[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

T47


B-West has plains flat riverside silver (1/2/6 yield, I believe) and picks up more coast in the second ring. We're not actually working these high-commerce tiles yet, but that will change around T60. The southern sheep are likely too risky to settle, but those offshore landmasses might not be.

The approach towards CML appears to be forested. Just as well; makes it more difficult for 2-movers to reach us. The barb warrior can potentially make an annoying move here that would force us to delay improving the pcow. (Which counts as "riverside", incidentally.)

CML has founded his third city on this turn, by the way (his naming scheme is to insert the syllable "cuck" into default city names) and whipped something (possibly for 2 pop; went 99 -> 94 score; axe?), but not his capital, which has grown to size5. It's behind a size4 capital in the rankings, which I guess must be Gavagai's, so the size7 (!) city leading the rankings probably belongs to someone else (GermanJoey?). Krill's capital has grown to size6. No other size5 cities in the world. Furthermore, CML has lost 2000 soldier points in the graphs, and he didn't whip on the last few turns. Could mean the loss of a warrior.


And lead us not into temptation...

Note the road leading 7, and that this is indeed the barracks city (his second one), not Castleview. He might be able to reinforce it, and he can always whip two 2XP AGG warriors if we declare. (It's also quite possible that Harmondale pops borders on the next turn anyway.)

If Savant intends to use the work boat on his next city, that means it will go quite far to the west. He might just want to scout the coastline, though.


Edit: The road signs in the north are off. We'll move W4 to partial-road the oasis on T48, then road towards the north-east.

Don't forget (to swap oasis -> rice and dial back science next turn). I'm good at forgetting these details I've posted about thrice already. Edit: The reason for the oasis is to reach 1/28f and grow to size5 (building axe or spear) at 9 surplus. Actually leaning towards spear, since who knows what CML might be up to. We have better visibility on Savant, and CML's potential axes can't reach us before we connect copper at Vermin. A chariot might. Then again, the chariot would run into 4-5 warriors if we just whip once. Note also that CML seems to be keeping a turn split with us (!) -- he's definitely not ending his turns when he's first to play (CivStats). So whatever we produce at Rhapsody definitely goes south. I'm expecting an attack, or at least a probe; he might have spotted the borders with a warrior we never saw. Keep an eye on soldiers.

Sicil grows in 4t; W1 (just moved onto hill) will have finished a grass mine by then. Plan is to get the granary running, then whip a worker or library (might want to 2-pop whip). I think that B-West actually gets founded on T52 thanks to the road; the settler should move to hill 8 of lake (T48), grass forest hill (T49), plains hill (T50), and onto the forested site (T51).

Final note: CML took 2 EP off us on the same turn that I changed our EP weights. Hope that means he's concerned about dtay, but won't read anything into it. I might split them 3 Sav / 1 CML depending on what happens.

EDIT: If CML is keeping a turn split, it's with us and not dtay. Bring it on, then.

[Bacchus]

Well, his last two logins show that he is not keeping a turn split with anyone

[Coeurva]

Just noticed that as well...

I've upgraded my system to the next LTS release; now the keyboard doesn't work in-game, except for the Escape key (I don't know, either), and pressing F1 apparently aborts the game. Civ4 also takes five minutes to load. No such problems occur with other applications run through wine (of course not). I'm looking to get that fixed right now.

Until then, all I can tell you is that Harmondale did indeed pop its borders, which I guess will have amused Savant as much as it did me. I suppose our warrior was just so overwhelmed by the sheer sophistication of those Ethiopian military instructors that he now finds himself in a dark and savage wood with no memory of how he got there; "tant' era pien di sonno a quel punto..." -- It actually helps us, since it saves a turn of movement. The work boat went westward, by the way.

More, hopefully, in a few minutes.

EDIT: "the network socket could not be created" Oh this day will be FUN.

[Bacchus]

What the hell happened with Gavagai's score by the way? Surely he didn't build Henge being Creative. Or is that just his third ring coming through in score now.

[Coeurva]

It has happened before; Gavagai had 72 score to everyone else's ~56 around T25, might be visible in screenshots. CRE is the culprit, no doubt.

Nobody has built the Henge yet. Doesn't CRE give a production boost to that wonder? Mind the denial value!

I've managed to get the game running again without much of a fuss, fortunately, although it required a nightly build of wine , which might give... interesting results in the future. For now, here's the T48 report.

Domestically, there's nothing much to say. The barb warrior at Vermin has vanished into the fog again, so I've sent W2 to improve the cows. Everything else is going according to plan, except moving onto the oasis seems to have consumed 2 movement (?!) for W4; not that we need a road on that tile right now. I think Sailing should suffice to connect dragon and cow here, via lake 7 of Rhapsody into the river onto the road at Sicil. -- The settler from Sicil is underway towards B-West. T52 city confirmed. 11 OF into granary there; nice enough.

