[SPOILER] The Steak, Beer, and Cigar Saloon

[Catwalk]

Here are a few thoughts on my position in the game, and what has led up to it.

As mentioned earlier, I think I picked the wrong civ and leader. Elizabeth is not weak, but I clearly was not in the mindset for playing a PHI game. I feel that PHI is a stronger option on a more cramped map, and this one is quite spacious. I couldn't know that for sure, but I think the map description pre-game more or less matches what I've seen. Victoria and Hannibal were both available, and I would have preferred either one of them to Elizabeth. I'm happy with FIN, though. My second problem was going with the seafood start. I'm convinced that PH with nearby deer was the stronger option. Long-term it also would have let me replace coast tiles with additional grassland river tiles. I think could have gone for the PH start even with England. I'd get my first worker in 10 turns, and it'd take me 10 turns or so to build a camp and a farm. I would have had to wait a little bit for Bronze Working if I wanted to chop, I could either have gone Wheel first and started building roads or just built a grassland farm somewhere. Ethiopia would have been a nice choice.

I think I made the right choice in going for elephants reasonably early. It was a long and risky reach, and it was not a very productive plan concerning anything other than the happiness resource. I could have settled between elephants and cows instead, but then I would have needed a road connection. Already I was getting Sailing for Calendar and trade routes, so the benefits of settling on top of the elephants justified the closer location. I'm quite happy with the rest of my dotmap too, Vacuuming has been a strong support city and the timing of Buddhism was perfect. Buddhism was crucial to my plans as it afforded me that tiny bit of happiness to tide me over until I got elephants. I felt very choked in the early game with just base happiness, the free spread to my capital came at the absolute best time.

I'm not sure if going for Calendar before Monarchy was the right choice. Monarchy would have given me happiness earlier, Calendar gave me more happiness and a risky shot at MoM. It seems I'm going to grab MoM, so it's definitely paying off. I was quite late to Currency, and my research rate has been low all game. I think a lot of this was to do with my unproductive cities over by Jowy. Had I only settled the elephant city I think he would have been tempted to eat and swallow it, being so far from my core. I also did neglect cottages a bit too much, though. I think I managed okay on workers, but I probably could have used another one at an earlier time. I've had to work unimproved tiles here and there, nothing too terribly serious.

One big mistake I made was ignoring Oracle completely. Turns out everybody else ignored it too! I could have chopped it out easily on multiple occasions, and it wouldn't have cost me much to detour to Priesthood. I think that's mostly hindsight, though. I was starved for research, and I had every reason to believe that Oracle would fall imminently at all times. What worries me the most is that zanth got it, of all players. +1 on water tiles with a FIN/ORG leader that's already a runaway... unpleasant mental image.

On the military front, I think I've done well. I have seized more than my share of land on both borders without having to commit too much to a military buildup. I will need to keep securing those borders, but I think that looks very doable. Jowy hasn't built military for a while now, although it's important to note that he just completed Horseback Riding. Still, he doesn't have the economy to support a large army of horse archers. And in the event he wants to send them at me he'll either be wading through a lot of jungle or past a chokepoint down by Mother In Law. I need more vision down there by the way, he has an invisible staging tile that he can use to 1-move me with a stack of 2-movers.

[Catwalk]

Turn 103

BaII has marble and stone now, noone has a Calendar resource. My chops will complete on turn 105, so MoM will hopefully be mine on turn 106. I settled the marble island this turn and Masonry finished, so everyone can see that I have Marble + Calendar. Hopefully that won't make BaII pull off some late minute magic and whip MoM to completion, that would make me cry.

I have resumed scientist generation in Foot Rubs, I want to use the next scientist for a golden age to revolt into Bureaucracy. Near the end of the GA I will then revolt into Organized Religion and Monarchy as well. I decided to go for Code of Laws next for that reason, I want Civil Service fast. I have the most cities out of everyone I know (all but zanth and flugauto) with 12 cities versus several players who have 9 or 10 and a few who have 6-7. Notably, Azza the Pyramid builder is sitting on a measly 6 cities. I feel that I'm clawing my way back into this game!

[MaxPower]

Here are a few thoughts on my position in the game, and what has led up to it.

