[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[NylesStandish]

Turn 66:




Started chopping the workboat in Mosul and switched gold on.

Turn 67:




Switched to a worker in Akkad since I only have 4 and have another city on the way.




Some floodplains and more iron for Elkad.

Turn 68:




Wow. Four floodplains. You could grab them all with one city by planting either where the barb warrior is or 1S of Elkad's second silver (which he will be able to mine once borders pop for Nomads). The best food bonuses it has are 4 food (the deers or farming floodplains), which isn't quite as good as Akkad's pigs or Hamburg's rice, but still. Four floodplains. That grass hill deer is basically the same as a flat grassland cow in terms of tile yield.




Fished the fish and overflowed into granary. The granary should be whippable as soon as Mosul reaches size 2.

Also mismicroed the workers. I intended both to put turns into a cottage 1SW of Nineveh.


Not sure where I want to go in terms of tech path. I probably shouldn't have gone for Metal Casting so soon: non-industrious forges are expensive and workshops aren't great right now without a boost from caste system.

I could go the military route and get Construction and/or Horseback Riding. If I do, I may switch targets from Plako to Elkad, since taking out Elkad opens up settlement of the HUGE TRACTS OF COMPLETELY UNSETTLED LAND to his south (old screenshot, but nothing new has been explored in the area, and by mousing over I can tell none of the resources visible have been improved even as of Turn 68) :




Is it just me or is there a lot of extra room here?

I don't want to get the religious techs and Hereditary Rule yet since I have no religions and they do nothing for me until HR, which I'd have to revolt into and which I don't necessarily need right now. I have a decent amount of happiness and I want to grow wide as opposed to tall right now.

I could go for Currency directly or I could get Alphabet first. Getting Alphabet gets me a better multiplier and also allows open borders therefore foreign trade routes. I can also make spies, which (correct me if I'm wrong) aren't forbidden anywhere in the rules.

Currency also permits going for Confucianism. I don't think I'd be able to beat somebody who had been planning to get to it first, and with 22 other players there's bound to be at least one. I think it would be faster, if getting the religion were my only goal, to get Meditation and Priesthood first. However, the techs themselves are useless without religion (except as prerequisites). I don't really need courthouses yet and not enough food or workshops to justify Caste System for a while.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 69:







I take out a barb warrior with overwhelming odds. The workers started building the road north to the location of the Iron city, where the settler from Babylon will go.

Turn 70:




I spot a sword and axe from Elk. I don't know where CH is, but he's not to the northeast, and I know from the foreign advisor that Elkad was the one who started the war, so I'm guessing it was for scouting.




Plako's chariot takes out a barb warrior and I start building a settler. Chop comes in next turn.




Plako's MFG is impressive as fuck.




I did this for all of the other leaders I have contact with and added up all of the espionage points they had. I also did this for myself. I have put out a total of 248 EPs. This perfectly matches expectations: 4 points for each of the 70 turns so far, except for a few turns a the beginning before I had contacted anybody. I met Plako on turn 8, so that's 32 EPs lost from the 280 I would have if I had a place to put them on turn 1.

However, all of my rivals have missing EPs. Assuming I was Plako's first contact as well, he should also have 248 EPs over all of his opponents, but only has 198. That's 50 missing EPs, about enough for him to have graphs on an unmet civ.

I assume that all of the other civs had another contact before me, but even if I do the math as if I was the first contact implies 73 missing EPs for Commodore, 82 for Elkad, and 47 for CH. Yuri would have negative missing EPs if I was his first contact, but if he made first contact on turn 10 he has 110 missing EPs.

So, either I fucked up my math somewhere or everybody I have contact with has contact with at least one civilization who I lack contact with.

Also, I'm pretty sure that's a large inland sea to the south, as opposed to being open to the ocean at some point as I supposed earlier. Commodore's contact with Yuri implies that either they are connected or separated by a small amount of water.

Turn 71:




The first thing I noticed when logging in was that I had a trade network connection to Plako now. I have no roads connected to any of his, so I guess he founded Frankfurt on that part of the coast I've defogged, grabbing the fish and iron.




Chop goes into the settler.

Turn 72:




Walked my warrior into striking range of a barb warrior. He's injured, so I have about a coinflip chance if he attacks. 1 strength + 50% for forest +20% for Woodsman I = 1.7 strength. 1.5 + 10% for Combat I = 1.65 strength for barb warrior.




Commodore builds the Pyramids , and not in Saradash. I'm not that concerned about the government civics changing ability. If he builds a forge and runs an Engineer he can get a Great Engineer in a reasonable time, or 50 turns without any other specialists for a guaranteed Great Engineer, and that's basically another free wonder.




Mfg and crop yield increasingly becoming shit. The next 2 cities' city square tile yield will yield 2 food and 1 hammer each, and the first citizen will yield another 2 food and 1 hammer. That extra production puts me 2 points below average and the extra food puts me just 1 point above the average.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 73:




My scout survived!









Founded Basra. Thinking Granary, Moai, then Lighthouse.




Whipped granary in Mosul.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 74:




Switch on gold for Construction.

Turn 75:




Moved Chariot in case barb comes for me instead of Plako.

Turn 76:




It went for Plako. Moved Chariot to guard workers. After moving the Chariot I remembered Oasis tiles have a movement cost of 2 for some reason (maybe the units have to stop and get a drink when they walk through the Oasis or something) so Plako's chariot couldn't kill the workers before they'd have a chance to move.

