[SPOILER] PB37 Dark Savant tries not to be a blatant MP n00b

[Dark Savant]

Next turn, I can also move the chariot to the hill 2NE of Ignis Fatuus, and cover it with the spear from Sorpigal, if nothing shows up next turn either.

If he does show up with a spear, I can pull back the units as if nothing happened.

[Dark Savant]

I could have moved the chariot directly to the hill.  

I don't know what I was thinking.  It was 2 AM in the morning and I'd been traveling all day, but still.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 72 has rolled, but I need to clarify my thinking on what happened during the previous turns.

Turn 69 (1240 BC) - Part 4 (C&D)

Score tally:

• Us: +8 points for +1 pop in each of Castle Ironfist, Harmondale, and Castleview (21 pop total).  (Yeah, maybe I shouldn't forget ourselves. )
  
• Coeurva: -2 points for a -1 pop whip (16 pop total).
  
• dtay: -5 points for a -2 pop whip (11 pop total).
  
• GermanJoey: +3 points for +1 pop in State of Yue; -3 points for a -1 pop whip in ... somewhere outside State of Yue and Seven Mysteries (I can recheck this if really necessary) (17 pop total).
  
• JR4: +2 points for +1 pop; -2 points for a -1 pop whip (both outside city #2) (19 pop total); +6 points for an unknown technology.  (Unknown on t69, that is. )
  
• Krill: +5 points for +1 pop in Room 101 and +1 pop in either Wigan Pier or 12 Monkeys (15 pop total).
  
• Ventessel: +3 edit +2 points for +1 pop (7 pop total).
  

This is going to get hairy the next three turns, as people get credit for their capitals expanding to 3rd ring, but I'll see if I can keep up.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 70 (1200 BC) - Part 1

Sandro moves to take a closer look at Seven Mysteries.




GermanJoey has already played his turn, and he just 2-pop-whipped it.  That's probably either a settler or a lighthouse.

That one forest looks like it may be the only one it has, but Seven Mysteries could still easily be a serious competitor for the Great Lighthouse if that is a regular lighthouse about to complete.  Our scouts saw GermanJoey's workers starting to mine each of those grassland hills, and it may well have mined copper in one of the unrevealed tiles.

I have to watch this closely.

I wonder if GermanJoey knows that our scouts are doing more than just passing through.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 70 (1200 BC) - Part 2

Gem heads north, and finally makes contact with another player!



It's JR4, as expected.  He must have Writing, as I can trade World Maps with him.  We cannot trade resources yet, but I think that should readjust on the interturn.

F4 shows this:



We can't see the border between GermanJoey and JR4, so we have no indication how relations are between them, other than that they are not fighting a hot war.

And there is still no sign that anyone else has contact with someone who is not a land neighbor, or us.  I realize that even our 23 hammers for a work boat is a lot to invest early for exploration (which I hadn't even intended originally), but did no one else's starting scout discover a third contact?

[Dark Savant]

Turn 70 (1200 BC) - Part 3

We completed research on Mysticism; Masonry research is now underway.

I swap Castle Ironfist's citizen working the mined grassland hill to the recently cottaged river grassland tile.  This reduces its foodhammer input into the settler from 24/turn to 22/turn, but its settler will now reach 68/100 in 2 turns, so I can 2-pop-whip it then, just as its whip unhappiness clock resets (again).

As expected, Gavagai built a library in Ankara, though after building a granary first:



We have to eventually do something about this; otherwise Ankara will eventually claim Castleview's corn tile, which will also make it much easier for Gavagai to attack Castleview.

Sorpigal's border is about to expand to all the food in second-ring, so it whips its work boat.  And uh, it has 63/30 hammers into a work boat now, so I'll lose a few hammers to the overflow cap.  

Garrote Gorge has reached size 2, and as is becoming traditional, promptly whips its barracks.  (Red dot won't do that, since it has 3 food tiles in first-ring.)

[Dark Savant]

Turn 70 (1200 BC) - Part 4 (C&D)

Word of warning: attempting to search Google for JR4's city names results in his spoiler thread as the top result.    I had to ^W quickly out of that window too.  His city naming theme appears to be powerful real-life historical women of the Mongols.

His cities are:

1. Borte (size 7, in top 5 cities).  That one I recognize; she's the first wife of Genghis Khan.
   
2. Muqa (size 7, also in top 5 cities; must be the Buddhist holy city to appear in top 5 cities like this without a wonder).
   
3. Toregene
   
4. Oghul Qaimish
   
5. Chubei
   

Score tally:

• Us: +2 points for +1 pop in Garrote Gorge; -5 points for 2 -1 pop whips in Sorpigal and Garrote Gorge; +6 points for Mysticism (20 pop total).
  
• Coeurva: +5 points for +2 pop; +3 points for planting city #7, Westward Ho! (out of sight); -3 points for a -1 pop whip (18 pop total).  Imperialistic continuing to be Imperialistic.
  
• dtay: +10 points for +4 pop; -2 points for a -1 pop whip (14 pop total).  There isn't any other possible way he could have gained 10 points in 1 turn, so he must have captured a barbarian city (no one else's score went down as a result).  That in turn means that he's not really that far behind.
  
• GermanJoey: +8 points for +3 pop; -5 points for a -2 pop whip in Seven Mysteries (18 pop total).
  
• JR4: +2 point for +1 pop (not in Borte or Muqa) (20 pop total); +16 points for 12 land tiles held in the third ring of Borte for 20 turns.
  

[Dark Savant]

Okay, it's now clear that I was wrong about dtay and Ventessel's score gains on t68 and t70; Ventessel actually gained 2 points on t69, not 3.  The other hypothesis that I considered less likely does make the score numbers come out right.  I'll go back and edit the appropriate posts.  (This is for my own records more than anything else.)

edit: no, that doesn't, either.  Let me think about this for a while.

edit 2: okay, it turns out some of the previous numbers for Ventessel weren't right either.  He must have had the lowest demographics population (42,000) in the game on t68, so he can't have gained pop points.  It looks like he only controlled 8, not 9, land tiles during the 20 turns?  I'm not sure how, but this is the only way I can get the numbers to work.  I'll make a note of that and edit the previous posts for my record.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 71 (1160 BC) - Part 1

I log in and find this offer:



Sorry, no; we're not trading away our maps right now.  Since JR4 has Whales available to trade, he must have Sailing, and so we know all 12 of his techs (Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Bronze Working, Fishing, Hunting, Meditation, Mining, Mysticism, Pottery, Sailing, The Wheel, Writing).  I need to still examine him as a threat to build the Great Lighthouse, though he doesn't yet have Masonry either.

We also get this offer:



Sorry, no; we're not trading away our maps right now.

In other news, the Incest Empire must have just discovered Writing, because they did not have it the previous turn.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 71 (1160 BC) - Part 2

Sandro continues to creep along the borders of Seven Mysteries:



Okay, so he 2-pop-whipped a lighthouse there last turn.  He must be trying for the Great Lighthouse; he can't be wanting just to enhance the crabs' yield because he hasn't actually put a work boat on the tile -- the work boat we saw went on Seven Mysteries' whales tile in the fog.

He can straight-up build the Great Lighthouse, chop the forest we can see for 20 hammers, and 3-pop-whip for another 45 hammers, and if he's got a mined copper there too as I suspect, he may well beat our Great Lighthouse build currently planned to finish on t84, though it will be close.

Gem discovers the borders of one of JR4's cities:



That's too far south to be the borders of JR4's capital, I believe.