[SPOILER] Dark Savant's thread: Competition for limited resources remains a constant

[Dark Savant]

Turn 89 (650 BC)

Our wandering scout sees another one of superdeath's screening units.



Boy, are there a lot of them.

Our eastern scouting work boat finds another larger land mass, I wonder if anyone is home?



Our western would-have-scouting-but-needs-to-work-food work boat is about to launch my one-work-boat invasion of Rusten.  (Okay, so now I've done one warrior, one chariot, and one work boat.  )



You can also see a lone worker scrambling to get roads to the area, along with a skirmisher and settler.  (The next worker I'm about to finish is going to come here to help out.)

Demographics still aren't great; I've been doing quite a bit of whipping lately.  I never like to let the whip clock run down to zero anything remotely early, and we'll need markets and Calendar plantations and forges to push the cap higher.

Here are our units (it's going to soon be two workers, a settler, a skirmisher, and an axe by next turn) converging on superdeath's advance warrior.



Not going to declare war on him, I'll just let his warrior bounce out.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 90 (625 BC)

I find this when I log in:



I didn't make such an offer at first because superdeath was too far away to matter, then it slipped my mind, but then again superdeath is rather enthusiastic about these deals.

I accepted, of course, though this border is going to start to mature in a dozen turns or so.  It's also conciliatory of him to move his warrior so far away from where he's clearly seeing I'm going to plant a city.  Hmm.

superdeath also planted a new city last turn, and I do know where that is now:



Its borders are just barely visible to the north of our scout ... who can personally see no fewer than four random scouting units (one archer and three warriors).

I haven't decided yet where to place the next city on this frontier, but it'll be a while before I can have the settler and enough support for it ready anyway.

I also declared war on Rusten, sending him a note that I'm taking the first half the timer.

This is what the invading work boat found:



Size 6   and just produced a Jewish missionary, apparently.  That funny building in there is, I think, the new Indian granary UB, which is why it looks like a mausoleum.  

I can't propose a peace treaty, but I can propose a cease-fire, which I'll do next turn.  This will still break up the peace bonus for trade, though I don't want to sign Open Borders anyway, even if either of us had the technology for it.  I don't think we'll need to declare another war any time soon.

And even though that's just one archer, it will take like 10 turns to get so much as a galley with two axes over there, never mind anything that can actually crack what Rusten is likely to have by then.  (Though Rusten has seen that any currently existing coastal city of ours is rather far away,. even though our borders are just about to contact.)

Also, the eastern scouting work boat has discovered the borders of another player:



That looks like Adler/not-AT, playing Julius Caesar of Sumeria.  Lots of shades of blue and purple going on here.  

If he's able to sign Open Borders I'm tempted to immediately offer it, on the basis of him being neither Rusten nor superdeath. 

[Dark Savant]

Currency isn't that far away, so I need to think about what to research next.

That will almost certainly be either Calendar (+3 happy, plus a shot at the Mausoleum) or Metal Casting (enhanced Mali UB including +1 happy, and triremes).  Calendar was partly why I researched Mathematics instead of going the RB-RtR-multiplayer standard route of getting Alphabet first, too.

Another technology that we may want sooner rather than later is actually Compass.  We have half-price Harbors, which in this version of RtR are more important because they provide +2 XP to naval units.  That means 3-move galleys and triremes, but we'll need Iron Working as a prerequisite.  So Compass is too far away to consider right away.

We probably want to know soon, because I'll probably run max science while building some half-price markets in cities that need the +1 happy.

[Dark Savant]

I'm working late at work, so it'll be a while before I can get to the turn, but work has now hit this:



... so I have time to comment a little, on-topic.  (Sorry, still not enough time to talk about random off-topic things as I want to.)

I've now played enough that I'm wondering about my current reputation.  And this involves PB43 spoilers, so no current player there (like JR4) should open this spoiler:

There's a lot of discussion in PB43 -- in multiple places outside of JR4's thread -- about how JR4 is overly cautious militarily.

Thing is, I know perfectly well he thinks I'm overly cautious.  Here are some of his thoughts in PB39 that I read post-game:

• "That sure is a huge ancient army of axes/spears/chariots Dark Savant is amassing.  Why isn't he doing anything with it?"
  
• "That even huger ancient army is launching a massive invasion!"
  
• "That sure is a huge Renaissance army of rifles/cavalry Dark Savant is amassing.  Why isn't he doing anything with it?"
  
• "That even huger Renaissance army is launching a massive invasion!"
  

 

Okay, so that first time happened because my should-have-been-big-enough earlier ancient army ran into Ancient Warfare RNG and failed.

This doesn't really tell me what the other players think, but I have reason to believe it's something along those lines.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 91 (600 BC)

I move our scouting work boat, make contact with AT/not-Adler, push all EP over to him, and check out what he has on the table.



