RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius

[WarriorKnight]

Interesting...

If I had to guess now, I would say the map looks like this:

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Since we're in the S we have a land neighbor to the NW, 2 water neighbors on the E/W wrap and maybe a border with the NE civ. We sit in the S position while Alhazard is in the SE. There are water ismuses all along the map which connect the 3 'poles'.

My micro plan will run out in 6t, at which point the opening ends and we can begin to transition into our mid-game strat. I have some thoughts on that which I'd like to put here once I find the time to do so.

[WarriorKnight]

Almost played 3 turns today but sadly it wasn't to be.

Looks like I get to play 3 turns today instead!

This game is moving super fast, it's looks like we'll need to update our micro plan real soon (like Monday at the latest). I'll see if I can spare some time for it tomorrow, although I can't guarantee it.

[WarriorKnight]

T195:



Looks like Alhazard is trying to get circumnavigation as well, this Explorer has made a nonstop beeline towards the W, and it wouldn't surprise me if he sent a LBow E at the start of the game (I did spot a LBow in Alhazard's N, the other one is MIA). Assuming that no-one in the north is doing anything similar (and that's a BIG if), then it'll all come down to whatever the 3rd southern civ has done in terms of scouting. Unfortunately our run for circum isn't perfect, our W Longbow had a 2t delay which hopefully won't matter as much as contact with the last civ.

Both of our cities grow to size 2 next turn, so we can start having some fun with micro again. Can you believe we'll have a settler in 6t? (and a 3rd city in 9 most likely)

Also I have a confession to make, I haven't been tracking C&D nearly as much as I should have. Fortunately the only real loss is knowing how much pop everyone has in which city (which is kinda trivial), plus we can just exchange maps to figure it out in the long term so I don't think it'll really matter.

[WarriorKnight]

T196:

This turn starting with me opening the game to find a map trade request from Nicolae. Naturally I accepted, which basically defined the whole turn. Let's start with Nicolae:



Settled in place and 3N huh?

They are in Pacifism, which isn't a huge surprise considering their pop lead. Guess they plan to go for a GP strat, I wonder which goodies they are after. Come to think of it, Alhazard for some reason is not in Pacifism which is strange... (why pick Gandhi as 2nd leader and not GP rush?). Super happy with Nicolae as the other S leader, since no-one else in the S has Phracts or IMP so we've kinda lucked out in terms of early neighbors.

As an added bonus, we also got Sculla's map!



Guess the N/S configuration is pretty popular, everyone we know aside from us has done it (then again, we are the only ones to get the iron in 1st ring so who knows?). They have their capital in the 3 food/iron city though, which is possible due to being the only ones not to settle on the first turn.

It looks like Sculla is our NW neighbor, and the NE neighbor remains to be seen. Decent chance of a PB6 rematch then.



Here's a full map of the area to everyone's north. Now that we have a more or less complete map of everyone's mirror, it's worth browsing over to make sure we like the 3rd city spot.

Anyway, since we now have a full wrap of the world, the circumnavigation race is over. We will know next turn who the RNGod favors, I just hope it's us (assuming, of course, that it's even a factor. If it isn't we will look very, very silly).

[WarriorKnight]

plako flipped the turn shortly after I played, so I took a quick peek to see who got circum:

[oledavy]

You know, I didn't actually expect us to get it. Fuck yeah. I'm not sure exactly how we managed it, but I'll take it

[WarriorKnight]

You know, I didn't actually expect us to get it. Fuck yeah. I'm not sure exactly how we managed it, but I'll take it

ikr

What's great is that this is a map where it'll be invaluable (one could argue any game with 33+% water circum is invaluable... Regardless, it is invaluable here). With Nicolae's/Sculla's maps in hand with our own/Alhazard's, I can confidently say the map looks like:

/-/-/-
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So yeah, my keyboard art isn't anything to get excited about. Perhaps a pic would be better:



Everyone's landmass is a 'wave' pointing W, with the civs in the N being mirrored across the equator. There are isthmuses that link the waves together, and the tip of each wave touches part of another one. The isthmuses break the 'oceans' between each wave into 3 'lakes', which I've numbered above. Going in order:

1. Not strategically important to control, if important at all. You can't even build ships on it if it's the only lake you border. Not a priority at all. Hereafter dubbed 'puddle'.
   
2. Now we're talking! These 'southern' lakes (or northern lakes I guess, but those aren't important for us) are reasonably close to everyone's starting position and allow easy access to others cores. There are small islands on each one with who knows what on them (calendar resources is my guess, but who knows?). I would like to scout out the islands and see what's out there. Since there is competition from neighbors this is probably No.1 priority.
   
3. This 'equatorial' lake is perhaps the most important of all in the long term, since it's huge. Each civ has easy access to one but should eventually be able to reach 3-4. There is a decent size island on each one with gold/silver/who knows what else on it so the resources are plenty enough to prioritize it. Getting a decent presence to yours before anyone else can should be easy enough if you don't delay it too long though, so it can wait a bit.
   

The important part is that land connections are minimal so we will almost certainly see plenty of naval action later on. Guess it's a good thing we have a naval UU and circumnavigation huh?

So with this in mind, this is the city I want to plant most from a strategic point of view:



It allows access into both our equatorial lake and the southern lake to our E. Considering our southern neighbors should both be GP chasing (Nic is at least, dunno what Al is doing) we can potentially grab both of them, but this one also gives us our equatorial lake so it's priority No.1 in my book. Is this City 4?

On a final note, WTF is this?



AI diplo modifiers are funny in MP, but how did Alhazard get 'fair and forthright' bonuses from Nic? I can only guess they did a map exchange and the computer judged Alhazard's map as much more valuable then Nicolae's.

[WarriorKnight]

Alright Dave, as you're about to take over I've sent you the microplan I've made up. It goes until T208, so it'll probably last a few days before you need to update it/make your own additions. Couple of things to keep in mind:

• The original WB save I sent you in the original micro plan has an error in it, the tile 1N of the iron should be a hill. OTOH if you want a WB save from T208 I can send that to you instead.
  
• I slow build a library in Plains Cow while waiting for the city to grow back in size. This can be replaced with units if you want (my original plan built a explorer + Lbow, but decided they weren't necessary once we got Nicolae's map), but whatever you build you must have a few hammers of overflow eot206 in order for the 2 pop settler whip to work on t208.
  
• I haven't given worker 7 anything to do yet, I have a vague idea of roading to city 4 but that does depend on where it ends going. Worker 8 should be completed on t209, the same turn as our next settler.
  

[oledavy]

Alright Dave, as you're about to take over I've sent you the microplan I've made up

Ready for it Also ready to be done practicing for the GRE.

A lot to comment on that I will get to later, but first off just wanted to say we're lucking out in another important way at the moment. We started out this game with a 20% chance of not bordering Mackoti - we now have a 50% chance. We might be the one civ that doesn't border him, and that would be fantastic.

[WarriorKnight]

T198:

My last turn as turnplayer, although we also got a bit lucky this turn too:



Free religion spread! Not quite as big of a deal as circumnavigation but I'll take it. Nicolae and plako apparently also got free spreads.

We start building a settler next turn, 2 pop whip the turn after, move it into position in 3t and settle in 4! I wonder if anyone else can beat that, not sure about plako but Sculla can probably only tie it at best.