Oxy breaks from convention(possibly)

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I'm pretty sure the game is over.

Is that over-dramatic? Maybe, let's get to some other stuff right now:




Barbs are becoming more numerous, but I have plenty of chariots to handle them.




I opened borders with Thoth and am scouting his territory




I have a trade connection wtih TBS




Prepping a settler whip in the capital. Notice the first capital cottage finally being worked.




Here's where the whole game being over thing comes in. No, not Commodore building the Oracle. It's Thoth capturing what is almost certainly Pin's only source of copper. Unless Pin has archery, Thoth will run over Pin and have 8 cities and no close neighbors on turn 70. Maybe I'm overreacting/wrong here, but it seems like PB16 all over again. Oh well, hopefully Pin can whip out some archers.

[wetbandit]

It can't be as hopeless as PB16.

How do you know he can run over Pin? How did he get 8 cities? As of T56, he didn't even have 5 cities. He captured Pin's and settled three more? It seems like it will take a bit more to eliminate Pin and then consolidate his gains.

Does he border Commodore? We know dtay and Gaspar's Flying Circus of Lurkers are out there somewhere. It's possible one started west of him, the other is likely to our east. He may have another border to defend.

Even if Thoth manages to complete the conquest, he's going to spend a lot of time dumping hammers into military. You have quite a bit of uncontested land into which to expand. Your hammers are spent on growth and you could reach a competitive size.

Maybe you'll even have multiple GP by that point.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Thoth has 5 cities now, but Pin has 3 cities and only warriors to counter his impis. I mean, we'll see what happens, but it isn't looking good. And yes, Thoth will border other people, but he'll still be pretty isolated and have captured 4 cities for an investment of like 6 impis. That's pretty hard to beat. We'll see though, hopefully Pin has archery and they completely stalemate.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Pin lost another city and rage quit

[wetbandit]

Looks like I was completely wrong (as per usual).

[wetbandit]

Has Thoth taken over the world yet?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Sorry for being MIA again. Thoth's ascendance to pole position kinda got me down on this game as well as a pretty busy schedule has kept me from reporting. But I'm back, and cautiously optimistic that I can have a meaningful impression on this game.

Anyway, here's the overview from the current turn(t70):

Scrooge Jones was settled as a stepping stone to better city as well as to split off a couple tiles from the capital. Chaz Bono for pretty much the same reason. Both will split off food tiles and cottages while I'm constrained by happiness and then be mediocre, but useful cities.

I finished sailing a couple turns ago, giving me much needed foreign trade routes. I'm currently saving gold on math, which will finish turn 77. From there, I'll go on to calendar. Calendar over currency because unlike TBS, I only have one pre-calendar lux to play around with. Calendar gives me three more, as well as a bunch of good tiles to work, which is a little more valuable than the 15 cpt or so that currency would give me. Currency after calendar and then probably construction for ball courts.

Tock will slowbuild a settler while I'm waiting for whip happiness to wear off. The settler will go on the waiting galley to settle the one-tile island to the left of the screen.

Magic Head will also slowbuild a settler and when the whip happiness wears off will pick up two scientist specialists. The resulting GS will build an academy in the capital right in time to turn on research for calendar. The settler from Magic Head will build the pig-sheep city in the upper right of the screen.

Capital will grow to 6 and whip another settler for the western pig-sheep city. Then, it will grow back and build workers until calendar comes in for happiness.

I'm running pretty light on workers for all these cities, but with happiness I should be fine. My sims have me working zero to none unimproved tiles, so that seems like it will work out.




Demos suck right now, but in part that's because I'm at the low point of a whipping cycle. My expansion over the next 20 turns will be pretty hard to beat, I'm looking at 14 cities by turn 90, along with an academy in the cap. That seems like it should put me in a competitive position, so hopefully that will get me something. It may be hard to beat Thoth with two civ's land.




My newest expansion. The city will shore up my border with TBS and guarantee me the two fishing villages to the east. Hopefully the fact that I'm not settling for the wheat will signal to TBS that I have peaceful intentions. Honestly, the one thing that will guarantee Thoth's victory is a war between me and TBS. A grinding war between us will weaken TBS on his other borders and let Thoth get an advantageous border. I think I'm offering a pretty fair border between us in terms of distance from capital. Of course, many a war have been started because nations have disagreed about the definition of fair when it comes to borders




Here's why Thoth is dominating. That CY is pretty scary, even though his GNP isn't that great currently.

[wetbandit]

Yikes, that is a large CY advantage. I'm surprised also that TBS has also rebounded with his CY, surely he's been able to leverage Joao at this point with granaries, too.

14 cities with an academy at T90 is a great goal, I hope that everyone else tries to run a farmer's gambit also. Calendar also finishes in the mid to late 80s?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I don't like making bitching-at-mapmaker-posts, but xenu, what is this?



TBS gets 3 first-ring luxes, including 2 gold and 2 silvers, while I only get one ivory? Gaspar also has 2 golds and gems. The island to the north has unnatural tundra sheep, so I figured it was an artificial island that had my silver, but nothing. I have to research currency before calendar because my economy sucks and there's no marble/stone on the map(another thing xenu REALLY should have told us) so I don't have a shot at MoM. So it looks like I have a happy cap of 5 until turn 105. Ridiculous.

Gaspar settled an annoying city to my east that I can't do anything about. I'm doing ok(3 in CY, 1 in GNP at 100%) but this luxury thing is killing me. I guess I could have done some things differently(prioritized monarchy?) but currency is too vital on this map to delay.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I put wines at your capital, I thought if you cultivated the vineyard and consumed enough of its produce that you wouldn't notice any discrepancies.

And those sheep carry heavy woolen coats, they can handle the tundra. Ne'er fear!

Anyway, I bent over backwards and spent the better part of a week on this map. I submitted it to scrutiny and revised it a number of times based upon feedback before releasing it. I didn't catch all the problems, neither did the other guys who helped review it. It isn't perfect but it's a lot better than most maps. You won't win or lose this game because of the map. Well, maybe pindicator can disagree, but no one else. Check your settings screen on F8, look at the file name. The .151 is the number of saved revisions. I did try to get them right. But outside of boring mirrored player spaces I don't think there's a way to be a mapmaker and not be subjected to criticism. So there it is.

Just like PB17 has cured me of ever volunteering to GM a game again, PB19 has cured me of future desires to build maps. It isn't worth the time I invest to have the players take turns being Chief Shouting Officer. Seven's torusland script doesn't get bent out of shape when I question the preplacement of random tile improvements, it can probably digest player rage without self-terminating ad well. On its own that makes it better positioned to both roll maps and GM future games.