picklepikkl embarks on the Fool's Journey

[Gavagai]

Can you give an overview shot of your land, with Magican settled?

[picklepikkl]

Just played T33, so given that it's a nice round number, this will be a picture-heavy overview!

("But picklepikkl," I hear you say, "33 is not a round number at all!" Ah, dear reader, this is Quick speed, and thus t33 is isomorphic to Normal t50, which is a traditional time for overviews.)




Here's my capital city, The Fool. Caim finished his chop last turn, and so has moved to cottage the eastern floodplains. We're well behind compared to our foes on cottaging, alas, but I've been trying to maximize early game empire-wide foodhammer production, and may well be the first to three cities accordingly. Time will tell how that strategy works out, but for now, I think I want to let The Fool grow onto cottages as they come in, in the hopes of rescuing my GNP, with a scattered whip here and there as growth outpaces worker labor.




Here's The Magician, working three improved tiles with its three (freshly-whipped) pop and new granary, and building Worker #4. Worker #4 will probably be followed by Worker #5, but another Settler is a real possibility.




Overview shot of my east. Next turn, I will found The High Priestess at 0 and immediately begin a farm on the wheat. This place has three resources I want to hook up ASAP -- the wheat for growth, the copper for a real military, and the ivory for empire happiness. That is the tentative order I'm going to do it in, but I can be convinced otherwise. Also visible in this screenshot are sites "2," "3," and "s," which are all places I'd like to found cities. 3 in particular is notable, because I'm pretty sure that's where I'm going to put Moai: it isn't a great spot to whip because of its low food surplus without borrowing the Fool's corn, and has some hammer resources already. One thing I've seen a lot of people say in my archive reading is that a good Moai early is better than an ideal one later. 2 is pretty tentative -- I have a scout there in the southeast about to scope out that tundra region, so maybe we'll see a better spot -- but it claims two gold tiles with the first-ring food to work them.




Overview of my west. The gems I have available in my west seem much easier to claim than the gems I have available in the north. 1 is a fairly conservative spot, trying to get the luxuries without antagonizing Sian too much by poking too far into "his" side of our borders. Still, I don't want to settle it until I have at least one real military unit to enforce my claim. I could put it one tile east for a better food situation and an obvious suggested compromise on the gems, but it feels like that just gives too much opportunity for him to settle with the southern gems first ring and dare me to do something about it against his skirmishers.

Demos under the spoiler:

Also, our opponents' naming schemes:

Sian: Aristotle and Socrates make his civilization philosopher-themed. I question his decision to make Aristotle his capital over Socrates, but that's something for postgame critique .
greenline: Home Bay and Undercaves, Google tells me, relates to a game I've never heard of called Ecco the Dolphin. OK.
Jowy: Brimstone and Mom's Knife, Google tells me, relates to The Binding of Isaac, a game I have heard of but never played. OK. [EDIT: OH THAT'S WHY HIS INGAME NAME IS ISAAC CHRIST I AM A MORON]

If anyone has specific things they'd like me to show, feel free to ask .

[picklepikkl]

We are first to three cities!



City 2: The High Priestess

The High Priestess is the feminine counterpart to the masculine Magician. His is the knowledge you can apprehend with the conscious intellect; hers are the mysteries you can only truly understand unconsciously, outside the domain of reason. She's depicted with the trappings of religion: a cross around her neck, the Torah on her lap, and the pillars of the Temple of Solomon on either side of her. She teaches the Fool to understand the potential hidden in things, to go below surface meanings and obvious uses and see obscured truths, and to see the strength of passivity, of letting things happen without interference. I confess, I'm not sure how to apply her lessons to Civ, but maybe that just means I need them more badly than I know .

Alas, Civ 4 has city name character limits, so I had to shorten it to "High Priestess" .

[picklepikkl]

Quick turnaround yesterday and today! Though greenline hasn't been updating his thread, which he used to do religiously, so I wonder what's up with that.

(Speaking of greenline, something I should have mentioned in the last update, but did not, is that he and Sian have finally met. The whole world now knows everyone else. New to this turn, however, is Sian entering Slavery.)

Anyway, the chief action of this turn was 1-whipping The Fool's granary. Next turn we regrow to 3, then we'll grow on a warrior to 4 in time to pick up the newly cottaged flood plains, and then probably stagnate on a fh unit while we wait for both the happiness to grow to size 5 and another improved tile to work. I hemmed and hawed over the whip this turn; the granary was going to finish soon anyway, so was it really worth it? I ended up deciding that it was, because the alternative was growing onto an unimproved tile, whip unhappiness from earlier had worn off, and what's the point of being in Slavery in an incredibly high-food situation if you aren't using it every reasonable chance you get? Or, as L. H. Franzibald would put it:

[picklepikkl]

Now this is interesting.




As annoying as the prospect of wasting seafood is, I think settling in the tundra is mostly a trap, given how high maintenance costs are and how little food such a city would have; it's impossible to get two non-whales seafood in the BFC of a city in that corner, and tundra deer isn't what I'd call exciting. The really interesting thing is the fur: this makes for all five low-tech luxuries in my quadrant, which makes the bottom of the tech tree less appealing. The western gems will probably be my next spot, followed by the lighthouse forest lake, which will get me up to three, with a fourth available once that city pops borders twice. Grabbing silver is more of a hill to climb once I've staked out the easy sites in my corner and have enough of a core that I can afford a forward plant.

