[Spoilers] Pindicator accepts his fate

[pindicator]

Turn 078

Silly mistake maker that I am, after I did all that calculating last night for Iron Working I left the slider on 60%. So now we're pretty much committed: get IW in 2 turns at 100% or don't. The good news is it looks like we are going to get it with only 1 or 2 beakers over:



The big focus this turn is on finishing up the last of my granaries: we whipped the granary at Kameber, giving the deer tile back to Torheven. Atuan grew to size 2 at end of turn and the new pop is actually working the pfh instead of the crabs. That tile along with the chop that came in this turn puts us right at 30/60 on the granary, setting up for a whip next turn. Meanwhile Andrad is actually going to swap off of it's granary next turn to finish out the worker in its queue. And the capital will swap to a granary next turn to gather up that chop and bring it up to 30/60 as well, prime for a 1-pop whip (but not before I push a settler out of there first).

Notable that my CY is now ranked #4 after that 1 whip. So there is a pretty tight group of us jockeying about for 2nd place behind OT4E. I still think we're early enough in the game that CY and city count are a better overall projection of how a civ is doing. Although tech is starting to become a bigger factor.

Speaking of tech, now that I have research sight on Nyles again (he's saving gold for Writing), I'm switching back to getting graphs on OT4E.

And finally, I offered chumchu a World Map swap, since I couldn't find anything in the Tech Thread or the Organizing Thread that said they weren't allowed. Funny enough, I had been assuming world map trades were banned just because lately they have been in the last few games I've played.

[pindicator]

Turn 079

Straight Mappin'



Chumchu accepted and we get some bigger picture knowledge know. I like seeing that Chumchu is next to Mr. Cairo - they should keep each other in check. And Nicolae (a.k.a. Kim Jong Un) is to the south, so DTG must be on the other side of Mr. Cairo. Or perhaps DTG just got lucky with a city sniped by a scouting chariot, and the whipping we saw by gsorel before he went AWAL was really in response to chumchu. Chumchu's power and mfg spiked recently, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are tensions there.

Bigger picture, we want to grab that center, obviously. But in addition, take a look at the dark area just north of center, and how it is blocked off by strategically placed peaks on all sides. Something must be there.

In addition: no silver spotted, and only 1 gold (in that large open area west of chumchu), and no marble or stone spotted.

The only other person I have contact with that also has Writing is StarDoor. This actually tells me something about OT4E: he couldn't have grabbed Feudalism, because that requires writing. So OT4E definitely grabbed Machinery off of Oracle, and is likely to be building Colossus rigiht now.


As for my turn, I whipped another granary at Atuan, chopped into the granary at Gont, and swapped back to finish the worker at Andrad. But only 1 thing really mattered this turn:



After finishing units in Gont, Karego, and Orandrad my expenses ticked up a little too far. And while it was possible to work a few more lake tiles and bump the slider down to 90%, it would come at too big a cost, so I deleted the scouting warrior. As is, we are going to hit Iron Working on the nose at end of turn with 0 gold in the bank.

Better get those gems running to make it worthwhile. Perregal is going to focus on growth first, so the first order of business is to get that rice chopped and farmed. It will take another 10 - 15 turns to get the city growing proper and working all the gems, but hopefully it will be worth the investment.


I've been weighing the next tech question in my head a bit lately: Writing for libraries and Great Scientists or Sailing to hook up whales for more happiness?

[pindicator]

Turn 080

OT4E cannot be stopped



I'm a little surprised at Police State over Rep. Perhaps he plans on continuing his rampage?

Not happy to see Nyles got a Great General upon finishing off dcodea.

But best of all, we have Iron!



StarDoor's iron is also in a similar position. (Speaking of StarDoor, he founded his ivory/gems city in the expected position last turn.) I still felt like chopping out those gems and rice were more important, so the workers aren't going to hook up that iron until after. We'll have the rice chopped next turn, and farmed the turn after.

Right now breakeven is sitting right at 30%. I'm a little scared of getting too over-extended before we get Writing in, so I didn't queue up 2 settlers like I originally planned -- instead I'm going to finish the settler in Gont that I had already put some hammers into, but Karego is going to get a 2-turn worker out first. Bigger picture, this is really where I need to be growing all my cities, so getting those last 2 granaries out, getting workers out to make sure I can cottage tiles -- this is my priority. Sailing is probably going to be 5 - 7 turns away (right now it's 7 turns at breakeven), and once it comes in we'll be able to get our cities up to size 8. Which is where they all need to be. Grow, grow, grow, it's the only way we're going to get the economy snowballing.

