[SPOILERS] Cornflakes brings the popcorn (because creativity is overrated)

[Cornflakes]

CONTACT! And the best possible neighbor

   

If I had to guess, I'd say both Banzailizard and TheArchduke should be pleased with how the continental division of players ended up. All three early powerhouse/danger civs (Aztec, Rome, and Greece/Gorgo) ended up on the same continent, while the 3 late-bloomers ended up together. I think for me this is the ideal setup. Banzailizard is a bit of a wildcard having never played an RB PBEM, but his civ choice indicates a builder-oriented game played for the long haul. I foresee (and will try to foster) peaceful expansion and buildup for many moons to come. I predict that a preemptive strike on TheArchduke prior to Cossack's will be the first serious military action of this continent, other than city state captures (or a possible scout squabble if TheArchduke doesn't move along in the next 3 turns).

Diplo screen indicates an obvious commercial CS contact, and probably barb camp clear based on the amount of gold in the bank. Other stats are all expected values so either no 2nd CS envoy yet, or one of the undetectable Militaristic/Industrial types. Science +4.3/turn with 2 techs from the first row completed. Culture +2.0/turn with 2 civics completed. Military the smallest in the world at 23 MS. Faith +1/turn presumably from God King.

   

The wheat must be 2nd ring to the German capital, since the 2nd city has no culture production to expand a tile. I count 17 tiles between Chess and the German capital based on the presumed location 2W of wheat. This puts the midpoint diagonal directly in between the two lakes, with the southern Tea on his side and the southern cows on my side (Valletta firmly on my side, but likely a border city location in a fair land split). Notice the "Unmet City-State Has Been Defeated" icon ... they finally updated that notification to read a much more intuitive "Unmet City-State" rather than the previous "Unmet Player"    Pindicator and rho21 both received an empire score increase, but of those two only Pindicator has enough military strength at this point to capture a CS (and makes the most sense given his builder-capture ability). Boy am I glad that all three early powerhouse civs are on the opposite continent   

   

Revealed some new territory in the south. No barb camp spotted. I used the Appeal overview (and tooltip info) to try and fog-gaze the barb camp location but no luck. Barb camps give -2 appeal to adjacent tiles and I used that to pinpoint the location of the northeastern barb camp a turn before I actually spotted it, although I don't think I mentioned it at the time. The grass-copper to the southeast shows -1 appeal but given the desert I suspect it's coming from a floodplain. Hmmm ... an adjacent forest could bring the -2 from barb camp up to the -1 I see on the tooltip. All-in-all I'm going to sent my warrior to the southeast next turn. That area is most likely to be un-explored by TheArchduke (possible CS contact), and more likely to contain the barb camp given the direction the scout is presumed to have traveled from (see previous post).

One last thing I have been mulling over for a half dozen turns is whether I really want to produce 3 early slingers. Now having confirmed I don't have an aggressive neighbor I'm leaning more and more towards not building 3 slingers, and instead going Warrior > Warrior (> Warrior? Trader?). Warriors cost slightly more production than going for the slingers, but I save the immediate 135 upgrade gold AND the ongoing maintenance by only using warriors for the Valletta capture. In effect, I open up an additional military policy card by not needing to run Conscription. The production cost difference (including the agoge discount) foregoing the slinger upgrades is only 17 which is a 2.5/ conversion. Later on I can get much more efficient conversion rates during upgrade especially after Mobilization. I'm going to build a warrior at Pinochle, which combined with the two from Chess and the one already in the north will give me 4. I think I'll need a 5th warrior to be safe, but I expect the one in the south to locate and deal with a barb camp and thus be healing when the time comes to attack. Hmmm ... thinking about this more, I can either get the 6th warrior out of the capital for a T42 estimated attack timeline, or out of Pinochle for T46 estimate attack. I'm thinking probably the earlier attack since everything else will line up well.

[Cornflakes]

Here's a preliminary district plan. Note that only 2 tiles are purchased (+5 campus site, and +3/4 site at City4).

