Turn Tracking Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 77 - 950BC

Another turn, more barbarians to fight.



Here is the north, where we have only the one barb still hovering around by Mansa's Muse. There's an axe playing zone defense halfway between Focal Point and Mansa to deal with that guy if he would move further into our borders.

Five workers finished clearing the jungle and then mining the gems. We had timed the capital and Mansa to grow this turn into unhappiness, which was then wiped out upon connection of those gems. Our second luxury resource, very nice. They also both double happiness with forges, so we will eventually want Metal Casting down the line. The axe moving up from the capital will be able to protect the workers from anything that might appear out of the fog, which allowed the spear to go out scouting again. I plan to move north again next turn onto the forested grassland hill, which should remove any last fogged tiles. We might even get visibility on the German city up there. It may be a good idea to send them a quick diplo message and let them know our spear will be poking around their borders to defog a trade connection.

Note that the German team still shouldn't have any idea that the city of Tree Huggers is there. All of the tiles between us are forested or jungle hill tiles, which block vision behind them. They may be in for a rude surprise later. I also like that they settled a jungle pigs tile that they have absolutely no way of using until they get Iron Working, which could be a very long time.



Here is the southeast, where there is another barb warrior (surprise surprise) slowing making its way towards Focal Point. The scout moved forward another tile, still with no sight of CFC borders. There is another river over there to the east, however. We have the choice of moving south or east next turn; I would suggest moving south so that we can move along the coast and maybe reveal seafood resources down there for future dotmapping. We could also make the really risky play and move directly onto the desert hill, which will reveal everything but also kill our scout if there's a barb nearby. I do not recommend this.



Here is the southwest, with yet another barb warrior incoming. Lew has moved onto the hill tile for vision, and cannot move again this turn. Wyn has not moved, and was supposed to go S-SE this turn for scouting, but we probably don't want to do that with the warrior incoming. I suggest resting in place and healing to full this turn, then seeing where that barb moves on the interturn. Let me know what everyone wants.



This is the overview shot and tile micro for the turn. We are working 24 tiles this turn, all of them improved except for the ones at Horse Feathers (which is a bit of special case; we are running 8 production to get the Expansive worker bonus). The capital and Horse Feathers will be double whipped for their settler and worker next turn, both regrowing immediately on the following turn. Even better, Gourmet Menu and Tree Huggers are nearly through their very weak size 1 state. They have been contributing very little for the past 6-8 turns, and both will become complete monsters in the near future. I can hardly wait.

We turned research back on this turn, producing 76 base beakers / 92 total beakers. That will knock out Sailing in 2t, and then it's on to Calendar (and extra happiness resources) from there. We should have a trade route to the German team built and defogged on the turn Sailing gets completed.



The Demographics are where our team is starting to take off. With other teams turning off research, we take over the GNP lead for this turn, although Apolyton will surely have it back again soon enough. We're still near the top though, and that's what matters. Meanwhile we are just a hair away from the lead in Food and Production, the latter stat in particular coming as a surprise since we have been among the lowest in that category for most of the game. We are basically equal to the Rival Best in all three of these metrics, fairly amazing for this early in the game. Comparing our numbers to Rival Average is just laughable. We are also third in Power (behind only the two teams at war building nonstop military), first in Land, and first in Population. Both Adventure One and Mansa's Muse are on the Top Five city list. In short, we are in very good shape.

Other tidbits... No one in the world has any trade routes yet; hopefully our Sailing connection will be the first. CFC still is not using Organized Religion civic for unknown reasons. CivPlayers revolted last turn to their Buddhism state religion, spending the turn in Anarchy. I didn't see any sign of further fighting between WPC and Germans last turn, although mostly_harmless did find out in a chat that the Germans believe that they'll be able to wipe their land clear of invaders soon. If the net result of the war was one immature city burned and a lot of units traded with no further purpose, that would be just about ideal for us.

I think that's all for now. We could end turn if desired, but let's spend a little time in discussion to see if there's anything that we've missed.

[Sullla]

Turn 78 - 925BC

We've spotted another city.



I moved our scouting spear a tile north, which gave us visibility on the German city of Worms. Currently size 3 as shown, with a barracks and a terrace inside and one quechua on guard duty. The German team has a worker in a nearby forest tile (presumably to chop) and they've irrigated two floodplains tiles for some reason. I guess they needed the food here? It doesn't feel like the best tile management to me. Worms was the second city founded by the German team, which means that their capital is probably further up that river. We now have an indisputable trade route defogged to the German team, which should go into effect when we build a road on the bananas tile next turn and discover Sailing.

Note that there is a barb warrior two tiles northeast of Mansa's Muse in the extreme right corner of the above screenshot. We have an axe that can move onto the gold tile this turn, or we can sit back and let the barb move there on the interturn and then whack it. It's probably safer just to cover the gold tile, although the barb warrior will not attack an axeman directly. Let me know what we would prefer to do.



In the southeast, I moved our scout one tile south, then saw that he couldn't be attacked by anything, and moved him another tile south next to the coast. This revealed the fish resource in the presumed lake, and pretty much locks down where we'll be placing our city in this area. The other good spot would be northeast of the corn / south of the oasis, but I thought we had promised CFC we wouldn't settle there (?) Might want to check on that. Well, you guys can talk it out on the exact spot. I expect that we'll be settling here in about a dozen or so turns, after the current round of double expansion to the southwest and spices. I still couldn't see any CFC cultural borders after moving; their city must be further east.



The barb in the southwest moved forward one tile; I'm glad that I left the axe inside Gourmet Menu and did not send him our scouting earlier. Our micro plan calls for the worker highlighted above to move southwest of the city and road that tile. This lets us settle the cows/wheat city a turn faster (on T80). I've left the worker unmoved for now; the obvious suggestion is to make that planned move and cover the worker with the axe inside the city. Let me know if I'm overlooking something obvious here.

Oh, and the axeman on the hill hasn't moved either. Suggestions? I would be fine with keeping him there for one turn to heal to full and continue providing that excellent sight range.



We also conducted two double whips this turn, at Adventure One (settler) and Horse Feathers (worker). Both cities will regrow immediately next turn to get back one of the two population points they lost. In the meantime, we had to drop the youngest plains river cottage at the capital and Mansa had to work a second Priest specialist (not that this is all that bad; it speeds along our future shrine). Gourmet Menu also grew for the first time this turn, picking up a second floodplains cottage and going to +4 food/turn. It will expand borders in 2t and finally pick up that clams tile. Tree Huggers is set to grow next turn as well, and grab that awesome grassland gems mine (2/1/7). Now that's a tile...

