Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[Gaspar]

Not normally one for a splash screen, but this is probably the 3rd best tech in the game (Pottery, BW.)



Not only do we get the nice free TR commerce, but it opens up everyone's favorite "OMG I NEED TECH FAST" game:



The always fun hax nature of wealth builds actually had our GNP at 126 before ending turn. This time I did *not* queue a tech, so the rest of the folks won't see anything quite so scary. Next turn we triple-whip a settler in Old Ruins to hopefully encourage Judaism to found in Cathedral. With a lack of anything especially interesting, here's a picture of the capital:



Currently donating the Wheat resource to help get Wortham Chapel going a little faster.

Here's demos:



Ichabod planted his 8th city this turn. Shocked if we don't see an HG build shortly. Commodore moved an EP back to us. That's all the news.

[pindicator]

Okay, took a look at the map in earnest. You have any plans of grabbing that corn spot in the east soon? It's probably the best site you have available. And maybe you can push back some fog towards Yuri and snipe some land that way. But I would prioritize settlements like so:

1. Sugar - for the resource
2. Corn in east - great commerce city
3. Push towards Yuri - either a defensive border city or something to grab space
4. Wines
5. Northern deer/whale

Hopefully I didn't repeat too much of what you've already written, but that's how I'd try to play it.

[NobleHelium]

Let's NOT whip Hidden Camp next turn. I forgot that the second pop lets us get another hammer in the city to finish the Work Boat next turn. So we'll finish it naturally and then whip the Granary at 3->2 instead. The Crab will be netted right after the border pop and we'll have the pop to work it this way.

We want to grab the Corn but it's really far away right now and it's annoying to grab it without settling the intermediary Wine city first.

[Gaspar]

Okay, took a look at the map in earnest. You have any plans of grabbing that corn spot in the east soon? It's probably the best site you have available. And maybe you can push back some fog towards Yuri and snipe some land that way. But I would prioritize settlements like so:

1. Sugar - for the resource
2. Corn in east - great commerce city
3. Push towards Yuri - either a defensive border city or something to grab space
4. Wines
5. Northern deer/whale

Hopefully I didn't repeat too much of what you've already written, but that's how I'd try to play it.

Generally I agree with this. Noble is big on transitions though so Corn has to wait. Right now we're leaning towards having it be our NE city since we're skunked on Marble and there's a lot of forests to chop it in there. But agree that its our best unsettled location.

[pindicator]

Good point about the logistics of getting there. It may be the best spot but its probably not worth over-extending to get. Still, it is rather sheltered so if you have the workforce to spare then its worth it
Another consideration is how much you plan on growing that stone city. If its at happy cap amd you dont need to whip it then might as well get the wine city first since that will be quicker to get up and easier to defend.

[NobleHelium]

We played turn 64.

And what a turn it was! First, we had fruitful exploring.



Also note yuris's borders in the southeast. Looks like his city expanded borders. After this, we hit the jackpot.



:2dance: I guesstimate that we had ~10% chance of spread in RC (pretty much the max).



Next turn we revolt to OR.

[NobleHelium]

By the way we were wrong about Torg not being hooked up (or at least on the basis of the Fish tooltip). Commodore has two Fish connected and the Clam also says the "Requires Route" thing. Not sure why I've never noticed this before.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 65.

We found Ivory in the southeast. Commodore's either roading between Kiki and Torg or roading to settle the Marble, although I can't fathom how he'd plant a city there and have it not suck. He's also got a new Chariot in Kiki, so we'll finish Cathedral's Spearman with overflow out of Cathedral's Missionary to be whipped next turn.



We're roading south to claim the Sugar. We'll probably have to hold the settler for the eastern city location because yuris's chariot will pass by the site on his way back so we need a spear first (plus some roads would be nice). Free spread in Hidden Camp.



yuris and Ichabod signed OB. We'll probably offer OB to yuris next turn as we tech Sailing and hopefully unlock a trade route. And interestingly, we're not first in Life Expectancy anymore.

[Gaspar]

I've used that title before - I might just change the name of the thread to it. Its a play on the name of a Talking Heads album (More Songs About Buildings and Food) but its a pretty fair assessment of what every turnplay we do together looks like. I wish they were funny, but they're usually not. Usually they're just annoyed.

Anyway, Commodore moved a chariot into the area we're intending to settle which caused no end of consternation to us.



The Purple Dot reflects our current planned settlement. The Yellow Circles reflect tiles Commodore might be intending to settle. What Commodore does with those units next turn will definitely impact our plans. We might even need to upgrade a warrior, perish the thought. Nonetheless, we need to get that site settled.

