[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I wouldn't be too afraid to 2-pop whip non-worker/settler builds in Two Fish since it has so much food available. You need another worker ASAP because you're going to be able to grow onto some cottages at Two Fish quickly. After that, spend the food surplus on perpetual workers/settlers there so you can acquire more happy resources and raise your cap. Need lots of workers to cut through all that jungle, so start soon.

Here's what I would do, but feel free to ignore because I'm not studying this in-game:

One Fish: Build infrastructure and boats
Two Fish: Workers/Settlers until the end of time, slot in a library for an academy in 1F
Red Fish: Units/WBs
Blue Fish: Basic infrastructure, then Units

Short term, you need a WB to scout, and a galley to haul a settler overseas for ICTRs. Scout for trade routes! Tech path, how do you feel about calendar? You would certainly benefit from it with the sugar/banana site, and you have already made the investment in IW.

Good luck!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Necro.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, I got a bit annoyed by the events a while back and stopped reporting. I'll try to do better. I haven't had any more slave revolts since the first two, no other events at all actually. But I've had a few developments in the last 13 turns. Here we go!

T67 - After some bad treatment by the RNG I got a little love in the form of a Buddhism spread in Two Fish, courtesy of Serdoa's Oracle push. He obviously took the Meditation path to get to Priesthood. Here's the turn log to set the stage for this catch up report:



The last tech I had researched was Writing, as I had planned to pop borders at Red Fish with a library at the time. That ended up changing later, though. As of now I've got no use out of Writing at all. Oops. Anyway, I was researching Hunting and would finish that and research Archery in one turn. I haven't built any archers yet either, but I won't say that it was a waste, PRO likes archers more than normal, I'll get around to it, and it was good to have the option to build them in case it was needed.

I build lighthouses in Two Fish and Red Fish over the next few turns to boost my food output. Two Fish picked up +2 food on the two fish, Red Fish picked up +3 food from the two lakes and the clams. On T70 I started a barracks build in Red Fish to get a border pop underway. On T71 Nakor made contact with me and ran away. I don't know which direction he contacted me from, but my best guess is that it was an exploring work boat. After contact I saw through the Top 5 screen that Nakor had built the Great Lighthouse. Nakor is not one of the IND teams, so I'm not sure if it will be worth it for him. We'll see. I took a peek at the trade screen to see what Nakor has been up to:



I'm even on cities with someone who built TGL. I should probably be ahead in city count, so maybe I'm not doing something right here. I offered a map trade which Nakor rejected (Serdoa had done the same thing). I guess they both figured that since they found me that their maps are better. Or maybe they both think I'm a maniac and don't want me to know where they are. Anyway, T71 and Nakor has no resources connected....

T71 I also began working on a settler at Two Fish for my 4th city, Blue Fish. T72 I was doing the same thing, but since I took a picture of Two Fish here it is:



This city does good work producing workers and settlers. It would probably do better if I consistently remembered this game is on normal speed instead of quick and would think about whip timing more. As it is it mostly goes without whipping. That's probably a crime. But look at the foodhammers! It's going to be a 5 turn settler without a whip. (But won't someone think of the overflow hammers?) Oh shut up!!!

By T73 I had a warrior beginning to wander off to the north, we'll check on his progress later since for now he's only retreading ground previously explored by our ancient (and dead) panther slayer. Through the next few turns my workers prepared a road to Blue Fish. Since worker micro isn't that interesting to follow when you're reading about someone whose worker micro is fairly average, I'll gloss over that bit and move on. I'm going to dump a stack of overview shots so anyone who cares can figure out what happened. It's the typical get a tile ready just in time for a city to grow on it, but OMG don't waste any worker turns stuff, you've all seen better.

T76 was an eventful turn:



Um. Okay, someone is beating in brains out in the fog somewhere. I didn't write anything down to track this stuff but it seems like Azza is involved somehow, because I remember that he did a lot of whipping at some point in the last dozen turns since I posted. A lot of whips at the same time indicates either he was being proactive about murdering someone, or he was in a deep moment of oh shit crisis when someone else showed up to murder him. Well, that sucks for someone but the event I care about on this turn is that I got a Buddhism spread in Red Fish. Thanks Serdoa! So now I have Buddhism in 2/3 of my cities, that's good enough to provoke a revolt because I need more happiness -- Two Fish is pushing the happiness cap (well, almost) and Red Fish has a few whips to work off, it didn't have a lot of room for growth either. So why not, Buddhism will obviously be my religion of choice now. I waited until T77 when the settler was on the move to pull the revolt. By that time One Fish had also finished its scouting work boat so I didn't really delay anything by summoning the revolt.

