[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

We're on turn 46, and with this turn pace we may have another full month before we see turn 50! The only drama is in why this game can't roll a turn...

That, and who "Barry Lyndon" actually is... I actually don't even care so much if he's a smurf (and he almost certainly is) but I do care that he can't play a turn within two days.

I just want to see where horses are!

But yeah, it's maybe less interesting to be able to entertain the idea of settling a third city and to get a library up before turn 100. So yeah, I warned you what you were getting into here. If this game goes the way I want it's going to be pure SimCity up to Knights or so.

I am kind of curious what kind of drama exists elsewhere in the world right now! The only odd thing I see on the scoreboard is how Nakor can have as low a score as he does. He's down 9 points on us, a tech is worth 6, and how could anyone even be down a tech on us? We got Agri, Mining, Bronze, and Pottery. How do you only research 3 techs in 46 turns?

[Ceiliazul]

beeline machinery?

[MindyMcCready]

We're on turn 46, and with this turn pace we may have another full month before we see turn 50! The only drama is in why this game can't roll a turn...

That, and who "Barry Lyndon" actually is... I actually don't even care so much if he's a smurf

Hmmm. Read the smurf thread. I will admit that I didn't see so much wrong with smurfing initially; we're all avatars after all. I didn't really see the problem with Sulla hiding his rep and I really liked the conversations Master Commodore was having with himself. :LOL:

However, I'm recognizing that's because I don't actually play. Playing against a ragequitter would probably be the thing that would upset me most and I'd want to know if they're in a game before signing up for a year long commitment. I guess I find an anonymous game pretty appealing since you're more blind to the personalities and I like trying to anticipate next moves.

But it's fair for people to make the choice of being in an anonymous game.

I just want to see where horses are!

We need scouts! :LOL:

But yeah, it's maybe less interesting to be able to entertain the idea of settling a third city and to get a library up before turn 100. So yeah, I warned you what you were getting into here. If this game goes the way I want it's going to be pure SimCity up to Knights or so.

Yep. I was thinking that the fireworks would eventually have to start. It will be interesting to see if we really can get a pseudo-alliance with Darrabod or else if we'll sit there in 1984-style power balance. "We have always been at war with Darrabod!".

Are there any more signs that MYKI is maintaining low city sizes? The success of your strategy hinges quite a bit on his low performance.

I am kind of curious what kind of drama exists elsewhere in the world right now! The only odd thing I see on the scoreboard is how Nakor can have as low a score as he does. He's down 9 points on us, a tech is worth 6, and how could anyone even be down a tech on us? We got Agri, Mining, Bronze, and Pottery. How do you only research 3 techs in 46 turns?

Nakor would probably do better in an anonymous game,...such a target. I sure hope that he isn't intentionally suppressing his score while he's got that bright pink neon "Squishy" sign above his head.

[WilliamLP]

Hmmm. Read the smurf thread. I will admit that I didn't see so much wrong with smurfing initially; we're all avatars after all. I didn't really see the problem with Sulla hiding his rep and I really liked the conversations Master Commodore was having with himself. :LOL:

However, I'm recognizing that's because I don't actually play. Playing against a ragequitter would probably be the thing that would upset me most and I'd want to know if they're in a game before signing up for a year long commitment. I guess I find an anonymous game pretty appealing since you're more blind to the personalities and I like trying to anticipate next moves.

But it's fair for people to make the choice of being in an anonymous game.

Yeah, those are my feelings too, really. There are some obvious cases where it's bad: veteran in a "green" game, someone deliberately trying to play against someone who would never play with them under their usual name. But other than something like that I don't care. It means newbies are looked at critically, but then, this site requires the thickest skin of any internet community around, as it is.

The Locke / Cervantes situation made that game fun to lurk, and also PB16 was pretty intriguing. (Speaking as someone who didn't play in it.)

As you allude to, being viewed as a newbie isn't all good. The last thing you want is to be viewed as an easy target.

We need scouts! :LOL:

Yes! A keshik would be just like an Explorer with G2 and W2 promotions right out of the gate!

Are there any more signs that MYKI is maintaining low city sizes? The success of your strategy hinges quite a bit on his low performance.

Just following score, he doesn't seem to be whipping himself into the ground. He's still on two cities. We'll get graphs on him in a couple of turns, and that should give a better read. Losing his first scout and warrior was a significant setback.

Nakor would probably do better in an anonymous game,...such a target. I sure hope that he isn't intentionally suppressing his score while he's got that bright pink neon "Squishy" sign above his head.

Yeah, poor Nakor, really, for setting himself up as _the_ punching bag at RB, right or wrong. His reputation for this has surpassed Kuro and Azza now, who both have shown some thorns lately.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 48:




The good things about the horses are that we have them, and the spot isn't contested at all. They're right on the ideal Moai site. I wouldn't feel bad about settling on them since they give the city tile +1 hammer, and a 1/4/1 tile is good but only 1 hammer better than a river hill mine, so settling on them isn't much worse than using the tile would be.

Is this enough to change our short term settlement plan? I'm thinking not really. If we were in a dire war build up it would be different but we do have easy bronze units.

I had that city going down as 9th, but we may want to bump it forward, I'm not sure.

The "here and now" spot would be 1S of sheep as the 3rd city, but I really don't like that it eliminates the potential Moai spot. With stone access and IND, Moai will be a big factor a lot sooner than is normal.

So I think the settle plan is:

3rd: Quadruple food + whales site with fast whipped library for border pop and (soonish) Scientist.
4th: Play for the land center defensive position + inland stone.
(5th?): Bridge city 1N2W of sheep.
(6th?): Gem city, location to be determined.
(7th?): Moai city on horse.
(8th?): Northwest first ring site, how aggressive it is depending on what Darrell does.

