Alright. I promised a turn 101 extravaganza, and a turn 101 extravaganza you shall have.
Here's our little slice of paradise:
I had mentioned the river somewhere. This river starts all the way in Cairo's land, runs through Superdeath, and empties out by our capital. It's very cool feature. Rusten has already pointed out that we are, well, a touch lacking in food tiles, especially of the 5 and 6 food variety. What we have instead is a very fertile floodplains. Before the war broke out, we had started expanding overseas. Boak/GeneralKilCavalry are making up for lost time settling the western continent, but we should keep in mind that we did have that as an expansion option. I've been puzzling over sailing. I'm not sure it was correct to go for sailing over Metal Casting. If we went Metal Casting first, we would have horses. Food for thought. Edit: I meant to add that if we are successful, it won't have been only because of samurai. The samurai would be stopped cold if we didn't have a way to bombard defenses. Having trebs on Machinery is vital.
The state of the game should be obvious. Magic Science started a bit inland, which meant he could grab a few more cities uncontested. He has sprawled out and doesn't have the best GNP, therefore. He'll hit Currency soon enough, and from there he'll be in a fantastic spot. (P.S. Rusten, I'm an idiot. We can't charge him for routes because he just now grabbed Alphabet. No currency.) Boak/GKC somehow killed Borsche with a warrior (or warriors, plural). They have a whole continent to themselves. They focused on landing wonders and grabbed Oracle, Colossus, and the Great Lighthouse. They seem to be fixing their slow settling now. Magic Science can't make any more gains without pushing into an opponent, but B/GKC can, without hindrance, claim an entire continent propped up by the two naval wonders. I'm not sure what the story is with Mr. Cairo. It looks like he had an early war with Superdeath who successfully boxed him in. He's Fin/Cha, so his expansion was never going to be great, and his neighbors were both quicker starters, with Superdeath having one of the fastest leaders in the game. Still, it's odd that he's as penned in as he is. He's fifteen tiles distant from his neighbors compared to the twelve we are, and for a long time and last I checked we had more cities. Superdeath, you should have a grasp of. He pushed Cairo back. Got angry at a warrior snipe, and is now locking horns with us. As Rusten pointed out at the time, we (Agg/Phi) settled 7 cities before he (Exp/Cre) settled 6. Something funky there.
Routes forward for various players: MSCC needs to consolidate their land and make it profitable in the form of tech, then use that tech to eat a neighbor. Geography dictates that that will be Cairo or us. Cairo needs to take a piece of Superdeath, frankly. It's possible he can use Cho-ko-nus to snipe MSCC's island holdings, but he's very small right now and probably still decently far from Machinery. Boak/GKC need to fill out their continent as fast as possible before other players get the naval tech to tangle with them. (Realistically, they're perfectly safe. Their closest neighbors have better things to do.) Once they get their continent, they get ships, use their Viking superpowers, win the game. Superdeath needs me to make a mistake or to materialize that horde of horse archers my paranoia tells me he has. The fact is, my invasion and the whips he's needed in response have set him back considerable. How about us, your neighborhood heroes? We need to turn the corner from "menacing" to "actually gaining cities." There will be a break point. The point at which either Superdeath has lost enough cities that our samurai death legion can roll nothing but 90% odds, or the point that our stack suffers enough attrition that we can't keep it together and he uses human waves to stop us. Time generally favors the defender in civ4. If we can start rolling through Superdeath's cities and if we can hit Currency while we're still relevant, our next goal is to recover, recover, recover. We seem to been on the "Borsche side" of the small continent. If we can wrap Superdeath up. There's a possibility that samurai would be relevant for expansion in that direction. (Or via Cairo, if he's still not near Cho-ko-nus.)
And now the part that every lurker lives for. Here's every city in the empire.
When I do this, I always feel like I'm back in Mrs. Kinderschmerz's third-grade class, presenting my work for critique.
And that is the empire. We are Agg and Phi (and Agg gets city maintenance reduction in this version of RtR). It will be nice when we can transition to a mid-game empire. Cities sitting at size three isn't it. Until next time.