Two workers moved to road the bananas for our German trade route connection. Two workers finished our iron mine. Three workers moved southeast from Tree Huggers, nearly building a grassland cottage along the way. The last one is still waiting to build its road in the southwest by Gourmet Menu, as explained before.

CivStats was disconnected when the turn rolled, but fortunately we can pull the score increases from screenshots:

RB: 225 -> 231 -> 221 (4 pop whipped)
CivFr: 206 -> 209 (1 pop)
Apolyton: 196 -> 211 (Classical tech, 1 pop)
UniversCiv: 188 -> 190 (1 pop)
CivFanatics: 161 -> 163 (1 pop)
We Play Civ: 142 -> 145 (1 pop)
Spanish Apolyton: 136 -> 138 (1 pop)
Germans: 128 -> 130 (1 pop)

No score increase for CivPlayers (205 points). No one was in-game when the turn rolled, so that rules out any immediate whipping shenanigans.

Here are Demographics from before and after we whipped:





Not too bad overall. We'll be planting cities on T80 and T82; I think we'll have an excellent chance of leading all the major Demo categories after that. Depends on what everyone else does, of course.

That should be all for now. Feel free as always to post comments and suggestions.

[Sullla]

Turn 79 - 900BC

Turn highlights include finishing research on Sailing tech, connecting a trade route to other teams, and getting a free religious spread into Horse Feathers. Let's go through some of the pictures.



This is the north, with a view into the German city of Worms before moving the spearman. (I moved the spear southwest onto the jungle hill, finding nothing of any interest. The tile 2S of Worms is resourceless jungle.) The German team whipped twice at the end of their turn including this city, obviously producing the chariot that we can see. Their power rating has continued to climb as they keep whipping; I really don't think their team is in any danger of losing further cities. Hopefully a bloodbath on all sides and nothing further changing hands.

That image also reveals our new trade route connection, with a road on the bananas tile leading to the northern river. Note the tiny little trade icon next to both the German team and WPC. We don't get any trade route income this turn of course, since trade routes are calculated at the beginning of each turn, but we should get a nice little boost in income next turn. With luck, we'll upgrade from 1 commerce -> 2 commerce trade routes in every city, which is worth about another gems tile all on its own. Not bad.



This is the eastern side of our territory. Up towards the top, our axeman on the gold tile moved to kill the barb warrior as shown, taking no damage in the process. (Barb warriors still refuse to attack our axes; their AI must consider the odds too low to attack.) There are actually two more barb warriors down in the south below Focal Point not visible in this screenshot. We have plenty of time to kill them when they finally do show up. Focal Point has another axe coming out soon.

The scout move still shows no sign of CivFanatics (including tile bleeding / cultural overlay) but did reveal a wines resource to the east. Hmmm... wines resource located very close to stone resource. Looks like this map script might have some repeating sections out there between teams. It's more and more obvious why CFC wants to settle this region. So long as we are able to claim the stone/horses/wines area across the water, it's not a huge deal to me. If they take forever to settle though... well, we'll see.



Here in the southwest, the barb warrior moved exactly as expected. We killed it with one axe and used the other axe to cover the worker who moved to the plains tile 2S of Gourmet Menu and roaded. Everything is on pace to found our new city next turn on the desert tile. As it turned out there wasn't another barb warrior in the area ready to kill any of our workers - but better safe than sorry.

We also received a free religion spread of Hinduism into Horse Feathers, which is a very nice little break of luck. Now we can grow the city to size 6 instead of size 5 before connecting Calendar resources. I expect we'll make a slight change or two here when we go back and do the next micro plan as a result. HF has tons of food and is only limited by the happy cap, making this the second best place for a free spread after the capital (which would obviously be the best). Next turn will be very busy for this region, as we'll get the long-awaited border expansion at Gourmet Menu (allowing us to use the clams) and also plant a new city. 12 more tiles here we come.



This is our tile micro for the turn. It looks almost identical to last turn, except that we are working the corn tile at Horse Feathers instead of the capital, and a cottage tile at the capital. The iron tile goes unworked for this turn (HF will not regrow in one turn if it works the iron). The addition of the gems tile at Tree Huggers, now at size 2, adds a very sizable amount of commerce. It was very obvious when looking at the GNP for this turn.

The trade routes let us see what resources the other teams have connected:





One simple way of telling how other teams are doing is to open up the trade screen and see how many resources they have connected. More resources = stronger civ. Pretty basic. Everyone has corn, copper, and gold connected, confirming that the stats were very closely mirrored. We have more food resources than either WPC or the German team, and we are the only team with a second happiness resource connected. Since no one has a capital above size 7, this again lends more evidence that luxury resources other than gold were tough to acquire on this map. German team also has their own native source of horses, as we fully expected.

I'll also mention that we have several improved but unconnected resources in our territory: cows, pigs, and iron are all not on the trade network currently. Keeping the iron hidden for now is probably a useful idea until we need it. We'll need those health resources connected eventually (Tree Huggers will be unhealthy at about size 7) but it's a non-issue for right now. And we also will add the clams at Gourmet Menu next turn when the borders expand. As a rough measure of expansion / economy, looking at the resources is a fairly useful tool.



Here are the Demos at 0% research. Our new 0% value is almost identical to our 100% value prior to connecting gems. (We are #1 in GNP at a break-even value of 70% research.) Our Food value continues to tick up, and we'll add about 10 more Food next turn with the combination of two city growths and a new city. Production is only low this turn because we aren't working the 1/5 iron tile. Everything else is about the same as before. I'm really looking forward to seeing these numbers next turn, with 3 more pop points and our new trade route income.

Nothing particularly interesting in terms of espionage points. No one seems to be allocating EP towards us right now. WPC had slightly higher war weariness at the start of this turn (15 instead of 12) so they probably lost another unit in German territory. As much as we have (rightly) criticized the German team for playing slowly, they did actually end this turn early, with about 8 hours left on their own personal turn timer. Thank goodness for that.

I've ended turn because I'm pretty sure there are no moves remaining to be made this turn. No big surprises in store at the moment. Everything seems to be proceeding according to plan.

[Sullla]

Turn 80 - 875BC

Trade routes are in and they are fabulous.



I noticed right away at the start of our turn that we had more commerce than before: every one of our cities has a 2 commerce trade route to a foreign city of some kind, either WPC or the German team. This increased our research rate - err, gold stockpiling - by a noticeable amount. Anyway, more on this in a minute.

