[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[spacetyrantxenu]

T97



In the year 450 BC order was restored to the empire following the wave of anarchy (quickly quashed) that surrounded the Tyrant's naming of himself as both king and leader of the state's Buddhist faith. With the dissenters dispatched or deported (deforestation duty at Black Fish for the most part), it was time to set about drafting a new plan for the upcoming years. The historical record indicates that it was in 450 BC that someone built a larger monument to his own self importance than the Tyrant had ever done (that or the rival emperor committed an act of GIGANTIC compensation, if you know what I mean), building a large, useless pile of rocks. No doubt it will be used to grant his people Representation, but as the Tyrant's tastes much preferred his Hereditary Rule, that's what his people got.

In a comic moment out in the wilderness an axe legion on a surveying mission came across wild men carrying shovels and pickaxes.



Alas that our men were not able to capture these barbarians (they look like good, hard workers). Likely they ended up in the hands of the Mayans, but on that point the truth may be lost to history. In any case, the surveyors thought that the nearby supply of hogs and sugar would likely produce fantastic barbecue some day, and the abundant marble would probably some day be useful, even if it is ill fitted to the supply of fantastic barbecue. Thus were the plans for Old Fish laid. Word was sent back to the capital, where recruiters had already been seeking out prospective colonists for an upcoming "can't miss business opportunity." Fortunately these were the days before the Code of Law, so one needed not worry about being sued for obviously misleading advertising.




Elsewhere, Red Fish was preparing colonists for a settlement not far from the existing frontier, as the Tyrant decided the best way to deal with not having much land was to pack in as many cities as possible and hope for the best in the short term, and then hopefully find somewhere else to settle or take more land in the future.

The Tyrant was also quoted as saying, "We need more workers."



Even if the empire's subjects weren't particularly industrious or productive, they were a well fed lot, and they knew how to breed.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T98 - In the year 425 BC BRickAstley of the rival Microbrewers empire proposed the following trade:



The clams were more or less uselss but we could spare the fish so why not. It was a good deal for us, as it turned out -- Brick had apparently been busy in the global map commodities market. More on that in a bit.




Domestically we managed a chop into the Black Fish granary and completing a farm there. Tile shuffling between One Fish and Two Fish kept the settler on schedule.



Someone surpassed our mark in food production and our GNP is slowly growing. But I'm really tired of being last in land area, can I get some more tiles in play, please? Well, yes we can! But it's going to come with a cost. It turns out land and small cities is expensive.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T98 - Map Trade

Brick, of the Microbrewers (Vikings):






Brick has a fair amount of land but most of it is brown and trash. It's no wonder he settled Terrapin where he did, that's the best land for miles. But pushing for that source of iron was not necessary, there is another source closer to his core up the coast to the west of Old Black Bear. I suspect the cows and gold were more enticing. I really wish I had got that spot, that is a major obstacle in my expansion path. I'm sailing around to get Old Fish, but we'll see how well that works out. It's essentially going to be an island city over there. I'm still figuring out my expansion path beyond Old Fish and my bit of backfill, but Brick's path is clear to the northwest as long as Serdoa doesn't block him.

Speaking of him, Serdoa of Maya:




Like me, Serdoa started on a nub of a peninsula. And that's about all the ill I can say of his start. It's green, has plenty of food, has enough hills to power his IND wonder whoring plans, and it's centrally located on the map with a lot of room to expand to the north and south. His nearest neighbor is Azza, to the west (not very close), and then me, and I'm across a lot of water from him. Oh, and then there is the nearby stone....Yeah, great start for Serdoa, he used it well to push to the top of the score board. I'd be curious if he has missed on any wonders he's tried for. He put his Oracle plan toward Metal Casting, grabbed the Colossus and has begun workshopping his territory, probably so he can build more wonders in the future. Aside from that he has done an OK job of expanding (well, compared to me but I was behind) and I'm sure he's researching very quickly.

Commodore of Khmer vs. Scooter/Pindicator of Zulu




I didn't have contact with either of these civs on T98 when I took this picture but it's obviously a hot war, both from reading Civstats and the event log in game. It's an ancient/classical era war, something Commodore may have been known to do in the past, but I don't know the genesis of this one. In the center of the screen you can see city ruins adjacent to Commodore's culture, so it looks like Scooticator started the war by burning a city of Commodore's. Maybe it was too close to their McDonald's franchise? I don't know who to root for in this war, but Commodore is getting the better of it for sure. Any chance he has his war elephants in the field already? Anyway, the land looks pretty good for both of these guys, but their close proximity is a tough break for both of them. Although I'm sure this war is fun reading for the lurkers right now, if they had been a bit more separated we probably could have got a bigger empire vs. empire clash later. Oh well. Cheer, blood!

