[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[Commodore]

Leveraging PRO via pink dots is always the most fun.

[pindicator]

072

I've got some words for the mapmaker




Where is his jungle, huh? Or Gira's? Well now the mystery of why Superdeath has a higher GNP than me has been solved (well, CRE, but with PRO that's only 1 more GNP point per city and it had been higher than that).

Cairo is being very antagonistic towards my scouting warrior. I'm not doing anything threatening but I'm already shadowed by 2 units and his work boat is staying on my shores instead of exploring further. I'd say that I'm a target in his mind with actions like that.

Leveraging PRO via pink dots is always the most fun.

I'm really reconsidering letting Superdeath "have" the elephants and doing exactly this. Although it doesn't seem great that my best neighbor right now has been Superdeath and I'm actively thinking about a plan to piss him off while attacking another neighbor.

[pindicator]

Forgot:  Demos now that I have both Gems online




I dropped my research to 70% to still get Writing in 2 and try to mask how big a jump both those Gems are for my economy.  Plus I'm teching a 2x pre-req so it's going to inflate my GNP anyway.  But I don't want to alarm anyone.  HBR in 8 at this rate, easy.

[pindicator]

074

Let's take a closer look at the west.  I've turned the image 90 degrees in order to fit everything in, so North is to your left here.




Superdeath is starting to extend his influence south more - which seems natural because as far as I can see he has a completely safe backline to the north *ahem*.  So I've decided that I need to do something to keep him from just exerting complete control to the south and thus making my eventual conquest of Gira turn into something awkward after that goal has been accomplished.  You can see Superdeath's scout inside Gira territory, and his axe hanging out around the dyes.  I'm sure he is considering planting down a city somewhere around there and then grabbing everything south to the pigs/clams that Gira was likely supposed to be settling towards.

Gira's newest city is shown with a worker cottaging the forest.  I'm a little worried about him chopping out a galley - note to self, check GNP for Sailing tech - but nothing I've seen from Gira makes me think he's going to do make any aggressive moves until he feels comfortable or backed into a corner.  His warriors continue to fortify on the forest.  He continues to not take peace.  I've given up on asking.  In the east he now has a settler probing my city of Clackamas, though with how he dances back and forth there I'm not sure if that's prelude to an attack or if he just is paranoid about what I might do.  Buddy, if it's paranoia then the only reason I'm going to kill you later is because you decided to harass me and set me as your mortal enemy.  You play the game peacefully, not settle up on me, let us establish somewhat normal borders like Superdeath and I are doing - then it's possible I may even go after Superdeath in this situation because he scares me in the longer term.

And then you can see my newest settler, escorted by ... 5 workers.  This is my entire workforce minus the worker that just came out of Clatsop this turn (that guy is making a cottage for Malheur / Clatsop to share).  And I'm sure you're all suspecting what all those forests + 5 workers means:  wonder chop.  The point of chopping a wonder at the marked city location is 3-fold:

• Set cultural border against Superdeath
  
• Get rid of the forests on the border that he may use to attack my city easier
  
• Make him use another settler to claim that elephant - right now it appears he's banking on 3rd ring borders to eventually grab that spot
  

So which wonder are we going to chop out?  I don't think that's too hard to guess.

But doing something this provocative on Superdeath's border has given me pause enough to swap the barracks at Clatsop into an axe.  Instead of overflowing for 36h and getting setup faster for the numidian swarm, we're going to take a safer approach and make sure that if he tries to harass me with that axe then I'll have units ready to cover the workers.

Interesting note:  the blue dot that the game gives me for this settler is to go 1NW of the iron, which doesn't have any food.

[pindicator]

076

If you didn't figure it out from last post, it should be really obvious with this pic




And yes, Marble is improved. Building the road right now.

I'm debating between Math and Monarchy for the tech (not to jinx myself, but I want to be prepared and not sit there staring at the screen for 10 minutes if I do pull this off). Monarchy makes sense if I am going to use my first great person for a golden age. But if I use it for a shrine and delay my first golden age then it makes more sense to take Math and speed my way along to Currency and get my happiness via Calendar.

Will somebody correct me if I misunderstood, but I was under the impression this map was going to be balanced




That is Gira's work boat on the west coast of Superdeath. Meaning that there is a connected waterway between Superdeath and Gira's south coast. So either 1) Superdeath has settled a canal city somewhere farther south than I can see (unlikely due to the number of cities Superdeath has and how many of them I have accounted for already) or 2) There is no western neighbor for Superdeath and the only border he has to worry about is in the direction of me and Gira. If it's the latter then I have words for the mapmaker about how I have to watch borders in 3 directions, but Superdeath only has 1. And don't say that I was supposed to settle west. You didn't put any food to my west. But you did lead superdeath south with lots of resources that way while you led me east.

