[SPOILERS] Lewger goes for the Bigwyn

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interesting stuff for turn 130:

1. Brick captured 2 cities off of xenu! lol. I was beginning to wonder why an imperialist brick had only settled one additional city since we met him many turns ago (by contrast we have settled maths and king arthur, and captured 2 cities from barbs/serdoa in that time - but we aren't imperialist). now I know - he has apparently been building a massive military.
This also explains why serdoa chose to settle towards the east instead of towards us (thankfully). we have been fighting azza - but it has been mostly a cold war, with only brief 6-8 turn spats of actual war. I think now that Brick and xenu have been at war since roughly the time that we made contact with Brick. I think Serdoa (rightly) surmised that it would be easier for him to expand east - its not like either Brick or Xenu are in a position to repel him, thanks to their war with each other. (the fact that we have graphs on Seroda, while brick and xenu probably do not, may have factored into it too). Serdoa has been steadily (although not dramatically) increasing his power, too, and may decide to join in on either side soon.
Thanks to the two extra foreign trade routes, we now only have 1 +1 internal route. For some reason its in size 3 King arthur, not size 1 Song of Roland. Not sure why that is. we'll get more as we found new cities soon, so we'll still need the 2nd island city.
2. As you can see, the barb axe finally suicided himself. He was nice enough to do that instead of pillaging the sheep - so yay. next turn we can promote and have a CG2 archer in Popol .
3. Azza lost his gold mine at A7X, lol. more on that in a bit.

I actually discovered a new minor C&D trick (well, I haven't heard mention of this before, although I'm sure some of you knew about it already):


We haven't made contact with xenu, so if I scroll over Brick in the foreign advisor screen it mentions nothing about his war with Xenu. However, Azza has made contact with Xenu. so If I click him to see his relationships with other civs, then scroll over Brick, it mentions Brick is at war with xenu! I know from this that Azza, Serdoa, and Brick have made contact with xenu (duh). More interestingly, I can figure out that Serdoa has made contact with CFC Jester the same way, but NOT Brick, azza, or commodore.

I suppose this would be more useful if slowcheetah or plako/merohoc were at war with someone we knew. but its a neat trick i wasn't aware of before this turn.

ok, here's A7X:

losing the gold mine has got to be a pain in the ass for azza. we aren't really in a position to DOW just to snipe workers if he tried to mine it uncovered, but given our history, I wouldnt want to risk it if I were in his shoes. The praet is moving to cover them, I guess - maybe a spear too. it will be 2 turns before the workers can start mining, so 4 turns before the gold is mined again, which will have a some effect on his economy. It also deprives him of a happy for those 4 turns - because he has resumed giving his other gold to scooter (in exchange for crabs this time).


I can't be certain, but I think this iron island has been settled by merohoc. this is a side effect of the long war, I think, as it more naturally belongs to Brick, or maybe xenu.


the barb axe suicided, but here we see a new barb axe and a barb warrior. The warrior will be trivial - our axe has 99.9 odds attacking on the forest - it will be even better next turn when the warrior moves onto flat land. as for the axe, our chariot is loaded on the galley and can be dropped onto the cotttage SW, W of popol next turn, or more likely the GFH between these 2 cities in 2 turns. so no worried, but it does show why we need more military over here soon - especially as we would like to settle in that direction fairly quickly.

demos:

Note the export/imports: Scooter and Brick's success in battle has been excellent for our trade routes <G>
we are breakeven exactly at 50% (partly due to working 2 scientists in volsung), so we have been keeping the science slider there for the last 6-7 turns. Next turn we discover monarchy and double revolt to HR and OR.

Power graph:

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< offtopic>

It's annoying, but you can get around an open trade window at log in to take a look at a lot of the game state to get the info you need before making a decision about whatever is in the trade window. The way I've found to do that is to click on your tech bar at the top of the screen, which will deselect the current tech. Then right-click on an available tech to bring up the civilopedia. While that is up you can press F1 to bring up a list of your cities, then you can click into your cities to look around if needed. Or use some of the other F-keys to look at whatever you need (F4 for diplomacy and trades comes to mind). Also, you can click on the mini-map while the trade window is open and drag around down there to move the main display behind the trade window. As long as you don't hit escape you can still take action on the active trade offer. It definitely isn't ideal but it's the only workaround I know of for now....until version 2.0!

< /offtopic

Lewwyn, not sure if you knew this already... but its news to me, I could have used that a few times during our war with azza, and once or twice with deals Serdoa offered us. good trick to know for pitboss!

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Which names are you already using?

gilgamesh, theaneid, theodyssey, the iliad, beowulf (lost but not forgotten, saving it for when we recapture), Volsung (viking epic) and mathfabmathowny(welsh epic)

Ramayana & Mahabharata

Chanson de Roland

Nibelungenlied (maybe too much overlap with the Volsung)

If you every really run dry, the wiki entry on "Epic Poetry" is nice and comprehensive.

In addition to the ones listed above we now have: Popol vuh, Song of Roland, and King Arthur.
This was interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion
seems to imply that MathFabMathony was influential in the King Arthur myths, which I did not know when I named either city. But it works out since the 2 are neighbors .

Anyway we are working on expansion projects atm, so I've been thinking of new epics
For the next 5-6 cities I am thinking:

El Cid (pretty much set on this being gold/pigs city) - or should it be "Poem of my Cid," not sure. El Cid is technically the character, Cantar de Mio Cid the work. "El Cid" just sounds cooler though .
Romance of 3 Kingdoms - I want to use this for the marble city, but I'm not sure how to shorten it to 15 characters w/o butchering it. Any suggestions?
Mahabharata (and I will use Ramayana eventually as well if we keep getting new cities - maybe in the same batch)
Nibelungenlied - probably one of the 2 tundra cities we will found
Shahnameh (Iranian)

I'm naturally biased towards European epics, so I've had to do some research for all but El Cid here. But I want to get the ancient epics out of the war before moving towards medieval/early modern works like Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, etc. - and eventually probably Leaves of Grass and other modern works.

