It's the end of the world, and Dave feels fine

[DaveV]

Waaay behind on reporting. Not much happening: killing barbs and marking time until my sage pops. Someone got a bard this turn, which means Drama, I'm sure. I almost lost my PZ on a 90% attack; now I'm being a little more careful since I'm running thin on units. My settler is on his way to the sugar tile.

[DaveV]

Behind on reporting again; it doesn't take long with this game.

Turn 73: building a road to speed up the sugar city.




Turn 74: a griffon shows up at a very inconvenient time.




The skeleton would have 96% odds of winning on defense; I stacked in an extra warrior to protect my settler from a bad roll. The warrior protecting the workers only has 67% odds on defense, so I braced myself to have a shock warrior and two workers eaten...

But the griffon backed off. Yay!




Demos are not good.

[DaveV]

Turn 76. I gritted my teeth and used the sage to bulb KotE. I feel like I used my one time $100 store credit to buy a $30 item: I have my free new possession to play with, but I could have had something much nicer. Observant lurkers could have seen this coming when I ate the turn of anarchy to revolt to City States.

This screenshot is from a replay, since I played last night in a hurry before leaving work and didn't take a screenie. So some of the details may be wrong, but the big picture is right.




My plan: build some adepts so I can summon more 2-move, +60% strength skeletons. Build planar gates and wait for Mobius Witches to appear from nowhere. Profit!

Tech path: AH, BW, Elementalism. Fireballs are going to be my answer to Cultists and boats.

I think I'll offer open borders to Aurorarcher next turn. We have a long border that's shaping up to be stable: I'll be happy with a city between White Horse and Red Horse, and Aurorarcher can have the dyes since they're clearly in his sphere. I can use a friend and trade route partner, and he looks like a good choice at the moment. We have similar scores, his GNP is much higher, but my power is higher.

Graph dump, since I'm talking about them:

The guy with the top power, by the way, has been building steadily for a long time. He doesn't have contact with me, but it's still somewhat worrying to watch.

[DaveV]

Offered OB to Aurorarcher, killed a goblin at 97%.

[DaveV]

Aurorarcher accepted open borders and offered a map trade. That trade almost certainly favors me, since he's had floating eyes since turn 1. I accepted, hoping to cement our friendship.

Time for a big stitch:




No resource bubbles, since they tend to throw off the stitch program, and are shifted several tiles south when using Alt-O. Here's a shot of Aurorarcher's land:




He has a pretty close border with Mr. Runaway. If it's the Lanun with the big power number, I'd be very concerned if I were in Aurorarcher's shoes. The first thing that struck me about his land is that he has three dyes, instead of my silk and cotton. The sugar is kind of midway between us. Dyes are a much better tile than cotton, but having different happy resources is much better than multiple copies of a single happy. It looks as though he's improved the Fur tile, so there's another happy for him. I'd be willing to trade one of my happies for a spare dye as a show of friendship.

[DaveV]

Not much happened on turn 79.




I tried to starve Bow to accelerate its mage guild and adept, but miscounted and didn't accomplish anything.

Turn 80 saw me settle my 6th city, by the stupid elephant.




I also finished my first mage guild, in White Horse. I'll insert an adept and a Planar Gate ahead of the Pact of the Nilhorn. Either failgold or the wonder would be a satisfactory result.

Edit: and hey, there are my horses, in the second ring of War, which is sitting at 4.8/5 culture. Aurorarcher's horses are in his south, by the barb city.

[DaveV]

My super skeleton almost died attacking the goblin in the south at 99.9% odds. He's at 1.1 health, which means he was reduced to .8 in the attack.




Two barb warriors are coming from the north of War. I'm sending in reinforcements; I expect the barbs to stack up on the forest NE of the city.

My worker east of White Horse is going to build a road to connect to Aurorarcher's new city. I'd planned to stick a city in roughly the same spot (2N1W, most likely), but it was very low priority, and his city is fine. It has only one tile of overlap with Red Horse, so no border tension there. He seems to be more limited in expansion routes than I am (since barbs are still pouring from my west and north, I must have some expansion space in both of those directions, as well as SW).

[DaveV]

Turn 82 started with the Bard event. I thought for a while, and decided it was probably worth it. I like this event: big reward, significant penalty.




I used the bard for a golden age; it will probably be my last great person for this game. Here are the demos on a reload, after saying "no, thanks" to the bard:



Demos with unhappy capital and golden age:



Overview at end of turn. The capital still has a decent production rate on a settler build, since that avoids feeding the unhappy guys.




The barbs moved exactly as I expected them to. I think they have a 50% chance of attacking now, so the most likely outcome is for one to be left next turn. I have plenty of firepower to kill them now.

[DaveV]

Finished my first adept; more are on the way. Next: planar gates.




Also next: more skeltons; I need some bodyguards so I can finish a trade connection to Aurorarcher. I would love to trade mana with him since he has some of the best.

[DaveV]

My super skeleton got an 89.2% shot at one of the annoying griffons who have been patrolling the land between Aurorarcher and me. I attacked, figuring my brand new adept could clean up if the skeleton failed (which he almost did).




He got enough XP for another promotion, so with March he'll heal enough to still be a good bodyguard for my worker to build a road to connect with Aurorarcher. Aurorarcher is connecting his new city to the river, which will give him a connection since he has researched Fishing (see his 4-food clam in my turn 78 report).

From the log: someone grabbed Circumnavigation. Most likely Captain Jack, for the dreaded +2 naval movement bonus .