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

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thanks for the notice on cancelling worker actions. I tend to do that every turn because I seem to recall someone mentioning a bug where very rarely a queued or continuing action will not be implemented? I don't know the circumstances of how or when that might happen, or if it even does, but cancelling only costs me a second and gives me flexibility in case trouble shows up or I need to change orders.

For the sake of consistency and ease of lurker reference if I should need a sub again, which will probably happen in the not so distant future, I'm going to try out a new heading for each turn:

T67

Same classic look, but now larger and with enhanced functionality!

In case you didn't bother to hover your mouse over the T67 heading, I've linked my micro plan. I'll try to remember to do this from now on, in addition to updating a larger link on the first post. I've retraced Catwalk's and LP's steps from the previous six turns and reconfigured the micro plan and updated the sandbox so it was current as of EoT 66. Over the next day or so I'll try to refine my plans until ~T80, since that has been my point of reference for much of the last 25 turns.

All in all, the departure from the micro plan has not been terrible. I'm more militarily secure than I would have been and the major things that were needed have happened, particularly the GS generation in Yellowstone. I anticipate that this will be the second GP made by a non-lurker(scum) civ. Someone has already birthed a great scientist.




I'm going to cut through the NW corner of Q's empire and offer peace on my way out. He's too busy, it seems, to take offense to me hiking across a flood plain on my way out of the boundary.




I did a little counting on fingers and toes and decided I'd go ahead and whip the settler at Yellowstone. Here's how this looks:

T67 - whip settler 6/5
T68 - overflow 68h to settler #2
T69 - +24h chop from T70N site + 8 or 9 base hammers = settler. Previous whip anger expires EoT and ready to regrow.




The T67 capital settler moves SOUTH to filler horse location on hill, founds T69 and works horses. Worker A moved 1S of this site this turn (T67) to begin chopping into the granary. Granary completes in ~7t. I would prefer whipping at size 2 in 5t but Yellowstone will regrow with the wheat, so working the horse will be good enough. Alternately, this settler can settle the T70W site on T70 after worker E chops the 13h into Lake. This allows a few more turns for workers to set up roads toward the corn/sheep/wheat T78 city and then I could back fill the horse location after. Now that I have spawn busting units in the area, I may do this instead. I need to play ahead and sim out which is better. Looking back waaaaay earlier in the thread when mackoti shared his thoughts on my dot map, I believe that this southern corn is the one that he encouraged me to settle sooner, which makes sense. This city is going to be a hammer beast and will get going quickly. I'll need at least two workers down there constantly and probably a third to keep chops coming in.




Land Area: 11th, with a creative leader. Not so good, but I've spent time building granaries and workers in advance of Math, in addition to burning food on Academy specialists, and will be throwing down cities fast and furious now. I'll recover soon, but I'm not sure I'll be #1 again anytime soon, if ever. Crop yield is doing well, considering whips and specialists. I wouldn't be surprised to be leading that category again in 10-15 turns. And with this skeleton military, I'm still in the top 1/3 of players in the game. Folks are really running light so far on units it seems, though it appears there are a couple of strong outliers. Well, so much the better, as long as these aren't my neighbors.

New turn coming later today.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Apparently AT and Molach are at war. They seem to be observing a turn split, else AT would have played first after being last and needing a pause last turn in addition to needing one this turn. Molach lost two points while AT was logged in and Molach was not.

Way to go guys!

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks for the notice on cancelling worker actions. I tend to do that every turn because I seem to recall someone mentioning a bug where very rarely a queued or continuing action will not be implemented? I don't know the circumstances of how or when that might happen, or if it even does, but cancelling only costs me a second and gives me flexibility in case trouble shows up or I need to change orders.

I used queued actions all the time myself and I've never noticed a problem with Workers not performing the right actions. You do have to be careful to click on the Worker again after you've set the plan though, to make sure it's set to do everything you think it is. (Especially in Pitboss, where sometimes if you get a bit of lag on the server one of your orders might not go through.)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T68












T69

Declared on Q to get the scout through. I offered a cease fire to show my peaceful intent while preserving my ability to declare again to get through next turn. Depending on whether or not he accepts the cease fire, I have drawn in some scouting options. Also shown, Ruff has hooked up the sheep and I completed the Great Scientist in Yellowstone.



