Nothing like the Prodigal Sons: The Odd Couple actually play as themselves.

[Gaspar]

t5 - Meh

Well, as I sort of anticipated, Gavagai wardec'd. He's currently sitting on the GH NE of the cap. Whether he just passes through or decides to sit on the Ivory (the best unimproved tile) will tell us a lot about how shitty this game is going to be, but I have low expectations. This is what we get for signing up for a greens game. Anyway, here's a look:




Scout movement revealed more rice and little else. Giant gap between food strongly suggests metal/horses in the area and mapmaker not paying close attention. (1) [going to count all the times I whine about the map this game, given the thread title.] Preliminarily, we'll largely ignore that area until a backfill city that utilizes the Oasis and lighthoused lakes. But I suspect we won't actually get that option.



Demos:

[NobleHelium]

Gaspar:
gavagai wardec'd
NobleHelium:
is he on the wheat
Gaspar:
no hill
NobleHelium:
did our border pop before he got to move in? that doesn't make much sense
is it the grass hill nw of the wheat
Gaspar:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1832...16/t5a.jpg
no he moved in, then border popped
NobleHelium:
oh ok
Gaspar:
another annoying difference between pb and pbem
NobleHelium:
no the thing is that
i expected him to move to the other hill
where he can defog our capital without declaring
well actually he defogged it by just moving across the lake
Gaspar:
i fully expect him to sit on the ivory
NobleHelium:
i guess he really wanted to move to the southeast quickly or he thinks this hurts us somehow
Gaspar:
was thinking that when i played last turn
NobleHelium:
anyway just keep the governor on
Gaspar:
defensible ground and a good unimproved tile
naturally
NobleHelium:
we'll auto swap to the phf if he moves there
Gaspar:
right
NobleHelium:
if he really wants to sit there for like 12 turns until we actually need the tile
then we'll see
Gaspar:
well, whether he hangs out or passes through will tell us a lot about how this game is going to go
NobleHelium:
well if he moves onto the ivory i expect him to get bored after a few turns and leave
Gaspar:
yeah, but either way, it'll tell us a lot about his intentions
NobleHelium:
do you want to offer him peace or no
and if so, we could offer him a treaty or a cease fire
Gaspar:
nah, lets see he what he does
NobleHelium:
k
move the scout nw one tile, i need to go throw out a couple stacks of newspapers
afk
Gaspar:
newspapers??
NobleHelium:
yes my mother reads newspapers
Gaspar:
its 2013
i used to read newspapers obsessively but i havent read one in at least 8 years.
NobleHelium:
okay that was actually six stacks of newspapers
i guess we haven't thrown out newspapers for two years or something
Gaspar:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1832...16/t5b.jpg
NobleHelium:
well that's good
we have mao's rice fields
Gaspar:
lol
i really want to reorganize the food over here
NobleHelium:
yeah
way too big of a gap
Gaspar:
yep
NobleHelium:
i think we could just settle for the rice due south and then settle the island next to the clam...
Gaspar:
horse or copper will be in that big gap
guaranteed
NobleHelium:
backfill 2W of the oasis
then plains SE of the new rice
Gaspar:
2W of the oasis gets no food whatsoever - how in the hell are we going to make that ever worth anything
NobleHelium:
well it's got the oasis and the lakes
i don't see how you can do better than that
Gaspar:
yeah
we'll settle that around 170
anyway
NE now?
NobleHelium:
yeah
first time i log in i will put up a bunch of dotmap signs naturally
Gaspar:
nothing new, though tile bleed shows more forests
if theres food north of ivory, the desert above the FP would be a decent 2nd city location, to share cottages and what not. Probably need to hit either the PH NE of it or the GH 4N of wheat for defensiblity though
anyway, 3x checking to make sure gov is on and ending turn
NobleHelium:
clicking the city tile turns on the gov btw
that does more harm than good, i end up accidentally turning on the gov a lot
Gaspar:
govs on because gov is default and theres been no reason for me to change it
NobleHelium:
maybe you accidentally turned it off when you were seething at gavagai's scout
Gaspar:
thats why i checked
NobleHelium:
it probably actually doesn't matter, because the governor kicks in for one specific citizen when one needs to be reassigned midturn regardless
same for pop from growth, gov needs to decide where to place them regardless
that's why you can manipulate the emphasize buttons to tell the game where to put the extra HG pop that you get midturn
Gaspar:
NobleHelium - RBs resident HG expert
NobleHelium:
people can't remember obscure game mechanics because they don't think like the game
Gaspar:
right
post up
NobleHelium:
i was expecting something wittier but it's not bad
Gaspar:
I insulted Gavagai and Serdoa, I suppose I should have tried to be a bit funnier
i took my first actual look at the demos and was briefly perplexed til i remembered that mining nonsensically gives soldier points
NobleHelium:
it allows you to mine things which means you produce warriors faster!
Gaspar:
lol
NobleHelium:
so if gavagai moves southeast this turn that increases the chances that he's northwestish
Gaspar:
over/under on what turn i decide that the slightly more elegant chopping and putting the names at the bottom of the demos isn't worth the trouble?
NobleHelium:
i think
unless he's doing a circular route
turn 13 when gavagai's warrior shows up
Gaspar:
lol
thats probably when i stop reporting
NobleHelium:
that satisfies the condition!
Gaspar:
fair enough
i'd guess he either lands on the PH 2E of his current location or the ivory next turn
NobleHelium:
yeah
Gaspar:
in the extremely unlikely event the turn rolls by the time i get home from work tomorrow
are you agreed with the scout path i outlined in my last post?
NobleHelium:
yeah i said it looked fine
Gaspar:
yes but game situation changed slightly
while that was highly unlikely to make any difference in the scouting
NobleHelium:
WELL OK WE CAN CHARGE INTO THE WOODS INSTEAD
Gaspar:
ive played with you long enough to know that its better just to ask

