Slowcheetah tries hunting for tuna

[slowcheetah]

The wolf, terrified by my guy's fighting prowess, elected to leave him alone. In case anyone is counting that leaves us at;

Scout: 3
Mother Nature: 0
Wolf in a Chicken costume: 1




Despite his prowess in the ring, the huntsman isn't all that clever. He seems to have found Azza's ponies, but since the Netherlands are yet to invent the horse he can't actually see what they are. They're kind of like the Silence but with more neighing and an insatiable lust for sugar lumps.

That hill is dynamite for some defensive healing Azza's borders guarding to off my flanks, rivers on the other two and a forested hill to boot. Hopefully, Azza will be neighbourly and not kill off my guy.




Back at home the townsfolk in the capital are almost enlightened enough to have a food store, sheltered from rats and plagyues of locusts. Unfortunately, for the people of Utrecht they aren't so forward thinking and still just store there food in piles on the floor. On the upside as soon as we learn what to do with cows they'll have the bluest cheese in history.

I'm surprised no-one has claimed a religion yet. I expect one to drop any turn now as someone seeks to give their third city a cultural boost.

[slowcheetah]

Not a very exciting turn, for me at least. Zanth will be delighted with his third city, and (Nakor?) is probably pretty pleased with stonehenge. I guess Nakor because he's now topping the scoreboard, and Ind is a decent boost into 'henge. Considering Zanth, I hope his cities are unimproved wastelands, I somewhat doubt that though.

Onto my empire, I now have a granary.




My people need to get pretty drunk to help them out with their mass copulation, so we're avoiding growth for a turn while they throw a massive party.

The Little ingrates didn't even invite me .

[slowcheetah]

Lots of reports in the last day or so. Clearly folks are starting to shuffle their third settlers out. Someone will also be celebrating the foundation of Buddhism. Vendors of statues of fatmen rejoice.




We've also had exciting developments on the homerange. My southern scouting warrior has found a source of gold. Provided the little rascal doesn't steal it all for himself the gold makes a great location for my fourth city site.

Reasoning-

-The site itself has two strong tiles available without a border pop, a second food resource and lots of forests upon popping borders.
-The site grabs a happy resource, which improves all of my other cities particularly in the happiness crunch of ancient times.
-It doesn't require an immediate bloody iron working.
-Nor does it require a workboat and grab a load of coast.
-Finally, inferring from a) The low distance between Azza and BaII's neighbouring capitals.
b) That barb warrior probably wandered off to someone's borders, and he was around that area.
The gold is probably contested and I would like to stake my claim as early as possible. Note that this means the site ideally needs to be settled with a spearman and an axeman. Which, I'm sure I can work in.

P.S. Azza didn't kill my scout yet.

[slowcheetah]

In barbarian news, a couple of turns ago the barb warrior and his pet bear were sighted. My warrior decided that bravery was the better part of valour and ran the hell away. Both barbarians look to be virgins to combat, which perhaps indicates that this area is yet to be scouted by anyone else. That's far from a sure thing but it's a hopeful indication.




Animal Husbandry has also come in which leads me to some interesting decisions regarding technology choice. I have two turns to think about it as I'll be saving gold, but let's have a look at the choices.

Sailing- Unlocks lighthouses (gives me a grand total of one extra food in the capital). Galleys are possibly more important, however I am still not sure this is actually an island ( I'll get more information in two turns when the capitals borders pop), and the fact that the map looks like a series of interconnected lakes drops galley transport down a notch.




Actually screw it I'm a little low on time, my tech choice is informed by where I want to settle next. Only the gold spot and some crappy sailing spots don't require IW. Therefore IW has to be in my next two techs, the coolest IW city requires a border pop in order to unlock chariots and gems. Cheapest way to pop borders is a Monument, therefore I'm going mysticism->IW. Myst is first because I want to build one in Utrecht to grab the sheep and make the city eminently better.

[slowcheetah]

My Warrior has 50% odds of survival. I wish him the best of luck.




I got my scout moving again, sighted some blue borders, I'm probably going to go and meet whomever it is before continuing in a southwesterly fashion.

I whipped my settler this turn. The loss of three pop has made my demographics some of the worst in the game.

[slowcheetah]

My warrior beat up the grizzly bear. Moved him to a forested hill to heal.




Settlers out, third city to be settled next turn.

[slowcheetah]

There are a fair few goings on in PB17, as cities start to rack up and turns become more time consuming.

Lets deal with domestics before foreign affairs.




Here's the screenshot of my third city, soon to be the first of my strongholds to actually utilise pastured beasts. I'm just going to go into a little more detail about it's location. Well pretty much why it's not one tile north, in order to grab the extra food resources.

City goals

The city is designed to be a short-term production city. It's supposed to produce a lot of hammers at a low size and eventually fill out to produce as many hammers as it can. It'll probably become more of a late game filler, although it may get heroic epic depending on the game circumstances.

Why it isn't of a slightly more northern bent

1) The rice is jungled and thus unusable until IW.
2) The rice would still be a border pop away and the city isn't getting one any time soon.
3) Wouldn't be able to share a few tiles with the capital, during an extreme worker turn crunch.
4) Would be one tile off the coast, I'd like to have a strong (early) production city for galleys/workboats on the lake to the west of my empire.

In the rest of my 'empire', I shaved a turn off of mysticism by working all of the improved commerce tiles I had available this turn. I do this so I can overflow into a monument at Utrecht, off the back of the worker whip that has just taken place there. I can then finish the monument with a chop in a few turns. The capital will finish off its warrior then build a worker to while away the happiness clock.




To the south east of Utrecht you can see Nakors scout. He only has two cities but I fuzzily remember attributing stonehenge to him (confirmed when I thought to check the 'top cities screen), so that's where he has been spending his hammers.

The blue borders turned out to be Yuri, he's checked onto my 'Leadersbook' and joins the known three cities club. I'm actually in position to upgrade my leadersbook status with Zanth and BaII by offering open borders, but I'm not signing any of their contracts without trade route access or an opportunity to scout them out.

Annoyingly virtually everyone is currently pumping EP into me. However, this could be because a number of them don't really have very many contacts yet. Perhaps their have been a number of scouting accidents?[/screenshot]

[slowcheetah]

Actually the other obviously could have met other people, I just haven't met the people they've met so I can't see the connection between the people who I've met and the people who I've met have met. :P

In any case I wish the blighters would spend there EP elsewhere.

[slowcheetah]

So I missed reporting on a turn, it rolled pretty late and I forgot to take any pictures. However, I'm back and we'll start this turn report with the mistake of the turn.




My delightfully pretty third city is pictured in the screenshot. The cows were quickly hooked, however I then moved my workers directly to the copper using up all their movement. Instead I could have roaded the cows and travelled to the copper for half movement next turn. Turns out patience while clicking really does save turns.




Monument is completing in my second city, I'll probably build some units next. In the capital I made the decision to complete a warrior to allow better scouting, this delays my next worker and settler a turn. I really want to know more about my neighbours though.

Speaking of neighbours I've started putting EP into Yuri, because the way toroidal wraps indicates he might be one of mine.

[slowcheetah]

If anyone has any questions feel free to shout out. There isn't a huge amount happening at the moment though.