I double moved Caledorn because I could play the second turn, and in no small part to remove the possibility of his vulture taking a very good shot at my chariot, which he may have decided to do. I'll see if he moves any closer to my cities. He can see my chariot with the warrior/settler pair, so if he does move closer to my cities with the vulture I may complete a second chariot in Lake and position it to kill the vulture. I would then use the first chariot to kill his settler covered by a worker. I may do that anyway if I can get a free worker. Cal may rage on me after that, but he seems a modestly reasonable sort, and I think he might just take the loss with a heaping dose of chagrin and move along. Or, Cal may just wait with the settler/warrior for a few turns until he can settle with better strength. That is fine too, I'll be able to get my gold city down without any interference in that time. I'll probably just leave the chariot where it is for now. If Cal moves his vulture toward the chariot using the PHF, I'll have to find more favorable terrain to deal with him, probably closer to his cities to make him focus on chasing me away rather than harassing me.



A shiny Academy with boosted beakers and Settler #2 from Yellowstone in the last three turns.



Settler #1 went here.



Settler #2 from the capital results in this:



You can also see a second city on T72. That's the plan, at least.




I got graphs back on Caledorn this turn, who has spent continuously on me:

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

So, I'm not totally sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I am very grateful for LP stepping in for Catwalk and playing my turns for me while I was on vacation, and for playing MANY turns for other players in the past week or so. We need him to continue to do this and I greatly appreciate his efforts. That said, I'm a bit miffed at the moment with his play. Current turn:



Parkin has not ended turn for Cal, but he has moved the Vulture this turn, unless I am very mistaken (I am pretty sure I am not). Cal was last to play the previous turn. LP either settled the city at the end of last turn or the beginning of this turn. Upon logging out, the score change for actions during either turn is reflected, so I have no way of distinguishing which turn the city was founded at a glance. For me, though, the real problem is the Vulture moving twice without me being able to respond.

From T69:



T70 Cal/LP was able to move to the PFH, then T71 to move underneath my chariot and prevent me from being able to declare war and attack the city. I think this is pretty clearly not ok, especially considering that LP didn't go ahead and end turn for Cal. Why move the units at all if he isn't going to play the entire turn?

I'm not trying to start a riot or anything, but I am irritated that I now do not have the ability to take my chances against the new city. I'm not 100% decided that I would have attacked, but I would have considered it and the opportunity has been denied.

I ended up doing this on the current turn,



but the double move on the settling of the city has removed the option I would have had on declaring and taking a better than 75% shot to kill the warrior and raze the city.

LP, if I've misinterpreted or incorrectly reported your actions, please inform me what I've missed and accept my sincere apologies. If I've rightly observed Sumer's unit moves, we need to have a straightforward conversation about expectations and limitations of the Sub Civ Player's responsibilities when playing turns.

Aside from this, but not totally separate, we need to start finding some additional players to sub. Parkin can't do it all. I'm currently at war with Q, who LP has subbed for, and very well could have been at war with Caledorn this turn too. I think that it would be very difficult to keep everything totally isolated to the confines of a single civ when confronted with a common enemy. At this point in the game with wide gaps between empires, it isn't really a problem, but soon it will be and we may as well get an answer for this issue now before we have to delay the game later. Lurkers, if you haven't been working on an idea for this in your thread, maybe you could do that now?

I'd like to keep this issue out of the tech thread just now. I would prefer Cal and other players not know I have an issue and was thinking of declaring on him. Thanks for any feedback.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

One other comment: Can subbing players log into the game indicating which civ is being played? It is very difficult if not impossible to sort which civ is which on the tracker when there are multiple logins with the same name because the event tracker on our game tracker does not list which civ is logging in, just the player name for whoever is logging in. I don't care a out this for C&D. I do want to be able to sort through possible double moves. If we are relying on subs to play with some regularity then double moves are bound to be an issue at some point, most likely accidentally, but we will still need some means of differentiating logins to sort out alleged violations.