   

I'm locating the campus @ Chess 1NE which just has +1 adjacency from the jungle. The other alternative is to purchase the double-mountain adjacency tile for 50, but then the only gain is only +1/turn for about 20 turns until the Carnival district is constructed, bringing the 1NE tile to +2 adjacency as well. The other thing that might appear odd is that I am NOT planning to build a commercial district at Pinochle even though there is a nice +3 riverside location available. The reason is that I want a Harbor here to be able to build ships from another productive city, and district slots will be limited. I'm locating the Carnival on the riverside location simply because it saves a tile purchase. Gold is going to be one of the most precious yields this game, converting directly into military power later in the game. Each 2nd ring tile purchase now is about 1/4 MG upgrade, or 1/2 Knight/Crossbow upgrade.

Check out those Theater district adjacency! +6 at City5 due to jungle adjacency (that tile has appeal rating of -6 indicating it is completely surrounded by jungle). I also have two other locations with at least +3.

[Cornflakes]

A barb warrior + slinger appeared to the north of Banzailizard's capital forcing my scout south. Turned out for the best though as I met another city stated towards the center.

   

The Commercial [as expected] city state of Lisbon with the quest to discover a natural wonder. Suzerain bonus practically irrelevant since I don't anticipate having many overseas trade routes. I anticipate finding TheArchduke's starting city state towards the center as well, probably to the south/southwest of Lisbon. I sent a 1 for 1 trade to Banzailizard last turn to indicate no ill intentions from my scout. I'll continue roughly southwest towards TheArchduke and I suspect I'll stumble upon a natural wonder for the eureka eventually since TAD completed Astrology very early.

Seeing Lisbon there makes me wonder if I should just continue my strike-force force straight on to Lisbon after capturing Valletta. I doubt I can get there before Lisbon has archers in the field (might make it to Valletta before). That goes against the "foster peace in my hemisphere" policy though, and the + will be very welcome towards accumulating enough for later upgrades. ... those farms around Lisbon would be enough to get me to the Feudalism boost   Plus a Copper [Wheel eureka], and hills coffee + monument for culture ... that will be tough to resist.

   

In the south I found the coast rather than a barb camp. The barb scout did return to this area after spotting my city though so it must be somewhere close. Still not showing up on the Appeal-Radar (nor are any city states on the settler-radar).

You can see the settler en route and the builder just completed. I adopted Agoge last turn simultaneous with finishing the builder. Foreign Trade is held at 1 turn left now, but I don't want to complete that until I plant the campus at the new city in order to keep costs down. I decided to swap civic research to Military Tradition after taking the screenshot in order to get the +2 flanking for my attack on the city state(s). It will end up delaying PP a couple of turns but not significantly. Probably 3 turns net, after accounting for the increase in my culture rate over the next 20 turns.

Pindicator is at 3 cities already thanks to city early CS capture. I'm assuming he at least got 1 builder and maybe 2 from the capture, and probably a monument. That's a strong start but I'll be at 3 a couple turns behind him. I believe Rowain is still the only player on 1 city ... is Pindicator sending Eagle Warriors his way? I'll have to check the military strength rankings next turn and see if Rowain is above me. I remember Pindicator is in first with me in 3rd but I can't remember who was in 2nd.

[Cornflakes]

T30 Stats Comparison (a little late, but these stats are from T30) ... NOTE: I will keep the 2nd post on the first page updated with all of the stats comparisons. Once we get a few in there I will start adding a graph as well. I may go with a 5-turn resolution rather than 10-turn as the game progresses.

Civ	Cities	Pop	Techs	Civics	Gold	Faith/turn	Districts	Military
Brazil	2	5	2 (+5.8/turn)	1 (+3.7/turn)	257 (+5.2/turn)	0	0	45
Germany	2	3	3 (+4.3/turn)	2 (+2/turn)	322 (+10/turn)	1	0	24
Russia	1	3	3 (+4.1/turn)	1 (+1.9/turn)	135 (+4/turn)	4	1: (1) Lavra	45

[Cornflakes]

Hold up, a plantation pillage is enough faith to grant me a pantheon   remind me why I sent the 1 for 1 trade to Banzailizard last turn? Oh, right, I want to foster peaceful buildup in this hemisphere. Oh boy, the temptation is strong 

[Cornflakes]

Busy day of posting yesterday In the north, cooler heads prevail and I order the scout to maintain peaceful relations. Here's an overview of that area since I don't think I showed the extent of my northern exploration yet.