On T78 we brought Blue Fish into the world:



It took the iron mine tile from Red Fish to slow build its own granary. The food box will be at 10/22 when the grany finishes, works for me. I'll be taking the fish from Two Fish to help speed this city's growth, but I wanted another worker out of Two Fish before I did that. Besides, I need the workers to have improved tiles for this new city to work, so it seems worth it. I took shots of my other cities on T78 as well, this is a good time to show the current infrastructure I've built so far:



One Fish has less infrastructure built than any other city, having completed a granary and then a bunch of units of varying types. Other than those two miserable slave revolts this city has been productive the whole game. I've probably only had a handful of turns when this city wasn't somewhere in the Top 5 cities list.




Two Fish = Worker/Settler pump. Just add granary and (insert border pop here - monument!). Rinse and repeat. Maybe it will get a library when I have time, I can surely run specialists here with all this food.



Red Fish is supposed to be my early military city. Well, not with 4 hammers per turn, but when it takes the iron and another mine back it will do fairly well. I already had the barracks underway when I got the free Buddhism spread so it just increased the culture accumulation here. The downside to the earlier border pop (no, it isn't really a downside) is that my workers won't be in place to improve the sugar just as the borders pop. I didn't have enough wiggle room in the worker plans to get them over there in time. But it's because they're busy on a super secret project...!

T79, it's more of the same, a worker is due next turn from Two Fish and we're busily shuffling around the rest of the workers. Yawn.

Wait, what's that in the north???

***

Incoming: overview shots for these missing turns, I have them, may as well post them.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Map dump.

T67


T68


T69


T70


T71


T72


T73



T74



T75


T76


T77



T78



T79

[spacetyrantxenu]

I can dump my F9 page for these turns if anyone wants to see it. Otherwise I'll spare Dropbox a small amount of abuse.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

So what's the super secret project? I couldn't be deciphered to learn Braille and go Helen Keller parsing a thousand pictures dumped in one post.

Do you have a galley to build an oversea city? Have you sent out anything to scout over the seas? Thank god I necroed this shitty thread.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

That post made no sense. You try to figure out what I meant, then you'll understand how anyone would feel lurking this so-called thread. I'm still sober. Ish.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T80 - Current turn report. First up, the annotated map:




Well Xenu, you say, why are you planning to build roads by your new city when there are obviously better things for your workers to do? And why did you build that ghastly backwater where it didn't pick up any new resources? Good questions.

Blue Fish will eventually make for a good hammer city but there is no food in the area except for sharing the fish at Two Fish. So I could have skipped this spot for now and settled the dyes/bananas area instead, but I don't have Calendar yet so that will have to wait just a bit. I think I can make Blue Fish profitable and not leave a hole in my dotmap, so there it is. Give it 15 turns, it will be OK I think. I'll probably farm everything I can and build military to supplement Red Fish's military builds when needed. Maybe I'll build a galley here, who knows. I don't have plans for everything.

So about the roads, what is the Lorax up to building out to the north? Here's the area:




Yeah, so we have neighbors. It's Brickabod, AKA Genghis Khan of the Vikings (AGG/IMP). I'm not thrilled with having the Vikings for neighbors, and Brick knows all about the kinds of things they can do after his game against Scooter's Vikings in PB5. I need to get his area explored and figure out what kind of naval threat he's going to be later. For now his AGG trait could pose difficulties on land. Remember when I teched Archery earlier for no useful purpose? Well here's the purpose. I'm going to go for a seal city (Black Fish) and put in sufficient garrision (including PRO archers) to discourage any complaints from Brick or Stupendous Man. That's the plan anyway, we'll see if it works out. It's T80 now and my guesstimations put me settling the city on T88 or T89. It looks like Brickabod's city only has first ring tiles, so it's probably fairly new. Maybe he isn't planning to expand down here before I get the city settled.