So, Parkin Sumer, Parkin Byzantium, etc. I'm not trying to make life difficult, but I do see this as making it easier to solve potential problems we are almost certain to encounter eventually.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Here is the rest of T70:



I logged in to see that Q had returned my cease fire offer. I declined to complete moving my scout through, but as you can see, nothing is threatening the scout. I think the back and forth cease fire offers have been a signal of amicable intent. I mean no harm passing through and he means no harm toward my scout. I'll offer a peace treaty as soon as I'm clear in the south.



I hope whoever has that massive land area number has tanked their economy. That seems like an awful lot of land tiles at this point, and that number has been pretty high for several turns. A BFC with 0 overlap at second ring is 21 tiles, so this could be 5 cities with some overlap and a third ring capital, but I think it is more likely six or even seven cities with tighter placement and less cultural output. Nothing to be done about it, whoever is in the land lead is almost certainly not in my neighborhood. I'm expanding as quickly as I prudently can. I was stuck on four cities for a long while as I built granaries, invested in an academy, and stocked up on workers. I aim to have four cities by T80, if things go well. I'm getting some cities later than some earlier sims because taking the hammer city in the south with corn/wheat/sheep is taking more worker turns to get up, but this city is going to be a monster immediately; five turns to grow to size to, turn 6 whip the granary, then in three turns back to size two, and a single turn each thereafter to grow to size three then size four. It will be +11food at size 3. I'll grow it onto some cottages until size 6 to share with the capital cottage filler and continue growing it up to the happy cap as workers furiously carve mines into the hills. In no time at all, this will be a hammer beast.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

So, if I make a plan, something will inevitably unmake it.



Here's how to overcome this, for now:

T71
A - move NE
CD - 2S/chop1/2/cancel

T72 -
A road1
C chop3 (done) - Axe in Canyon
D mine1/cancel

T73
A road2 (done) move axe to cover
C move SE, chop1/cancel
D move SE, chop2/cancel
SETTLER move to warrior/axe/3worker stack.

Hopefully barbs suicide into axe. Or, just run away. In sim, they declined combat.

T74
A move SW, road1
C move SW, road2
Settle city
D move SW/SW, farm1

This requires the spear not going directly toward my warrior/worker next turn. In my sim, it hasn't so far. The barb warrior is pretty mangled, so it poses no threat by itself as long as I don't leave workers uncovered. I'll finish the turn later on when I have time.

I guess this is why it is fruitless to make micro plans except for very narrow, specific objectives. Oh well.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T71

So, a decision to be made. If I invade, he could have reinforced with a spear and my invasion would be perceived as opportunistic and probably hurt me long term because we would both be forced to build more units and expand less, making this a lose/lose vs. the field. Or, it could be just a warrior and I can benefit relative to Caledorn by razing his city and hurting his expansion. Or, I can pass through, killing nothing when I perhaps had a chance, and hope that this is perceived as benevolence and a sign of friendly intent. Realistically, I want my chariot closer to home given the increased teeth that barbs are showing. Ho, ho, ho...they have a spear.



78% to raze the city, 72% to kill the vulture. I could totally kill the city and have my chariot in position to attack his Vulture near my upcoming city, should he decide to take vengeance.



But instead, a show of good faith.



In the end, I decided that even if I kill the city and the Vulture with my reinforcing chariot due next EoT, I still lose relative to the rest of the field if I have to build more units than the bare minimum.



Meanwhile, the barbs are making a nuisance of themselves, delaying my southern city. It was bound to happen with me building basically zero military to cover. All it takes is one bad roll and all progress comes to a stop. It was going to happen eventually.



Dat GNP (cheating lurkers).



The plan, so long as barbs don't screw me further.

[Ceiliazul]

78% to raze the city, 72% to kill the vulture. I could totally kill the city and have my chariot in position to attack his Vulture near my upcoming city, should he decide to take vengeance.



But instead, a show of good faith.

Wow, what a nice neighbor you are! I would have totally taken the city shot.