[PB 64] Ginger plays as Charlemagne, famed man of letters

[Mjmd]

Wait you got an event and didn't immediately tell us?

HOW DARE YOU!

[Ginger()]

   
New city is Embassytown, planted to grab cow and rice. Neither food source is really strong enough to grow a city on it's own, so I decided to be deflationary with city count and grab both resources in one. The book "Embassytown" is basically a sci-fi take on Julian Jaynes's linguistic theory, and follows human interactions and negotiations with an alien planet that speaks a language in which they cannot lie. I really want to read more of this author's work, as China Mieville has this incredibly precise attention to word choice and the detail and puts a great deal of effort into making all descriptions as accurate as possible. 
As for civ, the city is an incredibly well protected frontline against SD and Gav. Speaking of...

   
Well shit on a biscuit. That's something that demands a response. Of course, the only reasonable course of action is to declare war!
 



And offer peace. 
I'd rather sink hammers into granaries and lighthouses than into the defense I would need if I wanted to Respect The Power Graph™ 
I'm working 6 coast tiles right now for commerce, only 3 are food resources—the stupid things early game traits let you do... point is I need lighthouses or more workers for cottaging. 
If Gav gives me peace and lets me sim I'll be much happier. And why wouldn't he? If he wants to make me sweat now, I can pay it back later  
However, I kind of dropped the ball. If I wanted to war-peace, I really should've claimed second half of the timer. I've learned how devastating being unable to adjust/resolve production can be in the ancient era at low unit counts.

[Ginger()]

 Gavagai you dumb motherfucker
   

   
Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
That's like 1 and half settlers we're looking at, and 80 or so beakers into Archery so you can defend against chariots. 
He probably burns Embassytown but I think I can hold at Revelation Space unless he's got a Woody2 from barbs or some other bs I don't know about. I can expect chariots to follow up as he immediately hooked up his horse after he settled for it, but again, I'm really the wrong civ for this, if he really think Pro/Imp is an efficient lunch, I almost feel insulted. And if he thinks I need reining in for my farmer's gambit, he needs to work on his fucking scouting   .

Timer bullshit will indeed fuck me like it did in PB63, the axe doesn't complete in time if I whip (I don't understand how people can play non-sequential ancient wars and think to themselves "yup, this is okay" ). Will probably use stop growth to ensure an autoraze.

[Ginger()]

   
   

Okay this is a big fuck up that I believe merits reload. I clicked the worker onto the wrong forest tile. Instead of the one marked r for road. This road is pretty much critical to all my defense efforts. It's extremely significant and it is entirely within my territory, no combat occurred. You can also see the movement of my only relevant scout, the warrior, he'll move to the same location, I'm not gameing the fog of war knowledge here.
Reload time would be to my first log in this turn. (I logged out in disbelief when I realized the consequences and then logged back in to try to find a solution outside of a reload but I have nothing)

[Ginger()]

Well I briefly had 7 cities before anyone had 5. The new city name was originally going to be Moby Dick, both for thematic reasons of how I'm feeling this game, and for the fact that it will eventually have whales. However, I never liked that book, so instead it becomes Count of Monte Cristo.
It's also going to serve as a reminder that I can't tilt. I need to play with sustainability in mind and still grow my cities if I want to inflict punishment. And wait. Eventually Superdeath will run out of peaceful room to expand and hit Guild tech, and then Gav will have two hungry neighbors, not just one.

Gav actually kept the city. This is such a fundamentally dumb war that lacks some basic understanding of FFA theory. He's literally throwing his game so fucking hard it boggles my goddamn mind. SCOUT YOUR LAND. SCOUTING PREVENTS STRATEGIC ERRORS. I HAVE OTHER DIRECTIONS, YOU HAVE OTHER DIRECTIONS, WE'RE NOT IN DUEL
All those units you built could've been used to secure your expansion.
He doesn't profit at all, just inflicts a punishment that without a reparation will have me hounding him the rest of the game.

I've placed one Shock Axe on a hill so that he sees they have the promotion. Maybe it will make something click upstairs if anyone's home there.

Oh and I'm still top demos. :middlefinger:

And I Oracled Machinery. Unfortunately events giveth and taketh, so all of Gav's melee is promoted to Cover, which neutralizes any benefit I would've gotten from Pro Crossbows. This early war might grant me a Great General to settle in the capital for Guerilla 2 Xbows.

[Mjmd]

I thought you stopped growth on that one so it would be auto razed?

[Ginger()]

I thought you stopped growth on that one so it would be auto razed?

In the end it was kind of a tossup in my mind between whipping it for a unit and letting him capture. I figured the result was the same and why not get a unit on the miniscule offchance that he side steps it (if he doesn't want to raze, he might not capture if he never sees it go above one pop, if he wants to raze, makes no difference).
 
I didn't think he would deepthroat sunk-cost fallacy so hard as to pay maintenance for and try to defend it, but here we are. It's clear that I need to rethink the logic I'm applying to his thinking because it's following other rules than the ones I know.

I've noticed in his games that I've read that all of his games followed a pattern where he made an early land grab against an incompetent early defender and used that to snowball, so maybe that's just hardcoded into his programming as the reward pathway? As opposed to settling the entire map that was made available to him, like pearls before swine. I'd be very interested to follow Amicalola's slow realization that his entire south is wide, wide open for Mao to snap up. Maybe he sees it yet?

[Ginger()]

What do the lurkers desire? More unfiltered salt or an actual detailed turn report?

[Mjmd]

What do the lurkers desire? More unfiltered salt or an actual detailed turn report?

Little bit of A and a little bit of B? Something /shrug.

I did leave some comments in lurker thread for post game fyi.

[Magic Science]

What do the lurkers desire? More unfiltered salt or an actual detailed turn report?

How about an actual unfiltered turn report?