The geography gets interesting, though, west of my planned Black Fish city. If I stay on the southern coast (south of the iron tile) it won't necessarily block off Brickabod's western expansion, which should keep relations friendly enough for a while. If I went for a block to the west I think it would force him to attack me, and I'd rather not be at war yet, not as long as I can keep expanding peacefully. So the diplomacy goal with my apparently closest neighbor is to secure the territory that is obviously mine (my jungly peninsula) and then try to work out an amicable split of the other land as long as I can, or until that doesn't suit me anymore.

So what has Brickabod been up to?



Did I mention he was IMP? Yeah, cheap settlers, got it. They're up to 5 cities against my 4, and my 4th is brand new. I think this nearby city is new also, but I have no way of knowing for sure yet. Let's hope I at least have more workers? This is my unit composition, by the way:



My game opening felt horribly slow having to build all those work boats, but now that the seafood tiles are improved I feel like I'm catching up from the slow start a bit. Just keep growing and expanding. I have an axeman in progress and I'll try to get a pair of archers ready in time for settling. Not sure, maybe I'll only get out one by then. Hopefully it will be enough to deter Brickabod from any shenanigans.

Current EP allocation (I've lost Serdoa's graphs at the moment or I'd post those, getting them back soon):



It would be nice if Serdoa would swap his EPs onto someone else when he hits 42. I was working on Nakor's graphs but I care more about knowing what Brickabod is up to, given their land proximity.

Stats update:


The only item missing from that list is the three panthers I killed back in the day. I need more workers.

Finally, demographics:


My GNP is 7th while saving gold, it goes to 2nd at 100% science on Masonry (double prerequisite bonus). I'm probably in the upper third in actual GNP output, I'm a consistent leader in food, thanks for all the fish (and corn), and I'm in the upper third in MFG as well. What does it mean? I'm not whipping as frequently as other players, so I'm probably doing something wrong. I stopped eyeball tracking score and rival population a long time ago so I don't know if I'm leading in real population at this point or not, but I have to guess that I am. 20 pop over 4 cities isn't too terrible for T80, I don't think, but someone who runs tighter micro than me probably would have more cities and more workers out by now, even if at lower total population. I'll await constructive criticism in the lurker thread post game for alternate suggestions.

One number that jumps out in the demographics is approval rating -- at 48% someone has busted their happy cap. No clue who it is, but I wonder if it is related to the creation of that great general a while back? Also, I need more health resources, I don't have a lot to spare. Of course, I'm more bound by happiness at the moment than health so I'll have to address that first.

Keep saving cash, we'll go on a tech spree soon. Watch the scoreboard, we're sinking right now.

[spacetyrantxenu]

So what's the super secret project? I couldn't be deciphered to learn Braille and go Helen Keller parsing a thousand pictures dumped in one post.

Do you have a galley to build an oversea city? Have you sent out anything to scout over the seas? Thank god I necroed this shitty thread.

Well you cross-posted me while I took forever to write a report, but yeah, the secret project is Black Fish for the block.

The galley made it to the planning stage, up until I spotted Brick's borders. My quest for horses will have to wait. I do have a work boat exploring down there, I forgot to take a picture this turn though. I'll get one when I log in next time.

And what's with the hate about this thread? I know I could update more but I'm trying. It isn't like back in my PBEM29 days when I had no kid and had time to do turn reports at work. At my job now my desk is out in the open and I don't have the leverage (yet) to tell HR to fuck off and leave me alone. (Although they ARE on my shit list now...yes, HR, I do know what time YOU say the office opens...but I work in IT, I don't work your shitty 8 to 5 grind. I have to work some later hours because you people want me to support 24 time zones. So fuck your 8 to 5, I'll show up when I'm ready to. OK, put it in my personnel file. But don't be surprised when your accounts mysteriously and randomly start expiring. That's going to suck, isn't it?).

[Ceiliazul]

You try to figure out what I meant, then you'll understand how anyone would feel lurking this so-called thread. I'm still sober. Ish.

Don't listen to him, more updates! Also, if you hit ctrl-B before you take shots in the fog, it'll lighten up the terrain for better pics. I can't really see the hills/trees in the area of Black Fish.

May I suggest naming the block city "Once-ler". He is, after all, guardian of the trees. You can't name it 'fish' if it's landlocked, right?