Turn 77:




More this turn. I left the Chariot and Axe I was making for my aborted invasion of Plako earlier in queue long enough for the production to decay. They both had about a turn of hammers in them, and all that's left of the Chariot is 2 hammers and the Axe has none, so I removed him from the queue.

Finished Library, though. Gives me an extra 7 full beakers/turn with this base commerce.




In other news, CH's score rocketed up 30 points with his completion of the Hanging Gardens.

Turn 78:




Ramadi founded. Switched deer over; gonna whip rax and hook up stone.




CH got a lot of benefit out of that wonder.

Turn 79:




Nothing much but a demo screen this turn. GNP is too high. Middling crop yield, high population. Land area is low partly because I have a lot of water tiles; in the long run they're inferior to cottaged land tiles. Less so since I'm financial, but still inferior.

Turn 80:




Moving the workers away from the border to cottage the riverside. They'll go back east to camp the other deer and quarry the stone at some point.

Turn 81:




Got Construction, getting Currency next. Probably should have got currency first. Bridges aren't that important and I'm not gonna catapult somebody right now. Akkad is at the happy cap and Nineveh is near it, but I'd probably rather get the extra happiness from Markets or Forges before Gardens.




Checking to see what Elkad's up to.

Turn 82:




Starting to see a pattern. Elkad's workers are too preoccupied with dem gains to do any work, and spend all day squatting.




Also hasn't founded any new cities for a while. Was able to hook up 4 silvers (including the one he's trading with me) within the culture of his first 4 cities.




I expected to be able to see into the city with the galley; I guess the sight rules work differently with water units involved. In worldbuilder I was able to see the city square with a unit on a land tile where the galley is now.

I'm considering moving the galley into Plako's territory to scout down his coast next turn. If I do so, the declaration of war will allow me to move the Chariot south and see Hamburg and its garrison. I can then either move it back north and continue down the coast with the empty galley, or board the galley with the chariot and give myself the option to scout inland when I get past Plako's borders. Plako probably won't care much as long as I don't sit on any resources or pillage or attack anything. If I load the chariot into the galley, that may make him react more defensively.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 83:




I declared war on Plako. For real this time. Well, not really for real... you know what I mean. Scouting war. He whipped a unit somewhere after seeing my units on the border.




Hamburg has a Granary and nothing else.




I can't see any buildings in Frankfurt. Didn't load the Chariot to send the message that I'm just looking around. I could theoretically already have shit loaded in the galley, however.




Before I declared and cut off the trade route, I got a shot of Mr. 10 Cities and all of his resources. I also have a trade network connection to Borsche (who I haven't met yet) through Elkad. Speaking of whom...




What the fuck is this? My Chariot was on the marble and could have taken the worker and kept him. Didn't do it because I like his silver and I don't have enough of a military advantage to make it my silver yet. The one on the southern hill, which I couldn't take this turn, and which squatted a big deuce last turn, has moved off the hill without doing any work on the hill.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 84:




I had been assuming that the upright workers with the white circles had just done nothing and skipped turn. Apparently, you can fortify or assign worker actions after the worker does his turn of work and get the same effect. I didn't think of this at first since I never do this normally and I don't think there's any benefit to this practice other than hiding what action the worker is doing from opponents.




Moved galley. I'll explore the rest of Plako's coast and immediately ask for peace when I'm done.

I poked south with the Chariot on the stone and Hamburg has a Warrior and Axeman defending it.

[GermanJoey]

It's not that uncommon to cancel worker actions... you can hide what they're doing from your opponents, like you said, but its also useful for making sure that they won't auto-start an action at the start of your next turn, just in case you want them to do something else.

Nice updates, btw, thanks for writing them up!

[Mardoc]

its also useful for making sure that they won't auto-start an action at the start of your next turn, just in case you want them to do something else.

Agreed. The situation may change from turn to turn to change your priorities (wars, for instance).

Another reason might be when chopping forests for a wonder. You might find yourself 'pre-chopping' - getting all your forests within 1 turn of complete - but save the last chop until you can do them all at once. Two benefits: if someone else builds the wonder while you're pre-chopping, then you can use the forests for something else instead of just failgold. Also, you can prechop while you're researching the tech to unlock the wonder in question, saving some turns and getting the wonder earlier.

There's also the general trick of gaining worker turns while moving. If your next vital improvement is two tiles away from your previous, you have two options. You can move your worker directly to the tile, at which point he's out of movement and must wait until next turn. Or you can have it move one tile, and spend the rest of the turn improving the tile in the midde, and cancel worker action. Next turn you move to the urgent tile and start work.

You still get your first worker turn on the urgent tile next turn, whatever you do. But you also get a partial improvement done on the in-between tile, that you can come back to eventually and finish up, either en route to somewhere else, or once all the more urgent stuff is done. The most common thing to build is a partial road, because you usually do want a road network eventually but it's lower priority than improving tiles that you're working, but other things work just as well. The trick doesn't work all the time. Your workers have to be the right distance away from their next task, with something useful but low priority to do in between. If the urgent tile is a hill or a forest, then you don't gain anything by pausing en route. But when it does work, it's like getting a worker turn for free.

No single one of these tricks applies all the time, but one or another will matter often enough that a bunch of players just cancel every worker every turn. I think there's a keyboard shortcut that does all of them at once, in fact, although I don't personally know what it is. I don't cancel them all every turn, I'm too lazy to go for perfect worker efficiency, but I understand the theory and sometimes do one of those things.

[GermanJoey]

You can just click on the worker, once its done the first action, and then right-click, which cancels the action.

[Thoth]

With a worker selected, backspace clears the orders for that worker. Alt + backspace clears orders for all workers.