[SPOILERS] Hoarse Lord DaveV speaks softly...

[DaveV]

Hmm. Rival worst approval is currently 46%, which means unhappy campers (was 50% on turn 66). Harpy event is certainly possible.

[DaveV]

Turn 72, wherein the RNG hates me.

First, an event.




I thought it was worth 25 gold to avoid the health hit, but it means I need an extra turn of gold saving before I can research Mining.

I didn't take this attack, since I'd be hosed if I lost it. I'll just sit and defend.




The animals are lined up to snipe my settler. There's very little I can do to get odds on that Combat 2 tiger; he'll probably kill one of my guys and move out of range. I'm hoping the elephant will at least move off my city site.




Next turn, I can explore the graveyard with a warrior. 40% chance of getting some gold back, 20% chance of a free tech. What could possibly go wrong?

[Aurorarcher]

Is the other 40% going to give something very bad from the graveyard? Btw, how you know all these odds? Do you read them from some .xml file or what?

[DaveV]

20% skeletons, 20% spectres. The nightmare scenario is for a spectre to win at ridiculously long odds and upgrade to a wraith. That's pretty much game over.

The code that controls the exploration is in CvSpellInterface.py; some guy posted the results in case you can't decipher the python.

[DaveV]

Turn 73, wherein the RNG giveth and the RNG taketh away. The log gives a summary:



Reading bottom to top:

1. The tiger killed my 2.5/3.0 combat 3 warrior but was injured down to 0.2/4.0 in doing so.
2. The lion died attacking my other warrior, injuring him to 2.5/3.0, and giving him 1 XP.
3. A goblin moved onto the rice farm SE of Whirlaway.
4. The barb warrior near my capital is gathering his courage, or waiting for reinforcements, or something.
5. The elephant moved out of the way, so I founded my sixth city.
6. My scout promoted to Subdue Animal, and captured the tiger, sustaining no damage. The tiger will be a my strongest unit once I heal him up:




7. My combat 2, shock warrior killed the goblin on the rice farm flawlessly for 2 XP.
8. I got the worst result from the graveyard: spectres.




The eastern guy can pillage my village if he's so inclined. I'm hoping they both suicide into my warrior. Sareln's calculator says I have 74% odds of surviving two attacks; I don't think he takes defender first strike chances into account, so the odds should be somewhat better than that. Come on, RNG, you owe me!

Edit: I just realized I left a worker exposed to the western spectre. So that worker is probably toast, and I'll be faced with a spectre on a forest hill.

[DaveV]

Turn 74. The spectre ate my worker , as I feared.



Note to self: next time, pop the graveyard first, to avoid this kind of worker sniping.

Killing the offender:




Fail.




Won. Yay.

Scouts did some scouting in the west:

[DaveV]

Turn 75. A bit more scouting to reveal the tiles S and SW of the clams. Yay desert.




Log file reveals that Loki is on the board.



In honor of turn number evenly divisible by twenty five, the complete set of demos:

[DaveV]

Turn 76. Ellimist had an eventful turn 75:



He grabbed circumnav, as I predicted, but didn't have to use his worldspell to do it. He also switched into a complete copy of my civics. I don't think he was the one to grab FoL because of the order of messages (his research of it should have occurred before the barb turn, not after). So that leaves Yell0w, GreyWolf, or Kredom. Pro/con list:

Yellow: free source of culture (+), has some cool units on the recon line (+), definitely not on the way to puppets (-).

GreyWolf: lets him build units that can profit from XP (+), he already has a good building that gives culture (-), requires lots of techs that don't help his golems at all (-).

Kredom: completely off path for typical vampire techs (-), has no need of culture (-), but who knows what's on his mind?

I've listed them in my estimate of most to least likely, but I could be completely wrong.

I stacked up some workers to 2-turn the silk plantation, with a strong guarding unit.




After I ended turn, the game showed me my copper.




I'd been planning to put my next city on the highlighted plains hill, but I think I'll have to move one tile north now. Bronze Working would be a good next tech, for jungle chopping and stronger warriors.

Also, the observant viewer may note that I've started growing my capital and Gallant Fox one turn too early for the silk to keep them happy. So I'll have to spend one more turn stalling growth, then let them grow.

[DaveV]

Turn 77. The barbs are back, and someone got a great engineer.



That's gotta be GreyWolf, with his pack of engineer specialists.

One of the incoming warriors is sitting by my worker stack; I decided to attack him.



My warrior won, but was injured pretty badly.




I risked a scout to do some exploring in the northwest. I can see either an island or peninsula across the water. You can just see a barb warrior and goblin, respectively 4S1E and 4S2W of the capital.

[DaveV]

Turn 78.



GreyWolf continues to follow the Luchuirp template. The barbs are closing in on my roading worker and his guardian.




I like my odds here, so I'll stay in place. In the northwest, I moved my scout to reveal a bunch of empty water tiles. Yay.

In the northeast, I'm moving my animal hunting scout to take a shot at the lion.




I have three cities poised to grow at end of turn, which boosted me past Yell0w into third place. I still have a lot of ground to make up, though: