Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[civac2]

What did you gain by killing the scout?

[Gaspar]

What did you gain by killing the scout?

3 xp and 6 great general points?

The idea is that we gained him not knowing that we are heading for gold right now, which is a desirable contested site. There are definitely players I would have discouraged this move against but Serdoa isn't really the type to hold a gamelong grudge because we killed a scout. Whether we actually gained anything tangible beyond the xp and GG points, questionable. But I don't think we lost anything either.

[Gaspar]

We played t41, t42 and t43.  Here's some theme music for it:



(FWIW, I don't understand this song at all but my ex was into it and well, you'll see...)

Anyway, after we killed Serdoa's scout and he didn't accept peace, we whipped a spear at Harbour Bridge just in case on t41.  So we were presented with this at EOT:



We were preparing to settle Solaris Temple on t43 at the PH between the two golds.  Which was going to end up with 2 workers and a settler in the area.  Obviously, had we not whipped the spear, covering that many units with an injured warrior is a recipe for gg, and not the kind we're generating points for.  On t42, Serdoa advanced his warrior 1E. So we discussed ways to cover them both and Noble came up with the idea last turn of covering the settler with the injured warrior and then leaving the worker uncovered so that Serdoa would take the bait and we could then kill his warrior with the spear we whipped which was able to get there in time due to the just-in-time roads we were building to ensure Solaris Temple got trade routes the turn it was founded.  This was the situation EOT42:



Both Noble and I figured Serdoa would smell a rat and GTFO dodge, which would let us settle in peace which was all we really wanted.  However, we opened t43 to this:



err I mean this:



Well, if Serdoa wants to die young, who am I to stop him?  The worker completes the road on the wheat, settler founds Solaris Temple on the plains hill so when we kill his warrior we get the bonus homeland GG points and then spear takes 99.1% shot at his warrior.  Its important to note that the risk of this failing was truly infinitesimal since in the .9% instance, the warrior is right there to clean up.  Anyway, we got a slightly worse than average result:



Another 6 gg points, only 2XP on the spear, but we'll take it.  Its worth noting that Noble and I really have no interest in ruining Serdoa's game but opportunity knocks, etc.  Next turn we have to decide whether to move the spearman in on Serdoa's city or heal in place for a turn. The likelihood is we show up there, he has something we can't kill to defend the city, and hopefully he takes peace.  Of course, if we show up and the city is undefended or defended by a lone warrior, that's an entirely different situation.

In the NW, the SD border is beginning to get tastier as well.



He settled that city either t41 or t42, I don't recall.  Either way, its a relatively reasonable plant for him, though I probably would have preferred to plant 2N of that and 2N of the clam probably.  Lots of forests for him to clearcut into units of aggression, though, so we are keeping our scout on the original planned plant of Lioneye's Watch to keep our eyes out for SD Zerglings making their way east.

We complete another spearman in the capital this turn, so we'll have to see whether it heads south to assist the Serdoan expedition or whether it needs to head west to coagulate the Superdeathian sentry net.  Either way, things are hotting up on this ENTIRELY SMALLER THAN WE ASKED FOR map.

Here are demos:

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 44-47. Quite a bit of stuff has happened, but a lot of it was wishy-washy so I wasn't sure how to report it.



Not much happened on t44. We moved our warrior out of ST and healed the spear to prepare to make a move on Serdoa should we so choose.



On t45 Serdoa offered us a peace treaty. After debating this to death (mostly because I debate everything to death - this can be exhausting if you are not prepared to play a game with me) we decided to accept. This was partially because SD was getting frisky with his warrior in the other direction, so we immediately started moving our units back northward. We finished AH and discovered horse one tile next to our predicted spot (2S of the cow). We also discovered that SD hit one of his strokes of luck where he settled for horse without knowing it. I actually think SD is quite lucky from the various games (including Werewolf) that I've observed him play - and this is the guy who fails miserably and complains about variance (undeservedly) constantly! Imagine how he'd be doing with the supposed bad luck that he claims to have.



Astute lurkers will notice a certain asymmetry between our horse spot and SD's. Only a slight difference but one with a significant effect.



If you were wondering what we were doing with our scout on the prior turns, we were making somewhat unorthodox movements in order to keep eyes on SD's warrior while not leaving the scout vulnerable to attack. This most recent turn we noticed the warrior disappeared, which means it moved to one of the four adjacent tiles that we cannot see. I thought it was most likely that either the warrior moved 1N onto the hill, to sentry the area or to prepare for a possible settler; or NW in order to withdraw to his city of Guangzhou. We decided to move NW with the scout which reveals two tiles and more importantly the tile 1N of the silver - if that tile is clear, then we could move the scout to the silver. And to my surprise (and Gaspar's mostly non-surprise, because he somewhat ironically predicted SD would move to that tile as I thought it would make the least sense to move to), we did indeed find the warrior 1N of the silver. So we just moved the scout back to its starting position. I assume the 1W move is mostly equivalent to a NW move, and he is still generally withdrawing with the warrior. We will see again next turn.

