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

[spacetyrantxenu]

T131 - Held the turn up a few hours, oops. I play when my kid sleeps, what can I do?




Halvgud, the Sisub is getting support from a few other players. I'm telling myself that he's getting these sweetheart deals so he can stand up to Suttree rather than trying to dog our team, but the net effect is the same. He is getting free/cutrate essential materiel and it will make the job harder to finish him off. But I don't blame anyone for it.

This must be nice for WilliamLP, though I'll resist being jealous since we got a nice barb capture early on (The Boathouse).




There's basically no chance that I can get the chariot in there to raze the city before he can capture it. My assumption is that if he's already beating down the garrison the city is likely already size 2 so he can keep it. Otherwise he'd just wait. Maybe my chariot in the area has forced him to try capturing the city early, but I doubt it. It probably falls this turn and I'll see more of his culture as I move forward next turn. Anyway, I imagine the diplomatic fallout would be unpleasant, this would effectively be the same as killing a settler from his point of view. Not worth it.

Not much going on around the empire, just workers churning out food and connecting resources.




Here you can see the work gang that powered through getting the next dye resource connected. The Boathouse is immediately able to work it, so there's a small boost. I've also offered a few trades out on the international market. I'm trying to get gold and gems for our dyes. I offered deals to both Oxy and WilliamLP, basically 1 for 3 trades to both of them. They each get dyes in exchange for a happy they don't have (I think, unless I missed something on the relations screen and they've already traded for dyes), plus two health resources each that they don't have (unless I missed those trades too). The idea is that they're giving me two happies for one happy + 2 healths in return. Seems fair enough. If they don't think about us having MC then it will look like a very generous deal, hopefully they'll both take it.

The only other player I can really make a deal with to get a forge happy resource is Suttree and I'd rather not. There's a pretty effective ad hoc international trade blockade going on and I don't want to break it. Only two players (Kuro and Sisub) have open borders with Suttree and no one is really trading him much of anything that I can remember-- we're swapping one health resource. I'd like to keep him isolated as long as he's leading the game, and probably other players would too.

In the north I'm ferrying units around as always.




I'm not certain what to build in We Steal, but I feel like we should get the city in a position so it can 2 pop and finish Moai immediately if it is needed. Basically get a few hammers, up to four, into a spear or axe (whichever we need, I've opted for a spear for now) and then be able to double whip later to finish Moai. We still want to build it a few more places and let this city grow before we finish it, since it's useless right now, but if we get into an emergency and need to cash in the fail gold we've already accumulated this is where we have to finish it. For T132 we're going to swap builds a bit, What We Have will drop the Moai build for a turn and spend T132 on a forge while whip overflow in Stars Above goes into Moai. That will net us 90+ gold just on the overflow up there. T133 we'll go back to building Moai in What We Have until it's 1 turn from finishing it. By then some other city should have in the Possum Kingdom.

Here's our current builds. Basically a lot of markets got swapped to forges, yay IND.




I'm thinking more and more that this is a horrible time to have to go kill Sisub while we have so many good economic buildings we need to build. Sucks, but oh well. Inside ten turns hopefully we'll have a lot of this handled and can get on with finishing him. I haven't bulbed Machinery yet, I'm not going to until we have a city that can actually begin building crossbows. I'm almost certain on this one but haven't checked the bulb preference list -- us finishing Construction won't change the GE's priority from Machinery right? I mean...we can't tech Engineering until Machinery is in, so we can't bulb that. I don't see why it would change. May be worth verifying but I think we're OK.

I don't think we've posted this lately, here's the statistics screen.




So we look pretty light on infrastructure. A casualty of awful production and building a lot of wealth partial wonders. Also, we've killed a lot of barbarians and a fair number of other units, too. Those five chariots are still bad, losing a few on one turn set us back a bit early on. Anyway, I don't feel too terrible about the number of workers we have now, thanks to the Reds and automated workers.

End of turn demographics right before I rolled it:




The good news is that Wetbandit's golden age ended when I rolled the turn. But I don't think it moved us ahead in any of these categories. We're still the same Slowzantium as before.

I didn't play T132 yet, I don't like playing double turns especially since theoretically I should get some feedback about things in a team game.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Play both turns if you want. We're not on a split timer yet and I don't want to have to play.

The GE bulb preference is Machinery first. That's the first off the list. So, if we have cleared MC then Machinery is guaranteed up next. Check the mouse over. No need to wait on it in my opinion. We can put spare hammers into crossbow double whips instead of whatever else. Even if we finish Construction we will not bulb Engineering, so no point in waiting and paying unit maintenance on the GE.

