[SPOILERS] Hoarse Lord DaveV speaks softly...

[DaveV]

Turn 99. The barb warrior moved next to my well-promoted bronze warrior. Easy meat, right? Right???




Um, no.




In the west, I exposed a copper tile on the putative island.




GreyWolf has a scout poised to scout my lands; I offered a map trade to save him the trouble.

Ellimist's power took a somewhat worrisome jump.

[DaveV]

Turn 100. GreyWolf accepted the map trade, which turned out to be much in my favor.




Here's a cultural overview.




So the layout of civs is in Charlie Brown shirt mode, which is probably the fairest way:



Looks as though GreyWolf just missed circumnavigation. From the look of things, it won't matter much; Ellimist's boats will really only be useful against GreyWolf and Kredom, and I suspect most of the action will be on land.

Since it's turn 100, I owe the lurkers a set of graphs. But I should gain contact with Bob next turn, so I'll wait till then.

For now, here are the demos:



Meta analysis: I've just seen this movie. Ellimist researches to Ogres and Adepts and conquers the world. But this time, I'm going to try to organize a dogpile before that happens. The layout of the civs is pretty bad: Bob is as far from Ellimist as he could be, and Ellimist has the extremely vulnerable Kredom to devour when he decides it's time to make his move.

[DaveV]

Turn 101. As foreshadowed, I made contact with Bob. He's pretty comparable to me:





Note: Ellimist is one city ahead of me; GreyWolf is two behind.

His Reagents show he has Knowledge of the Ether, which means the he'll be rolling out the adepts.

In the south, my exploring warrior found some sugar.




Foreign intelligence (lurkers: do you want these spoilered, or not?):























Conclusion: I'm still very much in this game, although my low GNP is hurting me. I offered a map trade plus open borders to Bob, hoping that some foreign trade routes will help out. I'm also moving my new settler to settle the island city.

In the big picture, Ellimist's Warrens are going to widen his lead over the rest of us. Bob's use of Conquest seems to point to a magic-user game, sacrificing food for starting XP (and that's what Auric is built for, with his ARC/CHA traits).

[DaveV]

Turn 102. Bob accepted my deal. I meant to offer a map trade to GreyWolf since Bob now has his map, but I forgot. Next turn.

Here's a new stitch:




Looks I'm getting 20 trade from Bob and he's getting squat:



As I've said before, this is overstated. I'm getting a foreign trade route for two commerce in each of my 10 cities, instead of the one-commerce internal routes I had last turn, so it's really only 10 extra commerce.

In the south, one of Ellimist's wolf riders pops up its ugly snout:




Frankly, it pisses me off that Ellimist was able to walk this unit all over the map without being eaten. Now he's rubbing my nose in it by renaming him to Magellan. We are not amused.

You can barely see Clan borders under the interface in the lower right.

My workboat reveals some barb borders in the east. Looks like Yellow hasn't expanded very far to his west.

[DaveV]

Turn 103. I remembered to offer my map to GreyWolf. I'm hoping he takes that as another gesture of friendship. Bob didn't tilt and cancel open borders. Thanks, pal.

But the big news of the turn was the appearance of Loki:




Ellimist didn't move his wolf rider onto one of the "please kill me" tiles, but he is threatening my stack of workers on the bananas. I covered them with a scout and C2 warrior.

No deals offered to Yell0w, since I may have to declare war on him to prevent Loki from doing his obnoxious thing.

In the west, I'm set to drop off a settler and warrior on the island next turn:




A new contact means yet another foreign intelligence dump:























That's a nice GNP Yell0w has there, but he's seriously behind on expansion:

[DaveV]

Turn 104. GreyWolf is too proud to take map gift; he offers me a trade instead.



I accepted. As the log (and the city list) reported, he just took out the barb city of Sludgehome. He's also looking like he's ready to make a move against Kredom:




Not much I can do about that. Kredom has been looking like a dead man walking for a long time now, but he's still been playing his turns promptly.

After the trade window, an event popped up:



That's my only copper, which I can't afford to give up at this point. Otherwise, some more commerce would be welcome.

In the southeast, both Loki and Magellan have faded into the underbrush.

[DaveV]

Turn 105. I now have trade routes with Ellimist. I hope that doesn't mean that GreyWolf traded maps with him.

In the east, my explorer finds pretty solid Clan borders. And Loki pops up again from under his bridge .




I declared war on Yell0w to prevent Loki shenanigans. I hope GreyWolf and Bob don't take the wrong message from that.

I built my island city:




It looks as though Bob just researched Sailing. Demo screen now shows me at -18 on foreign trade, rival best at +21, rival worst at -3. I'll Have Another is getting a +3 route from GreyWolf, so he must be the one at -3. All my other routes are now internal with I'll Have Another.

Sheelba Spam is well underway:

[Aurorarcher]

Hmm, this might be a stupid question but how can you have TRs with Sheelba? I don't see any road/river/sea connection between your and her empire in your pictures or am I missing something?

[DaveV]

I was a little confused about this too, so I reloaded the turn to see when the trade arrows popped up. It was when I completed the road between Secretariat and the river to its SE. That river empties into the antarctic sea; although I haven't defogged Ellimist's coastline, he must have vision on the river mouth. This means that open borders (which I will never give him) would give trade routes for him but not for me.

[DaveV]

Turn 106. The log shows Yell0w building the FoL hero:



... and GreyWolf getting one of the annoying but probably inconsequential events.

Here's Loki lurking around my borders.




I had to cover my workers and settler (at the top of the screen, just left of the deer bubble) to prevent puppet sniping. The settler is headed to the sugar/cows site.