Azza of Rome






Azza is north of Commodore. Way north. If Commodore has been scouting he's surely seen the land in between his Khmer and Azza's Rome (much of it is not visible in this shot), which leads me to believe more that Scooter/Pindicator picked the fight. I assume Commodore would have been happy to keep expanding for a while in peace before making a war against someone eventually later on. I'll bet Azza would have been happy to delay conflict. I think he was involved either in a war or some kind of controversy earlier in the game, just from tech thread chatter and watching Civstats, but I don't have hard info on that. What I can see here, though, is that his northern city is being crushed by Lewwyn's culture and that his empire is a bit lacking in development. Maybe by the time Brick trade this map to me it was out of date in Azza's territory, but there aren't a lot of developed cottages to be found. And I don't know what kind of scouting Lewwyn has done, but I bet he'd love to burn that front city and remove Rome's source of iron. I don't see any elsewhere in this area.

Azza's future looks murky. He doesn't have a lot of land to expand into toward Lewwyn, and that's problematic militarily anyway most likely. He can settle to the east in the jungle toward Serdoa, but for all the grassland there aren't a lot of resources in the area. His best bet is probably to go south and to hope he can consume as much of the space between his territory and Commodore's as he can. He's going to need a lot of workers and boats. But he's ORG, so at least he has that working in his favor, because maintenance will probably get expensive when he spreads out all over the map.

Lewwyn of Netherlands




Not bad. That's a lot of space to work with. I'm guessing the capital is the bit in the north under the fog, and this is obviously and old map. I have no idea how much of this area is really covered in orange at this point but I'm guessing it's considerably more than what is shown here. Lewwyn is IND/PRO Qin, with Stonehenge, hence winning the culture war against Azza on their border. Plus he has some kind of ancient epic naming scheme going on, so he gets points for that. I'm not sure if the Aeneid is more epic than One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, though. Anyway, Lewwyn has done well in the RNG land sweepstakes.

Unsettled Lands

This is what is in the middle of the map:




I'm hoping to be able to place a city where I have the sign "city - missionary" to the north of Nakor. That will get my horse in play in a reasonable amount of time. If things don't go well over there I may have to settle on the horse, though, and just eat it with that city. After that I'd want to expand across the water to the area in between Serdoa in the north and Scooter/Pindicator in the south. I think Scooticator may be in a hurry to climb up that continent, though, with the way the war is going against Commodore. I'll have to be quick to get much over here, and I don't think I can go very quickly right now. Further expansion (as we shall see when I post more reports) is expensive and needs to be at a reasonably measured pace. Plus these sites are very far way from my land, they're going to have insane city distance costs for me.

On the left side of the map you can see Commodore's and Azza's borders. I guess there is less land over there than I remembered. Still, Azza better get moving if he wants that area. He may have to flee west toward the island on the far left of the map. I don't know much about that area or if it's close to one of the players I haven't met yet.

Whew. OK, now I'm only 8 turns behind on my reports. That will have to wait until tomorrow, though. Anyway, thanks for the map, Brick. All this essentially for a clam resource. That's a sweetheart deal and I'll take it as meaning we're going to have good relations moving forward.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Make that nine turns behind on reporting. I just played T107, which I won't report on now because I should really be going to work right now and I have several other reports to write first. But for anyone wondering what was going on in the period of "radio silence," specifically whether or not I was plotting some further attack, here is your answer: I was not planning an attack, but now someone has chosen unwisely! No idea when this will materialize, but at least the target selection is easy now.

Code:

>user: Tyrant
>pass: ********
>
PB8> enable
PB8> user: Xenu
PB8> pass: ********
>
PB8# config t
#
PB8 (config)# int WarPlanning 0/2
PB8 (int WarPlanning 0/2)# target Serdoa
PB8 (int WarPlanning 0/2)# warplan mode grudgemode
PB8 (int WarPlanning 0/2)# desc "Retaliation for taking a swipe at my border city and being greedy"
PB8 (int WarPlanning 0/2)# exit
PB8 (config)# exit
PB8# copy run start
PB8# exit
PB8> exit

Disastrous? Of course. Fun? OOOOOOOOOH YEAH!!!!!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T99 - Settler builds are on schedule in One Fish and Red Fish, and we need more workers:




Mathematics due in a billion turns.

Demographics are charming, as always:

[spacetyrantxenu]

T100 - Out in the fog Commodore commits an unspeakable crime and burns Scooticator's Zaxby's franchise. Where will we get our delicious fried chicken now? I should go AW with Commodore for this.




Still building the worker/settler pairs. Granary incoming at Black Fish. Spear/worker dropped off the galley at the frontier, the galley scooted back into my culture as it has an appointment next turn to be in port to receive the settler out of One Fish.




Someone is building an army, top rival soldier count is up 16k over last turn. My total is close to the global average, but I'm still ahead in my neighborhood, for what it's worth. Probably more important that I don't piss off my neighbors any more than absolutely necessary until the next time someone sends me off the rails.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T101 - We have been contacted by a Merovech/Ad Hoc work boat on the east of our little spit of land. What have they been up to?



