Turn 071
I guess it had only been three turns since I updated last; it somehow feels longer.
On turn 69 we attacked out against Commodore's axe/archer pair sitting outside Breakside. The first axe to boldly strike out against the fortified, shock axe in a forest, had a 1% odds of success (literally), and while he lost he did do his job, bringing the evil Commodorian barbarian brute to 72hp. This gave the second axe a 1-in-5 shot of actually winning:
And he won! That battle gained 5xp in itself
The archer was dispatched in a similar way: first the archer from Amnesia took him down a few pegs in a 5% battle, and then the archer to the south cleaned up.
We moved to occupy the forest hill between us and Commodore to prevent Commodore from harassing us further and offered peace:
The peace has been declined, but Commodore does not appear to be making moves against us ... yet. He has built more units lately, as his production this game is double that of pretty much anybody else we've met. Right now I have him down for 3 axes and a chariot empire-wide (his horses were hooked up just a few turns ago), so we've added a spear to our mountain-stack.
This has given us sufficient buffer to finally settle Ecliptic (they make a nice porter, but it happened to be the brewery I had just gotten back from when it was time to settle this city. This is the level of thought that gose into these names!) and remove the threat of him settling on that plains hill!
I've offered peace once more and if he declines again then I've resolved to Commodore being Commodore and us just being at a state of permanent war. Regardless, I am taking advantage of having control of the battlefield to bring south some workers and chop out all those nasty trees. Getting some Math-fueled hammer chops in will go a long way towards helping get 1) units and 2) culture buildings. We're only 5 culture points behind Commodore in control of the hill tile; it's important to get to 100 culture in Breakside before he does. To satisfy both unit and culture goals, a barracks is the first build.
In the core of the empire we're mostly building workers and whipping stuff. Leon's has finished it's granary and is starting a new archer; it's current MP is going to head NE to Coalition for when the galley completes eot74. Sadly the galley can only complete that turn by working a plains tile, so the worker that hooked up the stone is now cottaging said plains. There's good odds I improve over that tile later on; or not, who knows.
We are also just 2 turns away from a settler out of Amnesia for city #7, but it is delayed one turn because 1) Amnesia is finally rid of it's whip anger and 2) the settler would arrive 1 turn too soon for the galley as it currently stands.
The capital has just whipped a worker after building one naturally, and that pair will likely be cottaging and chopping out buildings.
As for wonders, I'm not sure we have the production to do any seriously. Yuris has already landed the game's first, taking advantage of his mostly-isolated state (too far south, minor nitpick) and built The Great Lighthouse. I've marked the resources he has hooked up with signs so we have a decent idea of how far north he's come.
If our economy wasn't starting to crash I think I'd be racing south to block him off.
And just because I care, here's some updated graphs from after ending turn:
Short version is we're losing on production badly, doing decent on GNP, and if we can actually get some happiness to our cities (ivory and city #7!) then we should be in good shape for making that food edge actually tell.