It will be really awkward for us if dtay spots our worker. Surely, he must be alarmed by the worker roading towards him. Hmmm, I really hope dtay does the sensible thing and turns around, but he could go SE - NE and be safe from our warriors plus having vital information on our plans. Thoughts?
Mmmf. Let's see: Does the Scout show any promotions (or injuries) when you mouse over it?
(I'm basically asleep already, finishing my last stretches and will shortly get to bed, wayyyyy too late, so don't expect anything too lucid; sorry!)
What are we worried his scout is going to do? (Not a rhetorical question.)
Realistically, seeing our warrior here and on this turn after seeing our scout come this way has to tell him we're planning to settle this way already. Note our planned city is not close to him, nor is it threatening. Killing his scout gives him information too, though of a different type.
Eh. It doesn't matter. He'll end his turn out of range or on the foresst hill where our hurt warrior is standing. I wouldn't risk our warrior at those odds. (In this position, wardeccing him while we share a tile would teleport our unit 1SW - ~toward Borte - without moving his.)
Oh, the scout can join our warrior at that forest hill. I didn`t think of that! Well, I was just not so happy about dtay seeing a worker roading towards him, but you are probably right that he won`t see our second city as overly aggressive. The scout is full-strength and has no promotions pending fyi. I was thinking about killing his scout if it was on a hill (without forest protection), but +75 % is too risky.
Yeah. Having slept: There are stong arguments for attacking his scout if it moves onto flatland or 1SW to that bare hill. If we let the scout move freely around us, it can provide him with detailed information about our movements, vision on our city centers, and opportunities to declare war and block unescorted civilians or important tiles, so we should certainly be alert to this. I wouldn't think he'd seek out those opportunities, but I wouldn't have thought going into this game that he would sign up for a pitboss and then log in only once every forty-eight hours through most of the early turns.
Just Ventessel still to play right now, so hopefully he'll do so without needing a pause. Then hopefully dtay will get another turn in too instead of waiting for tomorrow. (His play window, when he doesn't inexplicably skip a day, seems to be something like 00:00 to 05:00 GMT) Then we can respond accordingly. I tend to be inclined toward peace, but if we have a chance to kill his scout with excellent odds, we'd be (slightly) weakening a player who's not only our neighbor, but one of the ones who keeps holding the turns!
A few international notes while I continue to rebuild my picture of what happened up to now:
- dtay's entire military almost certainly still consists of one warrior and that scout. If (as I expect) he's producing a settler next turn with the help of a chop, his scout is in no position to fogbust for it, which means his warrior is doing that job on its own. Screenshots of what we can see of dtay's neighborhood with tile yields turned on (ctrl-y to toggle) before (i.e. now) and after he founds his first city might show us where his new city and/or copper is, if it's somewhere where he's scouted: If he founds on a forest, that forest will disappear when he builds the city even though it's in the fog. If copper is in his borders, the tile will show one more hammer than it would otherwise.
- Ventessel probably revolted to slavery T27 (after we had played). In any case, he whipped his (presumably) settler at the end of last turn and produced it this turn, immediately regrowing to size 3.
- Of note, at least one other player is also in slavery (my assumption is that it's (just) Coeurva for now, but I'm not 100% sure yet) - either Coeurva (who got BW that turn) or Dark Savant (who had already had it for ages) revolted before we played on T22. I expect dtay to revolt next turn after producing his settler.
- A big part of the reason it's taking so long to catch up: I no longer believe Gavagai was being choked at any time; I'm reassessing what happened with CML, but I finally realized that Gav definitely didn't improve his rice right away, and his growth curve is consistent with a normal pasture-first opening. Still working on this one, because a lot of the information available from the demos only means anything in context.
[EDIT: Also, Krill finally started working a tile with >0 production on Turn 25 (after we played) or 26 (before we played). I'm going to guess it was T25, and that he produced his first Quechua when he grew on T27.]
