Hiding Doctor Yellow Mist: 4 heads, one body

[Mardoc]

So am I close to having to wake up yet? I see a T118 came in, which I guess is probably still Yell0w and HK yet to play?

[HidingKneel]

So am I close to having to wake up yet?

That's my line!

I haven't taken the turns yet. Let me know when I should, Yell0w.

[Yell0w]

Here are your random numbers:
12

Timestamp: 2014-03-06 12:18:45 UTC

112 was my first turn meaning 123 will be my last one.

[Mardoc]

<yawn> ok.

[Yell0w]

<yawn> ok.

Hey I rolled two eights so far, I'm happy to be able to play a couple turns more now.

So....
Well the first turn I've played is a long time ago so let's load that one again...

Oh yeah, so Construction was discovered, we build TGL and the GLH was lost to someone else. We've got a GP which I believe is there to keep up the GA we are in. So I used him to build Necronomicon. I changed city builds around going for markets before Sea Havens and Lighthouses, slipping a couple of workers in there. Someone saved up a huge amount of money so I'll be able to tech quite a lot. Since we are in military state there maybe was a plan to cash rush some buildings, but I decided against it and will swap out of that civic asap.

So I one turned Smelting, cause I could and we desperately need more cities more workers and more military, so it seems a good time to go for forges.
So we've discovered Iron and we've actually got some, which is great. That opens up a lot of military options. For now I went for Iron Working, Mind Stapling -> HBR after that.

From that point on a kind of plan formulated:
get all the tiles improved
get at least one settler out and settle inland.
I figured out that four cities are good for Forge cities so I'll get them built there.
In Tortuga we'll finish the Forge go on to building a Shipyard and then the Tower of Complacency, which is a big investment but a worth while one I think.
Pop the dungeon to our north and settle a city on it.
The rest of the cities will build infra or after their forge is done a Siege Workshop.

Yeah thats basically it. There is not a lot happening. I'm trying to get the infra done to be able to produce Iron Chariots. I think with the great xp rich upgradeable warriors we have an invasion in ~10-15 turns might be possible.
It feels like the game is in the turn 75 stages right now, nobody has any military or really a lot of cities. We obviously are far ahead in tech, and appear not to be behind in production or number of cities as far as I can tell.

[Mardoc]

Not complaining at all. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't letting the other teams down. I'm keeping quite busy with my other games for the time being, anyway.

[Yell0w]

Hey hey, played my last turn, so Mardoc is up I guess.

[HidingKneel]

I think you mean me!

Although, I'm about to go on vacation. I'm pretty sure the place I'm heading will have internet, but if it looks like I've gone incommunicado maybe Mardoc should step in early.

[HidingKneel]

Okay, random number 8-12 = 12. Lucky me.

So, what's been going on? Looks like we've just connected us some Iron. That's good, Iron Working unlocks shipyards and our hero, and we still don't have bronze so Iron will be crucial for self-defense.

We're Financial, Spiritual, and Raiders. Awesome.

Here's what the overview screen looked like when I took over:



Except for "Tower of Complacency", which I added as a placeholder. Let's see... hunting lodge makes sense, we have AH now and need a place to build hawks. We get cheap markets, so might as well build one of those. Elder Council is questionable but 3 hammers from completion. Sea Haven makes sense (it's on an island city). Saverous is also one turn from completion, so we might as well build him, but I'm wondering if Mind Stapling is really worthwhile (I'd rather swap to AV once we have some cultists).

Eight-turn forge is crazy. We're very short on units, so I swapped that to a warrior (which we can cash-upgrade to a Drown).
The capital's building FotT, which makes sense but is coming along a bit slowly. Let's see if we can speed that up.

Civics looked like this:



Very questionable to me. We're so low on units that Military State isn't saving us any money, and we haven't expanded enough for City States to really be worthwhile. Religion is definitely right (we're very short on happiness). Foreign Trade I'm not sure about; Conquest would really help us get some units on the board. But at least it's doing a fair job of boosting our GNP.

We're Spiritual, so time to make a free civic swap. I went with God King and Slavery. It costs us an extra 30 gpt, but we almost make up for that with an extra 14 hammers in the capital alone. +50% gold in the capital would also be pretty huge if we're running gold, but it looks like we have more than enough of that right now so I flipped it to 100% science. Also Slavery will let me do something useful with our large food surpluses.

Techwise, what are we looking at? Yell0w was researching Stirrups despite the fact that we have no access to horses, which is even less useful than the Bronze Working without copper he left me with last time. There are several options which look appealing:

Currency: unlock Consumption. Also we're Fin right now, so cheap moneychangers.
Deception: Esus isn't founded. Nox Noctis is awesome. And if we don't build it, someone else will.
Knowledge of the Ether: Key tech and a prereq for Corruption of Spirit. But I don't think we have the hammers to really take advantage of it right now.
Mathematics: Mainly as a prereq for engineering. Also, Gambling Houses would end our happiness problem (though they're crazy expensive).
Optics: Unlock our awesome worldspell and our second hero.
Priesthood: Unlock Cultists.

I went with Deception, since it's the only tech that's time-sensitive. We have Trade and contact with the Amurites (we're actually getting Ale from them). They have Deception under "can research" and are running a GA right now, so I think we'd better hurry. It'll take 3 turns; fingers crossed.

Of note: the Amurites have not researched KotE yet .

So, Tortuga has a massive food surplus and some unhappiness. Tower of Complacency would be awesome given the potential of the city, but it's a 17 turn build. I decided to build a settler instead. We can finish one in three turns, and there's oodles of land to claim. I think this one should go inland to grab gems and/or sugar. That's quite distant from the capital, but I can swap out of GodKing during my turnset if need be (will want to switch to Undercouncil ASAP, also). We really need to raise the happy cap.

Looks like we've scouted an Amurite city here:



Easy pickings for Cultists; I wonder how many of their cities will be coastal.

Some of our happiness problems seem to be a consequence of this:



Looks like we have a Pearl city which got conquered by barbarians. I gave the Axe of Orthus to a boarding party and sent it to retake the city. Hopefully we'll immediately get cultural control of the pearls again, so we'll get a happy boost next turn.

Oh, and I almost forgot:



An Adventurer with 36 xp. Clearly this guy is going to be a Mage. So, some extra incentive to unlock KotE. But there's no rush on that.

Demos:



The Amurites are slightly ahead in GNP, but that's just because they're in a GA. I'd say we're keeping up quite well. We don't have much in the way of an army, but neither does anyone else.

[HidingKneel]

Turn 126 (3/12):

The bad news:



Wasn't quick enough on the Titan (I blame the lack of Copper). Also, GotN is down. That got built by the Amurites:



Not such a big deal. I don't think there's much use for that wonder unless you're the Hippus, or have a ton of gold (like us).

We made contact with the Luchuirp this turn:



They've got Optics. I'm not sure if that Caravel's packing heat, but they're in range of Port Royal so I thought I'd better not take chances; promoted the S3 warrior in the city to a S7 boarding party (figure we could use more of those anyway, and we've got money to burn).

The good news: we retook our Pearls city with no trouble. And while the other teams were out completing wonders, we've secured exclusive access to an awesome one for ourselves:



I'm thinking either KotE or Priesthood next. Let's establish naval dominance.