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

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 76 and 77. I have somewhat forgotten how to report, having not done it for a week.

In the north we founded Lioneye's Watch.  SD did not attempt to compete with us for the spot and instead sent his settler to his northern coast to settle a decent spot.  The city would be better 1SW on the tundra forest tile, but his other recently settled city (Tianjin was settled t76 and Shandong t77) may be claiming that fish.  So it makes sense for him to try to claim the other fish with Tianjin if that is the case.  We know Shandong is an island city from trade routes, so that is just my guess at where it is.  It could certainly be on a different island instead.



We also found another marble island, much to my chagrin.  We definitely could have used stone instead of a second marble.  Still, it makes the island better and we may try to claim it soonish, depending on how things shake out.  Not sure where we'd plant and it obviously depends on whether there is seafood on the northern coast.  If not, we may try to plant on the marble (2h plant) to fight over the fish with SD.  The hill also helps defense of course.



You may have noticed a flurry of activity in the other threads, as well as delay in playing the turn (no turns have been missed however).  On t76 Serdoa declared on Rusten and razed Rusten's second newest city of Shock Nova.  Rusten's newer city, Champion, was founded just the turn before Shock Nova was burned.  They made peace after that, but interestingly Serdoa offered a cease fire and not a treaty to Rusten. Subsequently there has been pretty substantial increase in rival power.  While I think Serdoa is not likely to attack us anytime soon, I think he wants us to show him due respect in terms of the threat that he poses, so we went ahead and put a turn into a spearman at ST as a contingency plan in case things go south.  Because we had previously delayed the HB settler by a turn to finish the axeman already, we are not delaying the marble city further in doing this, since the galley was timed to finish on the same turn as the settler.  This does delay the work boat that is due to be completed afterwards, but all plans must be modified according to new information.  Beacon did recently complete an archer which is now in ST, and there will be another one finished a few turns hence.  Two other units complete next turn as well, so our power level should be well within the realm of respectability.




Lewwyn's GNP is very high which is surprising to me given that he did not take Currency with the Oracle.  Perhaps he is researching Monarchy with two prereqs.  Researching Monarchy before Currency is the bane of Gaspar.  Or perhaps his economy is simply doing much better than I expected.  The map is more islandy than I expected, so this has contributed to surprises such as this.  You could say that Lewwyn has been able to adapt to the map better and/or earlier than us. Lewwyn also closed borders with us in an attempt to reduce our trade route income, but we have enough routes from Serdoa and SD so it didn't really do much. We'll also get a route to Bob and Rusten once we found the marble city.



Serdoa's power went up but by only about two units' worth.  So it is not an outlandish increase, despite a substantial dip in his score due to whipping.

[NobleHelium]

I just noticed that there is a forest growth on the southern marble island just this turn. We also got a growth at LW/BB last turn.

[Gaspar]

For the record, I don't think Serdoa is necessarily planning to attack us, but I do think we need to project strength to discourage him from trying.

[Gaspar]

Report will have to wait.

I did try to put together a map stitch but it came out terrible so I scrapped it. Sorry novice.

Serdoa and Rusten's war is hot again. Rusten refounded Shock Nova last turn though I can't say if it was in the same spot, though the fact that their war is hot again is a good indicator. Serdoa asked us for gold and Rusten asked us to declare on Serdoa. We declined both and offered Serdoa gold if he stops trading with Lewwyn. Serdoa's power spiked this turn, our best guess was 3 units. We completed a couple ourselves.

Lewwyn completed a tech this turn, probably Mathematics. For us, Metal Casting came in at EOT. Currency is next, probably in 5t.

[NobleHelium]

Lewwyn's tech wasn't Mathematics, his power didn't go up by enough. I really don't know what it is, unless he never finished Writing or something which seems obscene?

[NobleHelium]

I hope lurkers are paying attention because this game is getting REALLY interesting! I dare say this is the most interesting game being played right now.

[Commodore]

I hope lurkers are paying attention because this game is getting REALLY interesting!  I dare say this is the most interesting game being played right now.

Impossible. Interesting games have pictures being posted. 

[Gaspar]

t79 - Serdoa crazy... like a fox?

So when we opened the turn, we were greeted by a diplo box from Serdoa offering a peace treaty and a promise to stop trading with Lewwyn.  We of course were not at war last turn so... wtf?





So he extracted his pound of flesh for our earlier scout kill by killing our scout that was exploring over by Bob.  While normally this little act of impishness wouldn't bother me, we need all the trade routes we can muster and not only did he ruin the value of our trade routes, but that scout was ticketed for activating trade routes with Bob and Rusten.  We of course took the peace, since 10t of not worrying about an attack at Solaris Temple is worth more than any hurt feelings but about those trade routes...