As mentioned earlier, I think I picked the wrong civ and leader. Elizabeth is not weak, but I clearly was not in the mindset for playing a PHI game. I feel that PHI is a stronger option on a more cramped map, and this one is quite spacious. I couldn't know that for sure, but I think the map description pre-game more or less matches what I've seen. Victoria and Hannibal were both available, and I would have preferred either one of them to Elizabeth. I'm happy with FIN, though. My second problem was going with the seafood start. I'm convinced that PH with nearby deer was the stronger option. Long-term it also would have let me replace coast tiles with additional grassland river tiles. I think could have gone for the PH start even with England. I'd get my first worker in 10 turns, and it'd take me 10 turns or so to build a camp and a farm. I would have had to wait a little bit for Bronze Working if I wanted to chop, I could either have gone Wheel first and started building roads or just built a grassland farm somewhere. Ethiopia would have been a nice choice.

I think I made the right choice in going for elephants reasonably early. It was a long and risky reach, and it was not a very productive plan concerning anything other than the happiness resource. I could have settled between elephants and cows instead, but then I would have needed a road connection. Already I was getting Sailing for Calendar and trade routes, so the benefits of settling on top of the elephants justified the closer location. I'm quite happy with the rest of my dotmap too, Vacuuming has been a strong support city and the timing of Buddhism was perfect. Buddhism was crucial to my plans as it afforded me that tiny bit of happiness to tide me over until I got elephants. I felt very choked in the early game with just base happiness, the free spread to my capital came at the absolute best time.

I'm not sure if going for Calendar before Monarchy was the right choice. Monarchy would have given me happiness earlier, Calendar gave me more happiness and a risky shot at MoM. It seems I'm going to grab MoM, so it's definitely paying off. I was quite late to Currency, and my research rate has been low all game. I think a lot of this was to do with my unproductive cities over by Jowy. Had I only settled the elephant city I think he would have been tempted to eat and swallow it, being so far from my core. I also did neglect cottages a bit too much, though. I think I managed okay on workers, but I probably could have used another one at an earlier time. I've had to work unimproved tiles here and there, nothing too terribly serious.

One big mistake I made was ignoring Oracle completely. Turns out everybody else ignored it too! I could have chopped it out easily on multiple occasions, and it wouldn't have cost me much to detour to Priesthood. I think that's mostly hindsight, though. I was starved for research, and I had every reason to believe that Oracle would fall imminently at all times. What worries me the most is that zanth got it, of all players. +1 on water tiles with a FIN/ORG leader that's already a runaway... unpleasant mental image.

On the military front, I think I've done well. I have seized more than my share of land on both borders without having to commit too much to a military buildup. I will need to keep securing those borders, but I think that looks very doable. Jowy hasn't built military for a while now, although it's important to note that he just completed Horseback Riding. Still, he doesn't have the economy to support a large army of horse archers. And in the event he wants to send them at me he'll either be wading through a lot of jungle or past a chokepoint down by Mother In Law. I need more vision down there by the way, he has an invisible staging tile that he can use to 1-move me with a stack of 2-movers.

A few thoughts:
- Elizabeth is one strongest economic leader. It was definitely a good pick. At least much better than Hannibal or Victoria. Remember this will be a long game so you will have plenty of time to take advantage of your PHI trait. Even more if you land the MoM. Either Hannibal or Vicky would have been stronger if this game had a "shorter" setup like CTON with 2 city elimination, or X turns limit, due to their early game advantages.
- I agree England isn't a great pick but it's not terrible. At least Redcoats are dominant units of their era.
- The elephants gambit, was a bold move that turned out really well. Congratulations on that..
- About Monarchy vs Calendar: usually Monarchy first is the right call because it is cheaper and you can either go through Priesthood to have a chance at the Oracle or Monotheism for double civic swap. But IMO in this particular case Calendar was a better call. You had literally a forest on every tile around your starting position, so Math was a high priority, Sailing was a high priority too since this is a water heavy map. Finally you had plenty of calendar resources close enough to starting position. As a bonus, it happens that you also have marble in reach to get a shot at MoM.
- About Oracle and Buddhism, going for Buddhism was a good gambit as you knew that nobody started with Mysticism so probably no one was interested in grabbing early religions. But I am still surprised that The Oracle fell so late with all those IND civs around. What the hell have they been doing?
- I think that Jowy having HAs is bad news indeed. At some point he may realize that he is in a losing position and may get nasty with his neighbors. Watch this guy closely. He is still a threat until you out-tech him.

[Catwalk]

One thing that puzzles me is how early Azza got Pyramids without stone (turn 59). I didn't even have Mathematics at that time! With as many as 8 forests chopped (a lot of early worker labour required for that) he'd still need 174 base hammers. I think he overcommitted for this, and the fact that he only has 6 cities at this point seems to confirm that suspicion. Being low on pop is a bad place to be when you have Pyramids. I don't think Azza is a threat at all in this game, and whoever manages to steal his Pyramids will have a great advantage. Sadly, he seems to be quite far away from me.

