[SPOILERS] scooter's thread: how to finish second

[scooter]

Nothing big to note, just something kinda humorous.



I feel like every time I look into the event log, someone is at war or ending a war with Regoarrarr. He declared on me, how about the rest?



. One of those is Ruff declaring on Rego as you see. I hereby declare this to be the fastest anyone has ever been at war with every player in the game in a non-AW setup. Well done. *applause*

Deoms suggest I suck at this game.



I suggest I agree.

Also what in the WORLD is that 72GNP?? I seriously have no clue.

[scooter]

So I got the silver/cows hooked at Gratiot:



After my last post in which I derided my scores in the demos, you see what happens when people are whipping a lot:



It produces demos which are hard to discern because it's fluctuating so wildly. Anyways, here's an overview on the most recent turn - T56:



I'll be planting a city down in the southeastern corner. Here you get a nice demonstration of all the invalid city sites I've created with my placement of 8 Mile. Seriously, look at the two east coast sites I've marked - one in the bottom right of the picture and one in the top-right. Find another valid spot between those two that doesn't involve settling on a food tile. It's very frustrating - that's a TON of FIN coast I can't work with a mainland site. Granted, there's also almost no seafood whatsoever on this east coast so it's not all terrible, but it's still a bit annoying to have unknowingly invalidated so many spots. That's how it goes I guess.

Anyways, I'm behind the curve just a tad on expansion I suspect, though it's hard to read exactly. I prioritized commerce a bit here as you can see by my 4 shared riverside cottages, 2 of which have already matured into hamlets (one of the cottages is close). No idea if that was a good trade-off or not, time will tell. 8 Mile is building that library, and I'll probably use that to generate my early Academy. I know I know, early Academy is a bit overrated and whatnot - but it's still useful and I'm still Lizzie. I do believe this setup is more of a commerce race than an expansion race because of the Big Bad Jungle that's turning this game into a micro-fest. I figure most of the expansion sites will be there later, but the winner will be the person who gets ahead on commerce and leverages a bunch of the "first to" bonuses and the later tech-constrained wonders. MoM and Great Library are logical targets for me - I'm going to be very upset if I can't snag one of them.

Side note: awesome, I joined a micro-fest which contains Regoarrarr and Pindicator (with NH helping) . My macro is better than my micro, and that's probably going to be on full display in this game. My leader/civ selection does play to my strengths a bit though (or more accurately, does not play into my weaknesses). I don't necessarily have to out-expand the Isabellas and Surys of this game, I just need to not get left in the dust. We'll see if I can do that successfully or not.

At EoT, I got Regoarrarr's graphs to go with Ichabod's graphs, so let's take a look at the opening comparison for the three of us.





I feel OK knowing that I'm keeping decent pace with Regoarrarr right now. His graphs are a little distorting in that you can see the point where he swapped from high-hammers to high-food, but overall we've had similar levels of output so far.

It's a little disconcerting to see Ichabod showing so strongly thus far given his Stonehenge build. I'm guessing this is due to him having a high happy cap (CHM Henge), but I'm not positive. Again, not doing city/pop tracking or any sort of C&D here, as some of the other guys almost assuredly are doing knowing my competition. GNP:



No signs of that bizarre 70-something GNP. It looks as though Ichabod has sacrificed a fair bit of commerce here. His GNP is fairly even with us (pretty consistently below me actually), but he's getting 10-11 culture or so from Stonehenge that Rego and I are not getting. I suspect Regoarrarr has placed a few river cottages like me, but Ichabod has an FFH-inspired disdain for cottages and love for farms. I'm kind of theorizing that he's kept pace with expansion despite building Stonehenge because he's sacrified any semblance of commerce.

Also, I think that last spike there at the end of the frame is likely to be all of us hooking our commerce resource at roughly the same time, which is kind of funny. I'm not certain about that, but it sure looks similar.

I'm currently on the way to Regoarrarr's cities where I hope to defog to his borders and gain a trade route with him. I figure that should be pretty lucrative. My medium-term goal is the get to the islands. The problem is... how? It's difficult to settle my east coast right now - my one coastal site is on the Rego side of my block rather than the east coast (yes, this is why I'm settling down in that corner now). Settling the islands will get me IC routes, which is an automatic +1c in every city, and I'll get another one of those at Currency (providing I settle a second island city), which I'm pretty close to already. Also, there's nothing really inspiring or noteworthy on our main blocks, but the islands are likely to house stone/marble which will be critical.

Well, there's my attempt at writing something interesting when nothing interesting is going on . One drawback of this map is that it's a map designed for mid to late game action at the cost of almost zero ancient action. There's no reason for anyone to fight each other in the first 100 turns (normal speed). I'm sure the later game will be quite interesting - it just means you have to be patient.

[Commodore]

Ichabod = India. Solved that mystery for ya!

[scooter]

India has always been my favorite leader trait.

[scooter]

New turn rolled in right after I posted that. Found Rego's borders, so I'm assuming I can get routes now?



GLH has fallen already. Ok, who do we have to embargo?



Oh yeesh Ichabod. Well I'll be canceling OB as soon as the silly game lets me - not that it matters at this stage. Surprised Oracle hasn't fallen yet btw. Offered OB with Rego:



So remember how I spent that last post saying I felt pretty good about keeping pace with Regoarrarr? Well he's at 5 cities to my 3. Yeah nevermind.

[Merovech]

India has always been my favorite leader trait.

Now that's QOTM material.

[scooter]

India has always been my favorite leader trait.

Now that's QOTM material.

Make it happen!

This is the second time I've been pseudo-nominated for QOTM, and in both cases it involved India. First time was when I claimed that I picked Gandhi of India for "originality" without even a hint of irony. Something about India makes me say odd things I guess.

[Qgqqqqq]

Well, there's my attempt at writing something interesting when nothing interesting is going on . One drawback of this map is that it's a map designed for mid to late game action at the cost of almost zero ancient action.

Tell that to rego

[scooter]

Well, there's my attempt at writing something interesting when nothing interesting is going on . One drawback of this map is that it's a map designed for mid to late game action at the cost of almost zero ancient action.

Tell that to rego

He does seem determined to disprove the theory by "fighting" EVERYONE all the time. He's declaring war almost as often as he normally double-posts.

[Merovech]

India has always been my favorite leader trait.

Now that's QOTM material.

Make it happen!

You're welcome.