[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha. I can't vouch for Halo 4 yet, I bought it on launch night and have only had time to go through the first two levels. I'm enjoying it so far, I can say that. I haven't tried MP yet, I'll hold off on that until I finish the campaign. May as well since once I've played through the campaign I'll probably only play MP from then on, just like every Halo game before.

I like some of the new Forerunner weapons so far, but some of them are just meh. The new Covenant plasma-ish AR is just as useless as the old plasma repeater. And every time I'm down to using just Master Chief's AR I start scouting for magnum rounds like crazy. Probably one of my favorite things so far is the super satisfying "POP" sound grunts' heads make when you get a head shot on them. It sounds just like you opened a bottle of champagne. Couple that with the birthday party skull effect and it is plain awesome head shotting grunts, just like it should be.

I like the direction they're taking the story so far, I'll be interested to see where they leave it by the end of the campaign. I'm sure the story won't be complete by the end of this game, I think they've already planned a second trilogy right? Anyway, if I can get enough time to play through the rest of the campaign soon I'll be ready to suit up for MP duties. I guess I'll have to retrain on sniper all over again.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T21 - Scout moved NW revealing a cow and the source of a north flowing river. He'll chase the river north until he's eaten by a grue.



I began farming the second corn, which will take five worker turns. So on T25 I'll be size 3 with two improved corn tiles and working an unimproved tile to be named later. My city maintenance cost is negative so I don't see a problem with growing to size 3 even onto an unimproved tile. If I end up working one of the unimproved dyes or the gems it's still +1 commerce. Not to mention that when the gems are mined on T29 (I think -- still 4 turns to build a mine on normal? I play everything on quick these days and don't remember now) I'll have the pop available to be immediately working it.

As soon as I grow to size 3 I want to dump foodhammers into my second worker. I'll need two workers to stay ahead of population growth to keep growing onto improved tiles. I want those to be dye cottages for populations growths to size 4 and 5. By then I can stop growth by building a settler if necessary, but I'll probably want to keep growing. I can cottage/chop a few grass forests into my first settler and then get my second city founded. I can reliably pump settlers and workers with this much food available at One Fish, but I'm thinking that the second city will be positioned to at least share the NW corn so maybe by then One Fish won't have such a massive food surplus. I'm not putting pencil to paper or key to spreadsheet on this so it's hazy planning out that far.

I can't say I overlooked mentioning it -- purely blessed by the generosity of the map script I'm for the first time alone at #1 in score, off One Fish's growth to size 2. That is enough to place it as the #5 city in the world. I haven't paid attention to player order so I'm not sure if that's a function of me playing earlier in turn order than the other guys at size 2 or what.



Demographics, because we have wet corn hooked up and no one else does I guess, good enough to be #1 in food:

[spacetyrantxenu]

T22 - Well this just got interesting. Apparently I'm sharing this landmass with someone:



Someone had an encounter with a panther (I can only assume with their scout) and fared worse than I did with mine. This is really good for me. If that panther (0.2 strength) attacks my scout (0.5 strength, on a hill/jungle) I should win that fight and get my second XP so that I can promote/heal and keep exploring. There's also the other part of this, whatever that panther killed isn't out exploring and taking my huts. I wonder who is out there....

I didn't do pregame opponent analysis because, come on, Commodore is playing in this game and he has surely written much more entertaining briefs than I would. I still want to read mine after the game, though. Last time I asked him I think I was Xenu - (Insane, Angry) or something like that. For opponent analysis I'll have to refer you to his thread. As for who I'd like to be neighbors with, I really can't say. I'd prefer someone who has peaceful tendencies but you never know what you'll get from someone from one game to the next. The people here with the most hawkish reputations are probably both on the same team, Commodore and Thoth. No one else really stands out as a warmonger or really aggressive neighbor but I haven't read games from some of these guys so it's hard to know. As long as my scout doesn't get eaten this turn I'm sure I'll find out who it is soon enough. When they meet me they'll probably be saying, oh good, it's Xenu! MWAHAHA.

There is, alas, nothing else to report this turn. The Lorax keeps farming and that's about it for now.

All hail the RNG gods!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T23 - First things first, when I logged in the camera stayed right where I left it last time I was in game revealing a moustached, backpack wearing Scout with more panther blood all over him.



A check of the combat log shows that the panther attacked at 0.00% odds (0.24 panther vs. 1.53 scout) and died in the only combat roll. So we emerge with our second XP ready to take a promotion next turn and keep scouting, hoping to find our neighbor soon. I moved him west onto the hill tile, thankfully no other barbs were lying in wait. Next turn I'll move across an open grassland tile and onto one of the forests, barring any more black flag carrying annoyances.

