[SPOILERS] dtay's thread awaits a title

[dtay]

SAVED, Barb went the nice way




Promptly killed him as well, no harm at all

[dtay]

Planning city on the quecha, creates almost the ideal border against commodore. On a hill, only 1 point of attack, mountains to guard the flank, 2nd ring tiles are crap so culture fights are unlikely, this is perfect.



Now let's see if a nice border finally stops commodore from dogpiling me...


Shot of my whole empire



Nice little tendril going out to the floodplains. I'm basically content with that being the easternmost edge, just a matter of filling out down south. That coupled with the nortern cutoff v Commodore and I think I get slightly more than my fair share of land, and reasonably high quality. Especially b/c the arctic nonsense down below is reasonably useful to the financial me.

Long term strategy thoughts:
1) REX all my land. It's pretty nice, I want to be using it as quick as possible.
2) Religion? I almost went for Judaism earlier, except the culture bonus of the religion is basically worthless to me so it would pretty much only be for the shrine. And shrines are nice, but if that's the only reason I can aim for Confu or Tao or Islam. Or just take one...
3) Long term I obviously want to eat one of these two neighbors before they decide it is convenient to dogpile me. Hopefully they have neighbors on the other sides of them as well, but who knows, my scout died.
4) My teching is collapsing. It'll start to recover once some cottages get going, but I should found some coastal cities to use financial coast to fix this.
5) Any wonders I want? I don't see any stone or Marble (should recheck, it's been a while since I actually looked and I could be having a brain-failure) which makes it harder. MoM, Colossus, and Pyramids are the ones I want the most. Fin+Col coasts would be beautiful.

I'm def not at the stage of the game where I have a concerted long term strategy though, still mainly just trying to REX as fast/efficiently as possible while getting the obvious generally useful techs (ex: math).

[dtay]

Border city founded. Named "Ursa Minor" since it is likely my northernmost city, unless commodore really doddles or something (and doesn't build military) (unlikely)



My 6 cities, basically just chasing the food spots



Shots of the untamed south



Very large fishing villages can be built with this food down here



Likely not getting much/any of this



Event log - 2 wonders have fallen. This is rather late for no oracle. If not for playing inca I would have probably broken for Priesthood/Monotheism rather than going Writing->Math. (That and no visible Marble). I had to talk myself out of it, but honestly now it looks like that going up the religious line anyway might have been the right choice.



Demos -



Pretty much says what I expected - Food/Land Area signal I'm at the top expansion wise, but I have low GNP, which is fine by me for this point in the game.

Power - basically keeping pace

[dtay]

Looking at my expected territory it occurs to me this might be the game to try out serfdom watermills. Financial means cottaging non-riverland is ideal, and then areas around rivers can be milled up.

[TheHumanHydra]

Thanks for those reports; I enjoyed them.

[dtay]

Shot of everything




Commodore settling up the border. I'm fine with the resulting division (though I chopped a monument AND a terrace into Ursa Minor for cultural safety. Commodore got a barracks into Death Masks 1t before I got a terrace into Ursa, so was otherwise going to have control of those hills for the medium term. He'll get the desert one back with the new city, but I'll keep plains and also probably be first to 100 culture.)




Demos

[dtay]

So this barb city spawned last turn (I think, I should have been able to see it last turn I believe, but do cities spawn with 3 warriors like that?). Conveniently/Inconveniently exactly where I was sending a settler to. Soo... good placement, somewhat annoying timing? I'll let it grow then take it with chariots, hoping they don't build a spear in the meantime (anyone know what tiles barb cities prioritize?)




Demos

[dtay]

Well, Judaism has spread to us. No real need for it in the near term but that's nice for the future.



This land over here extends a lot further than I thought, and STONE!. Bit too late for the Pyramids (pretty sure they fell a turn back or so, I'll double check), but Hanging Gardens is in play



northern bit of the empire



Southern bit with offending/kind of nice barb city



Overview shot

[dtay]

Just been rexing. I have a ton of cities sitting on 6 pop and nearly full food bars, just waiting for calander to come in to start growing again.

