[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 38

Once upon a turn-set dreary while I pondered, weak and weary
over many a quaint and curious volume of Civilization lore
while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
as of someone gently rapping - rapping on my city's door!
"'tis some city-state," I muttered, "tapping on my chamber door,
only this, and nothing more."




Ah, distinctly I remember, I was in the barbarian wringer,
and each separate, dying slinger wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I sought the morrow - vainly I sought to borrow
from my reports surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost warrior
For the unit I should have built first, a warrior -
nameless here forevermore.




And the silken, sad uncertain rustling of turning each turn in
thrilled me, filled me with terrors never felt before
So that now to still the beating of my heart I stood repeating
"'tis some city-state entreating entrance at my city door - 
some FINANCIAL city-state entreating entrance at my city door.
Merely this and nothing more."

Presently, my units grew stronger - hesitating then no longer
"Sirs," said I, "Or madams, truly your forgiveness I implore,
But the truth is my units were hurting and so many barbs were lurking
that I scarce was sure I could scout you -" here I threw my scout across the river:
Only loyalty pressure, and nothing more.




Deep into that jungle peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Dreaming dreams no Civ player dared to dream before.
But the silence was unbroken, and the jungle gave no token,
and the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Kaiser?"
This I whispered and an echo murmured back the word, "Kaiser..."
Only this, and nothing more.

Back into my empire turning, all my soul within me burning
Soon again I saw my cities, somewhat larger than before!
"Surely," I said, "Surely that is something in my civic lattice
let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore! 
Let the barbs be gone a moment, and this mystery explore -
'tis Early Empire, and nothing more."




Then, methought the game grew denser, as I saw this strong competitor
Played by Kaiser whose civilization so dominated all the score
"Wretch!" I cried, "Thy start was easy - no barbarians, it was breezy!
Mine was quarrelsome and queasy - so I have such a high military score!
Why, oh why is your culture rate standing at 4 and 15 more?
And of your science - let us speak no more!"

Much I marveled this ungainly Civ to lead the game so plainly
though his player little ability - little prior skill bore
For we cannot help agreeing that no other player being
this early yet was blessed with seeing 19 cpt or more! 
19 cpt only 38 turns into the game, and no more:
Kaiser's crazy research score.




"Player!" cried I, "Thing of evil! Player still, if Egypt or devil,
Whether Ioan-led or your own skill led thee to thy score
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if within the distant Eden
it shall clasp the sainted maiden of barbarians no more
Clasp the rare and radiant maiden of building up my own score!"
Quoth the Kaiser: Nevermore.

"Be that word our sign of parting, player-fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting
"Get thee back into the jungle and the Pangaea's northern shore!
Leave no pillaging as a token of the lies thy soul hath spoken
Leave my loneliness unbroken - quit the borders of my city door!
Take thy warrior from off my lands, and leave here to return no more!"
Quoth the Kaiser: Nevermore.




But the scoreboard, never flitting, still is sitting, STILL is sitting
And Kaiser is perched safe and secure atop the score
And his civ has all the seeming of a runaway snowball streaming
and his cities are all gleaming with districts and pop and more
And my civ from out the basement of the score 
shall be lifted - nevermore!

[TheArchduke]

[gamblor]

Bravo

[shallow_thought]

Very nice .

But to be a little awkward, if you had to pick one of the other players to be an early runaway, would Kaiser have been so bad a choice, based on past results ?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Great civ poetry

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I mean, so far Kaiser hasn't had much of a chance to flash his stuff. He fell victim to Ichabod's rush in PBEM3, vanished for a year - I really am glad he's back, guys. I miss some of the original Civ VI players like teh, Singaboy, Japper, oledavy, Emperor-K...it's a small community, we need all we can get. good to see Ioan still hanging around in his thread! Anyway, Kaiser is killing it and I'm jealous, basically. We'll see what I can do.

Turn 39

Not a lot happening this turn (or last turn, but I find ways to amuse myself when there's little to report on).

Right now, I'm mostly concerned with scouting while my cities work on their builds. I want to find 

* The barb camp lurking near my city where all these damn slingers are coming from
* Kaiser's borders, maybe get a peek at a city. I'll also want to mess with any civilian units. Should denounce him next turn but his warrior is hanging around my borders and won't leave. 
* Suitable city sites
* Other fun things, like natural wonders, city-states, Sub, Woden, a brand new civilization to play instead of Canada, Ichabod, a new continent, you know, whatever. 