My known neighbours are as follows:
2metraninja south
Jowy east
Sian north
Nakor west
slowcheetah north west
yuris either east or south of Jowy
Furungy seems to be east of Sian, saw a warrior of his
BaII also somewhere east or south of Jowy
Azza no idea
Zanth no idea (and no contact)
flugauto no idea (and no contact)

[Catwalk]

Before I forget: Azza is due a great engineer in 6 turns. Which wonder is he planning on taking with it? MoM would actually be a very likely target, so our timing couldn't have been better. What will he go for instead? Available wonders, listed in order of availability:

Temple of Artemis (Polytheism)
Parthenon (Polytheism + Aesthetics)
Chichen Itza (Code of Laws)
Great Library (Literature)
Notre Dame (Engineering)
Hagia Sophia (Theology)
Taj Mahal (Nationalism)

Great Library and Taj Mahal stand out here as good candidates. Great Library is cheap to build in the first place though, only 140 base hammers for an IND player with marble. That's a meager 4 forests you need to pre-chop. So blowing a great engineer on that would be a bit of a waste. I'm guessing he's going to try to wait for Nationalism and Taj Mahal, once he realizes that MoM won't fall in his lap.

It would be rather nice to put Temple of Artemis in my GP city, but I think I will want to use Always Wrong for GP generation if I manage to land MoM as planned. It only has 2 food less than the jungle spot, and it is already developed which is a big plus. One downside is that I'll be out of forests for chopping out the National Epic. I'll likely have to build that with whip overflow from other buildings, 125 base hammers needed and max production of 3. Or should I just ignore the National Epic? It won't be easy to build at all, and pursuing Literature is a detour from my planned tech path.

[Catwalk]

Turn 104

Bunch of overview shots this turn. But before that, a bit of news:

BaII now has silk hooked up. Unless he settled on top of silk, this means he got Calendar some 3 to 5 turns ago. We know that he got marble 2 turns ago, so it makes sense that he did Calendar => Masonry just like we did. This could be a photo finish! I've committed a significant amount of workers to this and they couldn't have started much sooner, so I really hope this will be sufficient. The wealth wood storage facility is working out flawlessly, and I will dump the remaining hammers into MoM next turn. So unless I'm seeing a nasty message about it next turn, I'll be guaranteed a coin flip.

East:

Purple boxes denote workers. Note that I'm building MoM in Vacuuming for failgold, will give me 72 shiny marble coins. I wouldn't be able to finish MoM sooner with the 3 hammers I have available to me in Always Wrong, so 2 turns of failgold sounds very nice right around now. I still haven't hooked up silk, I haven't needed it yet and I needed those workers urgently for wonder chopping. I have a worker mining the tundra copper to the south and one building another river cottage for the capital. I need to finish getting my capital ready for a commerce explosion, I've been a bit late with cottages there all game long.

West:

My scout is marked with a white box, it will continue west. 4 workers (marked in purple) are busy over here, currently chopping out granaries. I'm very happy with this land grab, and my timing couldn't have been better. In addition to sealing off my core territory, I am also effectively blocking him off from the entire northern territories. He still has an access route north west of the lake we see to the west, but he will get there more slowly. I hope to settle both of those spices to the north west, provided that I manage to stay stronger than Nakor. I think I have a small edge on him now, and that I will be able to increase it over the next 20-30 turns. I just noticed that I failed to make plans to hook up my wheat, though. My workers will be exposed there, I'll need at least 1 spear to be on the safe side. His city of "Four" will expand borders in a few turns, making it even easier for him to strike at any workers sitting there. I'm tempted to declare war again and offer cash for peace, already our trade routes are worth fairly little and I have plenty other trading partners. Max and haphazard, any thoughts on this plan?

Exploring work boat:

My work boat is marked in white. slowcheetah also has culture west of it, suggesting that he's Nakor's mainland neighbour. Delft is sitting on an island there, I have a 3c trade route with it. There is a very nice spice site here, letting me claim 3 coastal lake tiles and 1 banana tile in addition to the spices. I think the spices will be worth several gpt in trade without having to work them, that's a significant bonus which is worth taking IMO. It's also nice to have something others want, lets me do a bit of diplo.