Gaspar: i have to say, i really would feel like 1000x better about map quality if there was just a token grass cow or some shit like 2N of the whales
NobleHelium: you mean a commodore

[NobleHelium]

Border pop revealed some corn in the northwest by the way. You should check whether that's wet or not next turn. Doesn't look like it though.

[Gaspar]

A Commodore is a plains cow, silly Noble.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah I know. I was remarking that a Commodore would be more likely in this kind of situation.

[Azarius]

Why is a plains cow a Commodore?

[Gaspar]

t6 - Double-time

So the new turn greeted us like so:




Gavagai offered a cease fire, which really has no value, but before accepting we checked to see where Gavagai moved his scout. After looking around wondering if he deleted him, it occurred to me I checked civstats before logging in and saw this:



This is a double-move. While its not a huge deal, it only denies us information on which way he scouted, we can't very well have players not observing turn splits while at war, even largely meaningless ones like this. If you global lurkers see behavior like this, hopefully you're correcting it in thread. I messaged Ichabod to let him know but do not intend to raise the issue otherwise, since the impact is minimal and I assume it's just a new player making an honest mistake. But more credit to the "Dammit Gaspar, don't sign up for games full of new players." and "Dammit Gaspar, don't sign up for pitbosses." factions.

Regardless, we accepted the meaningless cease fire because of the infinitesimal chance there are no further wardecs pre-writing, we could sign OB that have value with Gavagai and there's no drawback. I fully expect to wardec him to scout his capital when we get there, however. I also fully expect a warrior from him in ~8-10t. Here's the scouting result:



Forested plains deer. This game reminds me more and more of PB4 everyday. Please kill me. Here's the demos, which show Mikehendi of France researching a tech, presumably Fishing, since Hunting, the other tech you could have researched on t6 would give soldier points, and the rival average hasn't moved. Though I'm not entirely certain that with the way PB demos update we'd see it yet. Perhaps someone can explain this to me and I can forget and ask again later.

[NobleHelium]

Demos are always immediate, graphs are not.

[Gaspar]

Why is a plains cow a Commodore?

It was coined in PBEM29. I tried to find the specific instance, but I fell down a rabbit hole and lost track. Noble thinks it was around the founding of Unity Lair but I couldn't find it. Nonetheless, Commodore made the map for that game and we had a city with no food we had to settle and Commodore suggested the plains cow was food. This was a back and forth (some of it may have occurred over gchat, but I can't recall specifically.) Regardless, it became something of a joke between us to the point where I rolled a map for him to play a PB game off RB and gave him 3 Plains Cow as the food at his capital. There's more, but that's the gist of it.

On an aside, PBEM29, while an awful game, is a really good read. I think it was the apex of my reporting here at RB. While FFH7 is one of the 4-5 most epic threads on this forum, there is a TON of fluff to wade through. PBEM29 is really just a good read, start to finish, lots of humor and schadenfreude. Here, give it a read.

[Thoth]

While FFH7 is one of the 4-5 most epic threads on this forum

Which threads would you rank as the other 4?