[picklepikkl]

Spent a lot of time this turn thinking about the gems site and running the timings back and forth in my head. The 2 site would be faster to settle and not require as much investment, but then I risk Sian going for our shared gems and potentially locking me out, depending on what Jowy does. Sian has been settling north of his capital (he founded his third city this last turn), which is good, but Jowy has been settling south (I got vision on Mom's Knife's center, by the way), which is bad. I'm going to be dithering on this a long while.

In other news, the Victory Conditions screen tells me that as of my EOT, we lead the world in true population (10, 4/4/2), and we got Writing in at end of turn (I worked an unimproved dye over the plains hill mine at the capital to bring it in a turn early, which I think is worth it; gotta get going on those Libraries). Next up we'll be saving gold for a run at either Fishing or Mathematics. One thing I forgot to report last turn is that our fourth worker was build and has been named Decarabia. No picture for this demon (the only D-goetic demon I could find with an illustration is, uh, kind of racist), but here's the description from Wikipedia: "Decarabia knows the virtues of all herbs and precious stones, and can change into all birds and sing and fly like them before the conjurer. He is depicted as appearing as a pentagram star, changing into a man under the conjurer's request." Those skills are pretty neat, but mostly I'm a big fan of tutelary spirits made out of geometry (ask me sometime about Pattern from Words of Radiance).

Finally, an interesting bit from the demographics (I'm not doing in-depth C&D anymore -- it's just too mentally exhausting -- but I'm taking screenshots every turn to keep my eye on things):




Look at that top production number. I'm guessing someone is working a lot of hammers to bring in a wonder. Probably Stonehenge, but someone might have beelined Priesthood.

[picklepikkl]

The turn got to me just before I had to leave for church; it's Good Friday for Eastern Orthodox Christians, so I went to the Lamentations service with my family. I was considering playing quickly and sending the turn on before I went, but I decided that I really wanted to take my time and think about what I was doing. I proceeded to spend much of the last six hours thinking about the turn, and I'm still not sure about what I'm doing. Oh well!

(I also spent a lot of that time feeling bad about holding things up, as silly as that is. I am maybe too neurotic for my own good in turn-based multiplayer )

Current plan: Worker in The Magician, whip it ASAP and regrow on library. Meanwhile, The Fool will finish its worker and then move on to a settler. This will bring me up to six workers for soon-to-be-four cities, which is OK, and get The Magician started on finally popping its borders. Is this ideal? Probably not -- I dithered quite a bit. But I figure the worst-case scenario is that I'm slow on four cities, but quick to five.

Meanwhile, I proposed Open Borders with Jowy; I really want to take a look at his capital. greenline founded his third city. I also got eyes on Sian's third city:




He's been settling in a straight shot for The Promised Land, which is both good and bad. It's good, because it means that by the time he has supply lines to reasonably contest my gems city, I'll have real units available. It's bad because it means that, well, he's grabbing up The Promised Land :P. Not sure where greenline has been settling; maybe he'll be in a position to react? Also, it seems that Sian was the one to found Hinduism. I wonder if greenline's been poking along the religious path at all?

In conclusion: blah.

[picklepikkl]

Update: Still blah.

Jowy turned down Open Borders, Sian offered it. I rejected Sian; the reason I didn't want to propose to him is because we're about to settle into contested territory and I don't want him being able to have eyes on all my cities and military. Improving ivory in the east, which will help me grow my cities onto cottages.

[picklepikkl]

Happy Easter to those observing!

Jowy founded his third city and greenline built Stonehenge. This makes me feel somewhat better about my decision to ignore religion out the gates and instead get my culture from early libraries and hope to be first to CoL. Not completely, but somewhat -- there were three obvious prizes and three people better-suited to them than I.

Two workers completed this turn; The Magician started its library and The Fool grew to 5 on a warrior before it goes on to a settler for The Empress, which I will double-whip at the first opportunity. Fishing also came in, so I'm going to start saving gold for Mathematics.

Worker 5 is Eligos!



Under the name of Abigor, this demon appears as a PC in a theater LARP I really enjoyed. He has great insight into military matters and can find that which is hidden.

Worker 6 is Focalor; no picture for this guy (he's said to look like a man with gryphon wings), but I picked him over the other Fs because he is a giant woobie. He has power over the sea and can cause storms to sink ships, but he is specifically called out as being totally happy to not hurt anyone. He regrets his fallen nature, and hoped that after a thousand years he might be forgiven and brought back to heaven, but this did not happen. I have a giant soft spot for "bad guy regrets his wrongdoing and resolves to do better" stories, so he's my favorite.

[picklepikkl]

Things that have happened today:

1. Got turned down for a promotion.
2. Spotted a Sianic warrior poking around near our shared gems. Luckily, I have two warriors in the area already, so I'm reasonably confident that my claim can stand up in the near term (makes me feel better about the gpt it's costing to support those units). I just wish the settler were able to get out sooner.