[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T29

I went back to get visibility on the city tile. Turns out I could have gotten it going around to the other diagonal with the city on a hill (PH no less). Anyway...



The city is empty, the bronze is mined, but no roads, thus no axes just yet. While I was logged in, Sisu finished chopping the forest. This looks to me like 14 worker turns so far (5 on the farm, 1 traveling to the bronze and 4 more to mine it, 1 to the forest and 3 to chop). So, worker T15? With that setup he could have had one on T12 IF that is where he started. I have no idea if that is the case. I could probably dig into this and work backwards to learn more, but I just don't care at this point.

Next scouting step: alt+click, NW/NW? Can scouts enter a city tile if the city is empty? I know it would be unable to capture the city, but that looks like the next best tile for scouting purposes. If not there, then SW/SW, followed by SW/NW or whatever looks good.



Oh noes! No longer #1 in crop yield. Doom! Gloom!! We are certainly not commerce heavy in our start.

[spacetyrantxenu]

The first thing I thought when I saw no unit was that next turn we should go NW/NW, unless he builds a unit at the end of this turn.* Since we know/think he has no warrior to swat our scout with there is no retribution available.

Now if you want to be a real asshole we could declare war and sit on his corn until he builds a warrior. In that case I'd rather have the first half of the timer so that we can move our scout out of the way before he can kill it, but that isn't possible for this turn since he played first. Well he really didn't play first. You guys essentially played at the same time -- you logged in first, then he logged in, then he ended turn, then you ended turn, all within ten minutes start to finish. If we'd have to get technical about who was first/second, whatever, I guess we'd have to think more about it. But I'm kinda tempted to sit on his corn until he makes us move.

What do you think?

Failing that, as long as a warrior doesn't appear in the city tile next turn I say NW (are you sure? YES!)/NW as long as we play before him. That guarantees the scout a safe exit because even if he builds a warrior he isn't allowed to / can't kill us if we're on the same tile he is. Without roads that warrior only moves one tile, so no there and back attack.

*I'd want to rerun the power numbers to make sure he hasn't built a unit since last time I checked a few turns ago.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

He may not even be using the corn if he's making another worker/settler, as he'll get a better yield from the bronze mine (6 vs. 5). Anyway, a quick WB test shows that a scout can't go into an empty barb city. My assumption is that non-combat units can't enter hostile cities. So, no bueno here. Probably (certainly) not worth the risk anyway.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Merde. We'll just send a chariot next time.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T30 - Because of my shitty scouting this morning (two turns ago), our scout had to backtrack this turn.




Boldly thinks SW/?? next turn, I say make it simple and just go NW onto the forested hill. If there's a bear on the other side that's as safe as we were going to get, because there is a river to cross as well (1/3 chance). Sisu is working the grass copper mine this turn (2/4/0) rather than the corn (5/0/0) because he hates growth, or because he's IND and up to something....Do we know if he teched Mysticism and is trying to out 'Henge de Gaulle? Would be an audacious plan, but not impossible since we opted for growth rather than 100% 'Henge. I hope not, but really, if he did we can always just try to kill him and take it from him later.

We now have three improved tiles at the capital.




Mmmmm, tasty hammers. Three more turns of settler building and we're back to wonder whoring. I guess if Sisu IS going for SH and uses up several forests for it, I'm OK with that. Our 9 forests will get chopped into something useful one day too.

We got graph visibility against Suttree so I swapped our full EP allocation onto Oxyphenbutazone (forever after to be called Oxy). We'll probably lose graphs on Suttree as he catches up to our spending but hopefully we'll stabilize spending against each other and we can keep his graphs. For now, a three team comparison. Culture and Espionage are still irrelevant and not pictured.

Score


GNP


MFG


Food


Power

Demographics:




Unless there is more than one solution for the population numbers (and there may be for all I know, I'm not using a solver for this) someone has built a second city since there are two at size one and now 10 cities composing the solution set:

Rival Total = 95,000

3 @ size 3 = 63,000
5 @ size 2 = 30,000
2 @ size 1 = 2,000

I just rechecked civstats, the reason I didn't notice the new city there first is because it wasn't there when I checked when logging into the game. Suttree planted it while I was playing thet turn, before I took my F9 screenshot. So Suttree wins the prize for first to 2 cities. I'm sure we'll see several other teams settling their second cities over the next few turns, we're only 4 turns away ourselves.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T31 - Scout hates what he sees because he's a jealous bastard:




Cottaging the entire river that city is at +10 food at size 5, since that is wet corn. With 4 hills plus elephants that city will have very good production. Massive food, great production, lots of commerce, this site is capital city material. It has to be better than the (scoff!) dry corn/plains cow Sisu has at his capital now, nevermind that ELEVEN of that city's tiles are on a river already. Well who cares about that, in the new city it would be TWELVE river tiles in the BFC. Then there's another FP river system winding through the east of Sisu's capital, and the river valley between his capital and ours is mostly closer to him but that's a third river.

It's like the map team just wants us to go to war....

Nothing to show at the capital, I put the first turn into roading the horse tile, finish it next turn and move back to the cow for two turns of roads.

Demographics:




Top 5 cities are all size 3 now, including ours, so there is one new size 3 city. That +15000 difference between a size 2 and size 3 city equals the change in global population. G'day.

Today's population count:

total rival pop = 110,000
rival cities = 10

4 @ size 3 = 84,000
4 @ size 2 = 24,000
2 @ size 1 = 2,000 (Sisu's capital, Oxy's 2nd city)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Wow. That's some nice land for sure. But, before I complain too much, we have a good amount of land close to our capital that we haven't uncovered yet. For the scout, I say screw it, go NW/NW even though it's flat. We're going to lose it eventually. But if you want to limp along safely at 1tile/turn, that's fine too.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Why tempt fate? If we go one tile we lose nothing. If we go two tiles and lose the scout we've lost an unknown but possibly significant amount of map information. Not worth the risk to gain one extra scout movement this far from land we really care about scouting.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T32

Why tempt fate? Because you survive!



But at what cost?



Bottom line, Xenu is a wuss. Only gimps move a scouting unit one move out of fear. A better look at Sisu's capital:



Better watch out for those cows, eh? Xenu, what spit out some numbers! What did the world build?



Xenu, did we win yet?

[spacetyrantxenu]

All I see is a palace in that city close up, so I'm really curious what he's been building so far. If he gets the 'henge he really may have to die.

According to my calculations we have up to 93.6% of the game remaining to play, so it's too early to call it yet.

Today's second population count:

total rival pop = 115,000 (up 5,000 from last turn)
rival cities = 10 (no new cities visible from Civstats)

4 @ size 3 = 84,000
5 @ size 2 = 30,000 (Sisu's capital grew)
1 @ size 1 = 1,000 (Oxy's 2nd city)

I think you could have done that.... I'll look over the other F9 numbers later and report back if there's anything worth noting.