Moving the spearman in the northwest revealed a second jungle rice tile just outside German borders. Either they didn't scout this when they planted Worms or they just didn't care. We may want to plant our own city in the jungle later to try and claim this resource; the red dot is one possible location where we could do so. Keep in mind that it would be tough to win the cultural battle with the terrace that has been sitting in Worms for quite some time. Tough, not impossible (second ring beats third ring). Let's keep this on the backburner for now and come back to it later. Any city in this area would be an extreme long term project: every single tile at present is covered in jungle!



The scout in the east found more wines, lots of wines, and finally spotted CFC borders. It's impossible to see in this picture, but zooming out and checking the cultural overlay revealed purple borders on the tile SE of that hill as marked. We should try to chat with our CFC contact and ask if it's safe to move our scout onto that hill tile next turn. This would get us into their territory safely and allow the C&D team to start mapping out their cities.

We now also have a clear grasp of the distance between our civs. If we could get a city on the tile south of the oasis, and leave the weaker wines region to CFC... well, that would be an ideal split of land from our perspective. Again, let's wait and see what happens here. We have a planned settler being born T92 for this region from Mansa's Muse which could plant south of the oasis on T93 with road preparation. If CivFanatics still isn't there... we'll see.



Biggest action for this turn was in the southwest. We completed the roads southwest and south-south of Gourmet Menu to found our seventh city on the desert tile, appropriately named Seven Tribes. (Full name of that competition was Seven Tribes of Egypt, but that won't fit.) Settling the city revealed a plains cow off to the east and a water barrier down to the south. We do not appear to have narrowly missed out on any resources, thankfully. Seven Tribes appear to be in a very good spot, considering how we didn't have all of that land explored. There is also another barb down there - of course!

Gourmet Menu expanded its borders via Stonehenge this turn and picked up the long awaited clams tile. It will grow to size 3 next turn, where it produces +6 food/turn for very rapid growth. That will very quickly become one of our best cities; the micro plan has it racing to size 7 and working six Financial riverside cottages in the next ten turns. Not too shabby. There is an axe coming down from the north to garrison Gourmet Menu, although it should be reasonably safe at this point.

I've left our two axes in the area unmoved for now. Lew is on the left, Wyn is on the right. Both have 5 XP, and one of them needs to stick around to defend the new city. Tell me where to send the other one. We can go check out the stone area in the northwest, or fogbust the wheat/cows area to the east. Let me know what the team wants.



Here is the tile micro for the turn. It's mostly the same as last turn, with the addition of regrown population points at Adventure One and Horse Feathers. We also finished a plains riverside cottage at Mansa's Muse, so the city fired a Priest specialist and is working that tile. We have 26 total pop points working 11 resources, 13 cottages, one specialist, and one unimproved tile (floodplains at the new city). Fairly tight city micro.

We are still running minimum science towards a Calendar grab in a few more turns. The foreign trade route income is going to throw off our past sims quite a bit, as the bonus 7 commerce we get from them this turn is not at all trivial. Our whole civ only gets about 95 commerce; those trade routes increased our total economy by 7-8%. Not bad for something completely passive beyond building a road on a river tile.

I'll also point out that we were making +54 gold last turn at 0% science. This turn we added a seventh city, and now we're making +61 gold at 0% science. If anything, we can push expansion even harder: our economy is awesome! We're still the second team to seven cities, so I think we're doing fine.



The Demographics are looking very, very good. Two pop point growths and a new city founding have placed us back into the Food lead, albeit by the narrowest of margins. We'll likely lose it next turn when we double-whip the settler in Focal Point, then regain the lead upon founding our eighth city on T83. GNP has also been magnified by our trade route income, as we now sit at #2 despite running 0% science. Last turn we had a rating of 84 at the same 0% science. I checked our break-even rate (60% science) and we were #1 with a rating of 109. Max science put us ahead by a wide margin, around 120 or something. Food and GNP are the two most important stats in Civ4, generally speaking, which means this is all excellent news.

Elsewhere, we remain thoroughly average in Production as usual. I get the impression that many of these teams are working mines over working cottages, which almost never works out well in this game. We are still third in Power (with another axe completing next turn), ahead of everyone except the two warring teams. Our lead in Land Area has only gone up with the border expansion at Gourmet Menu and a new city. The rest of the stats don't matter too much, although I will point out that another team grew their capital to size 8, which is inflating their Population score. (It's a 4000BC capital, and thus almost certainly CivFr with the size 8 city.)

Note also our trade route income, highlighted above. We are getting 14 commerce from other teams: 2 commerce * 7 cities. At least I'm pretty sure that's where this number comes from; someone else may want to explain in more detail. The Rival Best has a score of 0, which leads me to believe that we are the only ones getting any trade route income at all. (We Play Civ and Germans both lack Sailing, and thus are getting exactly squat from Open Borders while we soak up income from both of them.) The whole situation couldn't be too much more perfect; these silly teams are stagnating and wasting their early game production on a meaningless war, while we sit on the fence zooming past them and stealing EVEN MORE commerce from them via Open Borders trade. Delicious.

Here's that war in one chart:



The German team has whipped extremely aggressively and they have a sizable army. WPC had better sign peace quickly, as their military adventure is about to come to a crashing halt. I have zero worries of further German cities getting taken; the question at this point is how many WPC cities will be taken in the counter attack. The diplo team might want to consider leaning on WPC and suggesting they make peace ASAP. I predict a very messy end if they don't get out immediately.

Whew, turns getting busier all the time. This is a fun point for us in the game. I can hardly wait for each new turn.

[Sullla]

Turn 81 - 850BC

The main news for this turn was spotting a barb city off to the east; everything else remains on schedule as planned.



Not too much going on up in the northern region. I moved the spear to the southwest, finding a barb warrior next to the rice tile. Note that there is another barb warrior on the tile marked with the white X, which we could see at the start of the turn before moving. I have no idea if our spear will get attacked between turns, or if the odds on the jungle tile are too bad for the AI. Guess we'll find out. The other one will most likely head into German territory to cause problems for them. There looks to be a peak tile and more jungle further to the west - plan is to keep the spear heading in that direction and defogging more tiles.

The two workers by Tree Huggers finished clearing the jungle on the bananas tile this turn. As instructed, I moved the axeman onto that tile. It can sit there just as well as inside the city center.