It looks like dtay missed his window tonight (my time). Now, what to do? Question to lurkers: Would it be okay for me to go ahead and play the turn this evening (before dtay)? If we assume dtay plays in the middle of the night, I will have to ask for a pause before going to bed. This will hold up the game quite unnecessarily for maybe 8-9 hours at least. I don`t think we have anything to gain from playing before him anyway.
Dtay finally played, and his scout did go SW. I didn`t think he would dare to do so, but he couldn`t see our second warrior. The warrior had about 95 % odds to win. After a few minutes staring at the screen - I decided not to attack. I hope that decision will not come back to bite us later, but I figured that we still want to have a bit of goodwill left, and it`s a non-military unit after all. The thing that pushed me into not attacking was the fact that an animal close to our Muqa city site could easily ruin our day (perhaps with a lucky roll), because our warriors would be a bit out of position and even wounded.
I couldn`t see any tiles with an extra hammer, so hopefully dtay will settle elsewhere with his second city.
Sorry, yeah, looking over dtay's history in this game, it looks like he doesn't actually have a consistent play window, and of course if he's in the U.S. this weekend would be weird anyway.
On your question to the lurkers: Since the only thing that would have made a turn split necessary here was the chance we might attack dtay's scout, it would have been fine to double-move as long as we didn't declare war. The basic rule is that as long as you don't gain an advantage from playing "out of order" it's fine (and in fact encouraged, as when someone in peace and not in a settler race plays last and first on consecutive turns so as not to hold the following turn).
In spite of arguing both sides above, I 100% support your decision not to attack. If nothing else, a turn split where we play after one of the Turn-Holding Trio would grind the already-slow turn pace almost to a halt - but given the size of our "military" for the next several turns, you're also right to be more concerned about barbs than a rival's scout, especially when attacking the scout risks provoking Tokuzulu in the early game.
Note the extra hammer on a copper tile won't appear unless/until it is actually inside the cultural borders of someone who has bronze working, so we'll have to wait until dtay settles his next city to see if either it or the city itself is someplace we've defogged. It's interesting that both of dtay's forest hills are still unchopped though. This might suggest that his copper is north or west of his city, but that's really speculative at this point.
I'm also closer to sorting out what everyone's actually been doing from the demos; it'll probably be at least a few more days before I actually catch up, but dtay at least looks pretty transparent from the graphs: I still expect his settler to complete next turn, thanks to a chop completed this turn. We'll see!
And Finally: Thinking about our injured warrior, I can't figure out how he wound up with 1.2 strength after fighting that lion! Any chance you could post a screenshot of the combat log so I can see what actually happened? It's imaginably possible there's some actually-helpful information attainable that way, but honestly it would mostly be just to satisfy my curiosity.
As requested, here is the combat log. I had to take two screenshots to cover the battle.
It`s no fun being second in a turn split with people living in a totally different time zone, who are also late to play. Thanks for the clarification on turn split rules. I`ll sure try to keep playing as soon as I`m able to, in order to keep a good turn pace.
I hope dtay doesn`t settle our way. Hopefully he`ll soon meet another neighbour as well. Btw, we`re at 60/60 espionage points right now. I guess civstats will tell us when he founds his second city. I`ll make sure to check for extra hammer tiles then.
Thanks, JR4! I find that fascinating. First, our warrior got credit for a turn of fortification, unlike in my sandbox - I think because of a difference between Pitboss and SP turn order. I'm guessing that in all forms of the game, you get the fortification bonus when the turn number updates, but in SP (or hotseat/PbeM) the barbs play "last" - just before fortification is assigned - but in Pitboss they play "first" - just after it's assigned.
Second, my sandbox showed a 58% warrior at 1.1 strength instead of 1.2: Just a matter of which way the display rounds unit strength, so just a curiosity, but still weird. I wonder if it's another weird difference between Pitboss and sequential or what.... Anyway, good to know!