Anyway, my info is incomplete and I'm sure I'm wrong. But I'm getting more suspicious that I'm right and that is annoying me.

It also makes me want to attack Superdeath instead of Gira. Which is silly: take hte easy gains first and get strong, then go after Superdeath. Right? Or maybe if he is still unawares I just run all my numids right at his copper.

Speaking of Superdeath, he has picked up Sailing



Of all the people I've met, 3 people have Sailing. So I need to assume Gira has it and that I could see a galley coming from the south.

Other GNP Scrying tidbits:

• 1 person has Math
  
• 1 person has Metal Casting
  
• Nobody has priesthood

This does not include Mjmd, Jowy, or Charriu as I've not yet met them.

Spent a lot of time this turn trying to figure out what to do with my workers. I have so many things to do, I was telling myself that I really should just make workers anywhere that isn't the capital. But then I realized that I have the perfect Moai spot to the east of Clackamas and that spot will hardly need any worker support, so I'm going to whip a settler out of Clackamas as well. Which means the work boat I'm making at Multnomah is going to go to a different city, which means that I need to get another worker east to Multnomah to chop out another workboat for that city. And a worker needs to road towards the horses / to where the settler from my capital is going up north for the Clam/Copper location. And I've got a huge bottleneck of workers in my west that need to generally improve tiles. I need more workers, I probably shouldn't have made a settler at Clackamas and isntead done another worker. But that spot out east is too good for Moai to pass and I need to get it down now.

Still have a lot of worker turns to figure out, as I really need to get the horses improved on t86 at the latest. This means I hope to get the first wave of numids out by t90, including all the needed whips and chops to make them roll. Which means I have to get my last wave of whips done in my cities in the next couple of turns so that all the anger is free for me to whip Numids around t88-89. Then hopefully 8-12 numids will be ready to conquer Gira.

Or maybe Superdeath.

As of t77 rolling, nobody had yet built the wonder. Need that to hold for just 2 more turns...

[pindicator]

078

Chop Chop Chop Chop Chop!




Granary in the queue just in case I lose a(nother) coin flip. That will at least get me a free granary and 42h overflow. Not an awful consolation prize.





7th worker came out of Yamhill, and in a stunning feat of micro will spend 2 turns moving to the far east side of the empire Getting all my workforce to chop out the Oracle has the downside of completely messing up any worker turn efficiencies I might have otherwise had. But with my 8th and 9th cities coming down in the next couple turns that's going to mean needing more workers. So I whipped the worker at Yamhill, used the overflow to complete a barracks, and then we'll go right back to another worker as soon as we grow back to 4. Pretty much every city reaching 4 is going to do this - except I forgot that I didn't have an MP at Malheur and so that city has grown into anger. So we're putting a turn into a spear there and we'll do the old 2p-whip-for-lots-of-overflow trick and send that spear to Coos. I don't trust Superdeath, even if his power is still low.

Next turn the settler comes out of the capital and will head up north to the Clams/ Copper area. Tillamook will build its work boat next, and I have a worker roading northeast of Malheur to help the settler get up there quicker. Then Tillamook gets its own barracks built. (I don't know how many barracks I'll end up with - 3 or 4 probably, but it depends on how many units I need.) My warrior that's been fogbusting up north will probably just stay put as I haven't seen anything more than AT's scout come through.

Next turn I also 2p whip the settler in Clackamas and that will head east to the Clam/Stone location. So the work boat in Multomah is going to be whipped as soon as that city hits size 2 and will go to the new Clam/Stone city; meanwhile one of our chopping workers at Coos will come all the way back east (efficient!) and chop another work boat from Multnomah to use for itself. Realistically, Multnomah isn't going to be able to produce any numids - it'll be too small and too slow of a growth curve. So I probably only have 5 cities to build them with. Maybe Coos can get up and running fast enough, but I doubt it.

Have really we done 4 turns today?

[pindicator]

Dang. Anybody else see how i completely screwed up my pattern with how i settled Coos?

[Thoth]

Dang.  Anybody else see how i completely screwed up my pattern with how i settled Coos?

You had the beginnings of an ICS grid started.  :D

[pindicator]

Dang.  Anybody else see how i completely screwed up my pattern with how i settled Coos?

You had the beginnings of an ICS grid started.  :D

Could have gone for a monk economy and everything!


