Your name is in the mouth of others, be sure it has teeth: a Tale of Mice & Centaurs

[Ventessel]

Turn 5 update:

Literally nothing interesting happened, although Padan Fain stumbled upon a large body of definitely non-potable water...


I'll mess around in MS Paint and mark up this with my current thoughts on the site for city #2. Any guesses as to the planned name?

Also, no changes in demographics. Dreylin is likely close to his worker now... it won't register on the soldier counts, so I'll wait and see. If his overall tile yields increase in 5-8 turns, without a corresponding pop increase, I'll know he built a worker. I'm going to crunch some numbers and pray to the dark gods of linear algebra...

[Ventessel]

So, two proposed sites for city #2.

Purple Dot is pretty appealing to me, despite the overlap with Caemlyn. That's actually part of the appeal, since it's four tiles away it'll be within road distance of a 2-mover so mutual defense is easier. It can work some riverside cottage tiles for Caemlyn as well, to keep them growing towards those sweet, sweet Enclaves. It will also pick up the rice and sheep with its first border pop, which will be important for keeping it growing.

I don't honestly expect for my cities to grow far beyond the 25 pop mark, so getting maximum utility out of the second ring is (at least by my reckoning) more important than potentially optimizing cities for their third ring.

White Dot would pick up the wines and rice with ring 2 borders, and the sheep with ring 3 borders. The upside is that it won't be overlapping with the capitol, while the downside is that it picks up a number of water tiles which are pretty crappy for a non-coastal city.

Having written all this down, I'm now quite confident that the Purple Dot will be the site of city #2...

[Molach]

I think you can safely assume that any semi-competent or better player will go worker first in a RB MP game, even in FFH with tougher barbs.

[Ventessel]

I think you can safely assume that any semi-competent or better player will go worker first in a RB MP game, even in FFH with tougher barbs.

True, there really isn't any other feasible move under the circumstances. I am probably just being paranoid due to the fact that the Calabim are pretty dangerous militarily when played right (as I assume Dreylin will) and that the pacing of the turns gives me plenty of time to wonder, probably to the detriment of my reasoning.

[Ventessel]

Just ran across this article on city placement over on CivFanatics. Relevant to what I was discussing earlier, and very good stuff all around.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=546356

[Ventessel]

Turn 6:

Found some gems!


Stuff happened, Dreylin's score increased... I'll try to wrap my head around what it means later this evening. For now, time to make dinner and listen to Taylor Swift. Espionage can wait.

[Ventessel]

Combined weekend update, including turn 9:

There's some very nice land down there...


And it looks like I may have to share. First Contact!


We've met jalapeno the helpful, of the Amurites. Strange, but it seems as if this civilization is oddly familiar... oh well.

The demographics are holding steady, although rival best GNP of 20 is somewhat irritating. My worker will be out soon and I can get to work (heh, pardon the pun) boosting my output.



I'm going to have my scout move north, both because I want to look over to the east of Caemlyn and because hopefully the Amurite scout will think that I'm coming FROM the south, and go that way looking for my capital. If it works, great. If not... oh well.

[Ventessel]

Turn 10:

They've moved onto the hill behind me... we will see if they follow me or not.


Here's all the land in the south... definitely looks quite good for city near those furs and pigs.


I'm ranked pretty low in terms of demographics, but my worker is now building a farm outside Caemlyn so hopefully that will change.

[Ventessel]

Turn 11:

I believe we have evaded the enemy, er... Amurite scout. He's no on those hills, and he didn't follow us. So... no new is good news? The warrior in Caemlyn is moving south a little to hopefully keep an eye out in case he jalapeno's scout loops north.



Meanwhile, in the Cloak & Dagger Ministry...




Rival best GNP has fallen slightly, no population changes. Looking at the graphs I see that jalapeno and I are equal in everything but Mfg where he is 1 pt up on me for 3h. As the next few turns go on and people complete their workers and the numbers settle down I should be able to piece together more detailed analysis now that I have rival best/worst and jalapeno's numbers, leaving only 1 unknown for some categories.

Current short term plan is to build a granary, Caemlyn will grow in 4t, farm is finished in 3 t. I will use 1t to start roading the corn, then when Animal Husbandry completes I'll move to start a pasture on one of my animal resources. When we get to 3 pop I'll start in on either a second scout or a warrior, and then there should be my first settler shortly thereafter. Hopefully 2 scouts can provide sufficient fogbusting to keep the worst of the barbs at bay.

