Nothing like the Prodigal Sons: The Odd Couple actually play as themselves.

[Gaspar]

I'll try and do a big report sometime in the next few days.

I've stopped updating because I hate this game, not because I don't love you guys.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

That won't stop me from trying to figure stuff out.

Are you running two scientists in the capital? I've counted up worked tiles in the middle column of cities and come up a couple short. If so, when is the GP due, roughly what odds, and ballpark your plan for use, based off those odds?

Also, settling on the sheep PH next in the newly created vacuum?

[Gaspar]

Also, settling on the sheep PH next in the newly created vacuum?

I'll report tomorrow with answers to your other questions and more. But I wanted you to know that we refer to that site as "Boldly." Unfortunately, the current thought is that we can't settle Boldly, because we'd need more culture in it than we can get to fight the existing holy city culture.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

What holy city?



Ok, latent culture from the old, dead city. Fair enough. At least that heathen eyesore has been removed.

[Gaspar]

Quick update...

So basically every turn since we razed Bery and then backed off in the aftermath, we've gotten peace offers from Gavagai, which we declined. On t111, we got a peace treaty offer accompanied by this:




So yeah... we were effed. He had built a pair of combat roads to get himself there and we had no reply. We took peace. Since then, there's been some softening of relations with a resource trade offering from Gavagai that we assumed was meant to indicate a cooling of hostilities.

Anyway, thought everyone would be interested in that. We're doing a little settling and such now, though we still need to continue to build units so we're not in the same situation but worse in 10t. I'll try and get a large overview up shortly.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Did Mike build a city in the near southwest? Looks like second ring expansion already in the mini map. Or else a line of units, which he can't have built because all he has is hoes, shovels, rakes, and combines.

If that is the case, where are the settlers going? Nice to see Gavagai can start building wealth next turn. How many turns until we can finish currency?

[Gaspar]

Did Mike build a city in the near southwest? Looks like second ring expansion already in the mini map. Or else a line of units, which he can't have built because all he has is hoes, shovels, rakes, and combines.

If that is the case, where are the settlers going? Nice to see Gavagai can start building wealth next turn. How many turns until we can finish currency?

Alright, I'm just insanely overdue for a real report so I'm logging in just for that purpose. Let's see what I can tell you about the game...




We had some hope that Gavagai would lay off and take his focus elsewhere after the peace treaty - I'm assuming he feels like he can pick on his western neighbor, who we've deduced to be Bantams. However, he's been as irritating a prick as ever since the treaty. We showed him we could have pillaged his cottages and his response to that was to Ellimist right up to our border to chop a forest. When we went and pillaged a cottage and moved a worker to that forest, his response was to resettle Beryllium 1S of its prior location and send a 2nd worker to the forest so he could chop it in one turn. He has a million spears in all of his border towns at this point and really, there's nothing for us to do other than bend over and wait for the reaming. I still maintain we're in much better shape than if we hadn't razed the original Beryllium, but make no mistake, we're still quite fucked. Fuck Gavagai.




Here's the west. Mike is in some ways a more irritating neighbor than Gavagai. He's been scouting the hell out of us since we opened borders. The orange exclamation points are locations of his current scouting units. He razed the barb city as discussed earlier and planted the city indicated by the sign in the SW there. I'd like him to die in a hot, fiery fire. He's been the benefactor of extremely good circumstance in this game, with an inept neighbor to the north and us tied down w/Gavagai to the east. But what I can see of his play he's really not very good - his being in 2nd here I would roughly equate to Nakor's position in PB2. Sorry if that sounds catty, but fuck him. This turn we managed to get TR with Seven, so I expect we're shortly closing borders with Mike, particularly if wetbandit accepts our offer of OB. Not sure how we managed to get put in between the two biggest d-bags in the game, but we did.

We met wetbandit in the NE last turn, so wetbandit and Seven are our closest eastern neighbors. Seven's been a good friend to this point:




Yeah, swell fellow, that.