We also discovered food in the desert, so we can firm up our plans for sealing off the border in the east:



With Sailing in @EOT, we offered Yuri OB. I don't expect him to accept it, but its worth a shot. We decided to plant where we did vs. further south to avoid antagonizing him. Remains to be seen if that's what happens.

All of our opponents save Commodore have settled a city in the last 2 turns. Commodore revolted to Confucianism this past turn.



Either Ichabod or Yuri's power is out of control. I sense blood and tears in the near term. I'll split off an observations, etc post after this turn report.

[Gaspar]

"Wow, Gaspar & NobleHelium updated their thread. I can't wait to read about how they moved their scouting units and see what the demos look like this turn" -- No one ever

So yeah, I feel like I need to throw more posts talking about the game out here because our turn reports are pretty robotic. We'll obviously do the big 1 AD thing but it sort of feels like we're at a bit of "stuff is about to go down in the next 10 turns that will impact the outcome of the game significantly" portion of events. For one, everyone is about to be out of room. The middle area has everyone's borders poking into it and will probably be fully settled in the next 5-10 turns. That will obviously raise tensions. The next batch of wonders is probably being worked on by our opponents - Hanging Gardens and Colossus in particular I expect to see fall soon. GLH is iffy - its decidedly nerfed here but its still an economic boost, particularly for a FIN civ that has good reason to do a lot of coastal settling anyway. People are starting to research into the Calendar/Aesthetics/CoL, etc portion of the tree which means we can probably expect to see MoM and GLib builds in the next 10-15 turns as well. Bottom line, shit's about to get real in PBEM38.

So where does that leave me in terms of analysis? Well, I think it might be a decent point to go ahead do a quick rundown of where everyone stands. So let's do that, based on what we know:

(Players listed in order of my perception of their position in the game, ranked from worst to best.)

Dave (Gandhi of France) - Dave landed two of the three wonders that have fallen so far - Pyramids and Stonehenge. We made a full try at Mids and a half-hearted try at Henge. Dave on the other hand pretty well crippled himself to get those done. Part of the problem with landing Mids the way he landed them is that when you're Spi/Phi you need to get to specs quickly so you can use GP to jump out to an early lead and then hopefully stave off the inevitable overcome from the Fin guys. I think he might have fallen too far behind for that to happen, truth be told. He just landed his first GP, a scientist, 2-3t ago. (Not 100% sure this was him, for the record.) We've expected him to go after GLib and MoM pretty hard, but we don't know if he landed marble or not. We've only seen 2 on the map so far, but its a possible there could be a 3rd perhaps on the Dave/Commodore border. Anyway, in the current situation he's in the toilet looking for a plunger.

Yuri (HC of Ottomans) - Yuri had a slow start as well - grabbing religion and Oracle early but it would appear getting squeezed on land from Ichabod in the south. He is the tech leader at the moment, at least in terms of beakers, and was first to the key Currency tech. He's upped his expansion game, settling two cities in the last 5 turns or so and could be the power leader. I don't love his geopositioning, between Ichabod and us. And I also don't know what's taking him so long on Colossus - Fin Colossus coast is pure sex. Nonetheless, he's still got two great traits and a danger to get well in front if he can scrape together enough land. I expect we'll have some border tensions soon - hopefully he has other priorities than messing with us.

Ichabod (Victoria of Byzantium) - Ichabod has played a pretty sound game thus far - leveraging IMP to an expansion lead - he's the current leader by 2 cities on 9. We don't have graphs so we don't know his price gambit, but he'll definitely stay relevant into 'Phracting time which is where it gets scary. Fortunately for us, he's furthest away so we're not really a realistic option - I'd expect either Dave or Yuri eats the brunt of them.

Commodore (Darius of HRE) - Darius of HRE is often referred to as the newbie's choice because of the obvious synergy, but its also The Pick That Cannot Be Messed Up®. And Commodore is not messing it up. He's expanded well, on 7 cities and that sick GNP in the last shot is him. He has CoL and already has his first few Rathauses out - we can see one in Kiki. And at the moment, got one over on us setting the border between our two civilizations VERY favorably for him. He also probably is "player least likely to get Phracted" simply based on the fact that he'll probably be first to Pikes because of his UU. If he can avoid a grueling war with us or Dave, he might just be able to fill in his land and tech away to a lead the rest of us can't catch. That's probably the biggest threat at the moment - Fin/Org is definitely a great trait set here, he has religion, he has good land and he's about to have marble so he can land the crucial mid-game wonders. If that happens, I don't know how to catch him.

I'll leave this out for comments and then I'll talk a bit about us and what we can hope to do to beat our opponents tomorrow.