[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

Today was a long day. Ripped through my turn in five minutes in the morning right after the turn rolled, so no clue what Rusten was going to do. Got to log in again and saw this:




Ok. Guess those are fog busters? There is absolutely zero need for a fogbuster where that nearer warrior is. The row of tiles south of the peak is visible by my city so barbs won't spawn there. If I had to guess (and I have to guess), those warriors are clearing a zone for Rusten's fifth city. Another guess? It's gonna go on the plains hill that gets deer, wheat, and gems. This isn't the worst border for me if that's where it goes. It'll mean that Water Garden can't be hit by two-movers from the fog even post-engineering. Honestly, I obviously want all the land on all the continents on all the worlds, but the geography doesn't work out for me to push much more north. I'd love that plains wheat, but where would I go to get it? The tile itself is closer to my capitol than Rusten's by like one tile, but I would feel like I was really throwing a city in his face if I planted for it with city 5. Annoying, but oh well. If I knew where his capitol was earlier, perhaps Water Garden would've been planted for the wheat, and I would've back-filled later. We have the borders we have, however.

I'm getting prolix, so here's another picture.



I'm far too lazy to check my thread, but if memory serves, I calculated based on land points, and thanks to lurkers, (thanks Ref!) that there were ~229 land tiles per player. We don't know how many of those are tied up in islands, and you can see I have water tiles around me. What I've done in the pick above is draw lines 7 tiles out from Rusten and my capitols. (15*15=225, so roughly what an even chunk of land looks like.) Obviously what's even, what's fair, and what's possible are all three different things. Regardless, this division is good for me to think with, I feel. Basically, Rusten and my "shares" overlap (and good maps will encourage conflict, so   ). The overlapping area is what we're going to have to decide about, with the help of axes and chariots, perhaps. The biggest takeaway is that whoever founds in that overlapping area gets to reach across and claim with their BFC resources in the other section. Call it a lack of will, but I really don't feel like muscling Rusten's two warriors out of the area and grabbing that land. (Although, the more I think about it, I do have an axe...) I haven't met my neighbors to the south and west (I'm assuming I have, at the very least, another neighbor due west). And I still have to settle a border with Mackoti somewhere. In my turn 50 overview, I'll throw a little pity party about my general northern situation, but the summary version is that I'd really have to hustle to make moves there and those moves would cause lots of ill feeling in my neighbors.

Here's a pic with culture.



(And in the first pic, you can see a barb warrior that needs to get dealt with.) Now, I'd like to turn off my brain. See you next turn.

[naufragar]

Well this is what I get for inadequate scouting.



I'm a lot less happy to give up two food resources, and I was already pretty unhappy to give up one.

I'm tempted...


I haven't exactly overbuilt military, and that axe has a job to do on the other side of the empire. He's out ahead of schedule, but I don't think I have time. I'm going to plan it out and see if I can spare the turns to let that axe wander over Rusten way. That lovely three food plus g-d d-mn gems site is certainly in his sphere of influence, but who was it that said your borders are whatever you can hold? I feel like I'm talking myself into aggression against my neighbor when I have large swaths of so far uncontested land elsewhere. Hmm.

Edit: Question for lurkers: In SP, you can move your units into the same squares as neutral units without declaring war. This has got to be the case in MP too, right?

[RefSteel]

Question for lurkers: In SP, you can move your units into the same squares as neutral units without declaring war. This has got to be the case in MP too, right?

Yes, in neutral territory, units belonging to different civs can peacefully occupy the same tile. When you move onto the tile with a unit capable of attacking, the game may ask you if you want to declare war, but you can choose, "No, let's reconsider," and your unit will join the other player's unit there peacefully. Then if you declare war while your units are sharing a tile, your units get teleported away and your rival's units remain in place. [EDIT for clarity: The war-declarer's units are the ones that get teleported; it doesn't matter who moved to the tile most recently.]

[naufragar]

The war-declarer's units are the ones that get teleported; it doesn't matter who moved to the tile most recently.

Thanks. Super super important for a reason that'll be clear soon.

We discovered Animal Husbandry, and we have horses.



I'll settle for them with my seventh city.  

Rusten whipped twice last turn (settler + escort? Hopefully not two settlers). Even with these two whips, I'm pretty sure he's the Crop and MFG leader. (Before the whips, his crop yield was nuts. The whips haven't shown on the graphs yet.) I was putting a few EP into him to express my displeasure with the nearness of his warriors. He's put some into me in return, so he's paying attention. I've turn my EP off him. We'll see if he reciprocates, but I don't mind getting into an EP bidding war with him.



Decided to move the axe to the area under consideration.This means I have to stack a ton of whip unhappy at the capitol and have to whip out another unit (and one that I don't particularly want). Still, Rusten is leading the field in economic demos but is a bit lacking in power. I'm not serious about causing damage. If I were, I would've fielded two axes to go play. I frankly can't afford to sacrifice expansion right now to test Rusten. So, we're just going to play a little cold war chicken. I won't declare on him. I'm just moving into the region to get eyes on. If he leaves an undefended settler, of course I'll whack it, but this move is more to force him to defend his expansions and sink hammers into military. It's a delicate balance, because I do actually want Rusten as a trading partner and would prefer to keep an eye out for the eventual, inevitable Mackoti blitz. At the same time, I do want to give the impression of an active player, so Rusten doesn't feel comfortable pink dotting me or whatever. So, basically, the axe is just going to take a casual stroll and then fortify on some defensive terrain. Just some low stakes cold war chicken.



Almost forgot, founded my fifth city:


It's no 3 food plus gems like what we're tweaking Rusten over, but like the spot Rusten is probably eyeing, this spot is ~7 tiles from our cap, which means this could be a border with an unmet western neighbor. (And that in turn means the worker will have to finish connecting the city via roads once the pasture is done.)

[naufragar]

Happy Easter. I missed a turn 50 overview. Still have the pics, so may still put those up if I have the time. My axe had to move a tile off his route to bait a barb warrior. The barb warrior blew on by him this turn. I didn't know barbs did that. I thought if a barb started a turn next to a player unit it attacked. (Although I guess it could have a city attack AI mission? And I suppose FFH barbs do weird things too.) The barb moved into my territory, so I had to kill it with the axe. Unfortunately, this puts us 4 turns delayed. I'm seriously reconsidering sending the axe to Rusten. It's one thing to get their ahead of the settler + escort and scare him. It's another to try to wander up to a founded city with three units to defend it. That said, he still doesn't have an axe showing up on the graphs. Gah. This is so aggravating. I guess I already made my decision. If I were going to send that axe, I would've had to whip a unit from the capitol this turn in order to be able to get a settler escort where it needs to be in time.  

(Oh, and Rick survived another bear attack. The bear only had 33% odds despite the relative strengths being 3 to 3.2. Tiny differences matter, man. He didn't gain an experience point. I thought barb combat gave you up to 10xp, not 5.)

Edit: I'm sure other players will have said this, but just in case: Dreylin landed Stonehenge. (I think. He had a giant score increase. I assume it's the wonder.) He's FDR (Ind/Org), who is notoriously slow but then really, really good later. So, the question that needs answering is "Did Stonehenge slow down an already slow start? Or did it provide the border expansion, great people generation, etc Dreylin needs to focus on the other parts of his empire?" And for that, you'll have to go to smarter spoiler threads.

[RefSteel]

I thought barb combat gave you up to 10xp, not 5.

Barbs indeed are good for up to 10xp, but animal combat only gives you up to 5.

[naufragar]

Ah! Thanks! Wasn't aware of the distinction.

Would anyone like me to use "unrealized potential" in a sentence?

[naufragar]

Hadn't realized the turn had rolled when I posted that last. This turn (52), I was actually 3rd in crop yield. (Pasture completed. Back up to 1st. Hooray.) The two above me were Rusten and Mackoti, whose graphs I have. On whom, more anon.

But first. These bears. Man oh man these bears.


Rick dying to bears is, if not funny, at least expected. But lesson learned here. Don't move a unit outside your borders you wouldn't be happy to lose. These last few turns, man. Ok. We're about to lose that warrior. Mackoti seems to be trying to get graphs on us, so we're going to have to substitute and it's probably going to have to be a metal unit because just about everywhere has access to copper. I am healing my axe up after its barb combat, and now that I'm going to lose that warrior, I'm happy I didn't head after Rusten. Maybe next game.

Rick himself is healing up on the gems hill. He'll skedaddle if anything gets too close.

I said I'd throw myself a pity part on turn 50, but I missed it, so here's a tun 50ish overview recap deal.