I could easily see dropping the horse city as soon as 5th since it would have the wet wheat to grow with. Or as late as 8th. I do value working the gems tile extremely highly though, if we want to keep up with long term tech parity in this world.

[WilliamLP]

The interesting news from C&D is that MYKI has met somebody else, and it's not Darrellbod. We can tell since he only spent 2 EP on us last turn and he's not connected to Darrell on F4 yet.

Also, Darrellbod didn't get a power rise last turn, which means what they researched wasn't AH. It was a 6 turn tech and I wonder what it was? Masonry is possible if they have a stone or marble to work. What's good here is we don't have to worry about chariots yet, and their copper is still unconnected.

I'm going for Writing next, due in 8 turns. Under my current plan we start a library the turn we finish it.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 50:

I guess we're not playing a single player sandbox game?




This is Pindicator, who is Qin of China. This also sucks, since he has the same idea of grabbing the whales early that we do. He's Protective and Industrious which means he has a better early game trait than we do (cheap granaries). He's also a very strong and seasoned Civ player, more bad news. Pindicator has 3 cities, and it's pretty likely that this is his third city.

I'm not sure what to do.

1. Full speed ahead, change no plans. The problem is that this puts us in a culture war for the whales and the fish. He has the moral advantage of having gotten there first. Also, in the mid game, this is the rare situation where the Pavillion could shine if we're both pushing for a second ring border site vs each other. He'll almost certainly pop borders before us (I was planning to improve whales on a turn 69 border pop). He wouldn't be planning to out-push a library, most likely, but he'll have ways to do so and then we're in a negative sum game piling on buildings neither of us want. And we'd need to worry about the city being attackable by boats very soon.

2. Plant 1E of that site. Stake a claim on the fish (which is rightfully "ours"). This still has the culture push problem. It's also a substantially worse city site, to the point where it's not really worth being city #3. The reason to do this is if we can't stand the idea of giving up a very close and very nice food resource.

3. Abort completely, settle toward horses and gems first instead, perhaps. Or settle Mindy's preferred site 1S of the cow. That site at least has the advantage of growing like lightning, and it doesn't need a border pop.

Anyway, our prospects for this game just went quite substantially down, though they're by no means in the dumps. But an additional early happiness is a huge snowball factor, worth substantially more than an extra city would be this early.

Some graphs in the mean time:




With my crazy drunkard's walk research path, good luck to anyone brave enough to try and do C&D on it.






I don't know if the benefit is worth the effort of stepping through MYKI's food and hammers to read his tile micro.




It looks like he's on Bronze, Wheel, and a recent axe build.




MYKI has one monument, like Ichabarrel.

[WilliamLP]

So I'm going to need a couple of days to go through the stages of loss with my old micro plans.




I decided that I don't want to get into the culture push game with Pindicator, so I'm conceding the whales to him. We'll probably settle for the fish eventually, quite possibly 1N of it.

City 3 is moved. Is it the best third city? I don't know, probably not. But the 3 workers are already in position for it, and with it the road 1S of Mr. Ed is not wasted. It's not the micro plan I would have gone with had this city been the original plan, but that's why we're playing with human beings and stuff.

I finished 2 cottages. The new city will work the sheep for +5 food. Whether to chop the granary immediately, in time for the first growth to 2, or grow first and whip it with one chop, and improve the wheat earlier instead? I don't know. Very few good players seem to play like the former.

Chop the granary immediately:
+ The granary yields +10 food right away (two shots of sheep growth).
+ The city is size 2 for longer, to add additional tiles to the empire.
+ The city can grow to 4 without whip anger.

Chop once, then whip the granary:
+ Less worker labor, so the workers are freed to improve the wheat earlier or move elsewhere. The wheat is a great tile, 5/1/1, so every addtional turn working it is a gain. But the opportunity cost here is a river cottage, which are also good tiles. And I feel like tech will be a bottleneck for a lot of things in this game, more than a typical PB game.
+ More forests for later.

I'm going on the theory that most people on RB tend to expand too early when they don't have a worker force to support that expansion optimally. Demos mislead, because for every city you really ought to subtract 2 food and appropriate commerce. They laughed at Einstein, Newton, and also Bozo the Clown, and all that...

I switched tech to Archery because we don't need immediate Writing anymore, and contingency for whips and cheap-ish useful units can be a good idea. I'm moving one scout back to the west because I'd like to position to stop some barb spawns. I'm worried about the 3n+1 barb blitz when it comes. I'd like to not lose a city even in the lower 1% to 5% of bad luck on the dice.

About Pindicator, he only has 26 EP on the lurker civ, so that means someone met him during the second half of turn 6. He doesn't know Darrell or MYKI.

I really feel like the ones who come out of the opening game toward the upper middle or upper tier of the pecking order will be the ones who manage to avoid early aggression and settlement disputes.

A silver lining for this change of plans? Well the new city won't claim much on its own, other than the single extremely nice tile. But it will get to size 4 extremely fast and be able to contribute additional workers, settlers, and cottage turns to the empire very nicely.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 51:




I moved the settler so we're committed to the new site. This city, we can hope, doesn't implicitly start an inevitable naval war. It doesn't really do much, and it's a weak city in the later game with very little of its own, but for now its job is to grow very fast and work cottages, perhaps running a few double-whip cycles to produce workers and settlers.

MYKI settled his third city on T50. It's called "Peche" so I assume it's by fish somewhere. Grade 11 French for the win.




MYKI has his axe wandering around. It looks like it's leveled up on barb animals and / or warriors. Darrellbod might be more concerned about it than us, but I don't think he can afford to send it too far astray with the barb blitz coming nearer.

[Commodore]

I can say it now: Pindicator did you a favor. You're settling the best possible snowball city.