He doesn't have Alphabet or Currency either, and that's not actually that many resources for that matter.

I pull the scouting work boat back so AT doesn't see it.



It might not do a whole lot of good.  AT is a replacement player known to be significantly spoiled.  I don't know how much, or if he even remembers I'd be his western neighbor by water.  Might as well as long as there's a place I can scout without declaring war.

That island remaining between us would be good to try to claim quickly.  I was hesitant to whip out settlers and push whip anger high before, but Real Soon Now is probably the right time for that pain.  I won't try to claim both food first-ring, because that's both less defensible and more likely to cause conflict.

Over to the west, I plant a city site on the west coast (at last!), move the work boat to the seafood there out of Rusten's territory, and offer him a cease fire.



He built a random road over there for ... reasons I can't see.

superdeath's advance warrior is poking around where I'll be planting a city next turn.



If he tries to advance it, it'll be trapped behind our borders.

I re-arrange micro to whip out a couple more settlers quickly.  That whip anger is going to hurt, need more happy to counter that while I wait out the clock.

Current overview:




I was hoping to get Currency in by turn 94, but I can't quite squeeze it out in 3 turns without serious sacrifice, so we'll have it on turn 95.

[JR4]

AT is not overly aggressive as far as I know and he`s probably a better neighbour than the two others. That island out east next to AT looks really nice and I hope that he`s got other priorities than settling that quickly.

You do like building MoM. If you can`t get The Great Lighthouse - why not build MoM instead? Extra long Golden Ages are pretty much a guarantee to keep up in tech in the middle game.

[Dark Savant]

AT is not overly aggressive as far as I know and he`s probably a better neighbour than the two others. That island out east next to AT looks really nice and I hope that he`s got other priorities than settling that quickly.

You do like building MoM. If you can`t get The Great Lighthouse - why not build MoM instead? Extra long Golden Ages are pretty much a guarantee to keep up in tech in the middle game.

Yeah, if it wasn't already obvious, I think even the seriously nerfed Great Lighthouse and Mausoleum are still underpriced.

I'm not positive I can beat AT to that island, but it'd bite if we were.  Not having two island cities for ICTRs is going to be bad for the economy.  (In fact, my best guess is that Rusten's city is on a small island, and there are two islands, just as there are to our east.)

[Dark Savant]

Turn 92 (575 BC)

Rusten accepted our cease-fire and also proposed a non-aggression pact.



I couldn't have done that before getting the work boat through, but sure.  I'm sure we'll both be too busy scrambling to grab land to seriously consider war across these vast distances anytime soon.  So these non-aggression pacts aren't anything more than a token gesture of goodwill, but then again, that costs essentially nothing.  Though I'm unwilling to make a similar deal with AT right away, because that suggests we're getting close.  (I'd accept right away if he offered though.)

superdeath looks like he's going to stake a claim in our direction Real Soon Now, as there's a worker preparing a road:



Fair enough.  I don't think I can beat the settler he looks like he's about to send soon, but in most places where he might plant (like where that archer fortified on that hill is), I have a counter-plant location that's also on a hill (probably the one immediately north of the corn in the screenshot), and we'd finally have touching borders.

I'm not sure how we're going to make contact with anyone beyond our three existing contacts.  We'll probably just have to suck it up and sign Open Borders with one and send through a work boat.  AT, if I can at all help it, though he's doing well in expansion as well.

There's still an open water route for superdeath and Rusten to contact, which hasn't yet happened.  It's not worth blocking that imminently by settling the coast, because that land is awful.

Currency due in 3.  There's still no sign any of our contacts have Alphabet or Currency.  Rusten still has an absurd food lead; I'm not sure what we can realistically do about that soon, other than politely decline any Open Border requests.  (But yes, that might be the best way to make contact with whomever is on the other side.)

[JR4]

Assuming that Superdeath does settle on the plains hill where his Archer is, how do you feel about settling the desert hill N of Accra instead? That would secure an extra fish plus three extra food from a Lighthouse and could perhaps lead to the Stone peninsula being "contested" instead of "clearly within Superdeath`s sphere of influence". That would come with a cost, though as a city S of Superdeath`s planned city would have to be moved off a hill.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 93 (550 BC) - Part 1

The scouting work boat to the east finds this:



Automated Teller doesn't show any new borders at the edge of the fog, so it's going to press onward.  And of course I'm going to need more work boats.  

State of the landgrab on the main landmass:



Oh, and look what Rusten showed up with.



Whales are his third happy resource (no one else we know of has more than two), on top of him having a religion and 40-hammer temples.  

No one we know of has Alphabet or Currency yet, still.

Current empire overview:




Windhoek just 2-pop-whipped a settler for the island to the east.  Dar es Salaam will 3-pop-whip a settler next turn to grab something in superdeath's direction.