[SPOILER] And now for something completely different: DaveV is Hannah

[haphazard1]

The mushrooms event is a nice one.

Also nice to see the additional resources near that future city. Do they alter where you plan to place it?

[DaveV]

The mushrooms event is a nice one.

Also nice to see the additional resources near that future city. Do they alter where you plan to place it?

Definitely moving city #1 one tile south, which means #2 also goes one tile south (freshwater crabs, and two freshwater coves).



A couple interesting things in the log: someone already grabbed Octopus Overlords religion. My guess: superjm, since it fits well with his world spell and Spiritual trait. Aurorarcher ate another turn of anarchy to revolt to the standard set of civics.

My stack is finally moving out to take a look at his city. It looks like the city is on flat ground, so I should be able to beat a two-warrior garrison.

[DaveV]

In the north, the settler is still on his way.



In the south, I get a look into Pythagoras:



And here's where my earlier inattention really bites me. Given two more turns of healing and fortifying for the Doviello units, I don't like my chances on the attack. One turn earlier may have made the difference. Maybe I made Aurorarcher spend a few hammers on units, anyway. He's still spamming out the cities like a madman.

[DaveV]

Yeah, I'm definitely not cracking Pythagoras. I may just hang out there to pin down some of his guys, though.



Not much else going on. The settler moved to the city site, the barb warrior is still sitting outside my borders gathering up his courage.

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher apparently got the Strange Advisor event: +3 inflation in exchange for +10 culture in EVERY FREAKING CITY. It looks as though he just built a monument in Gauss; I bet he regrets those hammers now.



The new city is named Election Night, since I couldn't fit Election Night Special in 15 characters:



Here's how 1 gpt = eight turns of Creative trait:  

[DaveV]

Mr. Cairo and superjm have done their adaptive swaps, and, amusingly, have exactly the same traits now:



Expansive is a good choice; with five cities and the Creative trait, I'm using 1/7 of my share of land. So settler spam is an appropriate strategy. I'm not as convinced that Mr. Cairo's choice of Spiritual was a good one; with only three cities and no need for culture, I don't see religion as being his winning path. I might have gone Organized or Arcane.

I'm the only non-expansive civ, Aurorarcher is the only non-spiritual.

Even though I'm paying full price for my settlers, my demos are looking pretty good:



As I noted at the beginning, settlers are still being built mostly with food, so expansive is not as overpowered as it looks.

[DaveV]

Time for another trait swap:



Which makes it unanimous for EXP. Call this the "build infrastructure" set of traits, since it gives me a bunch of discounts on buildings. I'm going to build a few Sea Havens, which are the Lanun version of harbors:



Other civs' harbors lack the maintenance discount, the happy from pearls, and the shipbuilding bonus, and cost 80 hammers. 30 hammers is pretty irresistible for all those benefits. The 25% bonus should let me shave a turn off the galleys in both Cheese Shop and Dead Parrot.

It hurts to lose Creative the turn before borders pop at Election Night, but choosing an insane leader means taking what the RNG gives me. Because the workboats now have no nets/coves to build, I'll try to explore a little with them, but not wander too far for fear of sea monsters and griffons.

[haphazard1]

Sea Havens are pretty nice, and at that hammer cost are excellent.

Insane can be a lot of fun to play. It certainly adds flavor to the game.

[DaveV]

There's a wave of barb warriors coming from the west. That's the problem with living next to a BAR guy; all his barb issues become yours.



None of the barbs has a promotion (meaning they're wild barbs, not from a barb city), so they should be free XP for my shock warrior. My unpromoted warriors will only have 73% odds. If Aurorarcher wants to attack me, stacking up with these guys would be a cute strategy.

[DaveV]

Those barbs in the south seem to be having pathfinding problems or something. Maybe Auroarcher has a spider that's eating them?



In the north, I have a couple workers ready to build a road to speed up my next city. The settler is hiding under my diseased warrior; the barb warrior has 0.29% odds, which is unfortunately not zero.

I decided it was stupid to leave my workboats outside my culture, since I'll have two galleys at the end of next turn.

And someone (probably Mr. Cairo) built the Heron Throne (like the BTS Moai statues, but a world wonder instead of a national one).