[SPOILER] Ikhanbod

[Ichabod]

Serdoa updated... I have the bad feeling that he got CS and will rush CI. He can't have built CI this turn, because no one discovered CS last turn.

[Ichabod]

I think Serdoa teched Iron Working (someone discovered it), which probably indicates he's going for Notre Dame. That's golden for me.

I'm the first to Civil Service. I'm pretty confident regarding CI right now. Interestingly enough, I still have very few farms in my land, so CS benwfits will take a while longer to be felt.

[Ichabod]

I'll update later today. Again the save has been held for almost 24h by a single player. It's very annoying to see people playing their other games and leaving the one you are playing in to get dust.

[Ichabod]

Okay, I'll do a quick update telling the things that happened before I teched Civil Service. That's turn 56 to 62, very few turns, since our current pace is very slow. Not a lot of things were happening in the game, so I slacked on the updates. Here's basically what happened.

*International Affairs:

- Azza's demos were terrifying. He had high food and production (higher than me) and high GNP while in his GA. After the GA ended, he went back to a bad GNP, actually losing gold on the past turn. But his food and MFG are still high. That made me very disappointed. I wonder where he's getting his happiness from, since he doesn't appear to have more resources than I have (and my SPs give more happiness than his). He also has more unhappiness, since he has 4 cities, though we have the same population number. But he isn't unhappy, since demos don't show it (60% approval rate means 0 happiness - only an unknown civ was down to 57% for some turns). I guess he must have built some colosseums.

- Azza and Pindicator are still fighting.

*Domestic Affairs:

- My trirreme plan to explore the coast has been a failure until now. I was blocked by a barb galley that I couldn't kill due to a barb archer (that can shoot me) and I wasted a lot of turns.




Civ 5 doesn't allow boats to heal outside of the civ's cultural borders... I found out about this while playing this game, obviously. Finally I was able to get around the damn galley - he open the way, I didn't kill it - after reaching enough XP to promote heal my boat. There's another boat blocking my way, but I think I can get past it, since Civ 5 coast is, let's say, a bit random...




See the uncovered water tiles in this pic? All those are coast tiles, even though they aren't on the coast.

- I finally reached enough faith for a Pantheon (21 faith, I was beaten to 18 faith by someone, that chose the 2 faith for each quarry pantheon), all due to help from Jerusalem.




I chose the 1 culture per jungle tile. Right now, I'm working something like 4/5 jungle tiles per turn. That'll speed my next SP, since I'm now making 15 culture per turn, not 10. That's a pretty big benefit, since the tradition finisher is powerful. Late game, I plan to work jungle tiles after universities, getting 2 food, 1 gold (trade psot), 2 science and 1 culture. Only jungles that I can't turn into farms, though.

- I did quite a lot of tile shuffling to get the free growth production. The production in my cities went (and is planned to go):

*Harmonica: Partial built horsemen - switch to worker getting it to 45/46 production - work max production the turn before CS, finishing the worker and getting 22 overflow - start Chichen Itza.

*Sentenza: Stable - Circus (wasn't planning for this, but I reached a happiness wall for some turns and I was afraid of Azza demos - that enabled me to grow Harmonica to size 12 and Blondie to size 4) - Horsemen ad infinitum.

*Blondie: settler at size 3 - start growing on a horseman as soon as I could afford the happiness penalty; aim is to grow to size 5 - finish settler - finish horseman.

Here you can see my Circus/growth micro:




- I was the first to reach CS, though Azza discovered it only 1 turn later. Here's proof, the tech still at full price when I finished it:




- The Chichen Itza plan will work, I think, though it had some problems. Mostly the fact that I was way behind in worker labour, lacking a mine in the second gems and farms on the hills (one hill still has jungle on it too). But the large overflow I managed to dump into CI will make sure I can finish it in 6 turns.

By the way, another thing that the +1 culture per jungle gave me was faster cultural control of the forest tile highlighted above, so I could safely chop it. The picture below is before I chose the Pantheon.




Here's a pic of Harmonica at almost full production. I would starve this city when the last hill jungle tile was cleared, but CS gave me more food on the farms and reaching the medieval age gave me more food on the capital, since I'm friends with a maritime CS.




- I'm accumulating gold to upgrade my horsemen to keshiks.

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I think that clears most things I did in the past few turns. Updates will be more frequent now that the interesting stuff is close. I think my position is really good in the game, even though the score says I'm near last place.

[T-hawk]

Circuses aren't bad builds. They're roughly akin to a population growth costing an extra 37.5 hammers (normal speed) on top of the food, which isn't terrible given that the growth already costs 50-100 or more food.

As for Azza's happiness, lurkers probably shouldn't answer that.

Looks like a pretty tight plan for Chichen Itza. Hey, I never realized before how it synergizes with itself, its own happy will help push towards a Golden Age.

[Ichabod]

Circuses aren't bad builds. They're roughly akin to a population growth costing an extra 37.5 hammers (normal speed) on top of the food, which isn't terrible given that the growth already costs 50-100 or more food.

As for Azza's happiness, lurkers probably shouldn't answer that.