Open to lurker suggestions too (Math and Popol Vuh were both excellent suggestions I probably wouldnt have found on my own), but I think I'll use all 6 of at some point (if I can find a good name for 3 Kingdoms).

edit: ooh, might need to squeeze Arabian Nights in there somewhere too.

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xenu just played, whipped 4 cities (I think he may only have 5 cities left??? Not sure).

so it seems he was overwhelmed by Brick, and is taking emergency measures to avoid suffering the same fate ass the amigos. Its quite possible the 2 parties get locked in a death struggle until some third party comes and wipes them both out . or maybe Brick keeps advancing, we'll see.

we convert to HR and OR this turn, and do some other neat stuff next turn. I'm waiting on Lewwyn to play before I log in, and it looks like he's last - so probably he will play first and I'll give you a big report tomorrow on the next turn.

[Lewwyn]

Yeah sorry I'll grab it when company leaves in a couple hours.

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Yeah sorry I'll grab it when company leaves in a couple hours.

its cool, as long as you get it before it rolls I'm going to bed anyway.


Commodore and Brick, however, are impatient as ever hehe.

[Lewwyn]

Played both turns. Things are looking good. Offered Brick Fur for 3gpt. El Cid founded. I killed the barb warrior with the axe and I killed the barb axe with the chariot that I got into position with some fancy boat + worker road micro. That chariot hit 10xp so next turn we promote it and we got a Heroic unit. And as you may have gathered from civstats, whips galore.

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the whips Lewwyn was talking about:
1.
2.
3.
4.

The whip unhappy had already gone away in the Iliad. the whip is to overflow into market, then with the chop incoming whip the market in iliad. as for The Odyssey and the Aeneid, me and lewwyn discussed it and decided with HR (lots of military there anyway on the border with azza) plus gold and wine being hooked up soon, that we could handle the extra unhappy there.

Gilgamesh:

Lewwyn, I made a minor tile change. I had Gilgamesh give up a cottage to take a village from the Iliad. This was so the Iliad could work a hamlet that was being unworked. so I gave up a cottage in gilgamesh for a hamlet in the iliad for an extra 1g . you can switch them back next turn when the iliad grows a turn.

here's Poem of El Cid:

we completed the settler in 3 turns in math by 1 turn-chopping a forest with all 3 available workers. 2 workers came down here to improve El Cid.

Popol:

in 3 turns it will grow to size 6, then we can start a settler and 3 pop whip it for the marble city.

which is important:

sucks so we're not gonna get them gems/pigs city. looks like serdoa is using the pigs for a marble city instead of the gems. possibly we'll be able to grab the gems with a wine plant that can steal the rice from popol. or we may just have to use the marble city as a stronger border with serdoa. we'll see.

scooter accepted a recent map trade and we found slowcheetah:

this shows how close Plako is too us. won't be able to make contact w/ him this way until we have caravels, though. slowcheetah is located about where I thought he would be. its pretty apparent he's been pretty isolated and probably more able to run a farmer's gambit than anyone in the game. I wouldnt be surprised if he hasn't even been at war yet.

top 5 cities:

this confirmed my guess that Plako built the MOM.

demos at 0% science:

we're 198 at 100%. interesting that even with our max tax low GNP, we're still 4th. the world is quickly separating into the have and have not's. we're on the lower end of the haves, I think.
Serdoa and slowcheetah are #1 and #2, for sure. they are the only 2 civs that have not been ravished by war. #3 is either Plako or commodore, and the other one is probably not far behind us.

Plako and commodore have had their economy hurt by war, but have mostly won and are going to recover from the war. CFCJester\nakor are almost dead. Scooter, merohoc, brick, and xenu have killed their economy for war and will probably stay in the gutter for a bit. brick and xenu especially - I don't see any quick end to that war. scooter will eventually recover after he eliminated the amigos and gets some workers and settlers out. Azza never really had an economy to start with - he only has like 6 cottages built - including 2 hamlets and 1 village (none of the river).

power graph:

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Lewwyn,

1. your build order in the odyssey doesnt make sense. either change it to barracks-->elephant--> library, or library--Barracks--elephant. no point in doing barracks before library if you're gonna put off the elephant.
1a) with all these buildings, keep in mind we're gonna need forges just about everywhere in 7-8 turns. if we don't need a building in that time period, we're better off putting it off until after the forge. build a elephant or catapult instead.
2. we need more military, I think. a) we need to stay solidly in front of azza b) we have to worry about serdoa too. he's climbing rapidly . I don't want our eastern holdings to be in jeopardy.

[Lewwyn]

Lewwyn,

1. your build order in the odyssey doesnt make sense. either change it to barracks-->elephant--> library, or library--Barracks--elephant. no point in doing barracks before library if you're gonna put off the elephant.
1a) with all these buildings, keep in mind we're gonna need forges just about everywhere in 7-8 turns. if we don't need a building in that time period, we're better off putting it off until after the forge. build a elephant or catapult instead.
2. we need more military, I think. a) we need to stay solidly in front of azza b) we have to worry about serdoa too. he's climbing rapidly . I don't want our eastern holdings to be in jeopardy.

Hadn't really decided the build order in Odyssey yet for sure. No worries about military, we're whipping barracks and units shortly.