This was the noteworthy scouting information for the turn. Since we still had heard nothing back from CFC, I moved our scout a tile northeast to reveal the scene above. There is a barb city to the north as marked, as well as a horse resource and a rice tile. The plan here is to move the scout back to where it originally started this turn, back a tile southwest, and use the northern axe to go check out the barb city. The scout still has its second movement point remaining should we choose a different plan, but I really do think that moving back to the starting point this turn, following by moving to the hill next to CFC next turn, will be the best plan.



The southwest is fairly quiet this turn. I moved the western axe (Wyn) up a tile, and will move onto the plains hill tile next turn. The other axe (Lew) is healing inside the city of Seven Tribes this turn. We can move it onto the hill tile if desired, but that will only cause the barb unit to move into the forest, where we get worse odds to attack. I think that holding in place this turn and then killing the barb when it moves onto the hill tile next turn is the best plan. (Should the barb move into the forest, we could then cover our workers with the axe next turn.) Lew still has all movement points remaining, so let me know if you want him to do something different this turn.

The workers here sunk two turns into the cow pasture, while the one at the north put another turn into a floodplains cottage.



Here is the overview picture for the turn. (I'm playing from my laptop, which is why the graphics are set to lower quality for these pictures.) Our one population increase for the turn was Gourmet Menu growing to size 3, working the clams and two floodplains cottages. Focal Point lost three pop points in a triple settler whip, working its two resources and a developed grassland cottage. This meant that we dropped all Priest specialists, working three resources and three plains cottages. We've dropped two cottages (the grassland ones W-W of Adventure One and S of Mansa's Muse) until our cities regrow from that whip. Workers are in place to move the settler onto the desert hill tile next turn with some snazzy road construction.

There is a barb warrior located S-SW of Focal Point. If it moves onto the copper next turn, we'll kill it with the axe inside Focal Point. If it moves the other direction, towards the floodplains cottages at the capital, we'll kill the barb with the axeman currently holding position inside Adventure One. That axe is moving down from Tree Huggers to garrison Gourmet Menu, but has plenty of time to kill the barb on the way if needed.

We could grow Mansa's Muse this turn, but it still has 2 more turns of unhappiness due to whip duration. Instead, we'll sit 1 food away from growth and go for max overflow next turn.



Here are the Demographics after our triple whip. Note that we are still first in Food after whipping away three of our own people. We are also very close to tops in GNP at 0% science, and take the lead with ease at break-even research rate (60%). Not too much more to say here, since there were few score changes at the beginning of this turn. The only thing that I noticed was the continuing climb in Rival Best military power, as the German team keeps stacking more units. Another good sign.

We'll grow one pop point next turn, then grow 3 pop and plant our eighth city on T83. We are still the only team with any trade route income coming in, which is giving us a major boost. With luck, we'll be inside CFC territory by that time as well and start mapping our their cities. Looking steady as she goes all around.

See you again in three days.

[Sullla]

Turn 82 - 825BC

More discoveries abound. These turns are starting to becoming very interesting... if only they would come around a little faster.



mostly_harmless mentioned how our exploring spearman took quite a bit of damage from the barb warrior in between turns. I put the combat log in this picture to demonstrate how our unit was knocked down to 1.6 health in a 100% combat battle. Pretty unlucky. To make matters worse, another barb moved up to the south and is cutting off our retreat angle. What to do?

Well, we have two options as I see it. We can flee deeper into the fog by moving to the west, but there's no guarantee that there isn't another barb unit over there. We have no idea. Moving north or northwest is also probably not a good idea, as there was another barb warrior on the tile northwest of the rice last turn. It's likely still up there. We could alternately choose to do nothing and stay in place. It seems a bit silly, but we'll health for 10% of the spear's maximum health, taking us to 2.0 health. I tried to test this (although it's a little tough to get accurate odds for injured units), and it looks like we will have roughly 75% odds to win by healing in place and fortifying. That's not great, but we don't have too many options.

I haven't moved this unit yet. I suggest staying in place or moving a tile southwest. Recommendations?



We have better news everywhere else. Here in the east, our axeman moved up and found a rice resource along the river bend, just outside the barb city's borders. This axe will keep on moving up and has a good chance of spotting the barb city next turn, depending on local elevation.

The rice tile just misses the fat cross of Forbidden Fruit, which will be planted next turn. That's not such a bad thing, however, because it opens up the possibility of a VERY strong city on the red dot as shown, a city that can work irrigated rice + grassland cows and about a dozen grassland river cottages. That would then make the yellow dot a natural future spot to share cows and the western rice, continuing to follow the path of the river. We could also move the red spot a tile east to grab dyes, depending on what else we find over there in the eastern jungle.

I do not suggest changing the location of Forbidden Fruit, which has a great location in its own right and plenty of food to work with. We should instead concentrate on settling this part of the map in the next two dozen or so turns. It's very high quality land, it locks down another fertile river valley for Financial cottage cheese, it contains important Calendar luxury resources, and it expands towards our neighbors to claim disputed territory. Stone city will be #9, the oasis/fish spot will likely be city #10, and this red spot would be a great candidate for city #11. That's not counting the barb city either, which with luck could fall to us as well.

There's no need to worry about a defender for the settler; an axe will finish in Focal Point at end of turn, and will move to Forbidden Fruit before any barb units can show up.



CivFanatics told us that the route to their territory was safe, and indeed our scout has crossed over into the purple borders of India. That's good news because there was a barb warrior on the marked X tile at the start of this turn. Just barely dodged that guy, nice. Diplo team might want to tell CFC that they likely have another barb warrior incoming as a polite gesture, on the desert hill tile between the wines and stone.

I highlighted the floodplains cottage that we can see to demonstrate its level of development. Already a village, 34 turns left to become a town. That means that this is a very old cottage - our most mature cottage has 19 turns left to town status. Combined with the third-ring border pop, we're almost certainly looking at CFC's capital of Indira here. In any case, I plan to move two tiles southeast next turn into the forest, and that should reveal what city we're looking at. I'm kind of hoping that this is indeed their capital, as it would mean that we're in an excellent position to snap up most of the land between our two civs. We're doing a very good job of pushing up against the borders of all of our neighbors, with the two northern ones fighting their silly war and CFC seemingly absorbed in expansion elsewhere.



The southwest is fairly quiet. We killed the barb warrior after it moved to the hill as expected, taking our axe to 6 XP. Four battles to go, and at the rate of barb spawn that we're seeing, that should be very doable. Our other axe moved onto the plains hill tile, revealing another river and floodplains peeking out from under the fog. He'll keep heading northwest to investigate.