What did retep do with the trireme? Also, W/R/T attacking sisub, lets prepare and wait until suttree moves in. Let him fight a turn or two longer than us. Maybe sisub repositions troops favorably for us. Lets put a road on the jungle hill soon, the one willLP is occupying 2NW of sisub's city.

[spacetyrantxenu]

As far as I'm aware Retep's trireme went back to the north. He may have just been showing it to us to let us know not to mess with him. Kinda like I'm thinking we should get one crossbow and catapult onto the western border or in view of WilliamLP's chariot as soon as we can. The crossbow should be an indicator to go somewhere else, although with him having HAs and cats himself it isn't as big a deterrent as it might be.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T132 - I played quickly this morning and didn't have time for a lot of pictures.




Basically we're growing, workers are scrambling to keep up with city growth, the settler is on the move in the north, fail gold is being built in Stars Above (92 gold for this turn's overflow, more coming soon with a forest chop as we clear the tile we'll found the new city on), and we're building forges in a lot of places before we go back to finish markets. I spent the GE on Machinery since I hadn't thought about paying the 1gpt on maintenance, seems silly to spend it just to delay learning the tech. Why delay at all? Known tech bonus is all I was thinking of before, but I don't want to pay 1gpt for it. Construction will finish next turn, then we'll have to figure out how and where to build units because we do need to be ready when our 10 turns of peace is up, on the chance that Halvgud loses his mind again and wants to attack our center. As of now most everything is positioned around the left and right flanks of our loooooong southern front line, to be prepared against WilliamLP and Suttree, respectively. Hopefully the units won't be needed and we can kill the Sisub at our leisure once we get these necessary infrastructure builds completed, but don't count on it.

I forgot to take a shot of F9, oh well. It probably doesn't show anything different from the last 40 turns anyway. That's probably all, let me know if you have any questions, I may be able to conjure up more details.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T133 - I logged in and Oxy had a counter offer for my dyes:




So instead of trading away a pair of spare health resources I'll trade away 30 gold. So for a minimum of ten turns (unless there's an unexpected war declaration) we'll get a happy boost, 2 happies anywhere we get a forge built. So for 3gpt that isn't bad. And there's always the chance he forgets to cancel later on, or doesn't choose to. Accepted.

In the west our chariot headed back toward home after exploring the ruins of the barbarian city. WilliamLP is clearly baiting us, right?




We're OK on worker labor right now so I avoided starting an international incident and left the W3 Axe and three workers alive. For future purposes we'll need to spot where he builds his Heroic Epic since he's unlocked it.

Here's a wide view, mostly unhelpful map:




Not visible from this view is that the workers are still hacking away in the jungle, usually improving about 2 tiles per turn between The Boathouse, Tyler, and Swamp People. It's enough to keep up with population growth in those three cities, so up we go.

Exploration in the north reveals something not at all unexpected in the ice:




When we can afford it (which is now) we need to send a settler this way to claim the silver. Two additional happy in every forge city? Yes please. And marble is great for failing ALL THE WONDERS.

We ran things a little tight getting in construction this turn after giving Oxy the 30 gold. Made it with no beakers or gold to spare. I had to change two cities to compensate for being a few gold and beakers short. Happy Face:




Finishes the forge this turn anyway and had enough spare hammers to pull off the plains forest for a citizen specialist. The 3 beakers from representation give us what we need to finish Construction and overflow from forges gets divided into unmodified hammers anyway right? Now about getting the gold we need:




Swapped from the new grass cottage and worked a mine to build wealth and get the 4 gold we needed. Doesn't slow growth, slows 1 hammer this turn into the forge, I think we'll survive. Mission accomplished, the books are balanced. Now that I say that one of the remaining players will probably do something to upset this and we'll take 2 turns to finish anyway.

We had a border pop in the southwest and are now #3 in land area. Given that we're behind in everything else that makes us seem like massive underachievers, doesn't it? I don't think we are, lots of that land is still unproductive, but I don't know what other people are doing. Maybe we suck, maybe Slowzantium sucks. Makes no difference, our civ sucks.




OK, late for work yet again. Why did I agree to take over playing turns?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

OK, late for work yet again. Why did I agree to take over playing turns?

You talked me into a team game, right? Yeah, you and Brick both. You'll play the turns and like it!

Ehh, I'm not sure about giving coin for gold. By the time we get a few forges built, he's likely to cancel the deal. And, aren't we really hard-pressed for coin right now?

