[spoilers] The Bulldog of Africa: Commodore gets boat murdered

[Commodore]

FACT SHEET: BRICK ASTLEY

Brick (erratic, speedy) as Alexander (Aggressive, Philosophical) of the Zulu (Hunting, Agriculture, Impi, Ikhanda)
CURRENT CITES: 3
NOTABLE WONDERS: GREAT WALL
OTHER ASSETS: SETTLED GREAT SPY, MORE ON THE WAY
POSITION READ: APPARENTLY BAFFLED BY HIS OWN LAND
Brick managed here to land a pretty good combo, Aggressive Zulu being well known awesomeness and Phi actually being pretty good in this wasteland for popping multiple Great Spies. His early Great Wall build was very clever; the EP economy ought to see him at tech parity pretty easily post-Alphabet, not like many of the rest of us can afford to run counter-EP. This is a lovely combination, forcing the competition into a lovely race: Winners get stole from, losers get impis. I want us to win that race. The play is very typical of Brick...he's a smart guy but not one given to single-minded long-term focus on any one of his dozens of hobbies, so his civ skills are as variable as the winds. I do think that with disciplined cottage growing and strong defenses we can thwart him, but his over-water proximity definitely means we want that copper online sooner rather than latter.
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[El Grillo]

I'd be delighted to see an EP economy being played thoughtfully in a MP game, since it doesn't seem like many of the games here allow the option. Setting up the bronze/crab/furs city should also give the opportunity to scout those offshore isles for potential city sites. Shame on TGL, but the overall position seems agreeable once the cottages come online.

This Dwarf Fortress game sounds like a simultaneously brilliant and horrifying idea.

[Commodore]

I'd be delighted to see an EP economy being played thoughtfully in a MP game, since it doesn't seem like many of the games here allow the option. Setting up the bronze/crab/furs city should also give the opportunity to scout those offshore isles for potential city sites. Shame on TGL, but the overall position seems agreeable once the cottages come online.

Same here about seeing the EP econ...pity about Brick's foregone graphs though. To be completely honest I'm mostly just thinking we can win this if we just work hard on growing a nice cottage core; we own, conservatively, 349% of the world's green land.

This Dwarf Fortress game sounds like a simultaneously brilliant and horrifying idea.

Dwarf Fortress is a wonderful thing to watch/read about in Let's Plays. As an actual game, it is an ugly shambling wreck of a beast that fails on almost any traditional gradient not labelled "Machoism", where it ranks between CrossFit and attempting to take LoL seriously with any RTS background/intellect. DF is its own rather amusing culture, but it's impossible to learn by act of play.

[Commodore]

Headshoots, a sad fifth city.
   
This is a fifth city. All craftdwarfship is of the lowest quality. This city is adorned with a sad crab, chilly beavers, and distant copper and menaces with antarctic weather. In the city are citizens of hopeless prospects and a hungry future.

[Commodore]

23rd Felsite, Year of the Mole
The forts are getting wealthy, at long last. Thank Armok's curly beard the eggheads have finally gotten off their duffs and are working on minting some actual currency. Up until now they have been trying to convince me this “commerce” stuff actually represented riches. I get it, we're trading with the twinkly sparkly Celts and the prancing ruffle-clad Zulus, I know it helps the economy, I really do. But every damned time I look into the vaults and just see trade goods and statues I get a horrible sick feeling, like being sober and in sunshine. To the monster-haunted deeps with that. I want to see coins.
   
I also want to see some decent bronze weaponry, but who knows how long that will take. Those frostbitten idiots down in Headshoots are going to have to put in a rush order to get some warmule-pulled battlewagons before they can finish whipping the slaves to erect my monument. Addlepated nitwits. It all comes from eating seafood in my opinion; but of course we're planning the next two forts to be fed exclusively on seafood, so what do I know, I'm just the overseer. That second fort is the worst idea yet; they aim to set out in ships and then make their living hunting elephants. That is so stupidly foolhardy I think I might have to give them a commendation. We'll happily enjoy their ivory goods, but don't expect me to go near that fort. I think I'm going to instruct them to name it “Boatmurdered” just for the sake of truth in advertising...

[Commodore]

4th Obsidian, Year of the Plump Helmet
Those ruffle-loving cheese-sniffing muleheads down in Headshoots delayed their copper hook up, which of course made us miss bronze quota, which of course means for axes we are up a turd river without an oar.
   
It is always so comforting to an overseer when a fortress is guarded by "hope" and "goodwill".

[Commodore]

Boatmurdered, an elephant-infested sixth city.
   
This is a sixth city. All craftdwarfship is of the lowest quality. This city is adorned with fish and astonishing desiccation and menaces with ivory tusks. In the city are citizens of hopeless prospects and a hungry future.
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[Commodore]

I guess for those watching along a bit confused I should step OOC a bit and talk about the game as a whole. Here are the Dwarf Fortresses; we might be small but we're also weak!
   
