipped turn. Apparently, you can fortify or assign worker actions after the worker does his turn of work and get the same effect. I didn't think of this at first since I never do this normally and I don't think there's any benefit to this practice other than hiding what action the worker is doing from opponents.

I did not mean that I didn't understand any benefit of cancelling worker actions after performing them. I've done that with a huge portion of my worker turns this game (manually clicking each worker and hitting the cancel button with the mouse). I don't want to, for example, have a worker put a turn into an improvement and then be unable to move when I spot the barb that just moved to threaten him this turn. However, since the circle by the workers turns red (to me) whenever I cancel the worker actions, I assumed that Elkad had to be doing one of the things that I would have to do in order to make the circle by the worker appear white to me after cancelling that turn's action after the worker turn had been applied to the tile:

1: cancel action, then fortify

2: cancel action, then assign another action immediately

3: fortify in order to cancel action

Any of these would defeat the purpose of cancelling the action in the first place. If I fortify the worker, then I won't be prompted to assign him a task next turn and I'm more likely to waste that worker turn. If I assign another action, then the worker does that automatically next turn.

But now I'm pretty sure that I'm retarded and the white circle appears next to enemy units whether or not they have used their turn or not. I've taken about 850 screenshots of this game and I'm not going to go through every single one of them, but the ones I have looked through have failed to provide a counterexample. This never confused me when opponents' scouts or military units were moving about (which had obviously been moved but still had the white dot next to them), but for some reason it confused me when I saw the workers.

tl;dr I thought Elkad was doing something strange in addition to cancelling the worker actions because of the color of his dot, but he almost certainly wasn't since I apparently just noticed all dots other than mine are all white regardless of the circumstances.

Will report tomorrow.

[Ruff_Hi]

You cannot gain any information about the color (or otherwise) of opponent units. You will always (IIRC) see them as unchanged regardless of their true status.

[NylesStandish]

Thanks for the confirmation, Ruff.

Turn 85:




Got my first view of Berlin, and it's completely empty. Even if I had a unit on board, though, he'll certainly move 1 or 2 units to defend before they would be able to attack.




Nothing but the Palace and Granary. Seems to be a pattern here. My cities would probably look similar if I didn't need the culture from Barracks (except Akkad, which I would definitely build a cheap library in if I was creative). Those savings from not having to build Monuments or Barracks (as well as Plako's Mfg which has been far superior to mine in recent turns) are why he's got 9 cities to my 6. Commodore's got 10, Yuri's still at 10, and Elkad has 8 (up from 4 on turn 82).




One of his cities blocks off any further expansion south of the lake. If I had gotten a city by those mountains first, it would be harder to block my expansion further south. Expanding further south, however, would give me a long narrow strip of land far from my core and right next to Elkad's core. I have room for at most 3 more cities in the area north of the lake. I may put my settler 1W of the gems or move it further west to claim more land. Pretty soon the peaceful expansion phase will be over.

Grimace's score just took a big dive:




I think this is the first conquest in the game. Grimace is going to go the way of Nakor in PB12.

Plako ended turn a few minutes ago. I'll probably play the turn later tonight.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 86:




Forgetting how vision over water works, I moved my Galley southwest to see if I could see any more of the tiles around Berlin.




Nothing but the one forest tile. Moved back northeast. Will ask for peace next turn.

Turn 87:




Roading to the new city and moving my settler into position. Settling here (orange dot) I can share the Pigs with Akkad and Sheep with red dot. Yellow dot somewhere to grab the clams.




Left and asked for peace.




GNP is great. Mfg and crop yield are garbage. Land area is nearly the worst, second only to what I must assume are the remains of Grimace (with a whopping 5 land tiles, 4 food and 1 hammer per turn). I saw another city exchange on Civstats this last turn. Looking at the individual player logs I can see that I missed at least two city captures before the one I posted the screenshot of.

I should have expanded more, but have few options now. After the next 3 dots I can:

A: Try to conquer territory

B: Settle exclaves all around the southern sea that will effectively be free settlers for whoever is lucky enough to have me settle one nearby

C: Builder mode

[NylesStandish]

Turn 88:




Plako resent the peace offer and I accepted.

Have Currency. Going for Polytheism so I can get Priesthood > Hereditary Rule > Feudalism for Guilds later on. Probably throw Horseback Riding in there somewhere.




Founded Anbar. Gonna 2 pop whip the settler in Akkad and found on the west coast to block any further Elkad expansion up the coast.




I haven't been checking the events log much in this game, so I didn't notice that Plako has a Great Engineer that was born in Hamburg. In order to get Great Engineer points he must have a forge, which is, in fact, in the screenshot of Hamburg I posted where I declared "durr he only got a grainery".




It is mostly obscured by said Granary, though.