This is the North. I think you can just barely make out the border of Aretas' second city. Mack is about 4-6 tiles west of that lakeside sheep. Rusten you can see. The content of the pity party is this: there's very little food between me and Aretas. The food to my north is closer to Rusten/Aretas' side so they can plant further south, have it behind their city, and reach their borders further to me. This isn't really the problem. I can just compensate by expanding to my west and south where I haven't seen as much pressure. The problem is that I can't exert influence (in the form of cities and units) in the north. I forgot to check, but I believe Aretas is on two cities. I did check and see that he has not revolted to slavery yet.

Either Aretas or Superdeath have played Gamespy ladder games before. Can't remember which. I think it might be Aretas. His archery first plus barracks opening makes me think he's used to more aggressive openings from his opponents. I'm sure the vast majority of the lurkers know the following, but just for completeness: the meta here very much revolves around economically booming to reach a military break point, whatever that is, and then blasting a neighbor. Then consolidating his/her land, teching up again or just building more units and hitting the next neighbor. Repeat until you lose or win. Warriors aren't a mil tech break point, so people around here aren't as often rushing with them. (I am interested in what happened between Dark Savant and Donovan Zoi, but I'll have to wait and see.) (Popular breakpoints are horse archers, knights, rifles, occasionally cats. This, consequently, is why I'm not so worried yet that my tech rate is trash. Massed spears beat horse archers. If my tech rate is still trash by the time opponents are getting cats, and I'm nowhere near HBR, then there will be trepidation.) Ok, all this to say, Aretas has played a more defensive opening. This has made him a bit slower than opponents who just went econ first hell for leather. I'm bad at civ, so I'm not criticizing, and he may be playing brilliantly. Compare Rusten, whose opening I distrusted and who seems to be knocking his game out of the park.

Why do I care that there are few cities sites for me to claim between me and Aretas and that Aretas has opened a touch slower? Well, Aretas' and my neighbors are Mackoti and Rusten. Remember how I said the top three crop yields this turn were Rusten, Mack, and me? Yeah, Rusten and Mack, who look like they're gonna end up piloting juggernauts, have roads lined with food that lead toward Aretas. I worry very much that they will grow as best they can by grabbing easy land and then slam into Aretas. At that point, I would dearly love to be able to affect things one way or another. Final ingredient to the pity party: I mentioned once how, at the local level, Imperialistic loses some value when neighboring other Imperialistic civs. Basically, Imp is good because it gives you can early game growth advantage over your neighbors. Your neighbors in turn just need to hold on until the expansion phase is over, and then their trait has more impact than yours. As Imp, I don't care if I'm out-expanding someone half the world away. I need to be outpacing my neighbors. (And part of me picking Imp was to balance out my slow, sloppy newbishness.) 8 of the 25 civs were Imp, so it was likely that I'd have at least 1 and potentially 2 Imp neighbors. Unfortunately, I got two and the three of us currently have the highest crop yields in the game. And we're all next to someone who opened Archery/Barracks. And whom I can't reach. (None of this should be taken as criticism of the map! I love the map and the map makers! Just sucks that there are people on it.   )

Enough whining. Let's take a tour.


The Past: Our happy capitol. We started on a plains hill, so strongly encourage to settle in place. We did. The Present: Working a floodplains, loaning off its cottage, so that maximum food+commerce can be worked. Is actually building that spear to completion. Need military more than granary right now. Thorny Vineyard has a full 10t of whip anger built up, so we're gonna let that cool off for a bit. I hadn't planned on playing tonight, but heck, I wanted to. The result is, I'm not sure whether the cap or Water Garden should be working that ivory. The Future: This will be an excellent cottage capitol. One day it will even get a road connection to the Northwest. Probably not until construction however.



The Past: I set little goals to myself. For instance, I'm pretty sure I was first to a second city. To do that, I needed short travel time and to share the cap's food. It is the only city to have been unhappy in the empire. Last turn, stacked whip unhappy was too much, and no luxuries were connected. The Present: In a somewhat bizarre twist, my second city is the one with the infrastructure and two food resources and the cap is the one getting whipped to a bloody stump. This axeman will not be completed (had wanted it to be a spear, but I thought I was going to be sending my first axe away to Rusten, so I switched). The Future: Plex Anthill will grow to size four and then, two turns after that, two-pop whip a settler, so that I can crash my economy harder. This city will be an outstanding production hub. Many riverside mines. I won't be surprised if I get hammer decay on that barracks...



