Turn Tracking Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 106 - 225BC

This is not a finished turn report, but we have a lot to discuss this turn and it's better to get started now.

Anyway, the big news for the turn was the completion of Mausoleum by CivFr two turns before our own build would have finished. This is a fairly large setback, as we were counting on that wonder for a lot of our later plans. Unfortunately, as one of the two teams in the game with whom we do not have contact, there wasn't a whole lot we could do in terms of predicting what techs they had or what wonders they might be building. Kudos to them on a well-played move. We did also get 304 failgold from our partial build, which will speed us along to some of our immediate tech goals.

We did land the Great Wall as planned, only we popped borders at Focal Point on the exact same turn as the Great Wall completed, which teleported a barb axeman two tiles east... and right next to a chopping worker. The barb axe was still able to move and then killed our worker. This is possibly the single dumbest thing that I've ever seen in Civ4, the completion of Great Wall + border pop on the same turn magically teleporting a barb axe directly next to a chopping worker. I had big plans for that worker! I'm actually angrier about losing the worker right now than losing the wonder, since it forces me to redo several of the worker moves in the area. Grrr...



Here is the culprit axe. It was three tiles south of Focal Point last turn, and was able to kill a worker SW-W of Starfall between turns. Simply unbelievable. We had 99.4% odds with our war chariot, and then we almost lost that battle too! War chariot is sitting at 1.3 health remaining and needs to heal up before it can do any more exploring. That one axeman killed a war chariot (surviving with one hit left), then magically teleported and killed a worker, and then nearly killed a second war chariot at 0.5% odds to delay our scouting of the deep south further. Seriously game, WTF?!?!

Focal Point needs some serious attention now that the wonder plans have gone through. I will work on this tonight when I have some more time. Here is my general thought: we already have workers on the forests at Focal Point in mid-chop. We may as well continue following the previous plan and double-whip that worker (which we need now that the other worker died!) and finish the chops. But instead of going into Mausoleum, we can funnel all that production into Statue of Zeus, getting the full Organized Religion + ivory bonus, and get massive failgold to speed along our teching. While I have not tested this yet, it looks to be fairly easy to get the max gold value from the wonder at Focal Point. So we'd actually complete Statue of Zeus at Brick By Brick as planned (eot 113), and cash in 290 shields for 290 gold at Focal Point for 2.5 turns worth of 100% research. Does that sound like a good general plan to pursue? Focal Point is only going to be building a barracks and military otherwise, and that doesn't seem very useful right now when we have Great Wall for barb defense and NAPs with all neighbors.

Elsewhere on the turn:



Woodsman II axeman keeps exploring in the far west and has found a rather large body of water. We'll keep following the coastline south for as long as we can go and try to find a way past CivPlayers to the west. In the worst case scenario, we can always turn around and try to pass through to the north.



Here are the ivory operations underway at Brick By Brick. The settler moves onto the ivory tile next turn, settles the city T108, road connection done T109. There is a spear on the worker roading to the city and an axe on the settler itself, just to be safe. CFC has a chariot on the tile southwest of the horses. Amusingly, CFC could not declare war and kill our two workers on the plains hill tile even if they wanted to do so. (They can't move out of our territory, delcare war, and move back onto the hill tile no matter where they go.)



Here's a general picture of the eastern half of our territory. Five workers insta-farmed the rice tile to completion as The Covenant popped borders this turn. The only place we are lacking improved tile coverage is at Eastern Dealers, which is growing to size 6 and then triple-whipping a settler for the spot W-W-NW of The Covenant, which will lock down the German border and secure rice + cows. Forbidden Fruit and Tree Huggers both finished missionaries this turn, with the former on its way to Easter Dealers (visible on the floodplains above) and the latter going to Gourmet Menu. Forbidden Fruit has overflowed into another missionary, this one scheduled for WPC under the assumption that they'll take us up on our religious offer.

We didn't get the Great Wall border graphic, which I understand is what always happens in Pitboss games. I think we get it next turn (?) Nevertheless, it did complete in Mansa's Muse:



Kind of weird that the Great Wall only produces 2 culture/turn, no more than a library and less than a theatre. Anyway, we've forced two specialists here and a Great Person of some kind (we don't really care which type) will be due in 13t on T119. We can speed this up by running a third specialist after Mansa grows to size 9, or slow it down by dropping a specialist at the same time; we get the Great Person on T117 or T121 in those cases, if I remember this correctly. This is where we have to get to some high-level strategy discussion about the future.

The previous plan was to build Mausoleum, produce this Great Person out of Mansa using the Great Wall's free Great Person points, and then trigger a 12t Golden Age with it. We would revolt on the first turn of the GA into Bureaucracy, use the first 5t of the GA to research Philosophy tech, and then swap into Caste System/Pacifism as soon as it became possible, 5t into the GA. We'd run that configuration until the last turn of the GA, using it to produce Great People (likely 2 Scientists) and then swap back into Slavery/Organized Religion. But the key idea there was two civic swaps during the Golden Age, something that's only possible with Mausoleum. We will not have that option now.

So I think we can play this two different ways. One way is to drop the whole notion of using Caste/Pacifism and simply use the GA to revolt into Bureaucracy as soon as possible. We could probably still get one Scientist out this way, but two would be a lot harder. Alternately, we can still go with the same plan as before, but we will need to have Philosophy tech for Pacifism on the *FIRST* turn of the Golden Age, so that we can do an immediate swap into Bur/Caste/Pacifism. Then we swap back to Slavery/OR on the last turn of the GA after pushing out several Great People. The downside is that we have to research up to Philosophy tech first, which means we'll have several turns post-Civil Service where we aren't in Bureaucracy, effectively making CS a useless tech for a little while.



Here is the tech tree for illustration. Thanks to the Mausoleum failgold, we will clear Aesthetics at eot 107 (next turn) and Code of Laws eot 108. At that point, the techs we need are as follows:

Civil Service (1440 beakers)
Meditation (144 beakers)
Drama (540 beakers)
Philosophy (1440 beakers)

Tehnically we do not need Drama for Philosophy tech, but it opens up the 40% bonus beaker multiplier, which would make it rather foolish to skip the tech. (We are saving about 180 beakers on Philosophy by researching Drama first, and we do want Drama for theatres/Globe anyway.) How long will it take us to knock out these techs? We were landing Civil Service at eot 117 in my sandbox without the Mausoleum failgold, and with 300 gold along with potentially another 300 gold from Statue of Zeus failgold, we should be able to improve on that. My very rough estimate is that we can probably finish these techs around T122, which is just about when the Great Person comes out of Mansa's Muse (we can even slow it down slightly towards the end). So the plan would roughly be:

* Research these techs making use of failgold. Plan for roughly T122 date to start Golden Age.
* Trigger GA, revolt into Bur/Caste/Pacifism on first turn.
* Starve down cities with mass Scientist specialists during GA (by far the best two targets are Eastern Dealers and Starfall; I think getting 2 Great Scientists would be pretty doable, not sure about 3)
* Use 1 Scientist for Academy in Bureau capital, use 1 Scientist for Education lightbulb to secure Liberalism.
* Revolt back to normal civics on last turn of GA, roughly T130.

The biggest downside is that we'll be sitting on Civil Service without doing anything with it for about a half-dozen turns. Probably still worth it though, right? Generally speaking, is this the big picture strategy we want to pursue?



Demos for this turn. We have been bumped up to #2 in Power rating now, I believe still behind German team. Everything else looks pretty solid as usual. No one that we know has knowledge of Aesthetic techs, as we're only getting standard 20% bonus to our GNP.

Apolyton did use their second Great Scientist (first went for Academy) to lightbulb Philosophy tech and found Taoism. This gives them an awesome research score on our tables, but Apolyton still has only 7 cities and 39 pop; we have 12 cities and 74 pop. Their failure to expand means that they are probably not a huge threat in the long run. CivFr has emerged as the obvious top dog amongst our competitors.

We will have graphs on UniversCiv in a few more turns, and then we'll switch espionage spending over to Spanish Apolyton (who has spent no EP against us). CivPlayers still has a vast advantage over our team, but we have the EP edge on everyone else.

[Sullla]

Turn 107 - 200BC

I typed up the whole turn report post, only to see it get wiped out in a browser crash when I tried to open up the smiley tab. I was not amused. This will probably be shorter as a result, there's not too much happening this turn anyway.



At least, outside of this war anyway. The Spanish were true to their word and declared war on CivFanatics at the start of the turn. CFC has not logged in since this war declaration, no idea what their response will be. I expect several whippings at the very least. We have no visibility of the combat zone (something I hope to fix with a scouting war chariot eventually), and no real idea how this war will play out, beyond the certainty that the Spanish will eventually lose. Let's hope that they do a lot of damage and we see a repeat of the WPC/German war: everyone loses.

CivFanatics posted this bizarre message yesterday in the "storytelling thread":

Safely placed in a huge facility near the Mantra Granary, I could not notice that Caledorn seemed to be upset about something. First we had a rough ride through the western country, observing the roads and what he was calling "mapping possibilities". What is mapping? I am not sure I want to understand it. Caledorn seems to be rather good at using science, but really bad at explaining it to others.
Suddenly there was a sudden cold at my left shoulder and out of nowhere I spotted Yossarian's cold blue eyes. "Pleasant ride, Young Mansa?"
I shruggered in slight discomfort. There were few people that scared me, but Yossarian was still the worst... or best of them. What came to my mind that this was carefully planned, cause Caledorn's spirits suddenly lifted.
"Your fashionable lateness is forcing us to work at nearly double speed", Caledorn said. Fortunately todays lesson is about the function and practicalities of Granaries. Tomorrow you have to learn non-oral communication.
I was still not getting what Caledorn said.

Umm... err... ok? There's now another message just posted there which is nearly as cryptic, although it sounds related to the new war, something about bows and archers and whatnot. I have no idea whatsoever what in the world these guys are talking about.



We've found a really large body of water in the far west, something like looks like a genuine ocean instead of all these lakes. There are no borders poking through on the other side via tile bleeding. We'll just have to keep on heading south and hope to find a passge to the west that way.



Our settler moved onto the ivory this turn and will found the city next turn. I'm planning on calling this one Ditchdigger, since we'll be digging our way out from under the jungle for centuries to follow. There is an axe covering our settler, and an axe and spear covering each of our workers outside our territory. It cost an extra one gold to do it, but I don't like to flash uncovered workers near enemy units, NAP or no NAP with CivFanatics. The road on the tile southwest of ivory will be started next turn and ivory/city connected T109.



This was going to be the turn that we would complete Mausoleum, if CivFr hadn't already gotten there before us. A forest chop gives us 100/60 production overflow into the current worker; we'll then build Wealth for one turn and channel that into Shwedagon Paya. The worker on the tile west of the city must delay his chop for one turn to avoid hitting the overflow cap on that worker build. (This doesn't waste any worker labor though, as we can prebuild a cottage on that tile, and finish the chop next turn on the Wealth build.) We'll start at 177/450 production into Paya and the plan is to finish the wonder at eot 118. Shwedagon Paya allows our team to delay having to research Philosophy tech, and would allow us to skip researching Theology tech forever. If we would fail at the wonder, that's also fine, as we'd get lots of failgold to research Philosophy. No huge loss either way.

Starfall expanded borders this turn and began to put cultural pressure on Delhi. That city is building something at 1 production/turn; I went ahead and checked, it has 4 shields in the box right now. Either granary or monument most likely. In the short run we won't be able to push on this city too hard, since we're going to prioritize lighthouses over libraries in Eastern Dealers and Starfall. (Long story short: this is so we can grow the cities ASAP and then starve them down with mass Scientist specialists while running Golden Age + Caste Systyem + Pacifism.)

In the long term though, Delhi is pretty thoroughly screwed. We will easily be able to pile in religion + monument + library + theatre + double Artists into both border cities for 15 culture/turn. Both cities are high on food and low on production, making them perfect locations to run lots of specialists (Artists yay!) And that's before we add National Epic (4 culture) and Globe Theatre (6 culture) into those spots. Delhi will hold its first ring, but everything else will go over to us. It's a truly terrible city plant.



The northeast frontier is developing nicely from out of the jungle. Workers finished a grassland cottage south of The Covenant this turn, roaded the rice to speed along our upcoming settler, and will finish the cow pasture next turn. Eastern Dealers is the only place lacking enough improved tiles, having to work the floodplains and bare grassland tiles. Well, we fix that by swapping to settler next turn and triple-whipping it for the location W-W-NW of The Covenant. That cows/rice location will seal our border with the German team and become another strong city in its own right.

The missionary in Forbidden Fruit is intended to go to the WPC capital. If they would turn us down on the offer, that's fine too; we can save the missionary for use in the upcoming city in this area, and I can turn the missionary whip planned for that city into a worker whip. Both options are good.



Bad city management alert! Wasserburg is the German city founded with no resources and no food bonuses. They desperately need to farm the one floodplains tile to get some food surplus up and running. Instead, the Germans went ahead and... built a cottage on the floodplains. This locks them into a paltry +3 food/turn surplus, where it will take them 8 turns for each pop growth. Not good. Then they were so confident in this setup that they went and cottaged the grasland tile next to the floodplains as well. The Germans desperately need to farm at least two tiles here to get up to +5 food/turn surplus, and instead they're building cottages everywhere. They will never have the food to work all of those hills surrounding the city. Where's that facepalm smiley again?

Being Expansive Inca, they've chopped a forest into an instant terrace, and that will eventually allow them to take back the first ring of tiles. But this is still a thoroughly bad spot, and it's been made worse by their management.

Overview / tile micro:

There isn't anything else to do on this turn, all units have moved and builds should be pretty set. I'll hold off on ending turn for at least today to see if anyone has something to add.

Aesthetics research finishes this turn. With the overflow from 100% research, we'll be able to run 0% science and still grab the cheap Meditation tech next turn. (We need Meditation tech to build Shwedagon Paya, and it's mandatory for Philosophy tech later on too.)



We are first or second in pretty much everything on the Demographics screen. The Germans are still first in Power after I checked in game. This means that the Spanish have less power rating than we do; we don't have graphs on them, making it impossible to say for sure. All we do know is that CFC is quite a bit below us on the Power chart, not the Rival Worst but not too far off either. We will get graphs on UniversCiv next turn or the turn after, and I'll switch over to the Spanish after that to start tracking how much military they have.

Mostly a very quiet turn. Let's hope that the fireworks fly between our eastern neighbors.

[Sullla]

Turn 108 - 175BC

Big news for the turn was meeting Apolyton. We're only missing contact with CivFr now.



I saw WPC in-game when I logged in and engaged in a short conversation with them. (Read from bottom to top, as always for the Civ4 chat box.) I wanted to know if they had decided on our missionary offer yet; we finished the missionary itself on this current turn. Apparently they are still "debating" the issue and gave some weird answer about a growth spurt that I won't pretend to understand. I guess that's a reference to their team suddenly expanding and planting a bunch of cities in rapid succession? It's a non-issue for us, since our border is pretty much set right now and WPC's economy is beyond terrible at the moment.

I'm going to interpret this as a "no" answer unless they would respond to us later. For our purposes, it doesn't really matter whether WPC wants a free religion spread or not. I've built it into the micro plan that we can easily adapt either way. We'll simply get an extra worker whip instead of a future missionary whip if they refuse, and that might even be a better result. Their loss if they don't want religion.



We also did plant our ivory city this turn, fortunately with no opposition or other problems. Ditchdigger is a very appropriate name. All of its starting tiles are peaks or jungle, so we'll run a Priest specialist here for a couple turns while we hack out a grassland farm for the city to work. (Obelisk + Stonehenge combo for the specialists, score!) The city won't be connected to our trade network until next turn, the road going through the tile southwest of the city. Ditchdigger is a giant drain on the economy right now, costing us about 10 gpt while producing no immediate economic value. However, we're about to turn that ivory resource into Statue of Zeus and about 150 failgold over the next five turns, plus it will give us access to jumbos on demand. Hopefully well worth the investment.

Still more vast tracts of jungle to the west. We'll keep that in mind for the future, since that land would be amazing in the State Property workshop spam era.



There's nothing too exciting going on with our cities this turn, so I'll spend the rest of this report going over what we know of Apolyton as a team. Here's the contact point with their exploring chariot (C1/Shock) across the water from Eastern Dealers. We already had a trade connection with them before even meeting their team, and here's what that looks like:



It must be pretty intimidating when teams meet us and open that diplo screen for the first time. They have 9 cities to our 13, and the last two were planted very recently, just in the past few turns. They were sitting on 7 cities for a very long time. It's not just about cities though; the vast disparity in resources is immediately obvious from looking at this picture. We have 5 happiness resources to their 2, 9 health resources to their 5, and 26 total resources to their 11 total (without even counting the stone + spices we're trading away, which would make 28 resources). We all know that Civilization is a game of working tiles. More tiles worked + more resources worked with their high yields = more power. This huge disparity is exactly why we're so far ahead on the Demographics screens.

Apolyton appears to be researching at break-even pace (+1 gold/turn). I have no idea what tech they might be pursuing at the moment. They are in Slavery and Hereditary Rule civics like most other teams, but not Organized Religion (they haven't even researched Monotheism yet). This is understandable since they had no religion until lightbulbing Philosophy tech last turn. Speaking of research, Apolyton had to pick up Alphabet tech in order to clear the Great Scientist route to Philosophy. This means we can see their techs:



I will translate this screen to save all of you the need to get out your tech chart. Here's how we stack up:

Shared Techs (ignoring Ancient Age stuff): Currency, Mathematics, Monarchy
Apolyton: Meditation, Alphabet, Code of Laws, Philosophy
Realms Beyond: Monotheism, Aesthetics, Calendar, Construction, Iron Working

We had one mistake in our numbers, we had them down for Aesthetics instead of Currency. I went ahead and fixed this in the chart. (We also had them down for Archery instead of Priesthood, but that involves Power numbers, and so I'll leave that for kjn.) That's pretty darn accurate seeing as how we had absolutely no contact with Apolyton until this turn!

Overall, Apolyton is ahead about 450 beakers in terms of total research. However, that includes the Philosophy lightbulb that gave them 1440 beakers for free, so please do keep that in mind. Apolyton has a relatively small amount of population and territory, and they have focused heavily on research thus far. They produced the game's first Great Scientist for an early Academy in the capital, and then used the Philosophical trait for a second Scientist for that Philosophy lightbulb. It's not bad play by any means. However... our team is keeping pace on research (really going faster, in all honesty) while also expanding to a vastly bigger size. We turned our first Great Person into a Shrine which will scale ridiculously well on this map as the game continues. We're roughly 20 turns from producing our own Bureacademy capital, at which point in time any research lead that Apolyton had will evaporate and the size of our empire should take over. In other words, I don't see Apolyton as being a major lategame threat, not once their early game Academy power play wears off.



Here's a picture of our religious advisor showing off our investment into Organized Religion. We now have religion in every city other than Ditchdigger (and there's a missionary heading there shortly), providing the OR bonus everywhere and contributing shrine income for Mansa's Muse. It's at 12 gold/turn right now, with dozens of cities still to add religion and no market/grocer/bank/Wall Street income as yet. Because we got the shrine so early, it will end up providing thousands of gold over the course of the full game. Almost nothing scales better in this game than an early shrine with a widely spread religion on a Huge map.

Whoever would have thought that we would get more out of the obelisk than the war chariot when we picked Egypt for this game?

Overview / tile micro:

Nothing too crazy to report this turn from the micro. Focal Point builds Wealth to channel overflow from chopping into Shwedagon Paya next turn. (We hit the overflow cap on its worker build otherwise.) Gourmet Menu has to be careful not to produce too many shields this turn or it won't be able to double-whip the lighthouse next turn; this is why it isn't working the plains hill mine. We have just enough improved tiles to cover everything in the GM/ST area. (Check out the river running through our territory; we are working nearly every single tile that it touches, mostly for cottages. Just the three tiles due south of the capital missing where there's no city present, and some plains hills at Mansa.) Starfall got a forest chop to finish its work boat, and we finished the pasture on the cows at The Covenant, allowing Forbidden Fruit to take back the grassland spice for one turn. Triple whipped settler coming out of poor Eastern Dealers next turn.

We have more than enough overflow to research Meditation tech this turn at 0% science. We're actually quite lucky to meet Apolyton this turn, since they already have researched Meditation tech and Code of Laws, which we'll be going onto next. That's worth another 3% bonus beakers on each tech, putting us slightly ahead of where we were in the sandbox. This will be crazy silly next turn when we go 100% research on Code of Laws with 40% pre-requisite + 6% known civ (Apolyton + CivPlayers) bonuses. Just you wait and see, GNP of 400+ value.



With the recent whipping from other teams, we've opened up a vast gulf in the Food category... while also remaining #1 in GNP for the moment at 0% science. If I'm one of the other teams, these numbers would have me crapping my pants about now. Now add to that the fact that we're locked into peace with all neighbors for the next 35 turns, and we have a Golden Age upcoming in a dozen turns, along with several more wonders under construction, along with at least 150 failgold to further speed research... yeah, it's not pretty. For them.

Comments/suggestions welcome. Specifically, who do we want to put our EP on next: Apolyton or Spanish Apolyton? We just obtained graphs with UniversCiv, now is the time to decide who we want to put our EP on next.

[Sullla]

Turn 109 - 150BC

CFC comes begging for gold, not too much else going on.



We had two tiles of fog left uncovered in the far west. I considered whether to spend a turn revealing them, then did so, remembering how the two fogged tiles in the Apolyton game turned out to have horses and copper on them. Well, this wasn't quite as dramatic, but those two tiles did turn out to have rice and gems on them. Not bad. This could be a nice area for future expansion down the road, lots of resources and no team making much of a claim over here. At the same time, we don't want to overstrech too much either... Maybe come back here in 10-15 turns and see how things look?

Workers roaded the last tile needed to connect Ditchdigger to our trade network this turn. We'll have another 4 commerce in the form of trade routes arriving next turn (unless something happens that causes the game to recalculate trade routes during this turn). We now have ivory to play around with:



Two forest chops completed at Brick By Brick into a halfway done Statue of Zeus. The final forest along with overflow from a double-whip worker will finish the thing at eot 113. In the meantime, we're about to set ourselves up for some tasy failgold at other cities over the next few turns.

Keep in mind that we will still have to research Horseback Riding tech to be able to build elephants; we'll likely do this at some point during our Golden Age.



Here is the barb spearman in the southwest mentioned above. I moved our Heroic Epic axeman onto the cows tile, where he can hit the spear pretty much anywhere it moves next turn. And yes, the barb can't even move into our territory thanks to Great Wall, but we're still going to kill it anyway (99.7% odds) if it moves north or northeast next turn.

Gourmet Menu was double-whipped this turn to finish the lighthouse and overflow into Statue of Zeus failgold. I'll screenshot it next turn to demonstrate.



This is the core of our territory, without anything too terribly important going on this turn. Focal Point finally cashed in all of its overflow production into Shwedagon Paya, now that we have Meditation tech. It's sitting at 177/450 production and needs 9 more turns to finish at 38 production/turn. We're planning on letting that build naturally to completion without further hurrying, as there are no more forests to chop and we don't want to do more whipping at this low food location. Either we get the wonder on T118 with good timing for our planned Golden Age, or we're land more failgold to speed further research. [We should be pretty safe for Shwedagon Paya though; none of the other teams had Aesthetics tech as of 2t ago when we were researching it, and Apolyton doesn't have the tech either. CivFr is the only civ that could potentially have Aesthetics.]

The capital is finishing a war chariot next turn: where do we want it to go? There are basically two choices: send the war chariot over to guard Brick / Ditchdigger, or go explore the southern wastes. I'm open to either suggestion. The war chariot in Starfall still needs 3 more turns to finish healing.



This is the northeast frontier with our upcoming city location marked in white. Eastern Dealers triple whipped the settler this turn, and our workers have a road network in place to move it four tiles northwest next turn, then settle on T111. I'm crossing my fingers that the Germans aren't going to slip in another city here in the next turn. I checked their diplo screen and their team is making +18 gold/turn at the moment, presumably at 0% science, so I'm thinking they are probably not looking to expand further right now. Hope not anyway. There's a Hindu missionary intended for WPC just chilling south of The Covenant right now. If they don't ever respond to our offered religious spread, we'll use this missionary in the new upcoming city.

Incredibly, the Germans are building even more cottages over at Wasserburg that the city can't work. They have a floodplains cottage and now two grassland cottages for a city that can't get more than +3 food surplus. It's incredible. No wonder they're at the bottom of the scoreboard... The blue dot is sooooo's filler spot, which nicely completes our dotmapping of this part of the map. It's going to go up around roughly T116, haven't actually gotten that far ahead in the sandbox micro yet. Then it's just a matter of hacking down all that jungle and turning it into cottages/workshops.



There are two things going on in this screenshot. The first is the construction project going on in the CFC city of Tersavin: this is their wonder building city. Espionage tracking has the city at 224 production this turn, after forest chops finished last turn. CFC pretty much has to be building the Pyramids here; the only other eligible wonder is Temple of Artemis, and that would just be silly. Anyway, this is the spot where they are making their wonder play. We can follow along each turn with the espionage screen.

CivFanatics also asked us for a loan of 300 gold this turn, to be paid back in gold per turn starting ten turns from now. That's a terrible deal and we shouldn't take any part in it. I'll leave the discussion of that deal in the diplo thread, but I feel pretty strongly that we shouldn't help them at all and allow the Spanish to inflict the maximum damage possible. CFC's insane border city has caused me to lose any goodwill towards their team; the fact that they planted such an aggressive city after we specifically requested they choose a less invasive spot tells me that they don't really care about friendship in the long run.

The other item of note is the espionage point spending vis a vis Apolyton, which I highlighted on the left side. We spent 3 EP against them, and they spent 14 EP against them. Ummm... heh. Looks like Apolyton has five courthouses up and running already, which would explain why they did all those triple whips earlier and still only have eight cities. Foolish way to burn population in my opinion, especially with no forges or Organized Religion to ease the pain. Anyway, we cannot outspend them in EP, so I have swapped us over to spending our points against the Spanish (we sit at 0/0 with them). No point in beating our head against an EP wall again like with CivPlayers (who currently have spent 185 EP against us and are still climbing!)

Overview / tile micro:

We nearly finished Code of Laws this turn with the overflow from Meditation. I believe that we're getting 306 base beakers / 454 true beakers this turn, and the tech itself is only 630 beakers. The plan here is to run two turns of max research into Code of Laws, finish the tech and overflow into Civil Service, build gold for a few turns, and then finish Civil Service research at the end of turn 116. Then we build gold again for a few turns, pop Golden Age, revolt into Bureaucracy, and start burning through techs.



We were over 400 GNP before I whipped away 5 pop this turn. Ah well, perhaps this will be less intimidating. I don't see much point in trying to go through shenanigans to hide our incredible performance in this game. There's not much we can do to hide a lead in basically every single Demographics category while we also build wonder after wonder, and I'm not going to engage in the scumbaggery of last second turn timer research swaps or anything like that. We may as well play our best game and brace for the inevitable dogpile later on. But since we've already lined up so many NAPs for the next 50 turns, I think we're going to cross the tipping point and by the time the other teams attempt to do something, it will already be too late.

There's basically nothing more to do this turn. I'll leave the turn unended for at least today in case I missed anything.

[Sullla]

Turn 110 - 125BC

The Spanish continue to go on the warpath, WPC finally agrees to a missionary, and we keep building up peacefully.



Our scout finally made it back down to Spanish territory after getting stuck outside UniversCiv's borders for a long time. I'm going to start moving through their territory until they tell us not to do so. We've never signed any kind of non-scouting agreement with them, and the hope is that they either won't care or have bigger fish to fry in the form of their war against CFC.

We spotted a whole bunch of Spanish units trickling forward around KwaDukuza. I've highlighted the units inside the city (two impis and a catapult) and then drew in the rest of the units. This is pretty much a confirmation of what we already knew: the Spanish are using a swarm of low-tech units that will soon be outdated. They have zero chance to win this game, but in the short run they sure can ruin someone else's game. Fortunately they are ruining CFC's game and not ours. Go get 'em guys.

This does raise the question of why the Spanish didn't simply wait until these units were in place to declare war, instead of walking them up to the front line one at a time afterwards. Perhaps they sniped a worker or settler that CFC left exposed to kick things off? Anyway, there have been no unit trades since the first turn of the war. War weariness on both side is almost down to zero, amusingly enough. CFC spent all of their money last turn though, presumably upgrading units; they have 3 gold in the bank and a negative gold income right now. Let's continue to hope that the Spanish will force CFC to keep whipping, upgrading, and wasting their time.



There's even more good land over in the far west. We spotted three sugars buried under more jungle, and that's one resource that we don't have ourselves. This land is definitely going to have to be in our longterm future plans at some point. It's way too good to ignore. Why is CivPlayers not pushing for Iron Working and settling this awesome land (?)



The barb spearman in the south moved into the forest, allowing it to live for another turn. Our C2/Shock axe will kill it as soon as it moves onto flat ground. The fewer barb units wandering around in the southern wastes, the better.

Gourmet Menu turned its whip overflow into Statue of Zeus failgold this turn:



This 96 production will get converted into 96 gold at a 1:1 ratio when we complete Statue of Zeus in Brick By Brick in a few more turns. Making use of failgold when you have the doubling resource for a wonder (stone, marble, etc.) is a borderline exploit in this game. It's even worse with Industrious trait too. Well, we don't have that, but we're still getting an absurdly good conversion rate on this whip overflow, which will be turned into more teching later.



Here is the northwest frontier. After kjn's conversation with WPC, I moved our missionary up to their border where they'll be able to see it incoming. That guy was literally standing in place last turn while waiting for their team to make up their darned minds. I'll move the missionary N-NE next turn, revealing the center tile of their dyes city, and keep moving the unit towards their capital until WPC asks us to gift the unit. No reason not to explore their territory in the process unless we hear otherwise. "It's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" as they say.

There's also a German chariot very clearly in the middle of our territory scouting us out. I don't really care about that, but we did sign an agreement that neither side would enter each other's borders... at their insistence, by the way. Of course, there's no need to lodge a diplomatic complaint about this, we're simply going to send our own chariot to go explore their territory as well. And if that map information proves to be useful later when we go to war with the Germans, well, golly gee, who would have thought it!

The one irritating this is that their chariot will have full view of our settler in Eastern Dealers, who moves NW-NW-NW-NW this turn, and then settles next turn on the tile W-W-NW of The Covenant. I have left the settler unmoved so far, hoping that the Germans will move their chariot first, but if they play their typical "never end turn" clock games, we'll probably have to move the settler into their sight range. Oh well.

Overview / tile micro:

We had some nifty little things taking place this turn in tile micro. Four workers were in place to put down a river grassland cottage at Forbidden Fruit just as it grew to size 7, a tile that had to be cleared out from under the jungle. That was one place where planning ahead of time really made a difference, lining up those workers 3-4 turns in advance to get that tile roaded, cleared, and then cottaged just in time to line up with city growth. Mansa's Muse would normally be 1 food away from growing to size 9, so we drop one Scientist for this single turn (which does not affect the ETA for our Great Person there) and pick up an extra plains cottage. This results in exactly enough food to grow to the next size. Focal Point then picks up a new plains cottage finished last turn, trading a plains cottage for a plains cottage, and staying at exactly the same food/hammer numbers.

Scouting chariot deployment: I think we've got this figured out. The war chariot that finished in the capital is going to scout out German territory; it's up at Tree Huggers and will pass into their territory shortly. The Combat I war chariot in Starfall needs 2t remaining to heal, and will go down into the southern wastes as soon as that's done. Hopefully, this will finally reveal what's down there, after every previous unit in that area met a terrible death. That C1 chariot will get odds on every possible barb unit other than a spear - pray for no more bad luck. The chariot completing in Eastern Dealers will go off into CFC territory to reveal their new cities where we don't have map info and then watch the fireworks in the CFC/Spanish war. We'll need to name it something like "neutral observer" or "UN peacekeepers" or something like that. There's even another war chariot coming out of The Covenant down the road who will probably stay in that area for garrison duty and to handle any emergencies that crop up.

We nearly finished Code of Laws last turn, and we now sit at 597/630 beakers researched. We'll add 317 base / 471 modified beakers to that this turn, and overflow a large number into Civil Service next turn. This gets reflected in the Demographics:



We almost but not quite hit 400 on the GNP meter. Ah well. We do have the impressive trifecta of first in Food, Production, and GNP at the same time. Other teams have been building a fair amount of military, and we've now dropped to fourth in Power rating. We're behind the Germans and probably CFC and the Spanish. We can add more military extremely easily if we would need to do so; we're kind of coasting at present because we have deals with all neighbors and there's little point in building units that will be outdated by the time we go to war.

We grow another 5 population next turn and plant our 14th city along with discovering Code of Laws. That will be a lot of score points... CFC is up to 397 production now in their Pyramids city. Expect to see them finish the wonder in the next few turns. The Spanish are not spending espionage point against us, and we should have graphs on them in about eight more turns. I doubt that we'll be seeing the graphs of CivPlayers or Apolyton any time soon, with their huge number of courthouses, but we should be able to keep graphs on everyone else.

Turn is basically done now. Fire away with your questions and thoughts.

[Sullla]

Turn 111 - 100BC

CivPlayers unexpectedly builds Apostolic Palace while we keep on building upwards.



We were able to get a lot of scouting information this turn. First our scout in Spanish territory continued to get a view on the endless trickle of their units towards the CFC front. They have tons of axes, impis, and catapults moving towards the west, all of them with at least two promotions. There are even more than shown in this picture; there were more units on the forested hill southwest of KwaDuzuka. I'm still not sure why the units aren't grouped together. This is actually a pretty nasty force, mostly because of the double promos on every unit. CFC is going to have to invest a lot in their own army to beat this off.

Then I moved another tile and spotted their capital:



Ulundi has granary, library, and ikhanda for infrastructure. Like the other teams we've seen, they started near a lot of floodplains tiles, although they farmed most of them for some reason. Note how close the Zulu capital is to the CFC city of Lana. Their borders must be touching by now. I suspect that's where much of this conflict is taking place. I'm going to have the scout mosey on down there and see what's going on, then continue moving further east (and hopefully finding CivFr) after that.



We may have finally found a route to the west around this huge body of water. It looks like the land continues down to the southwest around it. Our Woodsman II axeman will keep exploring.

CivPlayers borders are just peeking out from the bottom of that picture. Their core territory looks to be further south than I initially expected; their border cities with us appear to be on the northeast frontier of their territory. CivPlayers surprisingly completed the Apostolic Palace this turn, only a few turns after researching Theology. I guess they had that lined up with forest chops and everything (no one has produced a Great Engineer yet in this game). The Apostolic religion is Buddhism, FYI.

Looks like they are going to try and run a monk economy, so expect CivPlayers to target Spiral Minaret and Sankore as well. I would be more concerned about that if 1) CivPlayers happened to be Spiritual (they are Fin/Org Darius) and 2) if they had more than their current 7 cities. On a map this big, a religious monk economy wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea. However, they don't have a shrine, and that lack of Spiritual trait makes it a much weaker strategy. I'm mostly glad that CFC didn't build Apostolic Palace, as they have temples everywhere and were a logical candidate to go for monk economy with their Spiritual trait.



Heroic axeman Lew attacked and killed the barb spearman wandering around our borders without taking a scratch. Oh, now we get the good barb dice roll! It feels weird to move a worker right next to the barb warrior in the area, naturally we are protected though via Great Wall. I'll kill the warrior next turn as well if it moves into axe range. No reason to let these things continue to wander around if we can take a free kill.

CivPlayers have their own exploring warrior down in the deep south. Cross your fingers that he comes into contact with a friendly barb axe. We're actually close to a border expansion in Seven Tribes which will provide excellent visibility, Hanging Gardens supplying the culture for the third-ring pop.



We temporarily have control of the desert hill tile by the idiot CFC city, although we will lose that shortly when the city pops its borders. Workers are 3t away from connecting the stone resource to make up for the one that we traded. Starfall double whipped a much-needed worker to help with that, overflow going into and nearly completing a lighthouse. From this point on, we're not going to whip either Starfall or Eastern Dealers, just let both of them growing as fast as possible for use in poping out Great Scientists during our upcoming Golden Age. Both are getting lighthouses before libraries for this purpose, allowing them to work lots of 2 food water tiles and grow at something like +10 food/turn. During and after the Golden Age, we'll be able to dump massive amounts of culture into these cities and make the life of that CFC city miserable.

The German team double-moved their chariot in our territory, moving at the end of last turn and again at the beginning of this turn. I had a devil of a time finding where it had gone, since it moved the full 8 tiles on our road network. Well, it started next to The Covenant and is now just east of our capital. Double moves for the win! Naturally, we're going to screw with them right back:



Our chariot is at the border of Wasserburg and will start moving through their land next turn. Poor Wasserburg is getting a FOURTH grassland cottage that it can't possibly have the food to work for the next dozen turns. Nice. They finished the terrace with a forest chop, which means we'll eventually lose control over the first-ring tiles there. Everything else will be ours permanently. Open question: when do you think the Germans will research Iron Working, so that they can finally use that 6 food pig tile?

Tree Huggers wants to build a missionary next, but can't because we have two missionaries on the field and a third one in production at The Covenant. What to do this turn? Solution: build Statue of Zeus for failgold, naturally. We get 5 gold if we build Weath this turn... and 18 gold if we build Statue of Zeus. Balanced? That's not totally fair, since we do make use of 3 production overflow with SoZ that we don't with Wealth, but you get the point. Might as well abuse this mechanic wholesale.

We also settled Simple Life as our 14th city in a place where it can share the cows and dry rice (once we chop down the jungle; workers will get there soon). The Covenant didn't have enough improved tiles to work after giving the cows to Simple Life, so we set up the city last turn to whip a missionary. That went through this turn, double whip from size 5 -> size 3, and now we're working all improved tiles again. The missionary will spread our religion in Simple Life next turn, in time for the incoming forest chop to provide the Organized Religion bonus for the granary. The Covenant then overflows into more Statue of Zeus failgold; we've been passing the wonder build around like a bong these last few turns. If all goes according to plan, we'll net just short of 200 gold from that wonder.

Finally, we also sent the Hindu missionary into WPC territory this turn:



Fields of Color has a totem pole and nothing else thus far. It's honestly rather disgusting just how much land we've stolen away from what should rightly be WPC territory. That peak tile is only 4 tiles from their capital; the smoke from that grassland hill mine is a tile worked by the capital itself. I plan to keep moving the missionary to their capital and spread religion that way manually, giving us vision on as much WPC territory as possible. If they ask us to gift the missionary, then we'll do it, but until they say something.... We can always tell them that we were confused. "Oh, I thought you wanted us to move the missionary to your capital! We had no idea you wanted us to gift the unit!" Hey, they didn't tell us to gift it in their messages. Not yet, anyway.

Overview / tile micro:

There isn't anything too clever in the tile micro this turn, beyond more Statue of Zeus abuse. Tree Huggers has the option of working a bare 2/0/1 grassland tile or a Scientist; the latter seems like clearly the better option to me, since we can maintain growth to size 8 the same date either way. Why is the capital starving? Because of the magical teleporting barb axe that killed a worker, that's why. We had to sacrifice something as a result, and I chose to slow down the construction of plains cottages at the capital. So instead of growing onto the non-river plains tiles with new cottages, the capital runs some Scientists for a turn or two. We'll take back the corn tile and stop starving next turn, it's just that Horse Feathers needs it this turn to grow at +9 food to size 9. Four more cities are growing next turn, even though we're working a lot of mines at present. We just have a lot of population, period.

Research completed Code of Laws and overflowed about 350 beakers into Civil Service. Plan is to run two turns of 0% science, then three turns of 100% research should finish the tech (with failgold help) at eot 116. Then we run more gold for a few turns, pop our Golden Age on roughly T120, and burn through that accumulated gold with our Bureaucracy capital at 100% research.



Demos look good as usual. Our 0% tech rate being #2 in GNP is an extremely good sign, especially since all our competitors have Academy capitals and we don't (yet). I'm also pretty sure that rival best in GNP/Food/Production are not all the same team. We did not recieve any trade route income from opening borders with Apolyton, as none of their cities must be large enough for the 3 commerce route. That said, it was still a good idea - we want to have some surplus routes in case another team cuts us off and closes borders. We're getting 14 cities x 2 commerce x 2 trade routes = 56 commerce per turn from trade income (actually 57 commerce with the single 3 commerce link to CFC's capital). That's a lot of cash, well worth the income we send back to other teams in return. Most of them don't have the cities and/or Currency tech to make full use of our routes anyway.

CFC definitely whipped a worker in the Pyramids city; we can't see the Production number inside this turn. Expect to see them finish the wonder with the overflow next turn. No changes on the espionage front, no more unit exchanges so far this turn between CFC and Spanish. We're basically done the turn, let me know if I've missed anything.

[Sullla]

Turn 112 - 75BC

Our religion keeps on spreading across the map...



Our scout found two Zulu cities this turn, both of them with names I won't even try to spell here. We now have vision on 4 of their 5 cities; no idea where the last one is located, probably near the capital though. The northern city by the gold has granary, monument, ikhanda, and library, while the southern city has all the same stuff except no library. The Spanish cities are all pretty well developed from what I've seen. Unfortunately, they only have 5 cities. Total. And none of them appear to be over size 5. They are probably the "Rival Worst" in GNP at a grand total of 16.

I'm going to move into the southern city next turn with the south, since it's on a hill and will reveal a lot of tiles, then try to head east from there.



War chariot mostly_harmless uncovered the city of Astan this turn en route to the CFC/Spanish battlefield. It has a granary and religion inside, nothing else. It's also empty, just like the idiot border city next to us. CFC sure seems pretty trusting, not even a token unit for defense near us. I'm going to move the chariot to the forested plains hill next turn, and then sweep down from there to the presumed battlefield.

CFC finished the Pyramids this turn, as we expected them to do so. They will probably revolt into Representation on their half of the wartime turnset.



I'm sorry kjn, but I didn't agree with the suggestion to have our Woodsman axeman kill the nearby barb warrior. Yes, we would almost certainly win at 99% odds, but we'd also only get 1 XP from the battle (5 XP -> 6 XP), and then we'd have to sit and heal for a number of turns. I'd rather keep on exploring further west. It's not like this area is near our own borders, and we need to clear out a path for future scouting units.

On the other side of this picture, Brick Brick Brick whipped a worker this turn. The whip overflow and a forest chop will finish Statue of Zeus next turn. Ditchdigger will finish a farm on the one clear grassland river tile next turn as well. There's also a missionary inside Ditchdigger ready to spread religion too.



Here's some interesting news in the southwest. I killed the barb warrior on the forest with axeman Lew, taking one hit in the process, with the goal of clearing the area out for any future scouting we do near our borders. Apparently we had never moved a unit onto this forest before, because it revealed furs to the southeast and another barb spear. Furs are really nice to have, worth +1 happy immediately and then another +1 happy with a marketplace. We'll have 3 different marketplace resources (ivory, furs, silks), making them even more attractive as a city build.

I'm hesitant to do any dotmapping just yet since we (finally) have our Combat I war chariot moving out to scout, visible on the right side of that picture. A few more turns of poking around and we should have a good idea of what's actually down there. We might also want to move Lew straight south as well, once he finishes healing back to full. Depends on how confident we are in that NAP that we signed with CivPlayers.



We received a free religious spread into Simple Life at the start of the turn, the same turn that this missionary was going to spread religion into the city. This effectively creates an extra missionary for our team, which I'm assuming we want to send to WPC as part of that email exchange we just had. The first missionary revealed their capital this turn, which has granary, barracks, and totem pole but no library (?!) for some reason.

Here is the question for you readers: we're currently capped at 3 missionaries. One in Ditchdigger ready to spread religion next turn, one in The Covenant, one in WPC territory. We'd like to start another missionary in Tree Huggers this turn for our upcoming 15th city down the road. And we can do this, but only if we gift the current missionary to WPC. Alternately, we can build Wealth for one turn and move the WPC missionary into their capital next turn, getting the extra map info before spreading the faith. What do you value higher, the map info or starting our next missionary a turn sooner? I don't have strong feelings either way right now. Let me know.



Mansa's Muse continues to plug along towards our upcoming Great Person / Golden Age. Interesting note: our shrine is currently giving us 16 gold/turn from religion. We only have 13 Hindu cities right now, and we can't see any more on the map. There must be 3 other cities somewhere out there with our religion! I bet WPC has one or two of them, which would explain why they were willing to ask for more of our missionaries. Still pretty cool regardless of where they are. This is going to be an awesome city as we keep spreading religion and building the gold multipliers (market, grocer, bank, Wall Street).

Overview / tile micro:

Not too much crazy going on here, I explained above about the Wealth/missionary situation at Tree Huggers. The Covenant is turning its whip overflow into 56 failgold on Statue of Zeus. The capital will be able to fire its Scientist specialist in two more turns when the plains cottage completes. Starfall and Eastern Dealers will finish their lighthouses shortly and start growing like weeds. Everything is currently on schedule.

We're accumulating gold right now in preparation for a run to Civil Service, planned finishing date eot 116.



Demos after I whipped Brick By Brick's worker. They look about the same as usual, very good all around.

UniversCiv gained a lot of espionage points between turns, confirming that they whipped a whole bunch of rathuses as expected during their last whipping spree. I have our points on them for the moment to maintain graphs. It might be a good idea to ask UniversCiv for an espionage point spending agreement, since they can outspend us easily if they want. Kjn will have to figure out the rest from the advanced data.

I'll be looking to update the sandbox and push it forward another half dozen turns when I get a chance over the next few days. We have a very health turn pace going on right now.

[Sullla]

Turn 113 - 50BC

This is the second half of the turn. The scouting pictures were up earlier in this thread. These are all pictures related to our own civ.



In the west, the last forest chop and worker whip overflow will finish Statue of Zeus in Brick By Brick. We're sitting at 305/300 production inside the city. Given that none of the 7 civs we've met even had Aesthetics tech as of five turns ago, and none of the civs we know have ivory, I think we are in pretty good shape for this one. Wonder failgold should start coming in over the next few turns, roughly 170 in total.

Ditchdigger finally picked up its first improved tile: a grassland farm. Hey, we've all got to start somewhere.



We didn't really find anything in the south, but at least our war chariot didn't walk into a barb spear either. The body of water to the east between us and CFC is looking larger and larger. Over at Seven Tribes, there's a barb warrior and spear still hanging around. Lew is spending this turn healing back to full, and then will probably try to kill one of them next turn.

Seven Tribes will expand borders (thanks to Hanging Gardens) in two more turns, and that extra vision will be really nice.



Not too much going on here in the north. The biggest news from this turn was a forest chop finishing the granary in Simple Life. It's nice to be Expansive. Elsewhere, a forest chop is going to finish the lighthouse in Eastern Dealers next turn. Workers are continuing to hack out cottages from the jungle all along the river valley.



Apolyton revolted to Bureaucracy and Organized Religion when they played their turn. The teams with any kind of research power are all in Hereditary Rule; the teams with a religion are all in Organized Religion. Germans, WPC, and Spanish are all still in the default civics.

For whatever reason, CFC still hasn't changed out of Hereditary Rule yet despite being Spiritual and building the Pyramids. I don't get it... why did they want the wonder so badly then (?)

Overview / tile micro:

I don't have a whole lot of thoughts to add here. We turn on research next turn and finish Civil Service eot 116. Apolyton's pickup of the tech was excellent timing for us.



Here are the Demos after I whipped Horse Feathers; the overflow finishes Moai Statues next turn when we reconnect our second stone. Apolyton is of course the team in Anarchy with the GNP value of 1. We'll be able to get a better sense of their research power next turn after their swap. They'll have more beakers/turn than us until we pop our Golden Age and get into Bureaucracy ourselves.

I've ended turn; I think we're done for this turn.

[Sullla]

Turn 114 - 25BC

We built Statue of Zeus successfully! Now the failgold train begins to roll in...



Here's a picture in the far west, where our Woodsman II axe fortunately found a barb warrior and not a barb axe. While this might look pretty mundane, check out the culture layer:



Aha! We've found the location of CivFr, very close to CivPlayers and probably their most likely target other than us. Poor CivPlayers got squeezed in between the top teams in the game. Bad luck for them. Our scouting axe will make contact next turn by moving southwest (we'll be able to see the border across the water). We just need to survive a battle against a barb warrior, which feels pretty safe. I will check the GNP with all of our visible techs before and after making contact, as a way to see what techs CivFr possesses.

Kjn, I saw the border of the CFC city in the far south last turn, and I turned the scout in the other direction anyway. We'll get vision on that city with our war chariot moving through CFC territory in a few more turns. The scout in Spanish territory will serve us better by continuing to push east, rather than moving back to the west. We have absolutely no idea what's over there, and I want to keep moving into the unknown.



Here is more of the German core, with two more cities now visible. We've spotted five of their ten cities so far. Weil der Stadt is their newest city, size 1 with no infrastructure yet (axeman defending it). Wien is their fifth city if I remember correctly; like every other German city, it has a terrace and barracks. Check out the name of their axeman too: definitely a team of German speakers! This appears to be the western border of German territory, so we'll keep heading to the east and unveiling as much as possible.



Our war chariot did not find anything of note in the south. At least there are some grassland tiles, everything else looks to be slim pickings. Heroic axeman Lew killed the barb spear as highlighted above, although he fell into the yellow range in the process. He can actually stay on the current forest tile to heal, because Seven Tribes expands borders next turn. (This is why I wanted to kill the barb spear this turn; it would have teleported to god knows where between turns. Best to eliminate it immediately.)

Note that Gourmet Menu has finished its library and been set to Great Lighthouse. I discussed this in the micro thread; the basic idea was that we might as well try for Great Lighthouse instead of building a market (200 shields against 150 shields). The wonder is worth 2 commerce x 2 trade routes x 5 coastal cities = 20 commerce/turn and possibly more with additional cities. Seems like it's worth a shot, why not. We finish it T127 in my sandbox, right at the end of the Golden Age. Speak now if you want a different build here.



This is the north of our territory. A couple things going on here... Tree Huggers has run itself out of improved tiles again, and will be triple-whipping a settler next turn as a result. It has to work the bare plains tile of shame for one turn until that happens. Settler is going to the spot next to the rice marked above, which ensures that we don't waste any tiles in the north. We only need one more city along our northern border, to be placed two tiles west of that western rice. We need Civil Service to chain irrigation over there first, however, so it needs to wait just a little longer.

Simple Life has 17 overflow from its chopped granary; I have put that into library for lack of anything else useful. Feel free to offer alternate suggestions, that just feels like the best choice out of the available ones. Eastern Dealers picked up a forest chop to finish its lighthouse, which will allow it to grow up to size 8 over the next five turns. (Without the lighthouse, we have nowhere near enough 2-food tiles to work.) Forbidden Fruit is hitting the cap on improved tiles again, which means that we swap to worker this turn, double-whip it next turn, and then overflow/complete library. Even with 21 workers we have tons of tiles to improve.



Workers reconnected stone this turn at Starfall, and Horse Feathers timed a forest chop and worker whip overflow on the same turn to insta-finish Moai Statues. Now we grow up to the happy cap, work all of those 2/1/3 water tiles, and use the Golden Age to build Heroic Epic. The micro here not only finishes Moai with the overflow, it also lines up the city for perfect growth to size 8 (we need 18 total food and the city gets +9 food each of the next two turns). Planning and sandboxing is fun.

Overview / tile micro:

Adventure One got a non-river plains cottage and began working it this turn. It will add another one in 2t and can finally fire that Scientist specialist. Mansa (5t Great Person) and Focal Point (4t Shwedagon Paya) are still running their same setup in preparation for our Golden Age. Starfall and Eastern Dealers both finish their lighthouses in preparation for some sick growth. Other cities are just doing their typical thing, growing upwards and working cottages.

We've begun researching Civil Service and will pick it up in 3t.



This is a rare turn where I didn't whip something, but don't worry, we'll be whipping 5 pop next turn. Demos look about the same as usual. I believe that Apolyton is the #2 value in GNP, and they are not running max science right now; they appear to be running break-even from their trade screen. That means that their research power is almost certainly higher than ours, although it's hard to tell because we have such massive costs weighing down our GNP value. Well, we'll be in Bureaucracy soon enough (6t) and have our own Academy a little after that.

Questions / comments welcome as always.

[Sullla]

Turn 115 - 1 AD

We made it to the AD years just as we hit the 3000th post in this thread. There's a lot going on this turn, so here's the accompanying picture dump.



This was the message from WPC that greeted me on logging into the game. These guys have some real balls to them; they not only dictated exactly where we should move our missionary, but they also insisted that we send them a third missionary, and then proposed the laughably unequal sheep for gems deal. Uh, thanks but no thanks, chief. I'd think that a team in their position wouldn't be quite so pushy, but what do I know. I've never found myself that far behind in one of these games.

Here's what I sent back to them:



I did move the missionary as requested, after decoding that horrible number pad system of directions that they used. We don't have any current plans for an extra missionary right now; we can discuss that later as a team. And I don't think I was going out on a limb by sending back a polite "no" on that sheep for gems trade. Maybe we can trade for their dyes, which would be about a thousand times more useful than extra health. Then again, they are a long ways away from Calendar tech.... Hope I wasn't stepping on any toes here by replying to their message.

The missionary in their territory didn't find anything of note. I'll post a picture if we spot their city next turn. More importantly, we found CivFr and made contact:



And apparently we've had a trade connection to them for some time now through various other teams. Here's what that looks like:



Here you go, folks. This is our biggest competition for the game, and it should be immediately obvious why. CFC is the only other team with anywhere near this number of resources connected. We have an edge overall:

Strategic: RB = 4*, CivFr = 2
Food: RB = 18, CivFr = 9
Luxuries: RB = 9*, CivFr = 4
* Counting the spices/stone we are trading away

So yeah, we are definitely ahead there, no question about it, but CivFr still has more resources connected than just about any other team. Note the confirmation of marble that we long suspected. That's almost certainly why we lost Mausoleum. Note as well that CivFr also has their own gems (so they almost certainly have Iron Working), and the presence of Calendar resources means they have that tech too, because duh, Mausoleum and all that.

Also with regards to CivFr, GNP tracking revealed that they already have Literature tech researched (and therefore Aesthetics as well). This is very useful information for us: with Literature tech and marble, that's a guaranteed Great Library wonder for CivFr in their capital. No point in even challenging this. They also have the inside track on the free Great Artist at Music tech, which I doubt we can beat them too if they really want it. You do not want to be giving free Great People away to the Mausoleum team. See why CivFr is so clearly the top competition?

Now for the good news. Despite all of that, CivFr is far from invincible. They have half the food resources that we do, and they are not the #2 team in Food (which is CFC according to our numbers tracking). They have 10 cities and we are about to plant our 15th. They do not have a religion, while we have a self-founded religion plus a shrine with almost 20 following cities. Their second trait is Creative, which scales poorly into the later stages of the game. (Expansive isn't great either, but the bonus health can be very useful in the Industrial era.) So yes, we are unquestionably ahead, but don't get cocky. This is a very good team with strong players.

Diplo team should send over a message and try to get Open Borders for their yummy 3 commerce trade routes with their capital + second city.

Oh, and other stuff also happened this turn too.



More scouting of der Germans revealed a sixth city, which appears to be their version of Mansa's Muse. Webringen is their capital, Worms under the interface was their second city, and this one Wittenberge was their third. It has the usual barracks + terrace but actually also has a library, the only one we've seen in German territory so far. There also appears to be a sizable body of water to the north of the Germans. Perhaps an arctic ocean along the Toroidal worldwrap? We shall see.



Over in CFC territory, we've found their 12th and most recent city Hansa. I think this is a pretty smart city placement, able to share the grassland cows and work the floodplains tiles. It's also very close to the Spanish border, located on a hill and with city walls as the only infastructure. Yeah, no granary or religion as yet, just walls. Our chariot will move further southeast and see if it can find any evidence of fighting. No clue if the Spanish tried to go after Hansa and were turned back. They are still at war for now.



In the south we have naturally found yet another barb axe next to our war chariot. Sigh. We've got Combat I promotion this time, and that means about 2/3 odds to win this battle... but I still expect that we'll likely lose this one too. If we survive, we'll be able to finish up scouting out the south. The land appears to end down there in the ice. Sure would be nice to know one way or the other though.

Now for some city pictures:



We did finish Moai Statues in Horse Feathers. Here's the obligatory picture of what that looks like. This city is going to work the corn for the next few turns to grow rapidly up to size 10, then work all of the coastal tiles during the Golden Age to knock out Heroic Epic quickly. We'll eventually take back the iron and grassland hill tiles and have a city that can build 1t catapults or 2t cuirassiers. Which we will do. A lot.



Meanwhile, Starfall and Eastern Dealers are at the other end of the spectrum, cities with massive food surpluses assigned to future Globe Theatre / National Epic duties. Starfall has 5t to grow at +12 food/turn in preparation for popping out a Great Scientist during our upcoming Golden Age. I have workers assigned to chop down all three of those forests to the west into a library, for the dual purpose of giving us the +25% bonus research while running 6 Scientist specialists, and for adding the extra culture to push back against CFC's city. Later on, we can go crazy abusing this city with the whip since it will be getting Globe Theatre eventually. Oh, I have all kinds of evil whip abuse planned for this location later on...

Overview / tile micro:

We whipped five pop this turn, a settler in Tree Huggers and a worker in Forbidden Fruit. (Don't feel too bad about losing five pop, since we grow six pop back next turn!) The settler goes to the filler spot in the northeast next to the rice. I do have a quick question about the Forbidden Fruit overflow: the original plan was to overflow into and finish the city's library, but we can easily overflow into a missionary instead. Should we send a third and final missionary to WPC just to get them off our backs diplomatically? Let me know. It's very easy to do either one.

Three turns to Shwedagon Paya, four turns to Great Person in Mansa. Even though CivFr does have Aesthetics tech and could be in the running for Paya, their total lack of any kind of religion, and their recent building of Temple of Artemis + impending Great Library play, suggests to me that they are probably not pursuing the wonder. I'm cautiously optimistic at this point that we'll land the wonder.

We are about 150 beakers short of finishing Civil Service at end of turn, and will overflow a lot of research into Literature afterwards. We picked up over 100 failgold between turns, which is why we're still over 500 total gold despite running 100% science last turn. I hope the other teams are scratching their heads about that one.



Demos after our whips. We've crept up to 3rd in Power now, but someone has leaped up enormously in GNP. My best guess is Apolyton with their Bureacademy capital. It could also be CivFr though, which is currently running an unsustainable 100% research with like 20g in the bank. As I said before, we're likely going to be slightly behind in research until we trigger our own Golden Age and revolt to Bureaucracy in 5 turns.

Our edge in Land Area remains stunning. This has been a fabulously succesful landgrab. Stonehenge for the win indeed.

We should get on the diplo phones and see what we can work out with CivFr. Now we finally have contact with everyone.