[SPOILERS] Bob is the Garrbage Man

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh, right, other people can get random events too...  


Speaking of which, jim also got the truffles event last turn.  Cool, I guess.  I'm semi-desperately hoping I'll be blessed with a free Great Prophet in the near future.  


Currently planning on founding my first expansion on the "c?" tile:




It'll pain me to build a city with no overlap with the capital, but that's an outstanding spot economically.  Settler will get a three Warrior + Mud Golem escort; it'll need a strong garrison due to being exposed and difficult to reinforce.  


Here's the capital:

[Bobchillingworth]

2nd city is down:






Little nervous about how difficult it will be to reinforce from my capital, but having that gold accessible early will mean a lot. Also lost a Warrior to a Spider, bleh.

[DaveV]

... but having that gold accessible early will mean a lot.

Early?

Also lost a Warrior to a Spider, bleh.

That's always painful when you can count your army on one hand.

[Bobchillingworth]

Right, early- I expect my opponents will settle (or have settled) 1N of where I did; that location means you can reinforce the expansion + capital from a few tiles, but makes the gold resource third ring, requiring another expansion into what looks like the jungle-infested center of the map if you want to work it.

[Bobchillingworth]

T50:






I'm doing fine on the empire-building front, but my military situation is unfortunate. I've lost a few battles I had odds to win, and I'm down four Warriors and a Scout thanks to the barbs; as a result, I still haven't gotten any scouting done since the first 20 turns. Situation is stable at the moment, but I'll need to build a couple waves of Warriors in order to expand further.

On the plus side, I do have a Combat II, Shock Warrior, so I'm cautiously optimistic about being to get the Form of the Titan.

[DaveV]

Still no prospect of the "early" gold being connected...

[Bobchillingworth]

Well, not until my borders expand and the local Mud Golem builds the roads & mine, so about four turns. Still faster than waiting for my borders to expand twice, if I had settled 1N as I was initially considering.

[Bobchillingworth]

Argh, disaster-


Settler scouting reveals that the following sites are unusable:





Only reasonable conclusion is that there's a city on the green diamond tile; that's awfully close to be another player, which means there's almost certainly a barb city blocking what's obviously my best expansion site.  


New plan- finish Myst, tech BW followed by Masonry, pop WS, kill barb city with Bronze Warriors passing off a single Golden Hammer as they die attacking (I'll settle the rest of the hammers).  Still, this is a real blow; I won't get able to connect my Wines for much longer than I intended, the commerce site I meant to settle in two turns is no longer viable, and I'm going to have to throw away yet more hammers vs. the barbs.  On the plus side, I should eventually get a free city out of it, and I needed to beef up my military anyway.

[DaveV]

That's annoying, and it looks like the city doesn't even fit your dotmap.

[Bobchillingworth]

Thankfully, things looked up a bit this turn:






I was off by a tile in locating the barb city; turns out one of the tiles was blocked for settling by a Gorilla, rather than proximity.  Ended up settling a decent site which, while it loses the hammers from the hill, should be fairly defensible and allows me to still get the wines and incense online quickly.  


I can also see the very edge of what looks like someone's borders to my south, through what is apparently only a thin band of jungle.  It's either superjim or Auro, colors look too similar from the little sliver I've uncovered.