I still have a fair bit of empty land to settle, and lots of productive islands to work financial coast left, so we will be rexing for quite a bit yet.

Overview of everything



The northern half



you can see the border with commodore, very seure and locked down. Perhaps the most secure border I've ever had. You can see I'm being somewhat paranoid about him hitting me... again (there's also a spear 1t from completion in the border city, just not completing it to save the 1gpt whilst I don't need the spear).


Border city is also the one running 2 scientists atm for a GP.

Southern half



The to-be-settled western penisula. It turned out to be a lot prettier than I thought it would be.




Demos



Tops in land area and CY. High in mfg. Still sucky in GNP, though not as bad as earlier. 2nd island city being settled next turn should help as well.

[dtay]

Long general update post. This will generally be the style of my reporting in this game, i generally only have the energy for 1 game of every-turn-updates and that is pb18 right now.

The core. Probably not the best segment of my empire actually, that would be the eastern cottage land. But the capital is bur worthy, though behind on cottage growth



The border with commodore. Still awesome. The long-long run will result in me probably losing the plains-hill once all cities are at 60% culture, but that need not happen anytime soon given I make 8 culture a turn and should win the race to 500 culture by a mile.



North-east cottage land. best area of the empire. I got 1 city column further than I expected to so am happy where the border ended up, pretty secure with 2/3 of the cities on hills (one to the south of here), and diagonals that either aren't flatland or I am likely to control.



Southern islands. Fin-Coast yay! Barb galley appeared and burnt some nets so I had to whip out a Trireme. That galley is carrying worker/settler to settle another fish-adjacent islanda



South-East Coast. You see the former-barb city of Synthian here, now quite productive, and the border city of Caelum. There's room for one more filler here btu in no hurry to settle it.



Penisular colonies, newly built. The southern one of these will become a naval shipyard, might be the Moia



The next major target for expansion is these islands, Fin makes all the coast great, but looks like I'm fighting commodore for them. Galley will be returning for a settler/worker or settler/chariot pair



Civs I don't have maps on must be in here, no way is that all unoccupied island land



Big fan of this Plako Commodore war, I hope it isn't just a small skirmish



Demos, pretty good. I've been maintaining good CY lead, and up there in GNP and MFG. Land Area and Pop lead are the cause, but other civs have more empty land to expand into than I do at the moment



Power, nothing too alarming, though Dreylin seems to be keeping his lead. Worth being vigilant as our peace ends, especially if power keeps rising (brief skirmish over a chariot earlier, but they signed peace right afterwards).




Broad strategy: right now it is get bur, then golden age into real civics. Afterwards really not sure. The goal long term si obviously beat someone to a relevant military tech and kill one of commodore or dreylin. Timeframe for that depends a lot on how fast either of them is teching and whether other wars happen.

Medium term goals are a question of next tech-group to beeline, kind of just dump of my thoughts
Beeline unto knights - kill someone
Beeline unto lib/econ - tech!
Beeline unto Cuirs - requires a lot of one of the above, should probably do one of the above as part of this
Beeline unto astro - maybe? I've never really done this before
Get aesth/lit - wonders fell mostly, though epics still nice
Get phi - Might be worth getting Phi before golden age for pacifism GPP.

I think aiming at Econ is a generla good idea, requires pieces of the knights and lib paths so is flex, free market is a guarnateed great consolation prize, and free great merchant is always great. This is likely, or at least me doing moves that keep this option open is likely. Might do Phi before this is remaining question, (for Pacifism) though Phi helps the lib push as well.

Edit:
Oh, construction->engineering, basically required once I go to war, and also quite possibly for defense. I'm not getting to knights nearly as fast as I did in pb18 and none of my neighbors are seemingly going to be as behind as Whosit/CH were tech-wise, so the unsupported Knight rush looks less likely to succeed.