Bob has had a little scouting work boat out heading along our border but I don't see any reasonable way in which we have TR back to him.  Regardless, thanks Bob!

In other Serdoa military news, he razed Rusten's city of Champion last turn.  So while Serdoa's start was pretty poor, he's captured a city off Superdeath and burned a pair of cities from Rusten.  Hell hath no fury like a Serdoa scorned.  I'm sure he views Solaris Temple as an affront as well, so that 10t of peace will be well appreciated and we will have to continue to ensure the city is well-defended.

Metal Casting came in last EOT and we started our first couple of forges this turn.  That galley will be ferrying a settler that also completes at EOT to the southern marble island.  Lewwyn shit out yet another Settler this turn and is now up to 11 cities.  We'll settle cities 9 and 10 over the next 10t but its pretty important we get the granaries and forges that aren't done put down now so we don't mind if we fall a little behind him in the settling front.  Though it sure would be nice if one of his neighbors pulled a Serdoa and got annoyed at the peach colored menace exploding all over the map. In lieu of the promised stitch, here's a couple overview shots:





And demos

[novice]

That's pretty funny.
Looking good.

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 80 and 81.

We are well on our way to founding the southern marble city.  Before doing that we wanted to look around to finalize its location, and found some interesting stuff.



That is an island to the east of the marble but also a different island south of that one.  So there are two more islands here before definitively getting into Bob's area.  The island further east of the middle two islands is Bob's equivalent of Oriath - the island very close to his capital.  Obviously we can't compete for that one, but we can try to claim both the middle two islands since Bob is not really all that close to settling them.  He is fully aware of them now though given his scouting work boat, so we have to be careful.

The newly discovered crab does not change our city position and in fact reinforces it.  It does mean however that we cannot escape the necessity of building more monuments.  We will get the third ring border pop at ST shortly before the work boat is in position to net the fish, so the city will be able to work that before growing onto the marble to finish the monument and then the granary. The monument will claim the crab which we can then use for the city on the island further east. If we found that 3E of the marble we will get to use the remaining land tile on the marble island which would otherwise be orphaned. This is a good arrangement - cue the Montgomery Burns "excellent" voice.

Serdoa also planted two new cities this turn, one of which is his first island city just southwest of the marble. We were already assuming he would claim that, and there was previously a settler sighted coming out of Novgorod. The marble island is ours however, although I would be open to trading the marble to him perhaps in exchange for stone sometime in the future. I do not believe he has seen the marble yet. It does also mean he has a galley nearby, but given that we have a treaty there is no risk to the settler. Speaking of Serdoa, I was expecting him to ask for the gold again after the war declaration but he has not done so - perhaps he already realized that we would have no reason to accept given the treaty. We'll likely give him the gold if he asks again (since there is nobody to trade it to anyway - literally everybody else has one gold) but probably only when the treaty is closer to expiring, just to convey the message that his war declaration was unwarranted.



We are taking advantage of our ensured peace with Serdoa to build some much needed infrastructure. We are also going to claim the northern marble in the near future, since Gaspar thinks it is more contested than the Beachhead border island with Lewwyn to the east. We did drop off a warrior there previously which increases our confidence in delaying the city. We actually sent the warrior-laden galley at Lewwyn's Roadhog city to make him whip an archer right after he grew to size 2, so that's a small win for us. He did have a warrior in the city as well but he couldn't have known whether we had an axe or multiple units on the galley. His city has since popped borders thanks to Stonehenge and he can now see our sentry warrior.

And yes, TS is building a work boat for the northern marble - it will take a bit to get there but it's still much better than trying to get the city to build its own work boat.




We are doing 40% on Currency this turn because we are making 70 points of commerce so no loss to rounding. Hopefully we can finish Currency with another 2t of burn. Things might get a little dicey since we're currently a bit short on gold and there is a new city next turn. It's also possible that someone may complete Currency and help us out, although whether that is a good thing for us on the balance is questionable.

Rusten refounded Champion this turn after refounding Shock Nova previously, although the cities are now in reverse order on the city list so I'm not sure what's happening with that. It seems like there may have been some city renaming shenanigans to get that result, but it doesn't really matter to us - we're just trying to scry what's happening there given that we see nothing of that area. The new Champion is confirmed as an island city via trade routes, but we only recently obtained trade routes to Rusten (same as when we got them to Bob) and so we do not know whether the old Champion was also an island city. We have trade routes to Bob and Rusten via Serdoa - his war with Rusten must have been provoked by some border disagreement and they must now have touching borders whereas previously they did not. So we got a trade route when that happened, otherwise we were planning to defog a route with our southern galley by going east of the marble city after founding it. Gaspar used some artistic license in describing the scouting strategy last report, as the scout had already done its job by going as westerly as possible on Bob's peninsula.