He had to have assigned the engineer 15 turns to get it, and a few turns to build the forge. I think if he 1 turned the forge, that puts his discovery of metal casting at 1800 BC at the latest. He hasn't fired a golden age yet, so either:

A: He's saving it for a specific wonder

or

B: He used it on Pyramids immediately and lost the coinflip with Commodore

Probably B. If he was going to use it for a later wonder he would probably time it so that he got the GE right when he needed it instead of spending 30 food on the GE earlier in the game that could be used for whips/growth.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 89:




Moved workers onto the second deer by Ramadi to camp it.




One turn to next settler. Anbar took the pigs.

Turn 90:




Border expansion at Akkad lets me see into the empty city of Captive, which already has an Armory.




Galley sees a young German city (bare map is on, it's not empty). I don't remember this one's name. I wouldn't have made peace so soon if I knew I'd run into more cities down here.

Turn 91:




Stuttgart! Yeah. I was able to sneak by this one before borders popped. However, I can see culture from another city in the fog. Wasn't able to get past that one without declaring war again.




Getting a barracks in the new city of Fallujah in order to reach the fish.

Turn 92:




Whipped Basra for overflow.




Also whipped Nineveh for overflow. Ramadi was whipped as well, just to complete the granary.

Turn 93:




Building Catapults. Also moving a worker with an Axe for cover to road that tile. From there I could get a stack of 1 movers on the hill next to Hamburg out of the fog without warning. I'm sure Plako realizes this, and the plan is (or was) to pre-chop to give a possible reason besides invasion for roading the tile.




Near term plans look something like this:



I'm (hopefully) Sean Penn in this metaphor.

Will report the next few turns with turn 97 after I play it later.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 94:




Galley got trapped. I don't know how much further down the coast Plako has settled, but since he has GLH there's a good chance he planted many more coastal cities. I probably should have just plowed through, but I just fortified him. I didn't want to risk having the enforced peace once I finally pass up his borders potentially delay the invasion or for him to react more defensively to my power spike due to us actually being at war, but me just staying put when I was willing to declare war to pass through his coastal waters before probably just gives him more reason to think something fishy's going on.

Turn 95:




2 pop whipped a catapult. Also finished up an axeman in Akkad this turn.

Turn 96:




This is what I get for talking shit about people's (real or perceived) worker mismanagement. Fucking forgot to cancel orders on the worker last turn. That worker was supposed to put a turn into a road instead of chopping that forest. This was a huge blunder. Now, if I want to attack Plako, he gets to see my stack of doom sitting on the corn the turn before it reaches the hill northwest of Hamburg, giving him the opportunity to whip it twice, actually have one native whipped defender, plus whatever units can make it into the city with 2 moves. There's a chance he might think the army's intended for someone else, since I wouldn't want to actually chop that tile if I was planning on invading for the reasons I listed above. More likely he'll assume I'm just a stupid noob who didn't realize he was giving advance warning by chopping the tile or that I don't care if he sees the stack of doom.

I could always just attack Elkad instead.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 97:




Plako proposes open borders. I declined and thought it over. He knows I obviously don't want my galley to just sit there forever waiting for borders to pop and displace him, and he knows I don't want to declare on him for some reason. Open borders should be the perfect deal for me, then, provided I'm not planning to attack. If I am planning to attack, then he can send a chariot to scout my 1 movers amassing and prepare accordingly. I considered shifting my units to Akkad to make it seem like Elkad was the target, wait a few more turns than I would have and amass an even larger force, and then move on him anyway. The hope would be that Plako would lay off military production, assuming he wasn't the target, then I would move in and he would have less military than he would have otherwise, preparing for a straight up attack. If he didn't lay off, then waiting longer to invade is a losing strategy, since his production is much stronger. I can put out a lot of military temporarily by using mass chops and whips, but if the build up phase goes too long Plako gets more edge.

I said no to the open borders. If he builds up enough by invasion time I'll attack Elkad instead.

Turn 98:




So, now he's got walls in Hamburg. Awesome.

Turn 99:




3 pop whip in Babylon and 1 pop whip in Nineveh.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 100:




My overview screenshot. Everything that's being worked is visible in this screen.




A second one for slightly better visibility in the northern part of the map. I didn't notice the tile yields and tile bleeds in the water before. Could be some islands or another continent.







Same, but with tile yields off and resources on, if you prefer. Sorry that I didn't hide names and scores, though.




The known world.




Tech screen.




Once mighty GNP is slipping from the whips and generally weak growth, and from not running binary research atm. Everything else except soldier count is pretty much garbage.




That's quite the power spike. And you know what I'm going to do with it? SOMEBODY'S GONNA GET STABBED IN THE ASS!

[GermanJoey]

Nicely written report as usual.

When would you be planning to invade plako?