Our scout is confronted by a lion on the lush lands north of Krill's capital. Scouty is currently on 96HP after healing from the wolf and panther attacks earlier, so moving NE so the lion has to attack over the river would give us 85% chance of surviving. If he had 97HP it would be 95%. Oh cruel world. In the end I decided to stay put because healing the last 4HP moves the odds to 90%. Strange world.
Demos. Someone is revolting and Donovan 1-whipped. Gavagai (EXP/PRO) is second to a second city, only 3 turns after us, and probably the one that's ahead of us on crop yield. We'll get graphs on Krill in 3 turns.
Scouty survives handily. I'll leave him to heal for a couple of turns, then he'll head eastwards. Possibly one tile at a time, given that barb warriors should be appearing now.
Demos. We had 29 GNP, 5 MFG and 23 CY before I whipped both cities (settler and scouting work boat), now we've dropped back into the pack a little. We're joint last on soldier points due to delaying The Wheel - I think everyone has Bronze Working now.
Exciting scouting turn! No food this way though so we'll double back hoping for some to the west. Also Donovan or Gavagai grabbed Buddhism (I hope it was Gav because Donovan only settled his second city this turn and that would be some major ). Also it looks like we got a forest growth that I didn't notice at some point (where the settler is standing).
Demos. We're last on MFG, Soldiers and Pop, but who cares about those things. Krill's Graphs are in. He started with Fishing & Mining and it looks like he went Hunting-Bronze Working and is working on Animal Husbandry (or something else expensive like Iron Working or Sailing) at the moment. He's behind us on espionage but I think it's because he revolted to Slavery rather than that he met someone else. Also is he having barb trouble?
It can't be normal to build so many work boats so early. I'm glad we went for EXP over IMP... The scouting workboat finds nothing interesting. Neither does our scouting scout. I'll probably just move him one tile next turn, since things are getting dangerous out there.
Demos and power. Things will look better next turn when both cities grow, then better again on t38 when we get our third down. Here's hoping nobody else is trying to improve their position while we do.
We're Hindu! The game differs from the sandbox in that the culture got applied to Babylon's Burning already (possibly because I deleted Hinduism from Hanibal in the sandbox and for some reason had to choose one of the other religions). It means the work boat will be a turn late to hook the fish.
Our scouting workboat didn't reveal anything this turn and we're 2 turns from our third city. Elkad (AGG/IND), OT4E (AGG/PRO) and Superdeath (FIN/IND) are all still on one city - perhaps they've got as rough terrain to traverse as we do?
My second double turn of the game and it's possible that people will miss the new city planted two minutes before the turn roll. Amazing Grace gets a Hindu spread on the inter-turn and the selected warrior is staying put because I *think* units fog-bust a 2-tile square but culture only fog-busts visible tiles. Can anyone confirm or deny?
Sigh. At least Krill is likely to expand away from us.
Sigh. I think we'll put a warrior on the grass hill 2S of copper once we have a galley ready, he can tell the settler where to land. Presumably those fogged tiles are full of corn and deer.
Demos. With the border pop in BB and new city we jump to the top of food and the holy city helps us top the GNP chart.
We thought about growing AG to size 5 to whip this settler, but slow-building it and whipping the next gets us our fifth city 2 turns earlier. The fourth (gems) city will be the same time and this way we get the commerce from the dyes tile for three more turns.
Demos are looking particularly nice, with another four food coming online next turn and a further four on t43. One advantage of all this seafood is that our commerce is pretty strong too.
Boring turn. I camera-flew around the southern island to try to figure out how many tiles it is. I'm not totally sure about the southern coast, there is a chance that it links to another stretch of land due south, but if I'm right then the island is about 34 tiles, meaning it won't have any barbarians on it, as on Monarch you need 40 tiles for barbs to appear.
Demos. The crop yield lead is faintly ridiculous, and a bit misleading because happy cap and a lack of granaries means MFG is as important at this stage. So adding them together to get foodhammers gives us 43, adding the rival best gives 42 (although this is unlikely to be the same player), rival average gives 32 and worst is 24, so I'm still pretty happy with the situation. EXP is doing good work for us, but SPI, China's start techs (which let us research BW first) and the build-workboats-without-fishing change have played a role too.
Our next city on the gems (a long trudge so turn 49) gets us a higher happy cap and the fifth city (probably t53) gets us overseas trade routes (+5 commerce on top of whatever the city provides), so hopefully that keeps the snowball rolling. Thinking about overseas trade - what sort of timing do we expect for The Great Lighthouse to fall?
It turns out that the east of Krill's land is all backlines. Scouty probably wants to head back around the north to see if he has another neighbour to the west (EP spending suggests not).
We're setting off to explore the land to the north of our capital, it looks pretty promising (the tile NW of the warrior is a canal with two floodplains tiles in the first ring). Hopefully the warrior can make it to defensive terrain before encountering barb units.
Hmmm. If there aren't any resources on the other side of these trees then wheat/sugar/dye is probably going to be our sixth city. Should we plant on the plains forest hill or the flat grassland with the extra dye?
In the end I decided to stay put because healing the last 4HP moves the odds to 90%. Strange world.
). Also it looks like we got a forest growth that I didn't notice at some point (where the settler is standing).
Krill's Graphs are in. He started with Fishing & Mining and it looks like he went Hunting-Bronze Working and is working on Animal Husbandry (or something else expensive like Iron Working or Sailing) at the moment. He's behind us on espionage but I think it's because he revolted to Slavery rather than that he met someone else. Also is he having barb trouble?
Amazing Grace gets a Hindu spread on the inter-turn and the selected warrior is staying put because I *think* units fog-bust a 2-tile square but culture only fog-busts visible tiles. Can anyone confirm or deny?