   

My starting continent is Pangaea Ultima, and there is a single tile on the continent of Avalonia just just to Banzailizards east. Not sure if that was a mapmaker mis-click or intentional but it scored the roll-of-the-dice Foreign Trade inspiration. Incidentally I haven't completed Foreign Trade yet, holding it at 1 turn remaining until I plant the 2nd campus (T37 after harvesting the rice). I think I will be able to establish a favorable and stable border with Germany. The mountains and lake to the north of Valletta make a nice natural border. I plant a somewhat-mediocre city on the jungle between Tea and Cows that cannot be hit by ranged attacks at all from the west. With only 2 narrow passes in the west and a 2-tile passage between the lakes from the north it should be easily defensible.

   

In the south the barb scout continues to follow my warrior. His camp is surprisingly far away. I'm now 14 tiles from my capital and suspect I'm probably closer to TheArchduke. Since the scout landed on floodplain I decided to take a whack in hopes of killing it before it can report back. With expected damage 37-55 I roll a 54!! Now an average damage will be enough to kill it on flat land, but I'll still need an above average roll if it's on a hill. In retrospect I probably would have been better off ignoring the camp for now and continuing to scout. I don't have a promo available to heal anymore and need another 29(!) combats against barbs to earn the next promo.

In score, Rowain still only has a single size-2 city. Aztec troubles? I'm glad rho21 is over there to counterbalance Pindicator as he seems to have great awareness in PBEM 10 (and also another strong easy-access UU).

[Cornflakes]

If you look at the southern screenshot in the post above ... just above the "m" in "enemy" there is a little blue dot on the northwest corner of the jungle tile. I have been wondering for some time now if that could be tile-bleed from something in the fog. There is no fresh or coastal housing on that jungle tile. When I go to standard view I don't see anything there at all. It could be just a graphical anomaly.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Could it be something left over from the illustrations on the fog of war? Like the last remnant of a whale or something?

[Cornflakes]

Could it be something left over from the illustrations on the fog of war? Like the last remnant of a whale or something?

Saw your post earlier but had to milk a few more thread views before responding   That is a plausible explanation and one I hadn’t thought of. That actually makes sense.

[Cornflakes]

I'm tracking stats every 5 turns so that I can graph the stats later in the game with more resolution, but not have to record every single turn.

T35 Civ Comparison

Civ	Cities	Pop	Techs	Civics	Gold	Faith/turn	Districts	Military
Brazil	3	7	3 (+7.1/turn)	2 (+5.2/turn)	228 (+5.2/turn)	0	0	63
Germany	2	5	4 (+5.8/turn)	2 (+2.6/turn)	379 (+10/turn)	1	0	34
Russia	2	4	4 (+6.1/turn)	1 (+2.3/turn)	155 (+4/turn)	6.3	1: (1) Lavra	45

This was an eventful turn! [eventful as compared to previous turns this game] The stats above represent end of turn, which is not necessarily a representative comparison in the table above because I'm essentially comparing my end of T35 with EOT34 for the others. Starting off in the core ...

   

Founded Cribbage and purchased the rice tile for the +5 adjacency campus. This brings me to 3 cities (2nd after Pindicator who captured a CS already) and 7 pop (I believe rival highest is 6).

The campus will be placed in 2 more turns after the builder arrives to harvest the rice. The rice harvest will bring Cribbage up to 3 pop. I'll have warriors #4 and #5 complete end of turn, and will start another warrior in each city. Chess will be just short of 2-turning the warrior and thus will get almost a full turn of +50% Agoge production into the campus. Pinochle should just barely have enough production to complete the next warrior in 3 turns. Those will be my last military for a very long time so I will swap out of Agoge. I want to make certain that I have enough force for Valletta, as well as securing all borders from barbs, and finishing exploration. 7 warriors should be ample.

   

In the south I fortify my warrior in place to heal a bit while containing the barb scout. Nothing interesting on any of the lenses there. ... but the big news of the turn is in the west:

   

Met TheArchduke's starting CS, which explains how he finished the Lavra so quickly. Rolled a decent quest which I'll definitely complete before advancing to the Classical era. Suzerain bonus for Hong Kong is +20% project construction which synergies with Circus UD projects. I may also be able to snipe another barb camp for +50 if HK's warrior attacks and leaves the spear with just a few HP.

I was expecting to run into another CS very soon, but given what I'm (not) seeing in the south and the cluster of CS in the center I'm starting to wonder if Emperor K only put 3 CS on each starting continent. If that is the case, people on the other continent may have difficulty with the Political Philosophy inspiration if they didn't meet all 3 CS there before Pindicator captured his.