[spoilers]Oh Canada! Victoria has a Commodore, eh?

[Krill]

So...would a pic dump of your cities be possible at some point over the next week?

[Commodore]

So...would a pic dump of your cities be possible at some point over the next week?

It's turn 200, I'll be posting it shortly. 42 screenshots right now.

Teaser, graphs:







I got back Mack's graphs just in time for the Ottoman/Portugal color contrast to really screw with me.

[fluffyflyingpig]

What does the espionage situation look like?

[Commodore]

So here we are, turn 200, 1400 AD, Canada (Victoria/Portugal). We are:
-Almost one tenth of the world population.
-Cover about 12% of the surface area of the planet but a mere 7% of the land.
-Solidly in fifth place, looking to challenge Dtay for fourth.


Demos are somewhat distorted by the usual patchwork of golden ages and research/saving cycles. I'm saving and look better than most in GNP, my MFG is wildly buffed but Universal Suffrage might make this nearly permanent, and crop yield is suppressed slightly but isn't budging from fourth place. The soldier count is hilarious, yes, I know.


That light military is armed, at least, with the most advanced arms in the world...rifles dot the borders in a thin, thin blue line of garrisons. I'll upgrade them to infantry before too long.


And here we are, tech-wise. We're massively behind the leaders, except where we're ahead. Communism, Rifling, and soon Democracy (Statue of Liberty is on the road map). Corporation is essential, makes about 5gpt in each of my 28 cities. Then, we draft. Chemistry is going to get silly boosts, as will Steam Power. Then I can safely draft Physics or Steel. Biology and Railroad are the big deals for domestic improvements, then we chase modern navy.


CANADIAN CITIES:
CORE:
Here is the heart and soul of Canada, by and large following the great Sky River, from the lake of Halifax to the northern coast. The best city in the world dominates its two stunted cottage-growers, while Toronto is itself the size of most other capital. Even Saskatoon, foodless home of the Apostolic Palace, is quite a decent little city. This is probably the best slice of land in the empire, and is certainly the most productive.

SOUTHWEST:
Now we enter the abused sector of the nation. Montreal is an amazing city that's been turned into a starving man's great person farm several times, currently in the midst of starving once more. St. John's I would love to see bigger, but keeps losing the fish to Montreal in the bigger city's hunger. Finally, the definition of hunger is Halifax, which is only the size it is from stealing the solo wet corn shared already by Quebec and Toronto. It's getting farms and will finally work all the mines, but make no mistake, it'll never be a biggun.

EAST PENINSULA:
As usual, the theme here is "not enough food" although I've definitely had worse. Regina is weirdly productive for a gold mine city, as is Calgary, while further up Edmonton and Vancouver are pretty well fed commerce spots. Eddie is painfully ignoring cottage growth in favor of growth growth at the moment, needs three more pop and the Emancipation time will get it to a scary place. In the cold north, Axel Heiberg enjoys ocean crabs(?) and naught all else, but who cares? Feitoria coasts, baby. This is clearly one of my favorite regions and a zone that really needs just a dozen emancipated turns to shine.

HOME ISLANDS:
Baffin and Ellesmere, my dear dear home islands. Baffin's growth comes only from stealing from Ottawa, so I don't expect it to be pushed up to its proper stagnant size...that silver mine is fun to work too. Ellesmere, on the other hand, just keeps on growing, it ought to hit 22 by the end. It is home to Moai Stones, oil, and the single most neglected cottage in Canada. Woop woo?

GREENLAND:
(Please ignore tile assignments, I was moving things here) Oh my America! My new-found land! Indeed, I hath polished and polish, and verily this turd shines a burnished bronze. Banks, Victoria, and Devon are clearly the superstars here, what with their food and their green tiles and such, Bank and Victoria in particular are also trembling for emancipation. Deven, bless its little heart, got whipped for all this, and had a stack of 13 anger at one point. It is recovering now, but still shaky and will need some TLC once the MP happy leaves. The tundra crap is just that, tundra crap. Yellowknife, now, is interesting, with two fish I think it will be maxed out fast into a real winner. Vicky of Portugal: Fun, maybe kind of abusive?

GREENERLAND:
...and here is the site of my embarrassing screwing around for a silly amount of time. But I'm making up for it now, and this place is growing like a weed. Bylot is painful to witness in the dotmap sense but what canyah do. I'm following the Arctic Thunder roadmap I posted above; once everything is grown to size cottages pave over farms and we make money. Moresby feels like a reach down south, but it's got an actual food so who cares? That makes it worth like two Grahams already.

FOODLESS CORDILLERA:
It's Charlottetown, even with trade routes the city is barely break-even. Nets me a free marble source, another iron, and an outpost to spy on the not-much-better-fooded-than-my-own German lands. Yeah. Brick, this whole reason could use just a few fish or even Axel Heiberg-ish ocean crabs.

[pindicator]

Well, you're doing better than real life Canada. That nation is only 0.5% of the world population, and still 7% of the world's land.

[Zed-F]

You wait to start playing until 1867 in a game with over 200 nations and see how well your game goes.

[Ceiliazul]

You wait to start playing until 1867 in a game with over 200 nations and see how well your game goes.

good to see you Zed, been a while.

[Commodore]

In case it isn't obvious from the report above, I am having a blast; this is the most fun I have had playing Civ4 in a while. But as pleasurable as just doing the best I can do is, I'm slowly getting a little niggling feeling that this is a position with an outside chance at winning.

My economy is singing, and in four more turns barring magic my production problems go away in two big ways; towns get hammers, and 2 gold becomes a hammer, Kremlin Cash Style. That's...kind of huge. Plus, the bigguns have problems:
-Mackoti has neighbors of Plako (heh), Scooter (hah), and the newly revivified Finarry (Ichabod died that others might live). He's a giant, but his paths to grow are...low. Plus, he's a mere third in tech pace now, although he's got a nice beaker lead still.
-Scooter managed to alienate his logistical half, and piss of Lewwyn. Lewwyn and rifles won't conquer Scooter, but Lewwyn is good and he's got a looooot of cities to whip, and the ability to collateral Scooter's cannon. That's going to be a mighty tax on the Vikings going forward.
-Plako is behind in beakers, a lot. He's actually got the best prospects of anyone, with the weak reed of Bacchus to push over. But then he's going to have Neighbor Issues too.
-Dtay has land but it isn't good, and Ichabod, his next natural prey, is kind of spiky on land (been scouting the shorelines there). Also, he's got Finarry south and those boys are hungry. So problems that make him toss and turn at night on top of his mountain of Hindu shrine gold.

So what shall we do, then? Well, Lewwyn isn't going to be a problem forever for Scooter, and Mackoti and Dtay will be able to split Finarry in the end. I cannot win with this foodless, silly little empire as it is. But conquest...be tough.

First, look west, at Dtay. Our main German man be rocking a massive stony empire of rocks and aggressive gunpowder units. I get bombers and tanks, he'll at least have fighters and infantry. Plus, well, look at it:

Dry, dry, India (which is exposed), and made for non-Financial. Nuthin' here folks, unless for some weird reason the brothers Finarryawesome decided to try for him. And, uh, he got suddenly stupid? I'll watch with airships, but this isn't welcoming.

Then look due south at Scott Calvin Ooter.

No seriously. You're MAD if you think that's a good idea. I might help if a Azza/Lewwyn/Mackoti/Plako dogpile happens, but...no. As occupied as Scooter might be soon with Chinese rifles, his navy could still ruin me this side of infantry/MGs. And forget conquest along the west coast, Mack would love those free cities. Now his eastern isles are great...

...but aside from TOTAL NAVAL DOMINANCE, how do you keep them? So not this side of destroyers, kk.

Finally, let's look at our old friend WillieLP.

...mmmaybe? Like I said, if I have tanks and he lacks infantry/arty...I'm watching.

[Commodore]

Canadian Faces – Miner in the Ringnes Range

You wake up a cold bed, hacking the same dry cough you've had for years. Worn, thin, your wife nods to you while she works on breakfast. Bread, salt cod, and if you are lucky a little Kerugel cabbage; the stuff is bitter but it staves off scurvy. Your breakfast is a good thousand calories, but you will still feel half-starved before lunch halfway through your fourteen hour work day. Your children, the two who have survived past infancy, also have the skinny, gaunt look. Energy levels are low through the meal, at least nobody quarrels.

You go to work in utter darkness half the year; in the summer the sun is out for most of the day but here on the north slopes it never seems to really warm you. There is a beautiful tundra to the north stretching out for countless miles, but hunger and the dread of the mines don't let you enjoy it.


You don't see much of it, but ore from your mine is transported weekly on bumpy, muddy roads to the warm villages of Banks Province, or Ammund Ringes or Ellef Ringes, places that to you sound like vast cities, although to the urbanite of Ottawa or Toronto either “city” would be rated a mere rural village.


Hard, cold, dangerous work in the mines fills six days of every seven for you and your fellow workers. Although Carl Marks' new philosophies promise better treatment for proles like you, and a strong democratic movement is pushing to give you a vote, you don't know or care; not starving to death is what makes you swing your pick, and the thin hopes that perhaps your children will live better lives than yours. Perhaps as gardeners, tending rye and cabbage under open skies, or maybe workers in trade, making the carts and picks you use every day. Anything would be better than this.

Sunday is the center of your week, and of the hundreds of others who live and work at the mines. The parish priest, a worn man as thin as the rest of you, delivers some small measure of hope from his pulpit, painting a vision of the world to come. His straightforward sermons in the common tongue would disgust the learned and bejeweled bishops of Saskatoon or Montreal, but fortunately they will never even have a moments thought for a tiny parish in the sparse and cold hills of Greenland.

And so, you survive. You live. Your cough might some day turn wet, or you may be injured in your dark pits, but then again, you may not. Your wife might soon get pregnant again, and while she is rail-thin and might lose the child, she might not. You live not in the now, but in the future where your soul and your seed might find a better dawn

But not in the present, not in the mines of the Ringnes Range.

[pindicator]

That was great Commodore. Artistically done