Looks like a pretty tight plan for Chichen Itza. Hey, I never realized before how it synergizes with itself, its own happy will help push towards a Golden Age.

Of course, don't tell me anything about my opponents. I said "I wonder..." only because I'd like to take a look at it when the game is over, since I still didn't figure it out for myself.

Regarding GA's, I'm hoping that the high amount of happiness I'm about to receive (+4 from silver, +4 from gems, +4 from Jerusalem resource - since silver will make me ally with them for a few turns -, and + 4 from CI) will allow me to reach a happiness GA before too long.

[Adbekunkus]

- Azza's demos were terrifying. He had high food and production (higher than me) and high GNP while in his GA. After the GA ended, he went back to a bad GNP, actually losing gold on the past turn. But his food and MFG are still high. That made me very disappointed. I wonder where he's getting his happiness from, since he doesn't appear to have more resources than I have (and my SPs give more happiness than his). He also has more unhappiness, since he has 4 cities, though we have the same population number. But he isn't unhappy, since demos don't show it (60% approval rate means 0 happiness - only an unknown civ was down to 57% for some turns). I guess he must have built some colosseums.

Azza's hapiness:

Not enough keshiks!

[Kurumi]

Nice update Ichabod, thanks

[Ichabod]

- Azza's demos were terrifying. He had high food and production (higher than me) and high GNP while in his GA. After the GA ended, he went back to a bad GNP, actually losing gold on the past turn. But his food and MFG are still high. That made me very disappointed. I wonder where he's getting his happiness from, since he doesn't appear to have more resources than I have (and my SPs give more happiness than his). He also has more unhappiness, since he has 4 cities, though we have the same population number. But he isn't unhappy, since demos don't show it (60% approval rate means 0 happiness - only an unknown civ was down to 57% for some turns). I guess he must have built some colosseums.

Azza's hapiness:

Not enough keshiks!

That'll soon be fixed, then.

I could attack Azza, since most of the land between us is plains, which is a playground for Keshiks. Besides, he has a knight replacement, War Elephants, which are stronger but slower than Knights. They also have a bonus against mounted, that doesn't apply against Keshiks (ranged units). But there isn't much benefit in attacking him: he has high power and I can't take his Capital (it's in an incredibly defensive position). I could take his two most recent cities, but I'm not sure if that'd be a great benefit.

I still haven't decided who to attack with my keshiks. I only decided that i'm going to do it.

Nice update Ichabod, thanks

No problem.

[Ichabod]

My trirreme play is finally giving me some benefits. It's a long story, though.




Like I've said before, I had to use a healing promo on the boat. After that, the barb galleys started to run away from my path, so I was able to advance a little more. If I keep going, I'll meet Jowy, because he's the one that chose the Fishing Boats Pantheon, so he must have a coastal city.




What I can see now is that Serdoa has quite a big backyard, with quite a lot of luxuries... Ivory, gems, sugar, probably more in the fog... That was one of the things that got me thinking...

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I finally finished my first horseman. He's just chilling around, waiting for an upgrade. Horsemen are really weak after all the nerfs, but I don't plan to use them anyway. Sentenza is on full horsemen duty for now.




That annoying citizen bug changed my assigned tiles yet again. How come they don't fix this stupid thing? There's no way they still haven't notice that it exist. Maybe the developers don't play their own game...

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Speaking of horsemen, I'm at a loss about how the power numbers work in this game. Let's take a look at the demos from turn 63 and 64.

As you can see, there's a 1200 points difference in my power number between turn 63 and 64. Thing is, I completed a horseman between these turns. So, a horseman is only 1200 power points? So how come Azza has 42000 power points? That's like a bajillion units... There's probably something I'm missing here...

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On diplomatic affairs, I've met Oledavy this turn. Or rather, he met me. Some info about him:

*He's on a Golden Age.
*His demos don't seem that good (he has less food and production than me, even though he's on a GA). He has higher GNP, but that's due to GA (they are really GOLDEN ages in Civ 5 - gold is by far the thing you get the most during a GA).
*He got the Stone Circle Pantheon.
*He has no wonders.
*I forgot to take a picture of his capital and to see how many cities he has.

I can see his capital because he made an offer to exchange embassies. It's a Capital with a river but with a lot of jungle (way more than mine). It has a lot of Happy resources, but I don't remember seeing any food resources. Here's some pics:




Lots of Hapiness resources, this guy have:




On less important news, Azza finished the Statue of Zeus. The wonder gives a bonus to units attacking cities. Not sure if it's a worthy build, it doesn't even give GP points. Meh.

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Here's the final configuration for the Chichen Itza plan. I can get the wonder in the planned 6 turns even without the second chop, so I'll save that forest for Sentenza (since it'll give more hammers). The worker that was going to chop that forest started farming instead (and I made a micro mistake, wasting a labour turn). Workers will be dedicated to improve the Capital from now on. When I farm everything I want to farm, my Capital will have a massive food surplus. I hope that + Aqueduct will make me grow very fast.




Overview shot. One of my workers will build a TR between Blondie and the Capital. It'll be worth a net gain of 4 gold for now.




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War plan post to come soon... After I try to make up my mind...