[Rowain]

How does the power look compared to Nyles?

[pindicator]

Turn 081

How does the power look compared to Nyles?

I think we're okay.



T80 was something like 26k power in all, a big jump on the graph (as you can see). I don't want to pay any more in unit costs than I have to, so I'm going to be starting some barracks as I grow cities, but I'll still be building some military units here and there, so I think I should be high enough to keep him from wanting to attack. I'm also hoping that Nyles has had a full meal and will need a long sleep to properly digest all of that dcodea he just ate!


With Power looking a lot better, my biggest concern now is figuring out how to continue to expand while being able to pay the bills / grow the economy. Speaking of which, I think we can grab Sailing in 5 more turns; we can nab the tech in 2t at 100%. But unlike Iron Working it really won't hurt things if Sailing gets delayed to 6t; I don't have any cities that will be growing into unhappiness before I hook up the whales. Although I haven't ruled out a run at the Great Lighthouse...



I whipped the worker out of Torheven. I was going to just slow-build him, but I would lose a lot of food doing that, and here I'm just going to have Torheven grow on the lake tiles, because I don't need to have it build anything, and I need the commerce to fund all these new and exciting techs.

We do have a settler coming out in 3 more turns, and I'm still debating the best spot to put him.

Candidates are:



This was originally my white dot to be founded on t80, which I've pushed back already. The plusses for this spot is that it will be the cheapest in terms of maintenance cost, probably in the range of 6g, and will be able to help grow a cottage or two for the capital. Strategically, there's the draw that this city will also get me visibility into NylesStandish's copper city (though keep in mind Nyles has 3 coppers connected now), giving me some good intel for when/if I ever attack. Swords on galleys look like a great way to attack that city, btw.

Negatives are that it doesn't really claim any land and that it doesn't have as much food as other spots.




This is the spot I want to grab, but I'm not sure I'm quite ready to grab it at this time. It would be the farthest city from my capital, and the previous city that I settled this far out, Perregal, cost me 11g. Despite this being a better city location long term and an ideal stepping stone for grabbing the center, I don't think I can afford it quite yet. It's the farthest city location I have my eye on, at 12 tiles from the capital.





Wild card third city locations!

We would have to sit in the settler a while for this city, but this is the next chunk of land for me to naturally go after. It's also closer by terms of maintenance (maintenance really is a funny and arbitrary concept when you think about it) than the cow/sheep city, and opens up a lot more locations for me to grab after. I don't really have any one spur picked out here as well - there's the fish/cow/horse location, or I can grab the more southerly fish and plan for building MaoI to take advantage of those water tiles (although I think Atuan is going to be where I build that). Or I can go farther out for the double seafood, double wine location.

Expecting Sailing to take 7 turns, and then the galley out of Karego-At to take 3, I would guess that we'd be settling across the water in 13 turns. I could also go by land, but depending where I want to settle is be looking at 6 to 12 turns travel time, so boat would definitely be faster.

Except the distance to these locations is comparable with the distance to the cow/sheep location in the east. Some spots, even more so. I haven't really firmed up any of these city locations or done a proper dotmap out here either. Just look at all those iron tiles though! I really do want to get here with how resource rich this part is.


Which would you grab? I think I know what my decision is.

[pindicator]

Turn 082

2 turns in one night!

Oh shit, what's this?



Also, those aren't names a pacifist uses.

So Zalson and Nyles played before me last turn, first time in ages. Then this turn they were in before and were playing when I went in ... but then Zalson left mid-turn, so I guess that means they aren't likely attacking now. Still, 2 chariots with 4 workers underneath is normally nothing but trouble. And yet ... they can't really get anywhere with all the hills on our border. All the same, I moved the spear in the capital north, and I started a spear in Karego-At that I'm going to leave half finished unless needed.

We hit 10 workers this turn. I think this is the first time all game I've had more workers than cities, or at least since the very start. I've got 4 of those workers chopping jungle and building improvements at Perregal, and that city finally has a real tile to use:



Took me a while to find the best growth plan for Perregal, but it's going to go something like this: Build granary while growing. Right before growing to size 3 whip out the work boat. Overflow back into granary and then I lost my notes as to the best way to grow to size 3 and also have enough hammers to 1p whip the granary. I'll have to figure that one out again...