Unfortunately I am finding approximately zero of those things this turn. Kaiser remains elusive:




Just loyalty pressure still! Not even a red ring of civilization in sight! What the heck. I can only figure I'm actually approaching both his cities - that is, they lie in a line perpendicular to my warrior, instead of one behind the other. Thus I am seeing combined loyalty pressure, which reaches further? I don't know, I'm just spitballing here. Gotta fill the pages somehow, right? :D 

(You know you don't actually have to fill pages, right?)

(You mean I wrote 150 pages of baseball stories for nothing in that other thread? D: ) 

Anyway, I also find no barb camp:




Is that good news or bad news? I think actually bad news, I could use the gold. I can't scout more, though, I need to use my remaining movement point to promote and heal. 

So either the barb camp is NONEXISTENT (whence the scout and slingers, then!?!?) or it's on the one fucking tile I haven't defogged yet, because of course it would be, because that's just the kind of game we're playing this go-round. Some day I will play a civ game and I will bless my luck and be really thrilled with my start and totally excited to play it.


...but that game already came, in PBEM8, and Archduke just had to go and chariot rush Emperor K and that put an end to my fun.

In the north, though, we have good terrain. I'ma be pissed if turns out Ichabod or something is already mucking about up here, I deserve something nice after -gestures wildly at desert/tundra start-




I'll keep an eye out for other units, but unless I miss my guess, one of Kaiser's city-states should be here. I think Antananarivo was shared between us, then Yerevan and Antioch seem to have been "mine" (I was first to meet Antioch, even as late as I was), which in turn means that he probably has two of his own in corresponding positions. Given his absurd science and culture, odds are he has a set of one each (or two science and he's just built a LOT of monuments. Seriously, where is 19 culture coming from? Need to reverse engineer that at some point...

...what the hell.


1 set of coffee hooked up, that's +1. He has 3 pop in his second city, 1 district completed for 3 empire points, and a palace, accounting for 17 era points between them. (5 per city, 1 for the palace) That means his capital has a population of 4, if my math is right. Culture per pop is....3? I wanna say? So those 7 pop points account for 2 culture. He has an envoy in Antananarivo (I want to conquer that place just so I can rename it Sharks or something so I don't have to keep typing Antananarivo. Agh! I typed Antananarivo again! Oh no, I typed Antananarivo again. Oh shit I typed Antana -

Ahem. Anyway. 2 points from the city state leads us to 5. That still leaves 14! The hell is he getting that? Even if we give him two monuments, that still leaves 10. Pingala is +15%...oh, could he have the +1 culture per pop promotion? That would be +7 right there. That knocks out 7 of our 10, and Pingala has an additional +15% native. If we divide 19 by 1.15, we get 16.5, so Pingala is worth 2.5 on his own, which is...just about everything.

So. I think monuments would show up on empire score, BUT sphinxes wouldn't, and generate culture, yeah? So knock those out, throw in a sphinx/other city-state, and he is reverse engineered. 

Bottom line: I need Pingala's second promotion, which will come with Early Empire. Neato! 


Let's see...I swap Kings to better tiles, missed a trick with my growth last time and spent a turn wasted on the rice tile:


 

What can I say? I'm bad at micro. I have no mind for details like this, and unless I write everything down, I forget to do it. Half the time I write these turn reports WHILE I play, so I can think through my actions rather than mindlessly clicking. Unfortunately, last time I was too busy trying to work out a rhyme for "slinger" and I totally forgot to swap tiles. 

Ummmmm....I think that's everything. I got distracted from my train of thought by working out Kaiser's culture, which is a problem when these reports are universally stream-of-consciousness ramblings from me anyway. Here's some scores AND a pair of pictures where I attempted to capture the Known World.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 40

Squeezing the turn in before joining friends downtown. No pictures, maybe later. Just Cliff's notes today, sorry, nerds.

* Found Kaiser borders, in 2 directions! My guess was right so I'm smug as hell

* NE continues to have lovely terrain. Maybe Kaiser and I both got crap starting terrain and we're supposed to fight over this? Hmmm...

* Found the camp, right where I expected it. Figures. Will begin peacekeeping operations next turn.

*Nothing in the south or west yet. Going to recall the southern scouting warrior and send him in Kaiser's direction for mischief making. The western one will keep probing. 

* Finished Writing, slotted Archery. I'd like that and Bronze Working (for iron), I think. 