This is the overview for our civ and the tile micro. We are still following the illustrated plan in this post, if anyone wants to follow along. Noteworthy tile usage for this turn would be the forested plains hill at Horse Feathers; working that tile gives us just enough production to finish the lighthouse at end of turn, which is a crucial city improvement for HF. Extra food from the fish and the lake tile, which will become a permanent 3/0/3 tile. I also did make one minor alteration to our worker micro: I had us road the grassland tile north of Focal Point instead of the plains tile to the northeast. This was suggested by someone a ways back, and it seemed like a good choice. We will certainly want to cottage that grassland tile soonish, and the road makes it much easier to do so. The main goal of the road was to get the settler onto the desert hill this turn, which can be achieved on either tile.

Elsewhere, workers finished the pasture on the cattle tile at Seven Tribes and a grassland cottage at Tree Huggers. The worker at the capital finished chopping a library, timed for when we go to 100% science next turn. On that note, the micro plan suggested we go to 30% science this turn to ensure we have enough beakers to finish Calendar tech eot 86. With the extra trade route income, I have no idea if this is still necessary or not. If someone wants to sim this out, then be my guest. I don't think we really lose too much by going 30% science this turn, and better safe than sorry. Let me know if you want me to change something here.



Here are the Demograpics with us at 30% science. We are still sitting in first in Food, and have surged above the average in Production as well. GNP is close to the leaders at 30% science rate; at break-even 60% rate, we have a rating of 101, and at 100% science, we sit at 110. This number will go up considerably next turn with the completion of the library in the capital and the resumption of max research. Everything else looks peachy: tops in Land, second in military now (after the bloodletting between WPC and Germans last turn), still the only team with trade route income, etc.

Next turn is the big one for us. We grow 3 pop between turns and then plant our eighth city after the turn roll. Then we grow another 2 pop (and build our Hindu Shrine!) on the turn after that. We'll have 31 total pop producing 125 beakers/turn and Calendar incoming in three turns. In the meantime, do your best to avoid boredom as we wait out these long turns and let's work out a plan for our poor spearman in the barbarian hinterland.

[Sullla]

Turn 83 - 800BC

I'll remember this as the New Years turn. We waited for four whole days for the turn to roll around. I was heading out for the evening at 9:30pm... and the German team ended turn at 9:25pm. Heh. I moved our scouting units and took some quick pictures, then finished things up today.



Here was the situation in the northwest at the start of the turn. The barb warrior moved as expected onto the jungle hill to cut off the retreat path of our spear. Meanwhile, the Germans killed their barb warrior with an axe up at Worms, and yet another barb warrior appeared next to their borders. I waited to take any action until our team could weigh in, and the consensus was to kill our barb warrior with the axe in Tree Huggers. We had 99.1% odds and won with minimal damage:



As predicted, this gave us two XP and a free promotion. I'm thinking that Woodsman would likely be best, given all the jungle we're going to be passing through. I moved the spear onto the axe for protection, and the plan is to move over to the banana tile and heal there. Hopefully we'll get some peace up here after the latest wave of barbarians get cleared out.



In the east, our settler founded our eighth city of Forbidden Fruit on the desert hill. It grabbed the wet corn from Mansa's Muse as planned to grow quickly to size 2. Our scouting axe revealed the barb city of Alemanni, on a grassland hill with three barb warriors inside. Barb cities only spawn on the suggested "blue circle" tiles, which means that there is at least one food bonus at this city that we're not seeing yet. Our axe will be able to move SE-NE and reveal all of the tiles nearby so that we have full information on the city.

I agree that we definitely should start killing our way through these barb warriors while waiting for the city to hit size 2. Barb cities don't build workers at size 1, making it just a matter of time. No idea how long this city has been here, and the time to grow will depend on what resources it happens to be working. We will know more next turn after moving.



Moving up the scout revealed the CivFanatics capital of Indira, right where we thought it would be. The city has granary and library inside and is working both mine tiles pictured. There's quite a bit of production in the box, and I suspect the city is building either a settler or worker at present. For some reason, CFC has not settled a city to work their grassland pigs resource four tiles away from the capital, which is a bit of an odd choice. They settled in place on T0, making this their exact starting tile. I plan to move the scout South-Southeast next turn onto the plains hill, which should reveal a large number of tiles and still allow us to move into the capital on the following turn if desired. We definitely want to defog a trade route to CFC so that we can make us of their trade routes when we discover Currency tech. The WPC/German cities won't be enough by themselves to get us 2 trade routes in each city.

We also spotted the barb warrior incoming to CFC at the start of the turn, whose location I marked with a sign. If someone chats with CFC in the next few days, we may as well let them know that a barb warrior is on the way to their northwest border.



There's nothing much going on in the southwest. Axeman Lew could heal to full health by standing in place, so he did. Axeman Wyn moved up a tile and will go another tile northwest next turn. That will reveal at least four more tiles as he continues heading in the general direction of the stone location.

Here is our overview/tile micro picture for the turn:

We grew three pop points this turn: Mansa's Muse, Focal Point, and Gourmet Menu. Horse Feathers also finished its lighthouse between turns and picked up the newly christened 3/0/3 lake tile. We may want to alter our planning at Horse Feathers slightly to take advantage of one extra happiness there due to the free religion spread a couple turns back. The plan has the city stopping growth at size 5, but we can instead take it up to size 6, and the city has a crazy +10 food/turn rate at the moment. Given all the free time we have sitting around between turns, this may be worth investigating.

Elsewhere, Gourmet Menu has one turn of working an unimproved floodplains tile before the cottage completes next turn. Focal Point runs one turn of +4 food instead of +5 food to decrease the starvation penalty in Mansa's Muse. It will still grow at eot 85. Forbidden Fruit takes over the corn tile for a little while to get it started, and three workers will chop the spices forest into a completed granary next turn. This city will start much faster than Gourmet Menu/Tree Huggers thanks to the borrowed corn. As for Mansa's Muse:



We're a bit low on workable tiles in this region currently, so we'll use this turn to run two Priests and complete our Great Prophet. Not only will this create our shrine next turn, but it will also cause the city to hit 500 culture faster and pop the borders for Forbidden Fruit. Borders pop eot 86 with the Hindu Shrine in place. With luck, we'll also get a faster rate of religious spread with the shrine up and running (a shrine doubles the rate of passive spread for religions in Civ4). We are beelining for Calendar tech and then Currency right now; some method of manually spreading religion in the form of Monotheism/Organized Religion will likely be our next tech goal after that.

