[SPOILERS] This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. But Mostly Mine.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I suppose now is as good a time as any to list some of my goals for this game.

1. Don't die early.
2. Don't stunt growth in pursuit of goal #1.
3. Make the most out of what I have.
a. Map - It hath been generous and bountiful so far. May it continue to be the land of milk and honey. And no Jowys or otherwise aggressive for no particular reason kind of neighbors.
b. Leader - Pericles has good synergy with Russia. Don't waste it.
c. Civ - Russia, it ain't old time Cossacks, but the new Research Institute (University replacement) still pairs very nicely with PHI and I'll probably want a bunch of them anyway. And they're cheap. And a free scientist? Yeah!
4. Be the aggressor - In my previous games, I've built and teched well enough, but inevitably the conflict is not on my terms and I'm reacting rather than making my opponents react to me. Creative culture should help me with this, but I still need to take the next step and be the one sending the stack into my neighbor's face, not defending against his. When I was CRE INCA () I culturally crushed Sian with a couple of holy cities and forced him to fight me because he really didn't have another choice. But he invaded me. I'd like to be a bit more aggressive/proactive in this area this game and be the one doing the invading.
5. Have A Plan - I tend to meander without a concrete plan or goal. This is antithetical to properly using Philosophical. I'll need to plan effectively when and how to achieve targeted bulbing strategies. So long as I can sandbox, I should do fine here, but later on this may become problematic, especially when I start taking time away from the game later in the summer. I'll need to make an effort to make this work, as I typically have not utilized bulbing strategies in my games.
6. Top Ten finish - Is this realistic? I think so. Winning is a pipe dream for anyone with so many players, but there are certain teams who stand out as having a relatively good chance so long as they get decently average luck in this game: Krill/novice and Plako come immediately to mind, obviously, and then some other solid, very capable vets (Pindicator, Scooter, Old Harry/Fintourist) have a realistic chance, depending on the way the game plays out.
6a. Finish higher than Xenu. Sibling rivalry and all, I have to beat him or else learn to enjoy the inevitable taunting I'll suffer at his hands. My trump card is that I can run more sims than him because I tend to have more time. Little Tyrant, thanks for helping with this. Keep him busy.
7. Find the secret to accumulating thread spam. I like comments and lurker input, and socializing in general. I'll try to keep the thread interesting if you'll keep my thread near the top. Deal?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T7




Not much new to report. I'm still #2 in GNP (not pictured). I did a little flying camera snooping to take a close look to see if I could learn anything new. All I learned for certain was a little map geography of very little importance, indicated in the signposts, and also drew in my guess on the coastal geography. I'm pretty sure these two landmasses on either side of the water are connected, and going further, that there will be a series of channels/inland seas to allow decent geographical spread between the many civs while allowing viable naval maneuvering. Commodore said every tile will be usable, so there won't be vast gaps of ocean between continental blobs. I anticipate that, as the crow flies, distances between cross-channel capitals is short, but for early game warmongering, we'll have to take the longer route around the lake. With so many civs, I see little else that could be done besides artificially walled mountain chains or something less fun. Good option. Also, while I was flying camera snooping, I confirmed that the wrap is east/west. I'm not sure why I hadn't bothered to do that previously.

I also checked the culture overlay to see if there were borders that I missed but there is nothing yet to see. I'm really sputtering trying to come up with anything interesting until I meet someone, so I guess I'll give in and try to post a player analysis later today. I don't know a lot of these guys, though, so I'll have to make up some info. So, lurker(s), if you have a particular nemesis playing in this game, let me know their many and serious civ transgressions and I'll work them into my writeup.

[Commodore]

Come now! You've played one of my tilted axis maps. You know I'm a details freak and if it was TA your trees would show it.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Come now! You've played one of my tilted axis maps. You know I'm a details freak and if it was TA your trees would show it.

Tilted axis trees grow sideways.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T8

I will leave no stone unturned in providing the most relevant, in-depth reporting for this game.




I've found another source of fresh water in the fog. Only the news that matters, folks. Still no contact other than the lurker civ, still no sign of barb animals. 4t until I have a worker to double my turn playing duties. Eight civs finished a tech at EoT, and Caledorn popped a tech from a hut it seems. Maybe I should have waited for my capital's borders to pop BW for me, that happened in one of my sandbox runs. I don't really mean that, but it would be cool. Scooter and Brick each have two techs since the game began, at least one via tech and one from a hut.