Graphs for OT4E are in:

I included score graph for fun. And culture graph is neat because you can see where OT4E built his wonders, but also where StarDoor built his libraries, as he seems to have been prioritizing GNP early on with libraries and building his initial cities higher up before expanding out farther.

Since I'm ahead of OT4E, I'm guessing Mr. Cairo is the #1 crop yield here, which makes me feel better about things. That means I at least have an advantage somewhere against OT4E and can potentially leverage that into additional advantages. This is wearing some serious rose-colored glasses, mind you, but it's better than I was looking at him just last turn.

[pindicator]

Turn 083

Guess that was a pair of roaming chariot escorts to go with the workers? Either way they were gone when I played this turn, leaving only a cottaged silk tile in their wake.

As for me, I have my own caravaning 4-worker stack:



Perregal will hit size 2 next turn and we'll be able to mine the gems the same turn. We won't be hooking up the 2nd gems just as fast, though -- the fastest method of getting Perregal running involves chopping and mining the grass hill northwest of the town, and then the gems hill, and in the end it only gains a couple of food over just using these tiles and the clams. It's also a lot more worker intensive, and I'd rather split some workers off to go north to build cottages and connect the iron. I'll leave 2 more workers down here to chop jungle and build improvements for Perregal.

Kind of quiet turn. Next turn we can turn on the research, and should easily be able to grab Sailing end of t85. We also get the settler for our 9th city done next turn.

[pindicator]

Turn 084

Big turn as we hit a really cool milestone: we grew 5 pop and passed OT4E in total population! We now have more population than anybody we've met. Pretty sure Mr. Cairo is ahead in total pop still, and I know DTG/picklepikkl are really close, but we've had a crazy good past 20 turns and I don't think we're at the end of our run yet. Also, we might be gaining on the #1 crop yield. We'll see....

Settled city #9



I went with the near city for all the reasons I outlined before. I'm hoping to take a brief pause in city founding, at least until I get Writing, and then I am going to try to claim the land across the ocean. In the meantime, my goal is to get every city up to at least size 7. Well, not Spevy or Perregal, but I think every other city should be able to hit size 7 within 10 turns.

It ended up costing a net of 4g (city & civic expenses went up by 7; units expenses went down 1; and the city brings in 2 cpt right away), which wasn't as bad as I was afraid of. It was a little scary to see my gpt at 0% get cut from 17 to 13, but after doing the tile micro and building new tile improvements (especially that new gems mine at Perregal) we were up to +26gpt at 0%.

And as it is, things are looking pretty solid on getting Sailing in 2t. Well, like Iron Working it will be right on the line.

Chumchu offered us maps again, and perhaps he's trying to build some goodwill, because while we did not have anything new to contribute, he sure did:



My scouting chariot has come to meet NylesStandish from the north.



I can't believe he's neglected that land. I mean, that's some gorgeous land. We'll have to see how that compares with what he got from dcodea.

I finally built a granary in the capital. Everybody else I have maps on has a big capital, but there are so many locations that are better than the capital on this map. It was a bit of a mental exercise because like Perregal, there was a clear "best" path as far as growing as fast as possible, but I'm not taking that route for favor of getting better tile development in. In this case, I whipped the capital to finish it's granary. Part of the reason is Spevy is taking a tile, and if I were to slow-build the granary it would be slower than whipping. And if I chop the granary then I lose worker-turns and fall behind on usable tiles. So we whipped it, even if it loses us 3 food over the next 5 turns.

Here's my ded-lurker test to see if they're still paying attention: do I offer StarDoor a map trade? Our borders are set, so I'm kind of leaning towards it.

Demos with science at 100%



Are we possibly gaining on that top crop demo?

[pindicator]

Someone go bug StarDoor to update his thread. He's playing well and I want to see what his strategy is because it was very different than mine, and I need to have my full serving of crow after the game for bashing his combo

[Commodore]

Do I offer StarDoor a map trade? Our borders are set, so I'm kind of leaning towards it.

Is it helpful? Probably not. Is it something you're very curious about exploring and thus pursuit of a core engagement this game has to offer? Very likely.