079

Got the prize




Would have loved to pick up Monarchy but I don't think I'm getting a golden age within the next 30 turns. If I didn't have a religion, Code of Laws would be great. I had a little bit of thought to sneak in Sailing a few turns ago and then grab Compass with the Oracle. But HBR actually costs the same as Mathematics but Math gives the extra +10 hammer to chops right now, and I still am waiting for that border pop at Multnomah. Suppose I could put in Stables in the meantime but I don't want to raise any suspicions among my neighbors. And I need to get along towards Currency, Calendar, and Construction. Probably want to build MoM since I have all this marble.

In the end I decided that Math was the best choice and put me closer to all my goals. I guess you could think of this as chopping out HBR in a way: HBR & Math both cost the same amount of beakers. But Currency looms as the next needed tech and a big bonus.

Speaking of suspicions among my neighbors




Offered me fish for fish. So he either wants to tech away in peace, or he wants to take over Gira. But he's on his own super safe peninsula and only has to guard one direction! If this had been set up as a random game I would just take that as random chance. But we were told we were getting balance and this ain't balance. He doesn't even seem to have a sea route in another direction - my work boat is almost all the way to Gira-land. And I bet I'm the only one with all this marble/stone - I should have just picked an economic strat and teched away / built wonders.
Anyway.

Did a couple of whips this turn: whipping the settler at Clackamas to get the eastern Moai city, and then the spear at Malheur for a military MP / to get lots of overflow towards the barracks there. It feels weird to build so many barracks before libraries - and honestly Malheur may be switched to a library last second anyway because it's a natural spot to pop out great people later in the game when it's tiles get assigned to neighboring cities - but the goal right now is military conquest with Numids and so I need to be building up towards that goal. Then we can go towards economy. Or keep killing.

Finally chased away Gira's warriors




Don't want him seeing the numids coming.

[pindicator]

080

Demos




I have starkly fallen off the pace of the leaders as I have filled up my land and swapped towards other goals, and - quite frankly - ran out of decent food locations to settle. Once I plant down these next 2 settlers I'm really out of new food tiles to claim. I could stretch north and grab that fish halfway between Cairo and myself - but I need to explore more and see what else is out there. I am clearly top-3 though as I suspect Mjmd is also the other person along with Superdeath and myself who has been able to grow successfully early on. And I've been switching to barracks because we're going to be growing by war in 10-12 turns if all goes according to plan.

Speaking of new cities, both of my settlers have found their own challenges.

Out east a barbarian showed right by where I wanted to plant my Moai city:




I had set up everything to complete the roads and have the settler move all the way over to the forest tile this turn, and now I found myself staring at the screen wondering how I was going to cover the worker and the settler on the forest. Then I remembered I could attack. And at 93.7% the RNG decided to be fair and there were no further issues.

Here I realize I desperately need to scout more to the south and east. So much that I'm considering putting Clackamas on an archer next build so that we can more units in the east and be able to garrison my cities as well as expand more outwards and see what can be seen. I really should find Gira's borders down here too as I've seen his scout pop up once or twice by Clackamas, which makes me certain that the water to my south is a vast inland sea.

Up north I'm contending with a shock warrior that Cairo has sent south to scout. I was worried a bit about the timing as his warrior would be right by my settler as I founded my city. But then I realized that he was going to be in my borders then when the city goes down, and since we have open borders it would take a very deliberate set of actions for him to declare on my and threaten the city, and I'd have plenty of time to react with the spear I just whipped out of Malheur. Oh i kind of wish that was an axe now, but I had intended to send this guy east to help safeguard the border with Superdeath.

The overflow from last turn's whips has gone to good use, getting my barracks at Malheur to 48/50 and giving enough overflow for me to finish the granary at Clackamas. Clackamas has been a really unfortunate case as ideally that granary would have been the first thing completed. But due to barbarians and then using whip overflow to finish production (same as the whip, really), it ends up being the 3rd thing built there. I'm pretty certain we are not building a barracks here as there won't be enough time to finish it unless I chop it out. But I think it's better to put the chops towards numids - or maybe just get a cheaper stable out instead of the barracks and call it good enough.

Superdeath's axe has reappeared in the west and this time he seems to be coming directly towards me, likely to scout. But my axe by Yamhill will shadow him by the border, at least until he is within my culture. Speaking of Yamhill, now that Gira's warriors have gone I pulled the warrior out of that city and will move it to Malheur for some desperately needed MPs. The axe at Clackamas I believe will go south instead of heading north towards Cairo's warrior. We'll get into that fog a bit and do some scouting.

Turned on the science this turn. HBR in 5 but I don't have enough gold to hold that. So HBR in 6.... hopefully