Grave Errors: The Bobchillingworth Experience

[Bobchillingworth]

Finally got Mining in:






Hrm, settling for copper is a little annoying, but whatever. Unfortunately neither is in very food-rich locations.


Fishing next for tech- after that, I'm not sure. AH would allow me to get my pigs online, but I won't be settling the city which can work them for another dozen turns or so. Writing is very tempting- my main concern is finding the time to actually build libraries, since my best cities really need to be producing nothing but workers, settlers and bloodpets now. Probably still worth it, though.

[Bobchillingworth]

New city:





That picture is actually a few turns out of date, since this game moves at an insane rate


I really badly need more workers. And settlers. Tempting as it would be to start growing my cities into unhappiness, each -1 citizen consumes two food but provides only a single hammer, so it's a suboptimal move until I'm looking to focus more on infra and more expensive military units.


Writing is now in, so the tech path is AH -> BW, and then I have to decide to go Festivals -> Drama and bulb Sanitation, or take the slower but otherwise safer path of directly researching Sanitation, with Warfare maybe thrown in first.


I also need Hunting at some point, lots of bears to capture and I do intend to settle Ivory within the next 20 turns.

[Qgqqqqq]

Tempting as it would be to start growing my cities into unhappiness, each -1 citizen consumes two food but provides only a single hammer, so it's a suboptimal move until I'm looking to focus more on infra and more expensive military units.

(Or you are building foodhammer units)

[Bobchillingworth]

Wait, are you saying it would be better to grow cities into unhappiness if I'm going to be producing settlers & workers?

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah, if that's all you're producing and you've got a Manor up (its not out and out better because extra citizens do cost extra maintenance, but then they also reduce unit costs, so maintenance wise it could go either way. But if you're building a foodhammer unit then each extra pop is one extra hpt).

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah, I hadn't realized unhappy citizens don't consume food if you're building a settler. Kind of a bizarre mechanic there. I haven't played Vamps for an MP game since PBEM I, so I never even thought about it before now. Thanks for the heads-up!


Btw this game averages over two turns a day, although I have of course just jinxed it.

[Bobchillingworth]

AH is in, with no easily-obtainable horses in sight:





Hopefully I've got some in that plains-and-jungle wasteland to my west, I was looking to build some chariots at some point.


This is a tad troubling as well:





I suppose those are pretty natural civics to adopt regardless of what his immediate intentions are, but Tholal's power is also much higher than mine, so I'll have to do a wave of military once my libraries come in. I also need to claim that copper near him soon.

[Bobchillingworth]

And another city:






Edit: I just realized Yarpin should be working one of the rice tiles. I'll have to fix that next turn, it was on the forest to finish the manor more quickly.

[Bobchillingworth]

Hmm, this is where my inability / disinterest in doing C&D work is starting to show:












Something is going on with Tholal, but I'm not sure what (the graphs are a couple turns out of date, but still relevant). I think the power spike might be a captured animal being settled in a city, probably a bear. Tholal's power went up again this turn by about the same amount, so he's probably farming a den somewhere.

The other two graphs are more confusing. I think his culture went down briefly due to the revolt into Conquest + Whatever, but if that's the case why didn't it jump back up to the previous level? Neither of the civics he adopted reduces culture, and he didn't leave anything which gave a bonus. Plus a Dancing Bear should have given him a large boost. And the score graph is even more strange- a drop followed by a flatline. He doesn't have Slavery and I'm not sure why he would starve a city, so what could cause him to go down in score? I don't think he lost a city, since I've been checking his city count via diplo screen every turn and haven't noticed any change. Strange.



In domestic news, things are going pretty well. My first library finished T84, and I'm first in GNP- and that's without much culture being produced. I think Charadon has like 2 million citizens & has an impressive score lead- I suspect that, along with Charismatic he has better access to happy resources than the rest of us.

[Bobchillingworth]

Thinking about it, maybe Tholal lost a city for a single turn, and a Monument burned in the process? Ah, I'm probably just missing something obvious.