The Jowy border:

I love having visibility on 3 out of 4 cities in this screenshot, helps tip me off if he's planning on moving against me. My one problem here is the yellow tile where he'll be able to one-move me with horse archers. I won't be able to gain cultural vision on it, so I'm contemplating putting a scout unit on the white hill tile. That gives me vision on a large part of his lands, including the last city tile.

Nakor border:

I'm wondering where he settled his second city. Looks like south west? His lands are fairly comparable to ours, with the small exception of having a better early luxury available and in a better location. I would have made a push to settle the PH instead, the location is on his side of the border and it would have given him gold access 10t sooner due to not needing a border pop. Nakor is way too fond of PH mines, though. Same thing I saw over by Jowy, except here it's 4 PH mines. All but one shared, but I still feel it's a bit much. He does have the cottages he needs though, so maybe some of these are later additions because he had workers in the area with little else to do. It looks like he would have benefitted from settling 1E on the PH tile instead.


Lastly, demos:

Graphs don't say much of interest, and I'm short a few graphs because a few rivals started putting EP on me. The ranks indicate otherwise, but I think I'm seeing slight improvements. I'm not as far behind zanth in crop yield, and I have a GNP of 150 with research turned on. My power ranking is right where it needs to be, a little bit behind the leader (still Jowy) and close to most other rivals. Nakor is still a bit behind me, letting me play boldly there even though many of my forces are tied up on the Jowy border.

[Catwalk]

Playing my turn later, hopped on to see the following:

slowcheetah:

Proved the world is round!

BaII:

Didn't build MoM! I'm guaranteed a coin flip.

zanth:

Only has 9 cities!

Nakor:

Settled up on me!

Full report coming later.

[Catwalk]

Turn 105

Jowy:

MoM being finished here, 486 hammers going into it. I'm producing a scout up in Vacuuming, it'll go down to Jowy and keep an eye on his invisible staging tile and his city over there.


Expansion:

I've decided to grab stone island next. Needless to say, it will be named Blue Balls. I don't need it urgently, but with 7 base commerce from the city tile + trade routes it mostly pays for itself and I want to get started on Moai. And what's more, I want to get started on failgold for Moai. I do think there's a slight risk it will be poached out from under my nose, and I don't have any other urgent sites to settle at this time.


Nakor:

As borders show, he settled the PH fish site this turn. That's very close to me, and I'm unsure how to deal with it. I've come up with the following creative approach: I've sent an empty galley towards it, he can see it this turn. I've also sent my 2 axes and 1 spear in Deprivation down that direction, simulating a military threat that I have no interest in carrying out at this time. I've also sent him an offer of 80 gold for the city, and a blank offer of 2 gold per turn. If he refuses (which I expect him to), I'll declare war and demand 40 gold. I don't care all that much about the money, but a renewed peace treaty would come in handy. Also, I'm hoping to make him whip some more military units throughout his empire in order to weaken his economy some. Problem is that Gaspar seems to be playing for him lately, I doubt he'll be intimidated in the least.


Cultural borders by Nakor:

To be fair, Nakor is rather cramped. I just found zanth this turn, he's settled up on Nakor quite a bit. I also found out that Nakor has a great capital with rice + pigs + dry wheat.


Own cultural borders:

Here you can see a somewhat more generous land grab for myself. Greed is good.


Relations:

slowcheetah declared war on zanth And they have a lot of EP on each other. This can only be a good thing!


Demos:

I still think they look promising, especially because I have more cities than everybody else and hence more short-term growth potential.


Graphs:

As can be seen here. Moreover, zanth only has 9 cities! I have a good feeling about this game.

[Catwalk]

Just plowed through all the diplo screens to make the following list of cities and resources (only including resources that require more than basic technology to hook up):

7 - Jowy
7 - 2metraninja
7 - Azza
9 - Nakor
9 - Furungy: Iron, Wine
10 - Sian: Dye, Iron
10 - slowcheetah
10 - Yuri
10 - BaII: Marble, Stone, Silk, Iron
10 - zanth: Incense
12 - Catwalk: Sugar, Marble, (Silk), (Incense)

3 players have Iron Working so far, 3 other players have Calendar. I think my MoM timing couldn't have been better, another 5 turns and we would have seen a high number of bids for it. Thanks again Max!

Looking through rival cities I noticed that Jowy has been slow to get granaries in his cities, and has focused a lot on culture. All 3 non-capital cities I see has a monument, and the SW one also got a library before it got a granary. Also worth noting that Nakor has two barracks.

[Catwalk]

The turn rolled, and I can't log in from work. I can check Civstats, though: