[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'll play the turn in a few minutes.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T47 - Fishing is in, set research to 0% for this turn (back to 100% T48 or 49, no difference because of T48 revolt to slavery).




Mr. Love is going to 1T build a work boat (12 base + 20 overflow from the forest chop last turn). Work boat nets a crab next turn, T48. On T48 we'll revolt to slavery. Workers will move onto the roaded grass forest hill 1S of Mister Love, will both chop on T48, Sam-I-Am will finish chop T49 (goes into a WB to net the other crab). Sam-I-Be will move 1SE (so S/SE of the capital) on T49. T50/51 worker B builds a road on the tile S/SE of the capital. T50 worker A moves to 1E of the capital, T51/52/53 he chops. Make sure that chop goes into a settler in Mister Love (check tile assignment to make sure it's assigned to Mr. Love). We want to 3 pop whip the settler and overflow to a granary (hopefully) when Pottery is in, so make sure that the chop that goes into the settler plus the city's natural production for the turn the chop goes in does not put us past 39 hammers total invested into the settler. At 40 hammers it's a 2 pop whip with no overflow, 39 hammers it's a 3 pop whip with 29 overflow. Boldly, if you read this, make sure I got that right. If we have to swap builds to something else to make the settler hammers line up correctly we can probably dump some hammers into yet another work boat to send out scouting.

A note on work boats -- there are three in the queue at Mister Love right now. Two for netting clams and the third one will scout the coast line to the west, on our land mass. I don't see a reason to jump across to the islands yet, we can do that later.

A chariot (named Brick Hur) and a warrior (Xenu) are being sent out to explore and hopefully not die. Their mission is to find our third city site and it needs to be done soon since the 3 pop whipped settler isn't that far away. A tentative travel plan is marked with signs on the map, but wide latitude should be given to avoiding bears and nasty things that can kill our units if possible. We're hoping to find copper but not expecting to, but we need a city site identified ASAP to help plan the worker movements toward that location. Obviously survival is more important that scouting so if anything appears out of the fog close to Happy Face, Xenu should turn around to help defend the city since the current garrison is a mostly dead chariot.

This should be more than enough planning for this weekend -- I'm only going to be gone Friday night through Sunday night. I don't really want to miss playing that many turns so I'm only trying to keep the pace for one turn per day over the weekend, with apolgies to the other teams.

All this (boring) planning discussion detracts from the main news of the turn. Wetbandit took a city from Azza according to Civstats. It seems like a size 1 city, so maybe it's Azza's second city and not his capital -- if it is somehow his capital he's probably finished. He's probably in really bad shape right now though, losing a city this early. I'm going to guess it was at minimal cost to Wetbandit to take the city or he probably wouldn't have tried to do it this early on. And if that's the case Azza either was not defending correctly or had really awful luck on strategic resources (no copper or horses) and didn't have time to tech Archery as a plan Z. On the one hand I hope Azza had bad luck here and didn't make a terrible game play mistake. On the other hand, Azza has already had enough bad luck in his other games and probably doesn't deserve more abuse from the Civ gods.

Demographics - our power rating has recovered with building two warriors and two chariots, plus researching BW.




No one is really killing it with military right now, except whoever has built (apparently) one more chariot + pop than we have. Or an axe, or something. Anyway the leader isn't a big scary boogeyman. I wish we weren't building so much military, I think two chariots is enough for now, but Byzantium's starting techs are terrible and chasing down BW first after having to go Hunting / AH means our opening is commerce poor and we don't have anything much better we can build right now while still growing. So chariots and work boats, go forth ye mighty buggy and dinghy and explore.

I'm still not sure at this point who is going to cover the turns for us over the weekend. Boldly and I will be decidedly unavailable (I'm bringing my laptop in case there is Internet access but somehow I doubt it where we're going), Brick looks like he isn't going to be available either. Any lurkers feel comfortable enough with the plans laid out above to move workers, explore, and press enter about twice this weekend? I'll be available for questions tomorrow morning through about noon US Eastern time if anyone wants to sub and has questions about the poorly documented plan listed above.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh, tech is set to Pottery for now. I really want granaries soon and unless we build our next city down by that dry rice we still won't need Agriculture yet so we could push it back a bit. I hope the chariot finds something good near the western cow, like maybe corn? Then I'd switch to Agriculture in a heartbeat. But our commerce is awful so we need cottages soon (if we can get one of these two cities to work them. Probably it would be Happy Face as it grows taller over the next several turns and runs out of special tiles to grab).

Anyway, our tech path doesn't matter this turn or next turn since we won't contribute any beakers until T49 after the revolt. We probably won't know anything useful by then unless we risk the western chariot by moving (from the marked T48 forest) S/(SW/S/SE) -- speaking of, which tile do we want to explore? S/SW gets the most vision but none of it is very close to the rice tile. But the warrior will clear out around the rice tile in a few turns anyway...just not by the time we turn on research. So I say we move the chariot S/SE on T49 unless we can obviously see that would put is in danger because of a barb or something. That will help our vision around the rice tile which is presumably our next target unless we can find something better somewhere else close very soon. Best possible outcome is that we find another tile we'd need to farm down there and we just switch to Agriculture by T49 when the beakers start flowing again.

But if we don't find a farmable resource by then I think we can stick with Pottery because we need those granaries in our two existing cities. Mister Love will likely be whipped fairly frequently so a granary is a must, and Happy Face can use help growing toward the cap and whipping settlers/workers, so I think granaries are an immediate need. Cottages too, since we have probably the third worst economy right now -- just subtract the culture from our GNP and it's awful. Slowzantium. Oh, and no rivers...MAPMAKER!!!!!!!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Did you put a request in the tech thread? More likely to be seen there.

Also, if whips are 30 on normal (right?), and settlers are 100 (right?), then we need 100 - (60+1) = 3 pop...Careful, BGN doing math is decidedly

[spacetyrantxenu]

I just posted in the tech thread a minute ago. And your math matches mine so it seems right enough. If we're wrong we'll be punished in the lurker thread for being idiots. That's why we have lurker threads.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T48 - Revolted to slavery, research is set to 100% onto Pottery for next turn until we find a reason to change to Agriculture instead. No beakers committed yet so we still have time to change our mind if we need to.




Netted the clams for +2 food at Mister Love. No production or growth this turn due to revolt but the workers are still chopping. Next turn one finishes the chop into the work boat, so on T50 we'll have all of our food resources hooked up just in time for the State of the Game report, so our food demographics won't look too bad.

Lots of signs on the map if someone can cover for us....!

With Pottery selected our GNP was listed as 3rd, which is still hogwash. Our economy is slooooow.




Nothing interesting in the event log, Azza hasn't lost another city but being down to just his capital, I think, he's still way behind now. I hope he doesn't collapse completely or give up, though, and really imbalance the game in his part of the world. I don't think we're doing badly over here, other than being gimped by Slowzantium's start and not having any kind of economy other than (mostly) palace cash, but we'll hit our growth phase and as long as we don't screw it up too badly we should be OK for a little while until things inevitably get nasty. And hopefully by then we'll be the ones breaking things and can enjoy it.

So...again...is anyone going to cover Saturday/Sunday for us? If not maybe someone will pause for us.....

[Cornflakes]

I am completely spoiled, but I can cover the turns.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Cool, thanks Cornflakes. I'll PM you the password. Do you have any questions? We're not trying to keep up the torrid turn pace over this weekend, I'm OK with slowing it down to one turn per day if need be, since we didn't really write out a full micro plan for someone to pop in and use. I don't want to cause any conflicts by having a spoiled lurker play any more turns than necessary. But I think I've left enough direction to get us through the weekend if only two/three turns go through. Just don't get in a hurry to play the first turn, I guess.

[Cornflakes]

Will you get another turn (or 3) in before heading out? Civstats shows only 2 more to play this one. Just let me know when to take over.

What's the plan for Chariot scouting?

So I say we move the chariot S/SE on T49 unless we can obviously see that would put is in danger because of a barb or something.

... and after this? Circle west along the edge of the fog (away from your warrior)?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Well I'm hoping to slow the pace and not ask you to steer us to the (hopefully) nearby triple gold, quadruple flood plain site waiting to be discovered in the fog. But the hope is to scout the area around the rice and around the western cow, those are the most likely spots for the third city, especially if a useful resource is hiding in the fog near those food sources.

If it turns out that the (dry ) rice is the best food spot available our settler will head there once we whip it coming up. The warrior should be guarding that area by then, if it is the best settlement spot, to fog bust barbs and to protect the workers/settler as they pass that way.

So I guess yes, the chariot heads a bit west away from the warrior after making the moves posted on the map by sign. But if we only do 2 or 3 turns by Sunday night when I get back I'll be able to relieve you and not force you to reveal the delicious city spot waiting in the fog.

Then again, you guys did so well scouting in PB9 maybe I should recruit you permanently to help our scouting units avoid death.