Speaking of technology, we turned the research rate on in full this turn, timed along with the completion of a library in the capital. We are producing 122 base beakers / 147 beakers after modifiers, good for Calendar in four turns at eot 86. While it's a bit hard to say how that compares to the other teams in this game (at least the real competitors we haven't met yet, obviously we're crushing the weak nearby teams) I would guess that we are either leading in research or close to it. By way of comparison, the Pitboss #2 India team that everyone was so freaked out about was making 97 beakers/turn on this same date at 100% science. We're significantly ahead of that pace in this game.



Here are the Demographics after playing turn (and after the CivPlayers whip). We are lapping the field in Food (despite working two Priest specialists) and have seized the top GNP mark as well. The Rival Best of 121 in GNP is the highest number we have seen so far in this game, and we are beating it comfortably with no bonus from other civs knowing Calendar tech and standard 20% pre-requisite bonus. (We may need to start sandbagging our GNP by running break-even rates after we discover Currency in about 10 turns. Otherwise we're going to stand out too much.) Yes, some of this does represent culture, but our numbers are still impressive.

Along with the top score in Food and GNP, we have now also ascended to the #2 spot in Production as well. We aren't even trying to emphasize production, we just happen to have a lot of population working a lot of improved tiles. We are also still first in Land Area (beating the Creative team), second in Power behind only the warring German team, and second in "Population" as calculated by the in-game geometric tally. In terms of the more accurate Total Pop statistic, the game stands as follows:

Total Pop
Realms Beyond: 29 pop, 8 cities
UniversCiv: 28 pop, 7 cities
CivFr: 27 pop, 6 cities
CivFanatics: 25 pop, 7 cities
CivPlayers: 22 pop, 6 cities
Apolyton: 20 pop, 5 cities
Spanish Apolyton: 16 pop, 4 cities
We Play Civ: 16 pop, 4 cities
Germans: 14 pop, 5 cities

Did I mention that we also grow two more pop points and build the Hindu Shrine next turn? While we don't want to get too cocky, our situation at the moment is extremely strong. Apolyton is the only team truly competitive with us in technology, and their working of Scientist specialists has stunted their growth significantly.

Finally, note that another team did gain access to trade routes this turn (check the Rival Best in Exports/Imports). Someone either discovered Sailing tech or completed a road to another team with whom they had Open Borders. We can narrow down the culprits: because their score is 10, it's likely a team with 5 cities pulling 2 commerce trade routes in each one. Apolyton is therefore the most likely candidate, but it's far from guaranteed. I'm not an expert on how that Demographic number is calculated. Sadly we are no longer unique in this category.

I really enjoy these turns, I just wish they would come along more often than once every four days.

[Sullla]

Turn 84 - 775BC

The German team logged into the game exactly once last turn. They evidently played their turns, logged out... and never logged in again, as we all sat and waited another 36 hours to no purpose whatsoever. I mean... it's one thing if you genuinely need more time for discussion, but at this point they're just screwing with everyone else to no purpose.

Anyway:



Up in the northwest, our injured spear moved back into our territory. I promoted the winning axeman to Woodsman I as requested, and had him sit in place for this turn. Healing with take the axe from 4.3 strength to 4.8 strength, and that should be enough to move out again. Hopefully we can get further to the west this time before being driven back by barbarian spawn.



More interesting were events over here in the east, where our Great Prophet constructed the Hindu Shrine. (Sojourner Truth? Interesting "old man" graphic there! ) The shrine currently gives us +3 gold/turn for our three Hindu cities and doubles the passive rate of religion spread. With so many unconverted cities close nearby, we'll have excellent odds of seeing some more free religious expansions over the upcoming turns. The shrine is also worth additional culture, and Mansa's Muse will hit 500 culture and expand borders again at eot 87. This is non-trivial for the development of Forbidden Fruit, which will pick up a jungle/grassland spice tile and the floodplains tile in the border expansion.

We also gained more vision of Alemanni by moving up our axeman. I mentioned last turn that barb cities only appear on the recommended "blue circle" tiles that the game engine likes so much, and indeed we found two different food resources this turn, grassland pigs and clams. Along with its six river tiles, this instantly makes Alemanni an extreme high quality location. The barb city has been working the pigs tile (+3 food), and we know it's been there since at least T81 when we first spotted it, which means the city will hit size 2 on T89 at the latest. Probably a turn or two before that. Our axe should go ahead and start killing the barb warriors one per turn right now, and it looks like we'll have excellent odds to claim this spot around T87-88. Another extremely good city location completely for free!



As I said last turn, I decided to move the scout South-Southeast onto the plains hill in CFC territory. This revealed 13 different tiles, including their second city of Terasvin, which is also the Jewish Holy City. Terasvin has a granary and nothing else at present. We also have confirmation that their starting area looks almost identical to ours, as we long suspected via C&D scouting. I'm open for suggestions on where to move from here, although my strongest inclination is to move into Indira next turn. It's on a hill and on their road network, and would reveal another 8-10 tiles. Let me know.



Southwest remains pretty quiet for now. The barb warrior moved up, and we had to cover the workers with our axeman for safety's sake. We could have killed the barb warrior at the start of the turn, but then our workers would be at risk for more barbs moving out of the fog from the west. Much safer to do things this way, and we do still have another axe in Gourmet Menu if we need it. I'll be looking forward to the Stonehenge border expansion down here, if only to give more warning of barb activity.

Axeman Wyn has found even more floodplains tiles unclaimed by any team in the far west. This looks like yet another fertile region to go after with future expansion. Stone city first, then we'll go from there. He'll move another tile northwest next turn and keep defogging more terrain.

Overview picture for the turn. Horse Feathers and Tree Huggers grew between turns, and amazingly no city is planned to increase next turn (though there are quite a few that are 2t away from growth). I'm sure that some people will be unhappy with what I did with the workers near Horse Feathers. I did read the discussion about partially cottaging near the capital, but we had no immediate plans to finish that tile improvement. What I wanted to do was finish the road SE of Horse Feathers, which makes it significantly easier to shift workers between Horse Feathers and Gourmet Menu. This road was 1t from completion, and I believe it was more useful to us than partial completion on a cottage that we don't need at present. I dumped the other spare worker turn into the grassland mine next turn Horse Feathers, for the purpose of having 2t into a tile improvement rather than 1t into two different ones. Feel free to criticize, but that's how I preferred to play this one. It's a bit of a moot point next turn, as the road finishes at the silk tile and the workers move to start chopping/plantationing it.

