[SPOILERS]Acrid Pinot and other Pindicator anagrams

[NobleHelium]

Sounds tempting if we're going through Chemistry and not Astronomy.

So we tech Machinery, bulb PP, then tech Construction-Engineering, bulb Chemistry, and then the last GS would bulb Liberalism?

[NobleHelium]

Wait...that doesn't work because Optics & Astronomy are above Liberalism in the bulb priority. So we'd manually tech Liberalism then? Or you were thinking we'd do it through Astronomy I guess...

[pindicator]

The idea would be to bulb the Great Sci into Liberalism before teching Machinery. If Rego or someone else gets within sniffing distance of Lib then we'd finish the tech and take Nationalism.

But while i like the idea for a plan of teching towards Sci Meth and Physics / Communism, I don't think that's as good a choice as teching Military Tradition and Gunpowder for cuirs to conquer Ichabod's lands.

[pindicator]

Turn 126

It finally happened! We finally got a free spread of Judaism!!!!

To one of Ichabod's cities...

We settled our next city, Candy Here:



Yes, our last 3 cities have been in a line, because we can only literally expand in a straight line. I guess we could expand north of Spa Rag, too -- in another straight line

Inside the city, we're aiming to pop borders quick and then improve the sheep with an inbound worker:



To the southwest we sent our workboat scouting, and finally found the fabled scooter's borders!



Then it was time to use our Great Scientist:



1 turn at break-even was enough to finish off Education this turn.
Abroad, Rego & Ruff both teched Compass, so we're the only people without it. This is making me a little jumpy; I don't want to be the only one without galleons, especially since we already have a bit of a target on our backs. But as soon as we finish our Liberalism shot to pick up Military Tradition, then we'll use a GS to bulb Astronomy.

Hired another scientist specialist at Hick Test:



The plan here is to slowly work down the stored up food, and then when we hit near-0, we'll just pick up all the citizens and starve away 1 population. We'll only have to starve 1 pop out for HT to sneak in a Great Scientist before any of our other cities get one out.

And we're finally exploring north. Here's what we know of Ruff so far:



I keep telling myself I'm not going to bitch about the land, but when I see everybody else's islands and compare them with mine, i kind of get upset. Oh well, we're winning in spite of it, so there

[pindicator]

This may be way out of left field, but i've been thinking about my pick of leader / civ and i thinking Vicky of Sumeria wasn't so hot. Coupling FIN with ziggurats means i really needed to REX hard to get more out of early courthouses. Now they are still cheaper in hammer cost, which is a nice boon in itself, but i'm starting to think Egypt or France would have paired better. We haven't been below 50% at breakeven all game, and have only 4 zigs built - wait, 3.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, I've actually been thinking that Sumeria has been pretty meh for us. It could be that Sumeria is overhyped (by myself included) and isn't as good as it looks without ORG.

But I don't think France would have been better - the extra musketeer movement is pretty useless on a map with this much water. And war chariots wouldn't have done anything. We would have gotten some use out of the obelisk at RUO, but I don't think the chance of that happening was large enough to justify picking Egypt over Sumeria before the start of the game.

[pindicator]

Heh, if we had France I don't think I would even be bothering with Mil Tradition. Just get drafted musketeers and galleons ASAP and overrun whomever we want.

[pindicator]

Turn 129

We're past the halfway mark of the golden age, and still churning along.

Ichabod teched Optics; Scooter teched Civil Service; and rego is teching Machinery. Looks like the way of the world is to get to Astronomy, so we can't be too far behind. But I'm not worried. We may beat them all to Astronomy at the pace we're going.

Last two turns we 1-turned Compass and Alphabet, and now we have a nice pile of gold ready to burn through Nationalism with.

We also offered Ruff a map trade last turn, and he accepted, so incoming pictures -- after the write up here. Also, if I was Ichabod I'd be asking why Rego, Scooter, and Ruff all got stone on an island in first ring of islands outside their starting area and he didn't. I mean, it's farther out for us -- the stone we took at Candy Here literally was the closest stone for us at 21 tiles away from our capital -- but at least we didn't pick a leader/civ combination that would have been screwed by other people having access to stone when we didn't. (All that easy stone makes me wonder why nobody built Pyramids this game.)

NHL is hiring more scientists, getting ready for it's great scientist due in a few more turns:



We're also finishing up a settler that will be used to head west. We need to lay a pair of settlers down on an island before Rego can get to them. So longbows, workers, the whole lot -- they're all headed west.

I kind of liked the micro at HCL lately:



2 turns ago we chopped a lighthouse out perfectly to 60/60 - and this turn we finished the plantation at the banana to be just enough food to grow to size 3.

I don't know if we'll grab anything farther south. Really, the next land grab for us is going to be Ichabod's cities.


And at end of turn, we got a new scientist.



Just like we got one the turn before

We finally get to open up our GNP and show off our demos at 100% in a golden age:



I'm missing the obligatory moai screenshot, aren't I?

[pindicator]

Here's some screenshots of the starting areas now that we have a map swap

Ichabod:





Ruff:





Scooter:





Rego:





And us:

[NobleHelium]

At least it explains why Ichabod didn't try to build the Pyramids - he probably assumed he'd be beat handily to them by someone with stone. He must have scouted out some of the stone locations with his ships, since everyone is better at scouting than us.