[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[pindicator]

032 & 033

This shit really pisses me off.




Because I swear it happens EVERY SINGLE GAME



I didn't even want to go that far. Just park that warrior on top of the marble for a more sight to the east / barb buffer when they start showing.

I was tempted to grow to 4 on another warrior because of this but decided to just get another worker out. Now while I am sure we won't need the worker for existing cities we are going to need them for roads to the 3rd city and he can help chop out the settler if he runs out of things to do.

Demos look good once the corn farm finished:

[pindicator]

035

It really did connect the cities




Anyone understand why?

Pottery is done, and I think I want to get archery sooner than later. But I'm still thinking about Mysticism ahead of that, or maybe AH.

Superdeath settled his 2nd city this turn but it was in another direction. He just let the 3rd ring culture of his borders get the copper since he's CRE.

[pindicator]

037

This looks really dubious by Gira.




EDIT: I missed the hover-over for the screenshot, but his scout is covering a settler here.

I declared war because otherwise if he settles then I have to spend another turn moving the warrior forward again. This way he has to run away or risk losing the settler.

Definitely need to get Archery next now.

[pindicator]

038

Gira ran his settler away




Which means I was just lucky to have my warrior in the right spot at the right time. He was just looking to get an opportunistic pink dot and now I've really slowed down his development.

Also- I didn't move my warrior there. I think I mistakenly had set it to explore(?) - I can't think why else it was already moved when I started the turn. Lucky he didn't settle the city!

With that in mind, Archery is premature. I'm not going to have any need for units in 5 turns. I am going to have a need for copper units sooner than later, so I am going to have to go for Mysticism next. I think that's the right play. And hey, it pays for itself after 85 turns.

2nd Also - Another error on my part. I should have swapped the capital over to work the spices. That would have let me grow and finish the warrior in 2. I want a settler out of the capital as soon as possible to grab the spot that Gira tried to pink-dot me on. Though maybe I settle on the hill now just to be a little more defensive. I don't need to expand like crazy until Numids.

[pindicator]

039

Whipped the worker in Clatsop




This is one of the oldest tricks in the book with Civ4, but I end up getting a warrior for "free" because I whipped the worker instead of building it slow on t1. And that warrior will be needed because the capital is starting a settler as soon as it gets to 4, then we're going to go plant to make sure Gira doesn't take that spot.





That's my scout by the bear in the far west of the screen. Hopefully he survives; he should.

As much as I dislike monuments, they actually have a purpose in this game (unlike RtR), so I do need to tech Mysticism. (I never understood Krill's arguments for putting culture on a barracks; it just amounted to "I don't like monuments" - which I get, because I also hate building them. But RtR pretty much made it so they don't have any purpose to build, which means you can skip Mysticism altogether if you want to. I like that monuments have a purpose again, even if it sucks for me in this instance.) And here I think it's more important to make sure the copper is hooked up within 15 turns rather than getting Archery. I don't know if anybody remembers, but this isn't my first time taking Carthage in a MP game here. A long time ago I took them and had a bunch of copper that I kept in 2nd ring of cities while I leisurely went to libraries to pop borders. Unbeknownst to me, Zulu had spotted my borders in the fog and rather than making contact at once he waited and then made contact with half a dozen Impi. So I don't plan on repeating that mistake.

Anyway, next the 2 workers are going to chop out a settler from the capital. The new worker from Clatsop will cottage the banana.

And I need to get AH too - need to know where horses are to make Numids after all.

[pindicator]

043

WTF is this, Gira? Are you trying to get me to throw my game for the sole purpose of destroying you? Because this is how you get exactly that.




Also WTF in that he passed up a GRASSLAND GEMS to pink dot me with a worse city location? (I dont' care what else is down there, what I have nearby is not nearly as good as grassland gems + food.)

I offered peace because this is pretty pointless. If he declines I might settle on the hill. Or I might just tempt him to advance because I'll have 4 warriors in range in 2 turns. Do I delay the settle if he advances in hopes of taking his units out? Maybe it's better just to take the suboptimal plains hill plant just for the defensive location.

And while I'm on a rant, WTF is this mapmaker? In a map that was labeled as being balanced, how the hell is it balanced to give one player jungled gems and another one unjungled gems? That's one of the strongest tiles in the game.

[pindicator]

044

I don't even know what's going on with Gira.  He didn't take peace, but then he also just kept his warriors on the forest and didn't stop me from settling the obviously good spot




Thanks to the warrior's innate +25% city defense bonus, he has about a 1 in 16 chance of razing my city.  If he takes that longshot and wins I will dedicate the rest of this game to wiping him off the map.  If he takes the longshot and loses then I will march all my warriors to his lands right now and dedicate the rest of this game to wiping him off the map.  Basically, his only shot of me not dedicating my game to wiping him off the map at this point in time is to back down, accept peace with this border, and hope and pray that I find an easier target for my Numids when they come online.

Because it was way too early in the game for me to have to draw up one of these battle overview composites!

