[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[Old Harry]

Turn 40

OT4E offered a cease fire back, so we know he got the peace offer and didn't want it. He also whipped Utica in the last couple of turns, so we're a bit paranoid that he settled on copper with his third city... If a granary appears next turn we'll rest easy.


If not then I think we'll be whipping the part-built Axe out of Civ and getting it down to BG before a theoretical axe can get there. I also made what looks like a dumb move with the warrior at BG to get a bit more intel/warning of incoming units. However if OT4E declares his warrior will teleport south and if he moves into our culture and declares he'll teleport south. So either way our warrior can be back in the city ahead of his attacking. Hopefully. Next turn our settler will move to the sheep-city site, so I hope our warriors can move to cover. If necessary we can whip the warrior in BG, but I'd rather not...


Demos and power. Five more turns before we get OT4E's graphs.

[Fintourist]

Hitru was the first to notice the major global news. It seems that Donovan captured a city from Dark Savant!  Wow, that’s a major break for Dono.. or more likely neighbors of those guys.. 

It’s a bit early to reflect our macro position, but I’ll do it anyways. The big picture is that we don’t really have much space for peaceful expansion and non-peaceful expansion does not seem easy either. We have 2 vet neighbors, who are both showing signs of aggression and settled their 2nd cities towards us. And both are PRO and one of them has AGG trait to boost. 

Compared to our previous games I would hope that we are not as screwed as in PB13, where we were both squeezed and had bottom 3 starting land in addition. But most certainly we don’t have as good position as in PB18, where we were able to first grab way beyond our share peacefully and then had immediate target with Azza.

Anyways, too early to say if our start will be somewhat successful or we get into trouble, but as some of the players are certain to feast on Donovan+DS conflict and newbish plays around the globe.. Keeping us within the fighting distance will be a real challenge and we might well be playing catch-up for the whole game..

I think the map is nice and interesting so far My competitive side is wishing that everyone is equally squeezed – no indication yet that it would not be so.

EDIT: Plus I want to reroll our neighbors

[Old Harry]

Turn 41

A granary!


So with our paranoia quenched things get back to the plan - our injured warrior coves the Settler and the full health warrior covers two workers. BG isn't going to start on a worker any more though - we'll finish the warrior and then whip a settler.


We're going to get a much better idea of the neighbourhood when we settle our fourth city next turn. Aretas and BGN are still on one somehow.

William still hasn't settled his third city, four turns after 2-whipping, so its possible that he'll settle on the stone next turn. If he does then I guess we re-direct our workers to make an extra chop into the Stonehenge build and flip the city with culture! Actually I did a quick test and it looks like we don't need an extra chop. Building it without Stone will cost us 20 more base hammers though and those could be most of an axe or immortal... 'Henge doesn't get us into flipping territory until the mid 60's and probably not until much later, so we could well be more productive with all-out war. We'll do some debating once we know what's actually happening next turn.


Demos

[Fintourist]

Turn 42

We are first to 4 cities!




Pottery is also coming in this turn, next turn we will whip the worker at Alpha Centauri and he starts putting up much needed shareable cottages for our capital. Gems coming online next turn helps as well.

Demos without spoilers, because we have a nice food lead at least temporarily. 




I ended our turn, but some stuff potentially left to do this turn:

1. Name our city
   
2. Move our northern fog-busting warrior (Maybe it should go to the potential wheat-silver city?)
   
3. Maybe change our slider to 50 % (probably not). I'll try to calculate the optimal slider-sequence for the incoming turns later in the evening.
   

[Old Harry]

Our fourth city name continues something of a theme.

( let the warrior meet the lion )

Game: Colonization
Released: 1994
Played: 1995-2017 (on and off)
Personal rating: A warm fuzzy blanket of nostalgia


Colonization was the successor to Civ, arriving only three years after the granddaddy of 4X games and soaking up unknown hundreds of satisfying hours of my well-spent youth. It polished the graphics and interface and did away with the technology tree in favour of collecting liberty bells and founding fathers.

A the start you find yourself in unknown waters with only a boat, two colonists, 100 tools, 100 muskets and thousands of squares of virgin terrain to exploit. The exploration was particularly satisfying - finding tribes with skills to teach and goods to trade - and the joy of finding a lost city rumour was only tempered by the risk that you'd lose your scout without trace...