I'm leaning towards building my second city relatively close to Caemlyn (4 or 6 tiles away so that troops can move easily between them) and then pushing further south with the third city. I'd love to get a solid claim on the land down south before jalapeno can move in, and if he's confused about the direction my scout was coming from then all the better.

[Ventessel]

Some things have happened and I have been procrastinating with updating this thread. Here is a combined update leading turn 16 (which I have in my inbox and will play just as soon as I write this up).

For starters, Padan Fain has discovered a strange land populated by downtrodden peasants and ruled over by absentee landlords who were unavailable for comment during the daytime...



Still no sign of the Amurite scout near Caemlyn...



Hopefully he wandered off and got eaten by a bear or something horrible like that.

Research on Animal Husbandry is finally completed! My worker (he needs a name... my first idea for worker naming schemes was probably offensive to those of Jewish descent. My second idea wasn't much better. I will decide on a name for this industrious servant of the king when I play T16)

The Kuriotate researchers are now exploring the secrets of Ancient Chants (we get a bonus to research because we've met the Amurites and they have this tech, right? How much of a bonus is that to research efficiency?)

Here's a screen shot of the Victory Conditions screen



Apparently I have twice as much land as jalapeno, percentage wise. That's quite interesting to note, I wonder if that number gets updated every turn or every turn cycle?

There is a city out there called Bagpuss that has 32 culture, and is leading the game. I wonder if that city belongs to Dreylin? Or maybe those small bearded miners...

Oh, silly me.

Definitely belongs to Dreylin.

Someone's city still only has 1 population? That's really unfortunate.



Rival worst crop yield is 4. I don't think I'm missing any special mechanics for the Khazad WRT food production, so that means either they or the Svarts are beginning to fall a little behind in food output. My MFG is still a joke, and will be until I get mining. it's alright, no one else is really close to mining besides the Khazad (and they don't have the population to work those tiles, ha!).

Rival best GNP is up at 20, which is really not good and I need to correct that ASAP. I'm sitting in 5th place with a rival average of 16. Very bad.

But this is as good a place as any to try my hand at more detailed analysis now that I know two of my neighbors.

Starting with crop yield:

Looks like a 3-way tie for me, Dreylin, and jalapeno at 11f. Quite simple to figure out, rival best should be DaveV at 14 and aurorarcher at 4.

Just like high school, check your linear algebra. Rival average is 9. Values of (11 + 11 + 14 + 4) = 40. That's a slight discrepancy, but perhaps the graphs haven't updated? If someone shifted their worked tiles this turn before me in the play order, I don't think that the graph will reflect that, but the demographics screen will. Any lurkers out there able to confirm that?

Now for manufactured goods.


Interesting to note that Dreylin opened with a very heavy focus on hammers and switched over to food. Makes sense because he had a 2 pop lead on everyone right away.

My value is 3, and it looks like both Dreylin and jalapeno are at 4. My rival average is 3, the best is 5, the worst is 3. This leads me to believe that there might be further discrepancies between the graphs and the info screen. If the total rival MFG was 15, would Civ round down and display the rival average as 3 instead of the 4 that would be displayed for a total of 16? (5 + 3 + 4 +4)

Nothing insane here, although if I'm feeling really nerdy I might compute the area under these lines and get a pretty solid estimate of total production to date... In an amusing anecdote, my girlfriend saw me marking up a screenshot in MS paint and asked "Oh, are you playing your game?" to which I had to answer, "No, I'm drawing on a screen shot of the game to plan out my next moves." Needless to say, my geek credentials were automatically renewed on the spot. I guess some people do this stuff for a living, but they're analysts for three letter agencies. (or they just manage databases. Also an option.)

Lastly... GNP. I honestly am hesitant to say anything with much certainty here because I know that there are modifiers for research and I'm not fully sure how those work. All I know is, I need to pick up that slack here.

Rival worst is 14, that looks like jalapeno. That puts Dreylin and those blood sucking fiends at 15. Rival average is 16 and the best is 20. Thus the remaining player should also be at 15. Now, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Dave is at 20 (maybe from research modifiers?) and that Aurorarcher is at 15.

Essentially, the field is pretty close for the most part. I'm lagging behind and one player is pushing ahead somewhat. We'll see if those numbers change now that I'm researching something with a bonus from jalapeno knowing it.

I'll conclude with a nice wide angle shot of the land to my south, which I would like to quickly expand into with my double speed settlers and granaries...