I've been negligent with the event log; Hinduism was founded in 2240 BC. That may have been Krill. It was neither of our neighbours, at any rate, and if I read CivStats correctly, it wasn't Gavagai, JR4, dtay or Joey, since none of them gained score on the 2240 BC turn-roll. Ventessel is the other option, as he researched something that took him 12t to finish on T44, which would fit Polytheism, but also AH.

Graphs show nothing new, except that Savant's GNP is picking up. Demographically, we're falling behind in soldiers a bit; Rival Best is 35,000. An axe will fix that (William Tell, paraphrased).

EDIT: The size7 city was whipped for 1 pop since I last checked, which means it belongs to dtay, JR4 or GermanJoey. If I had followed Top5 cities on every log-in, I could have identified the owner.

EDIT: I've also thought about whether axe or spear first is better, and the answer is clearly axe, contrary to what I thought at first. Sure, the spear counters the chariot with less fuss, but spear + warriors still loses to an axe, whereas we can simply keep the axe in reserve against a chariot, since chariot vs. warrior in city is exactly the same odds as chariot vs. axe

[Coeurva]

T49


These two have forced me to change the worker plan; we'll use both W3 and W4 to move into and chop the northern forest, since if I had moved W3 onto the grass forested hill and the barb warrior moved 7, we would have lost two worker turns, which isn't acceptable. At least this gets us 1t into the floodplains cottage, but I hope I won't have to whip the axe here. Even so, we could lose the rice farm, since I didn't use W3 to finish the road on the tile 3 of Rhapsody; depending on where those warriors move next, we might have to keep a worker around so that we can road this tile on the turn the axe arrives.

(I'm not sure how the barbarians move and what the various UNITAI plans do, by the way; I had imagined that by roading the tile, the worker would serve as a "lure" and provoke the warriors to come closer, which is the last thing we need here.)

Writing will take one more turn of saving gold. The good news is that our neighbours' GNP has dropped markedly as well, as you've anticipated. Still, we're tied for last in GNP even at 100% research (lack of culture probably contributes).

As spotted by one of our warriors, CML's warrior (still 1.4/2 str) is sitting on the grass forest hill again, which means he knows about our city and will know about the next one unless he moves. No soldiers increase; only got one from Savant (but doesn't look like axe; could be chariot, if he teched AH, since it looks like 4000). Savant is sending the work boat towards us, so he might gain visibility on Sicil. He's also removed his EP spending on us, so I assigned all of ours to CML again.

[Bacchus]

On GNP front, we badly need to establish a trade route.

[Coeurva]

Strongly agree -- I've used almost every turn of worker labour so far to improve the food as we grow, or put chops into settlers, but that might have been a bit narrow-minded on my part. Our road network still consists of three whole tiles (discounting city tiles). Nearly all of our workers will mostly build roads over the next ten turns, while the granaries are under construction.

Whipping the granary at Sicil will free up W1 to road towards the capital (two tiles needed) starting around T52; B-West connects to Shag via river upon foundation; Cowish will link to Shag starting T56 (W5's task) and to the as-yet unsettled fifth city starting T60, perhaps earlier, depending on how much roading assistance W3 can provide to W4. Give me another dozen turns, chief, and I'll have connected all the dots...

You've suggested going off-shore for that ICTY juice with city #7; did any location or direction catch your interest from the screenshots, as sparse as our information is on these islands? We might have the chance to build a scouting work boat at B-West, or a galley, depending on when we tech Sailing.

[Bacchus]

I feel better about the eastern sea, the view from the jungle bordering Savant suggests there may be a large landmass there.

[Coeurva]

T50


Not suspicious!

(We might be able to delay his settler, depending on where it is and how it is being escorted, by moving the warrior (Ames-Ace) next to him. The jungle helps as well. Still, I think he'll be faster. Moving 7 next. Might send the axe north after all... Think it's worth pillaging any road here if he lets us, but that will make him our enemy. He's not roading from Harmondale, which makes me suspect the settler is already underway.)

The barb warriors at Rhapsody have disappeared into the fog again. The other two cities will grow this turn as W1 finishes the grass mine at Sicil and W2 the plains cow pasture at Vermin. Something about W2: on T52, he can either move 7, road 1t; move 7, road 1t; move 4, pasture, or move 77, move 4, pasture. The former shaves a turn off the road to Vermin (finishes T55 in that case), but delays the 5/0/1 tile for B-West by a turn.

Krill's capital hits size7, CML gains 2,000 soldiers (now 26,000 total), someone is at 39,000 soldiers (could be Savant), our GNP is crummy, everything else is looking fine (above-average). Savant is spending 2 EP/t on us, as is CML. I'll use the next two turns to push EP to 104/104 with CML (Savant 78/80 by that point) and then split them evenly.

What do we do with settler #5 if Savant settles first, invalidating the site? Settle pigs/whales on the hill? Skip him and build 2-3 more axes instead?