The economy was based on improving your buildings, piracy, rapidly collapsing commodity prices and a weird system of random trade embargoes that you had to get a certain founding father to let you build a custom house to get around. But really it was a game about shuffling wagon trains around while you waited for that one extra cannon to complete before you attacked someone. I'd probably frown at the whitewashed history today (slavery? No sir, only criminals and "religious converts" working in our fields, honest!) but when I was a teenager that didn't seem so important.

The game itself stands up surprisingly well even now, I sank a few tens of hours into Freecol last year and had fun until the interface (the only bit of Freecol that's different from the original) started grating and making me wish I could play Colonization again.

[Old Harry]

Turn 43

After we played last turn OT4E moved next to our borders, but then this turn he kindly double-moved to save us ruining our micro plan (well, delaying the settler intended for the marble by a turn). We're going to need to road the corn very soon so that we get stone in time for the 'Henge build, but with his warrior and a lion running around here it's going to be somewhat tricky...


Something we didn't mention about Donovan Zoi clobbering Dark Savant a couple of turns ago - DS founded Buddhism in his capital, but his score only went down enough to indicate it was city 2 that got shanked. It leaves DZ with 2 cities (unless he disguised settling one at the turn roll at some point) and DS on 1 city. Demos are less impressive due to a whip this turn, so into the spoiler they go.

[BRickAstley]

You can play Colonization again.

[Old Harry]

You can play Colonization again.

Sooooooo tempted.

Turn 44

It's a bit complicated trying to decide how to road to the stone. If we can play before him on turn 48 OT4E won't be able to pillage a road on the corn. However there's a lion out there that will have a 25% chance of killing both our warrior and worker if we're on flat ground. So the best chance we have is to road the plains tile instead. We can move the warrior 1E to check the forest S of the stone/attract an attack this turn. Otherwise the lion could menace our worker on t46.


These are my latest dotmapping thoughts. Blue are existing cities, red are locked in and pink are moveable. H is a bit of a stretch, but with the speed William is expanding could be doable. There is space for a filler between I and K at some point and moving I 1W would let us put another filler between the Ivory and Silver.


If anyone wants to do some dotmapping here's a blank.

We'll get OT4E's graphs next turn. Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 45

A BEAR!!!11!!!


If he sniffs around where we want to be settling we could be in trouble. Anyone know anything about animal behaviour? Is he going to hang around the tile NW of stone so that our worker can't road to that city? If Baloo moves back south our worker will move to build that road pdq. OT4E reduced our collective tension somewhat by moving his warrior south. We ratcheted it back up though by deciding he's moving back to cover a settler that will settle the plains hill SE of that peak and invalidate our marble city.


We got graphs for OT4E this turn and can now choose who to really invest in from here on out - we expect to eat William at some point, would tech visibility help or be wasted? Spoilered for length.

Pleasingly it doesn't look like either neighbour is planning to attack us imminently.

Those graphs let me confirm OT4E's story so far:
Techs - began with Fishing & Mining, researched Agri, BW, wheel, pottery & hunting last turn. I presume he'll go for AH next, so thinking about chariots we need to get some spears soon.
Units - built warriors on t18 and t22.
William got a couple of techs recently. On t38 he got pottery, then t44 he got a power increase of 3000 points with a tech. No tech gives that and no combination of tech and unit can. However an AGG barracks gives 3000 points and pops borders. Is that good for us? It's not a settler or worker, but it makes him harder to eat... Hang on though, I can't see it here, did he build it in the capital?


Demos

[Old Harry]

Turn 46

Baloo moved south so our intrepid worker steps into the danger zone to road. Or he would if the connection didn't hang with four people logged in at the same time. I was a little worried about the lag when I realised the map was bigger than PB18 - in that game logging in towards the end took ~5 minutes sometimes and if someone else logged in while you played it was really annoying. While I wait to get in: William whipped something in the capital this turn. We're hoping it isn't a shock axe, but you never know... If it is it'll get to the stone site around t51. It's most likely to be a settler for his copper, which then means we need to look out for axes. I think TBD has a road to the sheep tile, so if we want to get a peek at his land then the warrior should move NE. Do we want to?


OT4E's warrior is heading home. Should we follow or just stake out the marble city site? And what should the warrior in BG do? Stay put? MP for Civ? Fogbusting to the west?


Demos and power.