The Past: Fort Survivalist came into this world like a bastard, half inspiration, half compromise. I needed the copper and I wanted to found for a new food resource. Maybe there was a better spot, especially for a third city. The Present: Not totally sure why I built the granary. The city's tiles are pretty much garbage. Can't farm more than two tiles until Civil Service. Not really enough food to whip a lot. I will say that I am very happy to have a four commerce tile in my impoverished empire. The barracks will be completed. We need borders to pop for that deer and better southern vision and I refuse to ever build monuments. (Too phallic.) The Future: What future?



The Past: I'm so proud of this name. It's got a little closed off area filled with water which it will use to grow its food. Oh it makes me so happy. I really dig the site of this city. I needed a port and I got a good one on a hill. The Present: My de facto Rusten watchtower. I cannot tell you how Rusten's two warriors are playing havoc on my nerves. It'll be interesting to see after the game what his thoughts were. Is it as big a deal to him as it is to me? (Presumably not. It's his units near my borders. The situation feels different with the roles reversed.) Like with the cap, I'm not sure what tiles I should be working. The granary will get whipped. The Future: I have big plans for this city, assuming it doesn't get boated from the fog. We're going to workshop most all of this. I have a tiny little plan to go for a very early Moai here. There are only 8 possible water tiles, so the payback period would be long, but I never know how to do Moai. Sure, it would be ideal on a one tile island with 20 tiles of coast around, but how in the world does it ever get done? This way, Water Garden becomes an excellent naval production hub. I don't think Rusten has a port yet, but this city is going to get walls and hopefully a pretty significant garrison forever.



The Past: Last and currently least, New Jerusalem. You can guess that I completely punted on the name. Nothing New Jersusalem-y about this spot. It's quite a ways from the empire, although we will have a road connection in three turns. It is about where I expect a mid-line between me and a neighbor is. Dotmapping the area Southwest of my capitol has been a nightmare. Basically, the stuff you see outside the bfc here to the east isn't going to be backfilled for a very long time. I picked this spot so that another city can share the wheat and grab a forested deer for itself. It also picks up a mining lux. As an aside, it'll be a long time before I do more scouting and figure out what these suspiciously "natural boundary" like hill ranges extending west-east and north south are doing. Does this look like the corner of a natural envelope to anyone else? The Present: Survive, hopefully. This place is about to lose its warrior, which sucks. It's really bad. The granary will eventually get chop/whipped here. The Future: Item two on the build queue was going to be a barracks to grab wheat and silver, but I have a feeling that I'll need to at least put 5 hammers into a metal unit. Maybe if a random event grants me two thousand workers, I'll eventually spare the worker turns to put a windmill on that desert hill and turn it into a lovely unimproved riverside plains.

Welp. That's the empire. Sorry if I talked up aggression against Rusten that never panned out. It would've happened if not for a speedy barb warrior and me running a warrior into a bear. We'll plant one more city. (I can stop anytime.   ) And then settle in for a bit of growing onto cottages and building two movers, hopefully.

[naufragar]

My play's getting even sloppier, so I don't want to talk about it. You know the signs. Workers spending two (or more!!) turns in transit not improving stuff. More and more unimproved tiles being worked. I'm even second guessing my tech choice... I do want to talk about this:



Did Aretas lose an archer?   He's not at war with anyone I know. He's still on two cities and not in slavery. Did a bear get lucky? Did a barb warrior get super lucky? Even on flatland, archers have pretty good odds on bears. Color me very curious.

[naufragar]

Rusten founded where I guessed. Makes me happy I at least got that prediction right. Looks like he didn't have a metal escort, so even with the delay, my axe could have prevented its founding. I've made peace with what I had the axe do instead. This was a game defining decision. I could've kept on my own development or challenged Rusten. Hindsight will say which was best, I guess. He's been whipping a lot, but no new power. Get ready to see him grow like a weed. He will gain that peak tile, so he'll always have vision on Water Garden, which is a little worrying. (But can anyone guess why I'm interested in that plains hill 1NE of the wheat?   )

Mackoti has a size 8 capitol. How? I do not know. Mining lux somewhere close? Just grew into unhappy to whip something? Is already in Hereditary Rule by magic? The city has no other infrastructure than a granary (and palace).

I've set my tech on writing. Have no clue what I actually want. I want an early-ish sailing because of Org lighthouses, but right now I only have one coastal city. Writing is a safe choice, right? But when am I going to build a library? What city in my empire has four commerce and so could get the benefit? (Hilariously enough, Fort Survivalist.)