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

[DaveV]

A minor bad event starts turn 102:



Here are my post-GA demographics: not as impressive as in the GA, but probably still in the dogpile zone.

[haphazard1]

Ouchie on the event. Not one of the really bad ones, but losing pop always hurts.

The demos are looking pretty good. That crop yield is especially nice, quite a significant lead.

[DaveV]

I'd been starting to wonder whether the coastline to my south was a huge island, since no one seems to be settling there.



Nope, just the northern coast of superjm, apparently.

Meanwhile, Aurorarcher is cranking up a pretty good power spike. He has construction, so I have to worry about catapults.

[DaveV]

I missed reporting a turn where someone discovered Ashen Veil. Turns out it was (as expected) Mr. Cairo:



I don't expect him to push the AC, since the pain of Blight is proportional to your city size.



I was hoping for a merchant, since the next guy is likely to be a sage. So, thanks, RNG!

If you look really closely in the northern edge of the second screenie, you can see two Cultists (upgraded from Zealots for a mere 85 gold). I was originally planning to use them offensively, but I think I need to nail down my defenses first.

[DaveV]

Is this the casus belli for Aurorarcher?



He has a promotion glow on his galley; if he takes combat I, he'll have 67.5 odds of sinking my galley (that extra 10% makes a surprising difference). If he has a couple beastmen on board, he can do the Doviello upgrade trick and have 31% odds against my warriors, better if he has some promotions. I don't think there's any way for him to settle the island without killing my units.

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher didn't attack, and I settled the city. He can take it easily with a shock Son of Asena, but I'll try to distract him.



The pickings were pretty slim for a "Q" sketch, so here's another heavily abbreviated one.

[DaveV]

Here's another double report:



Aurorarcher built the Titan; I was never able to farm enough XP to qualify. Mr. Cairo founded RoK; an odd choice, in my view: he should be going full-tilt on the Veil techs. I used my open borders with Mr. Cairo to map out his territory. Unfortunately, two of his cities are not easily reachable.

Someone grabbed a great prophet; worst case is that it's superjm and he's going to use it to bulb Priesthood and throw his world spell.

Sorry for the skimpy reportage; I'll write up a full report next turn when things begin to hit the fan.

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher razed Queen Victoria Handicap with no losses. I should have checked the odds before settling that city.



That's a pretty tough navy.

In the west, my galley was one tile short of being able to move to threaten Klein. Stupid sea serpent.

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher pillaged my marble and killed one of my drowns camped on his seafood. I moved to attack Klein and found the galley; I also moved the drown to peek into Pythagoras.



I cleaned up at 86%, 98%, and two 99% attacks, leaving this situation:



By Piranha Brothers, I had to soften up the beastman with a warrior, then killed him with a drown. Aurorarcher's galleys are sitting safely out of range, but I'll be going after them soon. My goal is to kill his navy and raze his port cities, so I control the sea.



I was all set up to raze Mr. Cairo's RoK holy city, but moved away to set up against superjm instead.

Here are the demos at the beginning and end of the turn:





Auro lost about 10% of his power, and average manufacturing went down by 3, so he lost ~9 hammers. It looks like his GNP actually went up by 5, because of support costs, maybe?

[DaveV]

Not as much excitement this turn; it was kind of a set up turn. I did use Tsunami to pillage out Aurorarcher's gems by casting from the highlighted tile:



Tsunami has a 25% chance to destroy any improvement that's in its area of effect, and adjacent to water. I don't get the pillage cash, but it's some nice retribution for pillaging my marble.

That one-warrior garrison in Feuerbach looks tempting.

I'm moving out in the east, with a screen of drowns:



And there's yet another galley. I've got to take out his port cities.