On the home front The Lorax is still farming, 3 turns to completion on the second corn. One Fish grows in 2 turns onto an unimproved tile and then I'll queue up another worker. Quick mechanics question though:

I know that hammers begin decaying on units after 10 turns, on buildings after 50 turns. However, when does the timer begin ticking? Is it immediately when the unit enters the build queue (which on this warrior I'm building now was 8 turns ago, as I'm dumping in 1 hammer per turn) or does the timer begin to tick when you pause actively building the unit, as I plan to do in 2 turns? At that point the warrior will be 10/15 with 10 turns of hammers going into it. If the hammers start to decay at that point I'd never finish it at 1 hammer per turn and I'd lose 1 hammer per turn as long as I'm building the worker. That would suck. I'm hoping the timer doesn't start until you pause building a unit -- I'll definitely come back to finish the worker inside of 10 turns after I pause the warrior build to start the worker build. I could probably research this myself but I'm just making sure someone is reading this thread besides me

In international news we've had several score increases this turn. Slowcheetah added 12 points since I last logged in, Plako added 11, and Commodore/Thoth added 8 to jump ahead of me in the mostly meaningless score competition. Digging down a little further since I have nothing else to do at the moment while my kid is napping (well, I could play Halo I guess) just a quick glance of score changes show population growth by Azza and Serdoa, no changes by Brick, Scooticator, Merohoc, or Nakor/CFCJesterFool. No changes for me either. The other change is Bigger, who added six points. So Bigger grabbed some Ancient era tech (no idea what because I'm not tracking these things), I'm going to guess that Commodore added an Ancient tech + 1 pop growth for his 8 points, and since Slowcheetah and Plako are both Creative maybe they both picked up land points for third ring expansion? Actually Commodore is Creative as well, maybe his score increase is only land instead of a tech + pop. I don't really know. If I had a teammate doing C&D we could be more definitive -- population comparison against last turn's numbers could determine if Commodore grew or not but that would be decidedly un-casual of us, now wouldn't it? In any case the three players with a creative leader are numbers 1, 2, and 3 in score for now.

The top 5 cities show two players have grown their caps to size 3 already. I'm 3rd in food yield, probably only behind those two players. With my stuipdly good double corn start I've been near the lead of crop yield since the start (thanks map script!) but I felt like I took forever to get my first worker out the door to speed my growth. It looks to me that whoever has 14 yield already has a worker and a size three capital, two turns faster than I'll be able to do it. That's a good job by them, I'd say. Since I'm only for certain ascribing population growth to Azza and Serdoa, maybe it's one of them who pulled off the quick worker/growth start.



OK, enough speculation. Come on Bigger and Brick, play your turn! I have plenty of time for Civ today....let's go!

TL;DR - 1 dead panther, 1 living scout, mechanics question - will the warrior ever finish?, blah blah score changes, I need more civ today.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T24 - Scout heal/promoted (woodsman I) and moved 4, 7 onto a plains forest tile. No contact with anyone yet but the movement revealed more happy resources:



I'm beginning to think the part of the map I'm exploring now is connected to the "island" NW of my capital, and that it's just a large bay of water in between. This is certainly a lot of coastline and would typically beg for a run at the Lighthouse. But with the nerf to +1 trade routes instead of +2...we'll have to think about that. For now I'm struck by the distribution of resources. It looks like IW/Calendar is going to be very helpful and, with that done, Monarchy/HR less useful. I have a lot of happy resources here but apparently not that much food outside of my ridiculous capital. I see two dry rices, two bananas, one cow, and then a few seafood resources. Where The Food? I guess I'll need to build a bunch of workers, chop jungles, farm them, and later cottage over the farms. Meh.

OK, score changes for this turn (heh, my kid is taking another nap!): Slowcheetah grew a pop and Commodore/Thoth/YMMV (who?) added on 6 points, so I'm sure now that last turn Commodore got the early creative third ring border pop and the 20 turn land points, along with Slowcheetah and Plako. This turn is an ancient era tech. The other option is that he swapped research and teched both this turn and last turn, but there isn't much point in that.

F9 and I'm out:

[spacetyrantxenu]

OK not out yet but I just thought of this. My start reminds me a bit of Cyneheard's PB5 start*. Crazy capital with fuck all to go with it. I guess I shouldn't complain so much about the jungle, it's all cottage and workshops waiting to happen. But more food would be great. Besides, aren't players obligated to complain about the map at every possible misfortune?