Other issues of note here... We are working the unimproved silk forest (1/2/1) at Horse Feathers this turn. We could alternately work a coastal tile (2/0/3) instead if desired, although it won't be enough to hit size 6 this turn. Not really sure which one is better, any thoughts? Workers triple chopped an instant granary for Forbidden Fruit this turn, getting it off to a fast start. I have some thoughts for how to micro the workers in that area in upcoming turns (I don't really like the ideas that have been floating around, sorry!) but I'll probably post them tonight or tomorrow. We finished a third floodplains cottage at Gourmet Menu and started the wheat farm at Seven Tribes.

Our research hits a perfect target this turn with no beakers lost to rounding: 129 base beakers + 1 beaker (the free one you get every turn) * 1.2 pre-requisite modifier = 156 total beakers. I always like it when that happens. Note that with the shrine in place we are only losing 49 gold/turn with our eight cities. We've also gone from 74 base beakers/turn on T78 to our current 129 base beakers/turn in just six turns. And there's a library completing in Mansa's Muse next turn. Yikes.



The Demos are... pretty good. First in Food, first in GNP, first in Land, first in Total Pop, first in Trade Route incoming, tied for first in Production, second in Power, second in geometric Population. There's not much more to say here. We're rolling the snowball down the hill, and it's starting to get pretty freaking big.

I've ended our turn as we have no more moves to do, but there's plenty of room for discussion, diplomacy, and planning. Let's get to it.

[Sullla]

Turn 85 - 750BC

The turn we spotted borders in the west.



Axeman Wyn moved forward a tile and spotted the borders of CivPlayers (Darius/Aztecs) to the west. This is one of our main competitors, the team that built Oracle one turn before we did and used it to take Code of Laws. We have CivPlayers and CivFr as the enemy teams doing the best thus far, with Apolyton close behind them (then a fairly significant dropoff to CivFanatics and UniversCiv). We now know that they are our neighbor to the west across the lake. While that's not the best luck, we can hardly complain after starting so close to the two minnows of WPC and German team. Spanish Apolyton is the other hopelessly behind civ, and we know they are to the east of CFC. We weren't going to get all of the pushover civs as neighbors.

I saw people pushing to avoid contact in this thread, and I do not agree with that. I am a big fan of always making contact as quickly as possible. Contact allows you to carry out diplomacy, start tracking bar graphs, give us all the APT mod information, and so on. I would meet their team next turn and go right ahead with settling our planned stone location. But if people would prefer to settle the stone first and then move to make contact, we could do that as well. I'd almost rather make contact, sign some kind of non-aggression deal, and then settle our forward spot. Still, this is a team decision, and I leave it up to the group.

Our plan has us landing a settler on T90 and founding our stone city on T91, six turns from present. I don't think we can speed this up in any meaningful way, as we currently have neither settler nor galley, and we produce both in the next four turns through use of a double whip and forest chop. I think we just need to cross our fingers for the next couple of turns that they won't settle here. We can move forward and try to have some kind of discussion with them about the subject, or keep their team in the dark and hope for good luck. Your call. The stone is at least six tiles away from that city, which hopefully will deter them from an aggressive plant forward.

Anyway, that was the biggest news of the turn by far, but of course other stuff took place as well.



I attacked with the Woodsman axe in the north, winning and taking some moderate damage. (We actually killed three barb warriors this turn.) We can sit in place and heal (10% recovery rate each turn = 0.5 health and 4t) or we can move a tile back southeast into our borders to heal (20% recovery rate each turn = 1.0 health and 2t). I probably favor moving into our territory as it gives us a little bit more flexibility should more barbs wander down from another direction. Thoughts?

The spearman moved to sit on the banana resource and heal there to prevent random jungle spread.



Axeman Dantski attacked and killed the first of three barb warriors inside Alemanni, taking very minimal damage in the process and gaining 2 XP. The axe is now 4.3 health. I plan to promote to City Raider I next turn and keep on killing those barb warriors. Alemanni is still working the grassland pigs resource (3 food/turn), and if it's been there since T79 as we suspect, it should grow to size 2 in just a couple more turns. Looking good here.

I have not moved the axeman inside Forbidden Fruit or any of the three workers north of the city. We need to draw up a changed plan for this region, as the city got a free spread of Hinduism this turn. (Thanks, Hindu Shrine!) Now borders will expand in four more turns, eot 88 or available to workers on T89. Although I generally agree with the idea to send one worker over to road the bananas tile, since that is clearly the best tile to improve in this region, we also need to consider what we're going to be doing with Mansa's Muse. The old plan had it getting a grassland cottage, which we desperately need. Let's go over this together and hash something out for the next 5-6 turns. Our old plan should be fine everywhere else. I'll try to take another look at this tomorrow as well.



Our scout moved Northeast-North into Indira this turn. There's actually a tiny little river just to the south of the city, which I bet has been lots of fun for the CFC workers to deal with as they move around. This revealed the predicted additional two floodplains cottages to the north of their capital, both of which have grown into villages. I plan to send the scout along that road to the north next turn, where there's likely another city to be found. It would be nice to know if there's a CFC city on the same body of water as Alemanni, which would make post-Currency trade routes very easy to obtain.

Axeman Lew killed another barb warriors in the southwest by Seven Tribes, taking him to 7 XP. Moving onto the hill in that combat also revealed yet another barb warrior incoming from deeper to the south. This should get Lew to experience point #8 when it arrives in a couple more turns. Heroic Epic here we come. I'll probably promote this axe to Shock next turn to speed up the healing process; it's currently at about 3.5 health.



Mansa's Muse is still starving, but converting its overflow and production into a perfect Expansive worker bonus: 16 -> 20 production/turn. The old plan was to start a grassland cottage with two workers this turn, and finish it next turn, ending the starvation diet. The new plan is... well, we don't know yet. I'm pointing this out in the hopes that we can figure out something here.

We had no population growths this turn, and we are working exactly the same tiles as last turn. Our research went up due to the library completion in Mansa's Muse. We are making 138 base beakers / 166 true beakers this turn, and sadly losing 0.8 beakers to rounding error. Ah well. We are at 349/630 beakers on Calendar, enough to finish the tech in 2t with plenty of overflow and extra gold left over in the bank.



And the Demos are also looking extremely good. We are first in everything that matters except Power. CivPlayers has a size 9 capital, which is why the geometric Population stat has them so far in front. We actually have more Total Pop than they do.

Still plenty to cover before we finish our turn, I'll leave the rest up to group discussion.

[Sullla]

Turn 86 - 725BC

A quiet turn, building small advantages.



