Japper leads the Imperium of Man to death or glory

[Mikeforall]

Still disagree on taking Kumasi btw, it's tiles are shit and it's Suzerain is awesome.

'To secure' and 'to conquer' are not the same thing, not in my book at least. With securing that city state, I mostly mean making sure you become its suzurain and stay it. It will give us a field-of-view in the tundra, thus we will see potential other players comming early, as wel as benefit from the CS bonus.

Though eventually, conquering will be the to-go strategy. Not before the renaissance though.

[Japper007]

Turn 12: The Front Line is clear...



Warrior scouts East and reveals a nice defensible spot that perfectly chokes of the peninsula I say we hit that as a second expand, as it makes the Crater lake spot a "safe" backline



Kumasi's quest is easy, all the more reason to Suz it instead of wiping it out. We just have to build a district, and Im planning on going Campus anyway...

[Japper007]

Turn 13: Look who came out to play



The barb spear came out of his encampment, I hit it with the slinger. With any luck we'll have the Archery Eureka and a promotion level in hand within a few turns.

Our warrior continues South onto the other snaky continent, I'm hoping he finds another continent there for the Foreign Trade Inspiration, or at least another player for the Writing Eureka (it's also just generally good to know where the others are).

[Japper007]

Turn 14: Well that was easier than I expected....




So... CS Warrior cleared the encampment, which caused the barb spear to nearly commit suicide attacking it. Thereby allowing the Slinger to get the easy kill and net us the Archery Eureka. Losing the 50 Gold from the camp sucks, but this is about as good as things could turn out really.

[Japper007]

Turn 15 taking stock:



Start the turn off by discovering Pottery



*Breathes deeply* (non-PG rant below...)

Tile picker changed it's mind and expanded to the shit whales tile!  It told me up to the last fucking turn it would grab the (far better at 3/1) sheep tile! Honestly Firaxis how are we supposed to experience all that "deep strategy" that Ed Beech keeps talking about if your damn interface keeps fucking lying to us   

*sigh* Anyway... as it's turn 15, let's look how everyone did on their openings shall we?




As you can see we are still in the lead in terms of science and culture, no surprises there, our culture is just Rome+Cultural CS at work. The science lead is nice though...

Don't let our score of 12 fool you, we are actually equal with Krill at 14 points (so we are right at the top off the board  ), the breakdown below it even adds up to 14   A lying interface is one thing... but an interface that can't add up? Come on Firaxis! even Excell can do that  , get your shit together . 

No idea what Jester is doing exactly btw, 10 points is just sad

[Japper007]

Our warrior continues exploring to find other players, but so far no luck, we do see a nice area for a city though:



It's a bit of a stretch in terms of distance, but a guy can dream can't he?

I sent the Slinger south, he'll upgrade when we hit Archery (6 turns) and then check out that CS/player to our south.

[Mikeforall]

Seems the frontline-grab isn't much of a frontline, with all that open land in front of it


It appears China has some tech problems (0 technology points). Wonder if this will be one of those games in which China will not pull off a string of wonder-rushes. 
Lacking in Empire is something I would understand, after all culture in early game is highly dependent on your start and early planning. But science...
Then again, it could be he went walking with his settler instead of SIP, but if he did so the benefit of it doesn't show itself in the score (as of yet). Or switching techs midway...
I mean, by now even sailing would have been discovered at the default science rate. It is only 50  after all.

[Japper007]

Turn 18:

Start the turn off by finishing Foreign Trade:


We actually just hard-cultured right through it  , and that only because it was either finishing this or Craftsmanship (which we'll boost anyway in about three turns), we're already sinking culture into Early Empire right now! Rome+Cultural CS is insane  For this reason I queued up a Settler as our next build in the capital, we need to get the boost to EE fast to avoid wasting culture.



Our warrior encounters the Vilnius cultural City State, we aren't first to meet sadly, which means someone is near there...

[Japper007]

Looked into Vilnius a little, and it's pretty much a dud. It's Suzerain ability is giving a random (ugh) Inspiration once you enter a new era. By the time you have enough envoys to get it to suzerain, there's only like 4 left! I also don't plan on going heavily (or even at all really) into Theatre squares, so any tier above 1 envoy is worthless that way as well.

It might be a good grab if our Legions are out and our opponent over there hasn't already bopped it yet, just something to consider. It would also be pretty easy to boat, being on flat land and with easy coastal access.

[Japper007]

Turn 19:



Builder builds a farm on the Rice, which makes it a 5 food tile, next he'll move to the horses which he'll improve next turn.