[SPOILERS] Mardoc's Magical Mystery Tour

[Qgqqqqq]

Damnit man, how am I supposed to agree mindlessly with you if you keep changing your mind?

[Mardoc]

Damnit man, how am I supposed to agree mindlessly with you if you keep changing your mind?

Hmm. You could disagree with me at first, so that when I change my mind it's due to more information plus your devil's advocating.

Or you could just send money

[Mardoc]

Now it's time for a boring ten turn settler build. Maybe we can do something interesting with the southern warrior once he heals. Or maybe we'll get five turns in this weekend, so the boredom might not stretch as long.




At least the worker should only lose one turn. Next turn he can start building a road net, and in three turns he can prebuild a farm or two for the new city.

[Qgqqqqq]

Uhh, I'd missed the river there, so it'll be a 2t settle regardless. Don't bother with the hill road, then. Maybe consider roading the dye soon, as it might be a while before worker comes back that way?

[Mardoc]

Ah, right, it does need a road if we're going to take advantage of the +1 happy. Well, jungle first, anyway, to save the worker turn.

And we did at least have a morning turn this time. So maybe we'll get our second city in a reasonable amount of time yet.

[Mardoc]

Three turns today! That makes up a bit for my grumbling .

Only one interesting decision:



Do we go lion hunting?

Pros: XP! Always good to get XP. Plus clearing out another animal will help future XP generation rate.

Cons: Kinda sorta need a garrison for our second city....

The southern warrior, though, has healed to full and hasn't spotted any new foes. So I think I'm going to recall him to the capital. If the lion fighter wins, then we're another good chunk toward a wane. If he loses, then we have a backup who will still arrive in time for settler escort duty.

Of course, the lion moved back out of sight at EOT, so we've got at least two more turns before we can possibly catch him. Maybe more if we're unlucky. So we've time to abort if absolutely necessary.

It's just that 73% is such a beautiful number.

The other option we have, of course, is to have him hold fast while the southern warrior comes home, then go lion hunting as a pair. This might be wiser, guarantee we actually kill the lion rather than risk creating a combat III monster who can't be killed short of divided souls. Now that I think about it, I really should be cautious and go this route - tactical aggression is very well, but we can pair it with strategic caution and make everybody happy.

[Mardoc]

Two more turns yesterday, but no morning turn today. Well, five in a weekend and otherwise 1/day is still a good rate. Pretty soon we'll have plenty to do. Probably.

Haven't seen the lion again, so I'm pretty glad I didn't send the warrior off after it - would probably have been looking for a long time. Getting the city count increased is more important right now - gotta switch the barbs from animals to warriors.

We're running tied in #1 GNP somehow - I guess maybe Dyes are just as good as a pirate cove, un-upgraded. Not sure how we equal the second cove Jalepeno ought to have by now - maybe he felt Mind would be overkill with Lanun on a map like this.

Of course, it won't last, our second city doesn't add much GNP while every new Lanun city ought to have a cove or two plus a bunch of coast. If the barbs don't get their act together, we're going to be third place economy at best. Still too early to be concerned, except from a 'what if' standpoint.

[Qgqqqqq]

The settler isn't going to be exposed, so I have no problem with lion-hunting. Don't rely too much on him surviving, though.

[Mardoc]

Yeah, I'm still going to go lion hunting - I'm just waiting to bring my warriors together, so that the lion definitely dies. Mostly because I thought about what happens if the lion wins that 27% defensive fight - he gets a bunch of XP, definitely enough for combat I, maybe combat II as well. Unless I have a second warrior right there, that is, who can take it out before it can promote and heal.

Lion hunting isn't just for the XP from the lion. It's equally as much to clear out space for more barbs to spawn. I need to make sure part B actually happens.

What I'm really hoping for is that I'm not the only one to be getting out a second city in the next ~6 turns. I'll probably be first or second, because I'm industrious but Jalepeno is Expansive - but DaveV and Aurorarcher ought to be following within a turn or two. Ideally that switches the barbs into warrior-mode, not animal-mode, and everyone gets busy killing off barb warriors. But, of course, that benefits me much more than anyone else.

I guess if my foes don't settle cities, I'm ok with that too . Then I outproduce them by the old-fashioned method of 'more worked tiles' rather than 'free specialists'. It's not the way I'm going to bet, though. Not against this crowd.

[Mardoc]

Still haven't seen the lion again. Warriors are maybe three turns from being brought together to head out and hunt. Settler's about three turns away as well, and Mysticism is 4-5ish? Don't remember the exact numbers but things should start happening by the end of the week.

We have the dyes hooked, so we can grow the city again whenever we think it's worthwhile. I don't think that it is worthwhile yet, except as a side effect of building hammer-stuff. I can't make myself *not* work that 7 food corn farm, so we'll have a food surplus even if everything else goes to hammer tiles.

I think what probably makes sense right after our settler build is to swap the city to mostly hammers (still work the dye, but probably not the oasis or floodplains farm), knock out a quick warrior (should be able to get this in two turns, I think) and then go into our cheap Elder Council as soon as Myst comes in. Warriors for wanes is nice, but 20 hammers for 2 bpt *now* is worth more. Also our best unworked 'tile' is probably the sage - and we're about to get our first GSage which will become an Academy and make all those rewards 50% better. We'll have our base commerce of 19 bpt, add six from the EC + Sage, then add 50% from the Academy - should put us at 37 bpt when we get all of that in place.

After that...well, honestly, Mining isn't all that far away anymore. Maybe 20 turns at our current beaker rate - but that rate is going to double. We'll want to convert all our hill forests into hill mines, finish farms at the 2nd city, build a road to a third city site and have a worker ready to improve that third city. So we need at least one more worker, maybe two, right after the EC. Then on to another settler.

All that assumes the barbs allow it. If they do ever pick up the pace, we'll have to slip in extra warriors.

Also, I think this is a game where God King makes sense, at least for a while. It won't be much gold boost, but the bonus hammers will be very nice. Already have a lot more things I want to build than I can, and I don't expect that to change. If the wane spigot ever opens up, we can take advantage of the gold boost too. Perhaps eventually we swap over to City States - I think that will depend on how many wanes we get vs. how many cities - which in turn depends on how the barbs look.

I hate repeating myself so much, but I really don't have any idea how Immortal Raging barbs look like on a Standard map. One of the factors in the previous raging barbs game I forgot about was an extra-large map with only four civs on it.