Demos are going to suck for at least another 10t. But at least we succeeded in our bid to settle the gold, which might be the most valuable city spot on the map other than the capitals.

Also, Serdoa's power spiked a bit a couple turns after we accepted the treaty.  No idea whether we really could have threatened his city or not, but I'm not going to dwell on it.



Lewwyn may have two axes. This could be good news for us.

[novice]

Third ring, fourth ring, who’s counting.

[Gaspar]

We played turns 48 through 50. You're only getting non-demo pictures from 50, though.

I have to say, I sort of wish I had either pushed for quick speed or uh, pushed for quick speed. Normal is soooo slow.

Anyway, the story of these turns is about Superdeath and paranoia...

Basically, Superdeath didn't do anything notable until last turn but we spent at least an hour discussing his possible moves. As I noted in the chat, we spent more time thinking about the scout move that revealed his t48 location than Superdeath has thought about anything in any game of Civ4. We debated getting units to the area, building another axe over the granary we started in the capital, keeping the scout as a sentry vs moving the scout to try and locate our western neighbors, various settling patterns, what SD might do if he had a plan, what SD might do given that he almost certainly doesn't have a plan and so on. Normally Noble's unending need for certainty on every topic doesn't bother me that much but I must confess I have considered gouging my eyes out recently. No knock on Noble, really, just that when you have a neighbor as erratic as SD, it gets tiresome discussing it.

Anyway, I think we're mostly settled on letting SD have a more favorable land split with us so long as it doesn't encroach too heavily because the way we win this game is settling the highest value spots and then killing all of our annoying close neighbors with Cataphracts. Any plan that takes us away from that plan and into earlier conflict is a win for them, not us. So what makes sense is that we keep enough military presence to dissuade our neighbors from trying anything stupid and we expand, improve our land and tech. Everything else is a distraction.

Anyway, we settled Broken Bridge this turn, which might be a more apt name, since there's a decent chance it is indeed a Broken Bridge since we're moving away from the idea of settling Lioneye's Watch at the dry wheat. Settling BB let us see that Superdeath settled Nanjing for... clams and whales?



That city in itself is fine, but might signal that he's planning on settling in such a way that contests BB's silver next. We will take that as it comes. Our next targets are all backlines:

Tundra City (The Ascent?)



This spot will no doubt be next and has a lot of potential.

Gateway City (Blood Aqueducts?) and Moai City (Oriath?)



Gateway city isn't that great, but lets us get both seafood for the Moai city in culture without a monument, while using up the remainder of the tiles on its peninsula. Moai is great (and better at the EOT screenshot, after the capital hit 3rd ring and revealed its last land tile) and should be a very important part of the empire.

We decided to keep tech off another turn - we're really hoping some folks discover Sailing and/or Writing so we can get a little KTB. We will probably turn tech on next turn, though.

Since its t50, here's a round up of the fledgling empire...

Twilight Strand, the capital


TS isn't all that special just yet - its produced all 3 settlers and no infrastructure. We've also split the deer between three cities, though in the long run it will keep that and lose the fish to Moai.

Harbour Bridge, lousy copper city


HB will mostly be what SP players refer to as a military pump. It will transition later on to other things, as it doesn't really have the potential to be as such once the unit hammer costs get higher, but its fine for what it is.

Solaris Temple, gold city


Serdoa surely doesn't like that we settled this and just as assuredly, it will be the site of future conflict. Wet wheat and two golds is worth fighting for, though. Its already responsible for a whole lotta commerce. The monument is a defensive measure as much as anything else.

Broken Bridge, newbie


BB was settled this turn. A worker is working on improving the cow right now. Its nothing special, but its good enough and those horses will assuredly be very important over time. Not to mention that grass hill silver is the sort of tile we'd be more excited about if we didn't already have grass hill gold improved.

Ending turn had St. Augustine tell us we were the most advanced civilization in the world, which is impressive since we've had tech off for like 5t, not to mention terrible start techs.



Here's an overview shot after ending turn. As you can see, the desert tile at Moai is actually an oasis, which is quite nice.



I'll dump the last three turns demos here:

t48

t49

t50

And here are graphs, if you're into that sort of thing...

GNP

MFG

CY

Power

That's a lot of info and not that much entertainment, but its a t50 report, I hear people like round numbers.

[novice]

How does Moai work in this mod?
Will the island city provide you with 2 commerce trade routes?

[novice]

Maybe Superdeath will settle 2N1W of the dry wheat, and you can have a peaceful border. (Albeit one with no more land for you). The only other option for him seems to be not expanding further east, or settling extremely aggressively right in your face.

You can still settle your planned dry wheat spot, I’m not sure what the border further north looks like then. But I agree that settling choice spots and teching to phracts seems like a good plan.

Are you planning on contesting the jungle/rice area?

[Charriu]

The wonder moai wasn't changed, but I guess you mean the planned city moai.

It will provide domestic trade routes of 3 commerce with PRO

+25% for capitol connection
+75% for Protective and domestic
+100% because it's on a different landmass

[novice]

Nice. Why do the current cities only have 1c trade routes then?