In the meantime, I realized that he's probably put everything up on that forest.  Wasting both of our resources in a pointless early war that's going to accomplish nothing except piss off a neighbor.  So I decided to show him just how pointless this was.




I can even see any units approaching from the hill.  We might stay on this gems tile a few turns and deny the tile from him.  Also, I don't understand this city placement.  There must be a food tile to the east in the fog that i can't see and he was thinking of getting the food with either a cheap monument (only 15h for him, very worth it) - but if that's the case then why not just put the city one tile east and get both the gems and the food 1st ring?  Or if there isn't a food then he should have put this city 1 NW and then popped borders so he could get the clams.  Right now this just looks like a bad city.

Next up is still Archery because I have to make sure there isn't some kind of BW rush going on.  Actually what I need to do is go back and do some C&D on his score increases and figure out tech path, units, etc.  I have demos but no charts, and I haven't been tracking demos because I didn't think I'd have to deal with a warrior ... not exactly a rush, what is this?  A warrior choke?  Anyway, I'm going to want Archery regardless because I'm PRO and the copper is still some time away.  And that means the best defensive plan I can have is to have cities ready to whip archers in case of an emergency and then just ignore his camping warriors until then.  So with that in mind, I started farming the wheat at Yamhill and brought a 2nd worker over to help speed that along.  That only left 1 worker to chop the monument at Carlton, so I changed plans a bit there and went with this configuration:




This gets me the monument with chop in 3 turns.  I don't want to whip it again too soon and this way is only 1 turn slower anyway.  I really shouldn't be whipping much until after granaries are in place anyway.

At the capital I was debating whether the overflow should go into a 5th warrior or the granary.  Another warrior would free up units to hit Gira if he does something (something more) stupid with those warriors.  But I don't think he's going to do anything more than sit on that forest for now.  Maybe he'll retreat when he sees my scout on his Gems.  But that scout also can see when more is coming up; and anyway, I'll have Yamhill at size 2 in 6 turns and able to whip an archer if needs be.

Demos:




MJMD and I think Charriu are the only other 2 people with 3 cities.  My food is looking good.  If it wasn't for the unpredictable southern neighbor I would be feeling rather good about my start.

[pindicator]

Went back to the timing of his new city and it's possible there's a warrior coming out of there this turn. If so, oh well. It's still a crappy city.

[Thoth]

035

It really did connect the cities




Anyone understand why?

At a guess, the river grass hill 1N of the road is part of the same river as the FGH with the road.  Doesn't look like it from the screenshot but might be an artifact from a hand drawn river.

[pindicator]

Yeah, I suppose?  The inner workings of trade routes in this game is all voodoo and sorcery to me.  The sim also has the rivers by the capital, but I had to draw that small river west of Clatsop myself, but maybe that's not where it's really connecting?  Anyway, appreciate the input Thoth.

I'm sitting and staring at my turn 48 right now, realizing I need to pick a strategy.  And I think that strategy is going to be "ignore the newbie and keep expanding".  Because right now these are my demos:




GNP is with no tech selected either.  Looking pretty good despite that whip to settle along my border with Gira.  I really don't understand what he's trying to accomplish here.  His soldier points aren't spiking so this isn't a rush so much as a "mess with my neighbor because I can".  Maybe he's following up with chariots or axes?  I'll keep a close eye on the soldier points.  Wish I could get graphs but I put my EP into Superdeath first and both he and Gira are keeping their EP 100% into me.  Perhaps they should explore more?  So yes, until I can actually see a threat from Gira I'm just going to treat those warriors as annoying.  The only thing he's preventing me from doing is hooking up the stone and building Stonehenge.  That and delaying the game.




So I've decided the best plan is to ignore him.  I'll keep vigilant watch on soldier points and if there's any spiking I'll have to assume its him (at least until I can catch up in graphs).  He just founded a 3rd city so he's not really in any rush to do anything to me here.  Now I'm going to just push economy, and get some more settlers out.  First up is that nice rice/marble/cow spot to my east.  Then there's a couple locations that share food with the capital.  So I really also want to grow my capital to happy cap so I can cottage grassland everywhere.

Tempted to go for a religion here.  That would solve my border-popping issues and likely would speed up hooking up the copper.  I should have done that over monuments anyway.  Is that more important than finding horses?  You can see my GNP is doing well and I'll have more cities out soon.  Religion would also help my happiness a little.  Though I feel like religions are going to start falling soon too; it's very late in the game for there to be no religions fallen yet.  I wouldn't care much for missionaries and pushing any farther up the religion line.  I'd just want the happiness and the culture.  So Meditation makes more sense than Polytheism for me.

I did take a little time this turn and figure out the worker turns.  I do need more workers here too.  While Yamhill is a slow grower (maybe that's a good worker pump), there's going to be a new city out east, and Carlton & Tillamook both are going to need more tile improvements.

You know what, I just got a military tech in Archery.  I don't need to rush to AH yet, and I like my GNP enough that I can grab a 4-turn tech in Meditation.  Let's try and go for a religion.  That would solve some culture and happiness issues.  So with that I settled on Meditation and hit enter.



Thank goodness, I picked the right one.