Unless they intentionally skipped the letter C in their naming scheme it appears they've had some trouble along the way. I don't remember now if I offered the map trade or Merohoc did, but a trade was made and on T102 I got to see what was going on. But that's for next turn's report.

This turn the big event is the settler from One Fish travelling five tiles toward the planned city site, three by land, load into the galley, two by sea.




Next turn it will unload onto the appointed tile, the following turn I'll have another city to drive up the cost of running an empire. That would be two new cities in two turns because I have a worker pair on the tile labeled Old Fish T102. They'll road the tile next turn and then I'll move over the settler from Red Fish to build the city. I'm still saving gold because with planting these two new cities and having only recently settled Black Fish, expenses will be high for a while until these cities begin to pay their own way. Also I'm planning on library builds in One Fish and Two Fish before long (way overdue really) so may as well halt research until those are online.

Demographics mostly unchanged for now, GNP to plummet (more) very soon.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T102 - My settler in the north will found New Fish next turn, but Serdoa just planted a city three tiles away to the west. (If there was a question what my out of order post regarding Serdoa a few days ago was about...well this is where it's going to happen).




As seen in the highlighted tile, Serdoa has a woody II axe that can swipe a worker this turn if he wants to. I kinda thought he'd try it at the time, but then I realized he'd just be suiciding the axe since I have two other axes and a spear nearby. Not that he knew what I had over there, he couldn't see any of it without moving the axe forward and then back. More to come later here.

Elsewhere Old Fish sprang out of the jungle and took the farmed sugar tile from Red Fish. I spotted a barb galley out to the east of my land and started building a galley in Red Fish to handle that. One Fish had a mostly complete axe in its queue so I set it to finish that up because the hammers would decay soon otherwise.

Merohoc accepted the map trade offer (or I accepted his offer, I don't remember now), leading to this:




Yeah, so he has had trouble with Plako it seems. For one, there's the case of the missing CC city -- the ruins are visible 1W of the pig tile north of Plako's border city. For another, look what they had to do to hook up metal. Ouch. Fox Forest is on its own down there. What's really bad about it is that he probably had to sail it down there on a galley. It looks like there is a peak tile blocking access to that whole western area by land. That's terrible luck for them. Also...look at the size of these cities. He has 8 total pop 102 turns into the game. That's the losing end of a war, I guess. Better luck in the next game, guys. I'll be interested to find out what happened over there when the game is over.

Here's what I can see of Plako's land:




I'd wager this map is fairly old, since Merohoc hasn't likely been dancing around in Plako's back lines while a war is going on (just assuming it is still ongoing, with Merohoc's cities being whipped down so hard). I'm sure Plako would like more food resources along that river, but otherwise that looks like some nice land. I'm going to guess Plako has a source of metal elsewhere because I don't think the iron visible here is connected. I can't really tell from that screenshot, I could go back in game and check but that's OK, one more mystery for later.

Demographics, and some end of turn charts since I only on T102 got them back on Nakor.

One Fish made its return to the Top 5 cities, after an absence during my whipping spree.



Score:


GNP:

[spacetyrantxenu]

T103 - Three cities are set to grow this turn and New Fish joins the empire, dragging down GNP with it. The work force at New Fish begins chopping and pasturing the pigs.




So how much did this city cost?

Before:


After:

That's another 5gpt in expenses an I'm only saving 21gpt now at max tax. I would have preferred to spread out planting these cities more but it's a land grab. Obviously the spot where New Fish is will be contested. Black Fish is a border, it had to be planted. The city that could have waited was Old Fish, but it's going to be a good city as soon as I can pop borders and cottage it up. So maybe it would have been better to tech Currency and then slam down these cities, but I felt like I was behind because of my ill-advised war buildup. Well, now I'm behind but just not in city count. Great!

So how bad are the demographics?



Well, I'm not last in anything...and that's about the best I can say. Wait, I am last in life expectancy, it's a tie. But 35 GNP, that's terribad.

I haven't shown the victory conditions screen so here it is:



Lots of population, not much land. That's why we live a life of squalor. Also, see the culture numbers from Serdoa's wonder building program. He will have a tech advantage from running his representation civic, so I assume he'll win the wonder race for whatever he targets next. Other than that, I guess Nakor is doing pretty well down there on his own continent. I know he's a builder anyway, he probably likes being on his own down there. I hope that by the time I get my feet back under me he hasn't zoomed way ahead of me. At least his Great Lighthouse is the RB Mod version, not the uber vanilla version.

Here's the rest of the charts from T102. I had the files saved incorrectly as being from T103, so just pair these with the Score and GNP graphs from the previous report to get the whole set.

MFG:


Food:


Power:


Culture:


Espionage:

[Ceiliazul]

Lots of population, not much land. That's why we live a life of squalor.

That's quite a disparity!

Loving the new reporting style. I'd volunteer for the fishboat exploration crew too.