Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[Gaspar]

The above was basically the entire turn.

Beyond that, we popped Lewwyn's warrior and got a closer look at what's going on in his city:



2 Axes and a warrior in a city on a hill. Not great. We're going to press on, though if he offers peace again next turn we might take it. Time will tell. He whipped that axe last turn, so at least we've made him think.

Relevant portion of turn log that came after the last picture:



So now two of our Bows have a promotion in hand.

And the demos, depressing as ever...

[Gaspar]

Most fun part of this game so far - translating the opponents cities.

Mackoti, as noted, has been naming his cities in Romanian after their purpose. His city settled this turn is Port of Ivory.

no7 has been using anagrams of techs for their cities:

Blameless Yin (Assembly Line)
Cruel Guitar (Agriculture)
Dominate It (Meditation)
Epic Smoots (Composites)
Failed Sum (Feudalism)
and just settled this turn - Great Inferior ([strike]NobleHelium and Gaspar[/strike] Refrigeration)

Lewwyn has been mailing his naming scheme in, some nonsense about Not (pronoun.) Whatever. Douche. Interestingly, he did not offer peace this turn. Perhaps he's mad, bro, about the warrior snipe. He did move his Axe out of the city, as I predicted. If he leaves it there, we'll probably kill it regardless.



Turn report to come later, when we actually play the turn.

[Ichabod]

Lewwyn has been mailing his naming scheme in, some nonsense about Not (pronoun.) Whatever. Douche.

You and Lewwyn should play every game together. This is very funny!

[scooter]

Lewwyn has been mailing his naming scheme in, some nonsense about Not (pronoun.) Whatever. Douche.

QOTM!

[Gaspar]

Clearly, insulting my opponents = lurker comments + thread views. I'll keep this in mind. Sadly there's no diplo for me to mock up in this game. On the plus side, there's no diplo for me to mock up in this game!

There really wasn't much to discuss this turn - we're in hunker down and get the econ up before expanding further phase. Gold was hooked this turn raising the happy caps, which is always good. We're ~9t out from currency I'd wager, though I might be underselling slightly.



I sort of struggle for what else to show you since I already discussed the machinations in the north with "Emperor Somehow Less Clever at City Naming than Mackoti." He did adopt Judaism and OR this turn, presumably Judaism to pop borders at his holy city though that means either he got a quick spread or he's paying higher upkeep to get a faster building build queue in one city, which is doubtful that its worth it.

While I'm thinking of it - interestingly no7 put Colossus/Mids in the same city - which means its coastal and hence boatable. If I didn't think the only thing we'd be doing is helping mackoti, I'd say there's a ton of value in planting the canal city in the north, loading up some galleys and trying to raze it - that action alone would bring huge value in evening the game out.



Here, have an overview shot of the empire, don't think I've pasted in one of those in a couple turns:




And the usual demographics shot that nobody including us really looks at:

[Ceiliazul]

And the usual demographics shot that nobody including us really looks at:

Hey, your demos seem to be getting better while you're not looking! ...except gnp. that one is increasingly skewed by wonder culture too, it's not as bad as it looks. Solid expansin is the order of the day.

Pissing off lewwyn would be a bonus for us lurkers, though.

[NobleHelium]

You okay Gaspar?

[Gaspar]

You okay Gaspar?

Normal service resumed, at least.

I played the turn in a rush so I didn't take any pictures. It sadly appears this gap in demo screenshots will grind the robust Hive C&D operation to a screeching halt... which it has been at ever since Serdoa spoiled himself.

[NobleHelium]

Here's my new contribution to the thread!



What's interesting about this picture you ask? Why the links in Chinese on the bottom. They say "ordering train tickets," "ordering train tickets online" and "airplane ticket schedules." I'm assuming this is from Google seeing "Chairmen" in my emails every day.

[Gaspar]

Okay, let's see if I can't resume normal service a bit. We played T57 tonight. Last turn we moved onto Lewwyn's silver but offered peace because he had 3 axes and a warrior in the city. Didn't really gain anything other than returning the favor - he made us sweat, we made him sweat. Or alternately, tit for tat. Anyway, he accepted peace this turn, so we have peace until EOT66. We also have peace with N7 until EOT66, since we accepted peace with them at the beginning of our previous turn. With several counts of peace in hand, we offered OB to mackoti. As 1st in turn order, we should benefit most from any OB deals so as much as this was an attempt to cultivate a friend and improve trade routes, hopefully it also takes a TR away from no7. We'll see if he accepts, but I don't see why the GLH holder would skip OB with anyone, especially offered for free. Later on, if we feel he is benefiting disproportionately from them, we can always cancel. Here's the event log showing those actions, plus a forest growth and the world's most expensive monument build:



The exploration of the Argo continued, and you can see the location of the islands that are essentially to be contested between us and Lewwyn:



For a more illustrative picture, let me try this:



Not precisely to scale, but you get the idea. Each player essentially has 2 competitors for islands. We can snipe from Lewwyn or no7 but not mackoti (well, without ridiculously overreaching.) The external islands appear essentially the same. I'd gander that there are modest differences, but probably nothing too extravagant. The thing is, ultimately there is precisely enough of everything to go around. If we all claim an island group and each take a quarter of the tundra/jungle hubs we'll all get a copy of every resource the map has to offer and it will be an extremely dull game. Of course, it won't turn out precisely that way. We can already see that bearing out in game: We have settled most aggressively toward the islands - we have claimed two offshore sites. Lewwyn has settled most aggressively towards the tundra, he's the only one with a city there as best we can tell. no7 has settled most aggressively towards the jungle, they already have a city at the edge of their floodplains. I'd guess Lewwyn's settled that way as well, with the most cities so far and knowing his habits. Anyway, I think ultimately like every 4-player map, there's too much land here and there's really no reason for conflict before the endgame. Of course, since we have a pair of hotheads like myself and Lewwyn, that won't be the case.

The other thing to note - much like PBEM26, the best land is not the homeland. The best production is probably there - its hilly and drier, quite forest-filled. But the commerce generating land is further-flung. Lots of resources in the tundra, tons of riverside grassland and calendar resources in the jungle hub (though it will take too long to settle and then cut the jungle for it to be viable to cottage heavily) and stuff like gold and the strategic wonder resources off on the islands, which are innately more profitable because of the increased TR income. What does this mean? Well, the SE is king even more than normal because the areas closest to home are best used as production cities, so cottage spam can't begin in earnest until you spread out. It also means slower starts (which we have certainly seen) and less conflict over land.

My opinion? It's a really interesting map and well-done but it needed to be smaller by a significant amount to generate the sort of conflict I'd imagine Commodore was hoping for. I think this one will shape up to be a snoozefest other than the likely back and forth between us and Lewwyn that only happens because Lewwyn, as you all know, is a douche.

In logistics news, the border pop at Labyrinth allowing us to start camping the furs on EOT59. We'll be whipping a Settler at the capital in 2T which will settle the horribad Ivory/Cows site on T61. We should get to turn research on next turn, which will result in Currency coming on ~T64. That in theory should fix-ish the economy well enough to allow settling our first tundra site, the first floodplains site and perhaps a second city on Gold Island. Might settle Marble before Gold Island Pt. II depending on how many nice Marble wonders are available. The Hive and The Colony both have 3 forests available at the moment - that's 120 hammers right there with the appropriate resource. That's half way to a Great Library build or 40% of the way to a MoM build right there. Just sayin'.

Anyway, here's demos - ever so slightly better thanks to working a scientist specialist at Colony while we wait for more luxes to get hooked.