Jesting aside, we're actually doing pretty well. This is of course a terrible map for food and all, but as you can see above I've got a fair bit of green land now paved with tons of dry grassland cottages...terrible tiles now, but if we can survive to see them mature then this core will easily outstrip any others that I've seen. Charismatic actually has been really nice, letting us grow taller than the average bear. Demographics bear that out:
   
...ouch. So yeah, the excellent crop yield and abysmal manufacturing are us investing in the future; unfortunately that's going to take a long while to come a cropper. Brick's Agg Zulu are expanding like wildfire and will keep up with EP economy, while Khan leads the not-us GNP with the Great Lighthouse and the Colossus. Sian and HAK are in hard places, all plains and rocks and crummy economic options. But we're all far-flung from one another yet, so conquest isn't exactly a solution. I'm a bit worried about Brick...our power is all chariots at the moment...but once we get a nice axe/Proarcher/spear combo in every city with a Numidian reaction force we'll be pretty solid for core defense. Basically, I guess, my Churchill strategy is to turtle, grow the edges, and eventually land rifles off of galleons into medieval stuff. No clue how well that'll work.

[Commodore]

FACT SHEET: KHAN

Khan (new, frisky) as Isabella (Spiritual, Expansive) of Native America (Fishing, Agriculture, Dog Soldier, Totem Pole)
CURRENT CITES: 5
NOTABLE WONDERS: GREAT LIGHTHOUSE, ORACLE, COLOSUS
OTHER ASSETS: JUDAISM
POSITION READ: UNDEREXPANDED BUT EXCELLENT ECONOMY WONDERS
Khan lucked into the best leader in the field by far, and combined her with the certainly useful Natives; dog soldiers ought to help in the low-copper environment, while of course if you've been lurking here at RB for any length of time you know Izzy's quality. He's certainly swept the useful wonders; Colossus is easily the best wonder to have this game, allowing 2/0/3 tiles all over the place, and although the GLH has gotten him a bit embargoed, there are enough islands out there somewhere to allow some good trade routes internally. Khan is a new player to RB, but has thus far shown himself to be playfully aggressive, prone to chokes and skirmishes. His peace in this game is due only the vast distances between us, I am sure. Going forward, I look to him to get a nice big economy snowball going; Brick might leech him, actually...but how Khan uses his whopping great ball is going to determine his fate, eventually you just gotta convert the lead into something else.
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[Commodore]

16th Opal, First Year of Armok's Doom
It is customary as an overseer to make one of these grand tours of the Fortresses upon assumption of rule, I am given to understand. Far be it from me to depart with tradition, particularly at the auspicious date of 1AD.

Bronzemurder

This city menaces me with its many tall trees, I think my first priority will definitely be to task more workers to clean this place up; first we'll put up some more cottages in the flatlands, then we'll work on mining those hills. I think we'll make a lighthouse to help grow but I doubt we'll bother with the long and annoying task of actually getting to maximum size. Nobles are a pain in my rear, but there are enough mines around here that bureaucracy probably makes sense.

Bravemule

This city menaces me with its dismaying lack of statuary...how can citizens take comfort from looking at fine monuments? I'd worry about tantrums soon, but we should be getting the citizens fine silks in time. This place is the egghead fort, really...I think a Great Egghead will be coming out of here before too long. I'll probably tell him to work on philosophy or something.

Syrupleaf

This city menaces me with its severe lack of hammers, for which I can determine no real solution. It's a happy fort, but I suspect we're going to be seeing a lot of miasma soon, it's not a healthy place. We're not going to see the end of that problem until the eggheads figure out how to make cothons. Like Bravemule, this fort is very very rich in cottages.

Oilfurnace

This city menaces me with its numerous water tiles. I am pretty sure the solution to such an uphappy circumstance is more statuary, we'll call them "Moai" or somesuch nonsense. We'll erect those stones by the expedient of whipping lots and lots...some for the citizens to look forward to I guess. The work boat is for the planned new fort we'll be founding next time, Gemclod. Oilfurnace is dangerously close to the rapacious Zulu hordes, we definitely need to increase the local militia against that vile force of darkness.

Headshoots

This city menaces me with its cold and howling wastes and general worthlessness. They made this fort to claim copper and furs, and it claims copper and furs. This worthless hellhole will never be worth anything beyond that.

Boatmurdered

This city menaces me with its terrifying elephants. It was apparently settled for ivory export, of all perversities, but it will actually be worth something in the long run as well, once they can fish the fort will be able to work two mines and a plains cottage in addition to the elephant camps. Here on Armok's misbegotten hunger-world, that's about as good as can be expected.

Skyscrapes

This cities menaces me with its unruly barbarian citizens and its dark jungles. When we get around to making the workers some iron axes we'll have some nice sugar plantations around down the slopes, that will feed enough citizens make a strong mining fort...whenever they set up a forge, we'll be looking at a place almost as productive as Bronzemurder.

That was exhausting. I don't think I'm going to venture out of my magnificent bedroom again this year.