If I don't have anything more meaningful to report than this next turn, I'll skip and won't make you read it.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T9

I lied. I'm going to post anyway.




Man, there is some seriously nice land here. Still no sign of foreign culture on the strategic layer, no sign of barbs. Good and good. Also, Top 5 is still showing that cheating lurker civ and four size 1 cities. I had a thought walking to work this morning that I'd like to add a supplemental late game goal; nuke the lurker city. Now I just need to stay alive and be technologically relevant enough to do it. Muahahahaha...

[Commodore]

You do that, we will poison every water supply you own...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

You do that, we will poison every water supply you own...

It would be well worth it.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I thought a little bit more today about the impact of the lurker civ on the game (aside from the turn pace ). Will the great spies on the map influence whether or not barbs will spawn? I know (or think that I know?) that the intent is to shadow player civ's scouting movements with the lurking great spies, but in the case that lurker spies do not occupy the same tile as the player civ, what influence if any will this have on barb spawns? I set up a test to find out.




I added some land into my sandbox and some gold to pay for the extra 16 units after taking the picture. I've set up five 10x10 grids and placed four units on four of the five grids such that each grid (except the one labeled "control: no units" has a unit fog busting a 2 tile distance from the unit's position. In theory, if the information I linked to in post #29 is accurate, no barbs should spawn on the four islands with units, regardless of whether the unit is a great spy or not. I indicated this hypothesis with the X marks on the four islands with units. The control island should have barbs spawn normally. And, for confirmation, I have already had barb animals spawn on the empty land on my civ's island, so barbs are spawning normally in the sandbox.

The test began on T9 and I checked each island every 5 turns in world builder.

14: "control" island has 2 animal barbs, no spawns on other islands.
19: no new barbs spawned. (3 on my home island)
24: no new barbs spawned.
29: no new barbs spawned.
34: no new barbs spawned.
39: no new barbs spawned.
44: no new barbs spawned.
49: no new barbs spawned.
54: no new barbs spawned. I deleted the two barb lions here to see if they would be replaced.
59: Two new barb lions. I guess the carrying capacity for a 10x10 island is two lions. Meanwhile my home island scout has killed 2/3 of barb animals (but not the bear). A new wolf has appeared.

I think this is far enough to be confirmed. The lurker civ's great spies will fog bust for barbs just like a regular, visible unit. So, lurker civ, keep up with your scouting target or else you'll be fog busting barbs. Also, this confirms that units will fog bust in a two tile radius regardless of having vision on the tile due to landscape geography.

Now I'm interested to know whether a unit would also fog bust further away due to geography and promotions (hill + sentry vision across water). For a few turns, I set up a Cossack on a hill and ringed this one tile island with grass at a distance of three tiles.




64: still no new barbs elsewhere, deleted barbs on control island.
69: two new barbs on control island, nowhere else. Deleted control island.
74: no new barbs.
79: no new barbs.
84: no new barbs, units on strike.
89: new barbs on formerly barb-immune, spawn-busted island after fog busting units disbanded. Deleted all other test islands, just the Cossack and ring left.
94: no new barbs.
99: no new barbs. deleted Cossack to see if maybe barbs were no longer spawning for some reason.
104: homeland scout kills a wolf. barbs are still spawning. nothing new on test ring.
109: no barbs on ring mass. drew in second ring on ring land mass.
114: lion on second ring mass. Not sure why they wouldn't appear on first ring even without a unit. delete lion, replace unit on center hill (non-sentry promo).
119: new lion on ring mass. deleted lion, promoted Cossack on hill to sentry (vision on inner ring of two ringed mass).




124: new lion on outer ring. Hmm. Not sure what to conclude here, but I'm done with this test.

From this very brief test, it appears that when looking across water that you spawn bust to an extra tile distance, but this test is hardly conclusive. However, I would say that this confirms that great spies act like other units for spawn busting purposes, so lurkers take care with those units or you'll impact the game in some small way.

[NobleHelium]

6a. Finish higher than Xenu. Sibling rivalry and all, I have to beat him or else learn to enjoy the inevitable taunting I'll suffer at his hands. My trump card is that I can run more sims than him because I tend to have more time. Little Tyrant, thanks for helping with this. Keep him busy.

Well, given that I rated you higher than him, you better not let me down.

Nice barb spawn tests. Good experiment setup.

And don't worry, we can't actually poison your water because we don't have any regular spies. Although if we managed to tech to attack submarines we could build a spy and transport it to the mainland with the sub.