* Sub popped some Empire points and an unknown player is generating GS points = sub finished campus. 

*I think Kaiser finished a settler? Probably headed in my direction if he's any brains at all (and he's not stupid). Need to doublecheck empire score.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Full disclosure, I'm grumpy as I type this (I'll probably put a rant in the chat thread in a little while), so apologies if this turn report comes across as grouchy. I'll do my best, but, uh, no promises of my usual cheer and gentle good nature.

Turn 41




I start the turn by denouncing Kaiser because I'm in a bad mood and fuckit, why not? Either he builds a bunch of chariot archers and comes after me, or he doesn't and I have the option of working mischief. This exposes both of us to the other, but since I'm the trailing player that's to my advantage - he has to decide whether to divert from his snowball to build defenses, or to trust I won't try anything in the ancient era.

My plan is to route my spare units up this way except one exploring in each direction and then try to block him from good city-sites. I want to at least get Bruins down, and if I can get Hurricanes, then I'll be extremely pleased with how things shook out. That's a bit of reach, of course. So I need to patrol the jungle and try to block any settlers that come through. 

In the southeast, my promoted warrior easily clears the camp in two turns of hard fighting:




The spearman attacked out, speeding things along, and I mopped up this turn for a nice 50g in my pocket. I SHOULD have bought a tile with it this turn, before completing Early Empire and driving costs up, but, oops. Again, not a micromanager. I'll have to hope that the ~5 gold it costs me won't prove decisive in the long run.

I intend to explore generally north and east, seeking Kaiser's science/culture state:




Might also find another neighbor out this way. They should be wandering by soon, unless they're also having barb problems, but I lead in military score so no one got hit as hard as I did. Sheesh, just to sum up:

1)Playing Canada
2)Rotten local terrain (cap is decent, I admit)
3)Barbs everywhere

Just a tough start all around. But I think we're turning the corner. The land grab will be decisive, I think - if I get shut out of this jungle belt and confined to the land around Blues, well, then gg. We'll do what Archduke said and build an army to try and burn some cities before we go down. If I can get ~3 cities here or more, then I should be competitive. 

Score:



Still have lowest pop growth = lowest everything else. Dry Kings is probably playing into that, so I'm not too worried. We'll match Kaiser on culture once we get Pingala's culture promotion in - he's mostly led due to Inspirations that we just couldn't get due to the above circumstances. Science will lag until our campuses go up, but then we'll be competitive in all categories. Not too worried.

Sorry for the lack of banter, deep strategic analysis, or butchered Poe poetry today, just not feeling it.

[Sullla]

Not every turn has a ton going on, don't worry about it. The next big decision is where to send the settler currently under production. The exact spot could change as more exploration takes place but I think I favor the tile east of Bruins (A) right now. It reaches the jungle belt while staying out of the obnoxious Egyptian loyalty zone, there's a 3/2 bananas tile in the first ring, lots of 2/2 jungle tiles to grow onto, and it minimizes the number of desert tiles in the city radius. I don't like the actual Bruins spot because it has too much desert and desert tiles are almost completely useless in this game.

By the way, I spotted that Kings did grab the desired Campus spot with its first cultural expansion. That's great news, no need to purchase that tile now. It would have been a good idea to put the Campus district down on that tile before the culture costs scaled up again since Kings should be cranking out the +3 beakers Campus district immediately after the granary finishes. It doesn't look like you did that yet so I definitely recommend that for next turn. My suggested build queues for now are:

Capital: settler -> Government Plaza -> trader
Kings: granary -> Campus

Not purchasing the Government Plaza tile and placing the district to lock in its cost also probably cost some additional wasted production but I guess that's water under the bridge now. Remember that it's cheaper to buy the tile from Kings (which is second ring) and then reassign to the capital's third ring before placing the Government Plaza. Kings shouldn't be the city to build the Government Plaza because it will simply take too long.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Quick report. More later maybe. Must dash.

- Good thoughts on placing the campus, totally forgot about that. Done. Although it's painful paving over the forest instead of chopping it...
- Killed a barb with my slinger. One orphan scout left.
- No other barbs in sight. Revectoring everything but a scout towards the disputed zone.
- Spotted an unescorted Egyptian settler right next to my scout. FUCK Canada. ):<
- Sub has high empire score. Need to analyze score trends. Maybe make graphs on excel? :o 
- need to learn how to use excel