Not much going on up here in the northwest. I checked the time to heal on our recovering spearman, and realized that I made a mistake in describing the situation here last turn. Units heal 10% of their maximum health each turn they rest in neutral territory, that was I thing that I knew for sure. However, they actually only heal 15% of their max health inside your own borders, not 20%. The 20% number is the rate at which they heal inside your own cities, not simply your borders. My mistake. Therefore, instead of moving 1t + healing for 3t + moving back 1t, it's better simply to heal the axeman in place for 4t at the neutral territory 10% rate. As such I did not move this unit on this turn; the axe will go from 2.8 -> 3.3 health next turn. We can still change if desired for some reason.



The biggest action of the turn was probably attacking the barb city with axeman Dantksi. We went in unpromoted at 96.6% odds and did emerge victoriously, taking a few hits in the process. (Our axe was hit 4 times in the combat log, but still could have absorbed 2 more hits without dying, so I guess it wasn't all that close.) The axe was sitting at roughly 1.5 health after that fight, and I decided I didn't want to take any chances with this unit at low health. I double-promoted to City Raider II, which gives us over 99% odds for the last warrior. If the barb city doesn't grow next turn, I'll move the axe onto the northeast hill tile to reveal more tiles.

In this part of our territory, Mansa's Muse double-whipped its worker (size 7 -> size 5) to drop out of starvation diet. We get a very large amount of production overflow here which will go into another worker; I'll post a screenshot of that next turn. This is all good stuff given how badly we need more workers to develop all these cities. Whipping Mansa's Muse also freed up a grassland cottage for Focal Point to work, as it grew to size 5 this turn.

Over at Forbidden Fruit, the workers have new roads in place on the spices and southeast of the city, plus a road halfway done on the bananas. They will start the spice plantation next turn as Calendar comes in, finish it T88, and then get to work on the banana resource as the city borders expand. We also will get a border expansion from Mansa's Muse next turn as it hits 500 culture.



I moved the scout in CFC territory NE-N-N-NW this turn and defogged the tiles shown. We found Daivagati, their fourth city, and a tiny little four tile lake. Daivagati has religion inside, but it must be recent because the borders have not spread yet. CFC doesn't seem to have all that much in the way of infrastructure in the cities we've seen thus far:

Indira: Palace, Granary, Library
Terasvin: Granary
Daivagati: Granary

That's not all bad for them, since it means they have likely been putting their production into workers and settlers. Nevertheless, we have larger cities and more cities while also have more infrastructure too, despite their Fast Workers. I'll take it as a good sign.

Note that CFC just chopped a forest two tiles west of their capital this turn, on the spot I marked with a temporary sign. I plan to send the scout E-NE next turn onto the sheep tile, and then double back to the south if there's nothing further in that direction.



Here in the southwest, I brought down the axeman from Gourmet Menu to play zone defense, which allowed axeman Lew to kill the nearby barb warrior. The northern axe can cover any of our workers as needed if barb units pop up, or retreat back into Gourmet Menu in a single turn. I promoted Lew to Shock before fighting for the healing, but unfortunately we got a somewhat unlucky combat result, taking more hits than expected. The unit now sits at 3.2 health, about where it started the turn. The good news is that this unit picked up XP #8, and with all the barb activity down there it's just a matter of time before this unit goes Heroic.

Moving onto the hill tile revealed a whole bunch of tundra wasteland nothingness.

The old plan for the workers here simply said "they keep doing what they were doing before." That didn't seem correct and so I made a slight change here. One worker finished the wheat farm, the second worker on that same tile moved NE-N to finish the plains cottage to the north of Seven Tribes, and this allowed the final worker who had been building said cottage to move NW and start a floodplains cottage there. This allows the two northern workers to finish the floodplains cottage southwest of Gourmet Menu on the same turn that it grows to size 6. (The southern worker roads the wheat tile over the next two turns, which is useful for movement purposes and we could definitely use the health from the wheat down the road.)

My apologies if we were planning something different with the worker moves here. It seemed to me that roading in place on the wheat this turn forced us to waste a worker turn later and delay the SW floodplains cottage by a turn. I do my best to keep up with all of the plans as they come in, but it can be confusing sometimes.



Most people wanted to move away from CivPlayers without making contact, and axeman Wyn followed those directions. He will move north next turn and defog this region in preparation for our settler.

Overview picture for the turn. Mansa's Muse is working its two resources and the three plains cottages. Forbidden Fruit still has the corn tile for the moment and will hit size 2 next turn. Focal Point and Tree Huggers are on their obvious tiles. The old plan had Focal Point swapping to a worker here, but my understanding is that we want it to grow to size 6 now because we just double whipped / overflowed into a pair of workers at Mansa's Muse. Let me know if this is not correct; I have it remaining on library for the moment.

The capital has swapped off of its temporary worker to start growing again, timed with the connection of Calendar resources. Did we decide to stick with barracks here? Obviously we are just dumping production into something while growing, but let me know if the idea was to put that minimal production into an axe instead. I figure we don't want a unit here due to production decay. Horse Feathers picked up a forest chop into its settler this turn, and as such works the 2/0/3 coastal tile instead of the 1/1/1 non-forest silks tile. (I took this picture before making the swap; it's since been corrected in-game.) Next turn we double-whip the galley in HF and overflow into the settler to complete it. Gourmet Menu has grown onto the new plains riverside cottage tile, and Seven Tribes works the two improved resource tiles, cows and wheat. In the future, we'll have to remember to farm the plains tile northwest of the wheat to chain irrigation to it.

We made 141 base / 170 modified beakers this turn and will finish Calendar tech at end of turn. I'm reasonably certain that we will be the first team to discover that tech. We definitely want to make sure that we are the ones to land the Mausoleum, and with the Great Wall and Pyramids still untaken thus far, I like our chances. (I do expect the Pyramids to fall in the next 10 turns, given the stone resources we've seen and at least one team trying to rush for it.)



We're tops in everything that matters on the Demos screen except Production and Power. Whipping away the 0/4 plains tile at Mansa's Muse is responsible for the drop in Production. However, in our entire empire of 32 population points, we are not working a single "normal" mine tile (just the gold resource and iron resource) and nevertheless are still right up there in production with everyone else. GNP and Food are dominant. I checked our 60% science rate, which is exactly break-even this turn, and we are still #1 in GNP by about 10 points. At 0% science, we are still second in GNP behind what is almost certainly Apolyton running at 100% rate. Looking good here, looking good.