We're getting ready to settle some islands in the south, which is where Serdoa is hiding all the happy resources:




Here's a long overdue tour around the cities:

Whiskey Ring, the capital




You can see we get our next GP in 5t. If its an engy, we're probably going to rush a culture-y wonder in a new city on the Aztec border, though there will certainly be some thought given to rushing Machinery - X-bows would have a lot of value with the bajillion melee units Gavagai currently has lined up on our border. If its a scientist or a prophet, we probably hold it for a GA, though I suppose we could consider bulbing Philo or something. Anyway, the city is easily our strongest even with the fact that Plame Affair and healthcare.gov are holding a lot of its good tiles.

Plame Affair, poor abused holy city




The inherent problems with the city are 1. There is zero natural production and 2. Its location on the Gavagai border has meant an near constant focus on military stuff. Nonetheless, we've gotten a lot of mileage out of it and I expect we'll continue to do so.

Iran Contra, gateway to the east




Iran Contra has been very productive, even with the fact that at time we were stacking as much as 4 whip unhappy, its managed to get itself to a normal level of unhappiness. Those 2 mines mean that it can generally produce things naturally now, not just by being whipped silly.

healthcare.gov, pretty good city




This city has produced a lot of military as well as the scouting workboat that met Seven and wetbandit and the galley we're using to settle our first island. All of that combined with Colossus has meant that a city we weren't too thrilled about has probably been the most productive non-capital berg.

Seward's Folly, nearly lost you




Seward's is the first of our former Barbarian cities, and the city we would have lost to Gavagai had he not given us peace presumably so he could march those HAs over to Bantams and take him out. Its been relatively productive quickly (EXP/IND is really great for getting cities off the ground fast) and if we can keep it, still has two more resources locked in the jungle.

Teapot Dome, want




Teapot Dome was the object of our desires as soon as we espied the location and it has lived up to the hype. Once we get silver and gems hooked and the jungle resources unlocked, it will be even better as both it and Seward's will be able to grow onto lots of lazy Colossus coast.

Bay of Pigs, one-off




Bay of Pigs is the other barb city, also one tile off of where we wanted it. Its got food coming out of its ears but is starved for decent non-food tiles to work. This of course means we're whipping it silly.

Watergate, edge of the world




This city was just planted a couple turn ago, and represents the SE end of our continent. Seven could come and take this city from us anytime he wants, but fortunately, he seems happy to be our benefactor. Thanks, Seven!

Anyway, I'll split some general thoughts off into a second post with demos.

[Gaspar]

Demos first:



You can see there that we lost research visibility on Gavagai this turn. He's on MC at last vision. We can't keep up with 70-billion Sacrificial Altars, so it goes. Crop Yield is probably the best indicator this game. That insane number is Seven, who is on an insane 17 cities right now. As best as I can tell, the other 3 ahead of us are Mike, Gavagai and Goreripper. We're tremendously underexpanded, so I have no fucking idea how one could possibly be on 78 CY at this stage of the game. Anyway, as best I can tell the game is like this:

Band A - Seven

Band B - Mikehendi

Band C - Gavagai, Goreripper

Band D - Us

Band E - Hashoosh, ad hoc, 2metra, wetbandit

Band F - Kuro, Bantams

Last turn I put the odds for victory as such: Seven 95%, Mikehendi 3%, Gavagai 1%, Field 1%

Anyway, I don't really care about all that. As far as us, we're probably teching Aesthetics after Currency with hopes of sniping a wonder then IW and Calendar and probably head towards Engineering after that, though we haven't really discussed anything past Aesthetics at any significant degree. We would like to bang out a round of Cats and then swap to Representation, but who knows if Gavagai will let us do that. He's obviously heading towards Maces right now, so Machinery would be really appealing, though Maces can be dealt with by a combination of Cats and Horse Archers.

Last but not least, we're probably going to plant 4-5 cities over the next 20t and those will probably be it for us for the game. Does anyone have any favorite scandals they'd like those cities named after? There's a list of possibilities upthread, though feel free to suggest your own.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Whichever city sucks worst, name Lewinski.

Thanks for the report. How about a shot of the religion screen? Would it kill the game for us to get a few free spreads for our shrine? I notice the other religions have been adopted, even 7's. Excepting that Confucian abomination.

[novice]

Thanks for the update, Gaspar.