Here's our little slice of paradise:
I had mentioned the river somewhere. This river starts all the way in Cairo's land, runs through Superdeath, and empties out by our capital. It's very cool feature. Rusten has already pointed out that we are, well, a touch lacking in food tiles, especially of the 5 and 6 food variety. What we have instead is a very fertile floodplains. Before the war broke out, we had started expanding overseas. Boak/GeneralKilCavalry are making up for lost time settling the western continent, but we should keep in mind that we did have that as an expansion option. I've been puzzling over sailing. I'm not sure it was correct to go for sailing over Metal Casting. If we went Metal Casting first, we would have horses. Food for thought. Edit: I meant to add that if we are successful, it won't have been only because of samurai. The samurai would be stopped cold if we didn't have a way to bombard defenses. Having trebs on Machinery is vital.
The state of the game should be obvious. Magic Science started a bit inland, which meant he could grab a few more cities uncontested. He has sprawled out and doesn't have the best GNP, therefore. He'll hit Currency soon enough, and from there he'll be in a fantastic spot. (P.S. Rusten, I'm an idiot. We can't charge him for routes because he just now grabbed Alphabet. No currency.) Boak/GKC somehow killed Borsche with a warrior (or warriors, plural). They have a whole continent to themselves. They focused on landing wonders and grabbed Oracle, Colossus, and the Great Lighthouse. They seem to be fixing their slow settling now. Magic Science can't make any more gains without pushing into an opponent, but B/GKC can, without hindrance, claim an entire continent propped up by the two naval wonders. I'm not sure what the story is with Mr. Cairo. It looks like he had an early war with Superdeath who successfully boxed him in. He's Fin/Cha, so his expansion was never going to be great, and his neighbors were both quicker starters, with Superdeath having one of the fastest leaders in the game. Still, it's odd that he's as penned in as he is. He's fifteen tiles distant from his neighbors compared to the twelve we are, and for a long time and last I checked we had more cities. Superdeath, you should have a grasp of. He pushed Cairo back. Got angry at a warrior snipe, and is now locking horns with us. As Rusten pointed out at the time, we (Agg/Phi) settled 7 cities before he (Exp/Cre) settled 6. Something funky there.
Routes forward for various players: MSCC needs to consolidate their land and make it profitable in the form of tech, then use that tech to eat a neighbor. Geography dictates that that will be Cairo or us. Cairo needs to take a piece of Superdeath, frankly. It's possible he can use Cho-ko-nus to snipe MSCC's island holdings, but he's very small right now and probably still decently far from Machinery. Boak/GKC need to fill out their continent as fast as possible before other players get the naval tech to tangle with them. (Realistically, they're perfectly safe. Their closest neighbors have better things to do.) Once they get their continent, they get ships, use their Viking superpowers, win the game. Superdeath needs me to make a mistake or to materialize that horde of horse archers my paranoia tells me he has. The fact is, my invasion and the whips he's needed in response have set him back considerable. How about us, your neighborhood heroes? We need to turn the corner from "menacing" to "actually gaining cities." There will be a break point. The point at which either Superdeath has lost enough cities that our samurai death legion can roll nothing but 90% odds, or the point that our stack suffers enough attrition that we can't keep it together and he uses human waves to stop us. Time generally favors the defender in civ4. If we can start rolling through Superdeath's cities and if we can hit Currency while we're still relevant, our next goal is to recover, recover, recover. We seem to been on the "Borsche side" of the small continent. If we can wrap Superdeath up. There's a possibility that samurai would be relevant for expansion in that direction. (Or via Cairo, if he's still not near Cho-ko-nus.)
And now the part that every lurker lives for. Here's every city in the empire.
When I do this, I always feel like I'm back in Mrs. Kinderschmerz's third-grade class, presenting my work for critique.
It's a good capital. Eventually it will give that fish back to Lander, which itself is a rock star of a city. We're probably too late for cottages, so farms and medieval improvements when necessary. By the way, a couple times this game, I've felt silly that we got Metal Casting and Machinery so very early but I never found a place for (many) workshops, watermills, or windmills. Suboptimal on my part.
And that is the empire. We are Agg and Phi (and Agg gets city maintenance reduction in this version of RtR). It will be nice when we can transition to a mid-game empire. Cities sitting at size three isn't it. Until next time.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
Of course not! All I know is he has a bunch of power we haven't seen and he's built at least two stables. One in Draft Dodger, one in his easternmost city by Cairo. If I were planning a big counterattack I wouldn't be whipping archers, but I'm not a mind reader. I hope you're right, but if I constantly expect the worst, I can only be pleasantly surprised. 