[Spoilers] Hashoosh, Gaz and the crew - The CANZAC Alliance sail the high seas

[Gazglum]

That's a little depressing. Where do you think Whosit found his extra 6 points from? A tech?

Edit: Creative border pop, of course!

[Gazglum]

Turn 3: Bounty!

Borders of newly named Dreamland popped this turn, and we got to see all the goodness that lies -outside- our capitals borders.



Still, good news! We have stone and gold available to us, and a couple of cows. Food is definitely going to be the limiting factor with this start, but it has potential. I can see what I think are 2 floodplains in the fog as the river continues north. There are also flood plains down by the southern gold, and an interior lake (or possibly western sea).



So we should be able to get some decent cities up. But they will require good dotmapping, which is not one of my skills, so Q, we shall need to discuss once we have cleared more fog.

Shall we keep the scout following the river basin north?

[Gazglum]

Turn 4: Tension

After a bit of mucking about with lost saves and failed games, we got back on the horse for what turned out to be a much more interesting turn than I had hoped.



When I logged in, Yuri was standing by MY STONE. Or what I thought was my stone. Because following the hills north I found the dreaded Thin White Line of neolithic England. There are 6 tiles between our borders, and while I did want to move to grab more land, that is a little close for comfort.

Still, excitement!

I will need to read up on Yuri the man. Is he the one that always tries to get the Oracle? Yuri the character is Isabella of England. UU and UB not a problem, traits are spiritual/expansive. Fishing and Mining are his techs, and I think he's not on the coast so he will hoepfully be at a food disadvantage. He'll be able to get a quick worker and start chopping though.

In the medium term, if he gets all those floodplains then he will out-tech me easily. Captain Glum feels hemmed in, and is considering reaching for his cutlass. But with only warpigs in our arsenal so far, we may need to put forth a kind face to the world until we know better where we are at.

[Qgqqqqq]

Apparently this sounds too empty, so here's what's going behind the scenes:

Gazglum:
pace of PBEM is making stalactites grow from my chin
hopefully things pick up
me:
what pbem?
/totally-not-funny
Gazglum:
report up
me:
wow
ok
yuri is definitely not very aggressive fortunately
flick me the save? If he has gold/floodplains to his south, and we also have gold/desert to the south, then there's likely a pattern to be had here
i think we loop the scout up to yuris capital, then back down our border
that way we get early site on him, and we can see if there are any decent border cities we could push soon
really not liking this games food
Gazglum:
nor me
me:
if we don't find anything better we're gonna have to go wheat for the first city, and that both sucks as a site and isn't helping our borders any
mountains to the east and coast to the west. damn this map is crowded...
and 177 land tiles per player!
I think our duel has 300+
Gazglum:
sorry, the tactics for this duel turn are killing me
offensive warfare just seems bloody impossible sometimes
hence my distractedness
me:
i wish it seemed so to me
and I hope you get distracted
Gazglum:
I gtg for a run
I shall muse on Yuri
and tlak again soon
[Interlude of me ranting at the stupid revolt pop-up that comes at the end of each turn and forced me to replay a duel turn]
Gazglum:
are you playing the turn? I'll have to go soon
in that case...farewell!
you should put your thoughts up in the pBEM thread as well as telling me here
so ti feels more like a conversation for the lurkers
talk later
me:
Ok. I might just post the chat
I know you've left, but what is our theme?
Gazglum:
I was going to amuse myself with imaginary cities and fantasy places
we could do famous priates
actually, that could be fun
Captain Hook
Long John Silver
Blackbeard
Redbeard
Longbeard and SHortbeard

Question for lurkers: How do you check for world wrap/map size? I can't seem to get it to work for me.

[Gazglum]

Turn 5 was boring, except that we accidently sent Dhalpir an email thread full of Civ discussion. Luckily I think it was mainly relating to the duel Q and I are playing at the moment, while I am comfortably sinking his ships at sea while he comfortably annhilates any land stacks I send his way and nothing much seems to happen.

Turn 6: Noun!

I kept the scout moving around Yuri's capital to get an idea of what we are up against. No sign of where his own scout may have gone.



The commerce potential of this river is disgusting, so we have to make sure he doesn't have an opportunity to develop it in peace. Looking more closely at his capital I saw that he's working the forested grass hill for 1/2., which I guess doesnt' tell us much. Hopefully that's his best tile!



I could have declared to get a view of his capital but I thought it probably wasn't worth being so blatently hostile right off. So back to the riverlands. Yuri also has an elephant, so I guess everyone probably does.

One play we could make here is to settle up on the floodplains and try to land a religion to grab control over that area. More likely we will both settle a city here and split the zone between us. I would kill to be creative now.

It's possible that there are better pickings in the south anyway. We finished Hunting this turn, and I changed to pottery. If you start one tech from granaries you should take advantage of it I figure, and it will give my worker something to do once he finishes the pasture. I really want to be able to start chopping, but that's going to have to wait a little while.

Once the worker is finished we'll have a few turns before we can build a granary anyway, so I figure a warrior to check out the southwest while we grow to size 2.

What are your thoughts Q, should we archer rush Yuribella?

[Qgqqqqq]

Luckily I think it was mainly relating to the duel Q and I are playing at the moment, while I am comfortably sinking his ships at sea while he comfortably annhilates any land stacks I send his way and nothing much seems to happen.

That's one way to put the mind-numbing horror opening each save is. Toroidal offers a horrible nightmare for any mid-late game conflict - I received an email saying Gazglum felt bad about this turn because I got unlucky and lost a lot, and about 5 different potential cities come to mind, any one of which could've been the target. Of course it turned out to be pretty well the worst possible raze anyway
Oh, we're talking about a different game?


I think a warrior is definitely a good idea, definitely finish before a granary. I think that a settler should probably come before a granary too, but we'll see where we want to settle first. I do like pottery now for cottages
A religion would certainly help establish that area, but again we probably need to scout it out more first.

[Gazglum]

Nothing of interest this turn. I'm brining the scout back down towards the western hills - no further resources in the fogged flood plains. With the pre-reqs bonus we are top in GNP, middle in production and equal top in food. Hopefully this is not the high point for Team ANZAC.

Once the worker is done we can get a warrior down southwest to look for our own rivers of gold. A Pirate Captain is nothing without his doubloons, after all.

In the fog, it looks like yuri is no longer working his forest hill. Lurker question: would that be because you just can't tell which tiles are worked if you don't have direct vision on them? Or has he actually changed his tiles?

Second lurker question - will we be notified of someone else's declaration of war if we haven't met one or both parties involved?

[Qgqqqqq]

would that be because you just can't tell which tiles are worked if you don't have direct vision on them? Or has he actually changed his tiles?

A quick test tells me that we need vision to be able to tell what others are working.

will we be notified of someone else's declaration of war if we haven't met one or both parties involved?

We need to know both civs to be aware of any war declarations.

[Gazglum]

Do you see what's happened here Q? You have hurried up, all eager to please, and answered all my questions. Thereby ensuring that all other lurkers remain hiding belowdecks. FOOL!

Thanks though. And no hard feelings about burning my 4th best city in our duel. RIP Lewwynia.

[Gazglum]

Turn played, nothing happened except our worker completed. Good pace though.