WillLP has a woody III axe. Hello medic! That's awesome for him. If we ever fight, we need to make sure to kill that thing.

How close is ML to the happy cap? I suppose I could log in and take a peek. Also, how goes the progress for our wandering settler? I am pretty sure I've never had a settler last so long between production and building a city. That's the one that we built out of ML so long ago.

Anything happening over is Sisubstan?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

One other thing (in a new post because it's better than editing the old post):

Are you bringing your laptop this weekend or are we going to have to press Brick into service?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Well we're hurting for gold right now but I think it's worth it. 3 gold per turn over 10 turns isn't a great deal for now since we only had one city at the happy cap (ML), but that gold resource added one happy immediately and will be worth a second in about three turns. Time to fire the specialists and grow the city I think. And as fast as our other cities are growing it won't be long before those are capped, either. But in the longer term I think we need to pump a quick settler, grab the marble/silver spot, and enjoy the +2 happy from that without having to pay for it. And fail gold every marble wonder we can get (seriously).

Not much happening in Sisubistan, no new units visible in the northern city, still has enforced peace with both us and Suttree, so he's still alive for now. No signs of building out a new city anywhere, which would be damn annoying to be crushed under his old culture, maybe he won't think of doing that. Not that any such city would survive long anyway.

And yeah I'm going to bring my laptop in case we get time to play a turn or two. But Brick should probably be on standby just in case. Hey Brick, are you available if needed this weekend?

[spacetyrantxenu]

T134 - Remember how I said something would happen to screw up our perfect completion of Construction?



There you have it. We lost two trade routes with Azza and that seems to be the likely cause why we didn't have enough commerce to finish the tech. Good thing it doesn't really matter; I don't know that we'd be building cats this turn anyway, but it's annoying nonetheless. We'll finish the tech this turn running 0% science (and saving...not much gold, shows 33 gold for now but we're about to add a city so it will be even less than that--after adding the city it was +25 gpt).




No major developments this turn, I did whip the forge in The Boathouse, it was 2 pop, 7-->5, will regrow this turn to 6 and then back to 7 in I think three turns from now. Happy Face started a crossbow, I guess that could have been a catapult, but we can use xbows too. That's our first completed forge, in a city that is capped for growth, so no happy benefit there. But with 18 base hammers it's a definite boost.




This turn Moai is being built in Stars Above, as planned. A 16 hammer out of culture chop came in right before a settler founded Suck Magic on the forested tile. Moai fail for the turn nets a future 55 gold. Next turn it probably goes back to being built in What We Have, which can fail build it for 4 more turns. We Steal, where Moai will eventually be actually built, has a spear at 4/35 right now in its build queue. I swapped to an axe so I can spend the next 4 turns building that. By then we're probably going to need to start researching so it may be time to cash in Moai with a 2 pop whip of either the axe or spear. I don't have a count on how much gold we're going to cascade from Moai but it's going to buy us at least one tech. We may have to spend it on Aesthetics just so we can keep building wonders for economy. We're stagnant right now and until our cities grow up some more...yeah it's bad.

To that point, at zero percent research we're 7th in GNP.




Third in land, 7th in GNP, it feels like we're doing something wrong here.

It looks like we're OK on EPs with Suttree for now, we're not losing his graphs right away, same with Molach. I swapped our 4 EPs back onto Retep. If he doesn't spend against us we may be able to get graphs again. We're at 113/57 (he leads) right now, let's see where he is next turn. If he's spending on us we may have to give it up.

One last thing, here's the north showing our new city and Kuro creeping up the ice.




Unless his copper/crab city has third ring borders he may be moving forward toward us up here. But I have no idea what those two workers are doing on the tile they're on, there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. There's no resource there, it isn't in the BFC of his current city (as I view where it's located), and improving that tile would make no sense. If he's building a road forward those workers should be either 1N or 1W to build the road on the diagonal. Maybe they're running from barbs. If so, where is their cover? Anyway, I couldn't figure out what he was doing with them. Anyone care to make a guess?

Hopping a flight to Atlanta tonight, our turn playing may be erratic over the next few days. I really hope no one declares war because that's going to lead to long pauses over the weekend as I can't guarantee availability. Or, on Saturday, I definitely can't be guaranteed to play the turn sober. So no one declare war until Monday, OK?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

My guess is that he intends to settle a city on that tile and is building the road to get the settler there 1t faster. It may be time to play the bully again. I like our chariot vs. axe matchup.