Also, any takers regarding my previous mechanics question?

*Aggressiveness of first neighbor yet to be determined.

[DaveV]

Also, any takers regarding my previous mechanics question?

I'll tell you how I think it works, and maybe someone else will come along and give you the real story

After you put hammers into something, the decay timer counts up every turn you're not working on that item. It never resets; going back to work on the original item doesn't change the decay timer.

Example:

You put 20 foodhammers into a settler.
You switch to warriors, building 2 in 8 turns.
You put 30 more foodhammers into the settler.
You build another warrior, taking 4 more turns. During the 2nd, 3rd and 4th turns of that build, you lose a hammer from the settler production. So now you have 47 settler foodhammers in the bank.

This example is for normal speed; the decay time is 6 turns for units at quick speed.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T25 - The Lorax finished the farm on my second corn tile and One Fish grew to size 3, pushing my crop yield back into a tie for 1st at 16. I paused my warrior build to start on a worker, that will take 5 turns to complete starting from scratch.



It's nice to see what 10 food surplus will do for your worker production. So the second worker will complete EoT30. By then I should have the gems mined by The Lorax and will be size 3 working three improved tiles, with two workers cottaging like crazy to try to keep up with population growth. That will work up to size 5 but I have to have BW in by then so I can start cottage/chopping the other grass tiles. I'll have to see how many tiles I'm working by then to see if I want to start whipping off them. I want to build a granary before doing that. I have so much food here that I can probably tolerate some whip inefficiency by doing multipop whips but I really don't like that idea very much. I'll be contributing 15 beakers per turn once I bring the gems online, so 13 turns to tech BW at that pont. That will come down a bit as I grow onto a cottage or two, but that still seems like a very long time to wait for whips and chops. I'm 4 turns from finishing Pottery, so mark that down as somewhere around T37 or T38 for BW? Ew.

Panther Slayer moved 1, 1 in the north and found several plains tiles. Screen of that area upcoming next turn.

Dave, thanks for the mechanics info, that sounds right or right enough to me. I'll get the worker finished quickly enough that I don't think the warrior is in danger of decaying off any hammers.



One thing I don't think I bothered to notice before is that someone has fewer land tiles than I do. They really got the shaft on that one.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T26 - Panther Slayer cleaned up a bit of the northern scouting and someone grew to size 4. I'll have to puzzle that out later as I'm holding up the turn. The Lorax started mining the gem and I hit enter.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T27 - More scouting, worker keeps mining the gems.



On T29 the gems finsh and our second worker can start cottaging the dye immediately west of One Fish. I'll probably build a road on the gems to avoid wasting the worker turns moving west, it will be a few turns until the capital grows to size 4 and needs the fourth improved tile. I could grow to size 5 quickly working 5 improved resource tiles (finishing the warrior probably) and then throw out a settler but that seems pretty late for a second city. It's probably better to immediately start a settler as soon as I grow in a few turns, get the second city online, and then get back to growing.



In the north I've dropped some signs indicating fresh water lakes at the edge of what Panther Slayer has charted so far. It looks like this continent is fairly snaky and that I have my own end of it. I took a left at a fork with the scout, hopefully that's the path that leads me into contact with my neighbor. I'd much rather find him than him find me, but it will probably be a while before anyone who lost a scout will spare a second unit to come find me, especially since they don't have any evidence of me being here yet. Well, unless you count the absence of huts, which I haven't seen any of in several turns. Maybe that means whoever it was that was eaten by the panther came from this side of the map.



I added signs for two very tentative city locations. I'm scratching my head trying to figure out where the prototypical hammer heavy second city would go. There just aren't hammers where I need them here. Where I've added the 2 - food sign looks like a winner for building settlers and workers, but everything else would have to be RB-Mod-nerf slaved. I guess One Fish can pump units and the second city could take growth units but once I hit my happy cap at One Fish that won't really be so helpful. I'm not sure how the site at 3 - hammers could even help in the short term, all it has for food is a fish if I can manage to pop borders to reach it. I'll think more about this, I know that the land west of One Fish looks bleak enough to skip it for now...no food resources there at all. Maybe scouting will find some seafood eventually.

Oh, and I found my first general resource, marble in the NW. Of course, since I've sworn off chasing wonders with so many IND leaders around....Maybe I'll have an opportunity to build a few epics, though? I mean, I'm CHA, of course I'll get the HE up at some point. Because, you know, waaaaaaaaar!