Coming from a 2-week travel it was nice to get back in-game. A lot of things are happening at the moment.
Let’s start with foreign news, dunno how well this is being reported. Mackoti is moving on Rusten. Kinda happy that he goes for one of the stronger civs as I’m hoping that Rusten’s longbows will make this invasion somewhat costly. Of course mackoti took the whole of Aretas’ land with limited cost already early and is thus working an area worth of 2 civs and probably can turn this into a profitable war. Buut let’s hope Rusten has adopted a good RB mentality and fights decently until the bitter end.
We finally take back our island city and thus OT4E is down to only 1 city and 3 CG archers behind city walls. Those are still nasty things so let’s see how fast we can release him from the duty. Our net gain from this war is so far only 3 cities (though with decent quality). The big macro thing is of course, that as a result of this conflict both Elkad and GJ are also extremely crippled and we are in a very solid position in our own corner. Unfortunately the game is becoming more and more global and we are definitely not the ones snowballing fastest due to our early struggles.
Meanwhile we continue with our own Astro-agenda. Pirates!, our first new world city, was founded this turn. We hope to get our fair share here and barbs might even co-operate with our agenda and as they are currently bugging TBS. We have another settling party a bit further north. Next turn we will grab a quality site there.
In the south we find some unclaimed islands. Info is still limited, but we are hoping that there will be some land worth grabbing as well.
Incoming turns will be quite exciting. Let’s see how things will develop with Donovan-GJ and what will Toku do in 4 turns as our enforced peace runs out? Astro expansion is running with full steam, but in a perfect scenario Toku turns his attention to weakened Elkad and we get to pile on another neighbor soon enough.
Demos and power:
Quite miserable, but at least we now have a bunch of smaller cities that are developing so hopefully we bounce back a bit..
As discussed Toku stayed intact of the previous war and could now be in position to make some moves..
Quake is settled this turn and next turn we will be landing there our next settler. It will probably head for a clam-copper-corn city to establish a border with TBS. We are slacking with "game reviews" as we keep settling cities with increasing pace, but let's still state that Quake's extension, Unreal Tournament, is one of my favorite shooting games of all-time and probably the first where I was even remotely decent.
Could.. Could there maybe be a passage?
Toku's power keeps rising. We sent him an iron-for-iron offer this turn. Wouldn't it be nice to fight a winning war and eat Elkad together? Toku being Toku we are still preparing for the worst as our enforced peace ends in 3 turns and moving units to our border. Somehow I'm expecting to find 15 cats and 20 random units staring at one of our border cities in a moment. At least we have a sentry chariot in the area and should not be surprised..
Demos look more decent as we have tech on. We are #1 or #2 in GNP if we cherry-pick a tech with more known-tech bonus. We are catching up with our city count, but mackoti still has almost double our population. Not gonna bitch this time though. Things are way better than I was thinking they ever will be at the time we got piled at around turn 60.
It of course helps that crazy things keep happening around the world. It seems that Gav and plako are the ones that are knocking themselves out at the moment. All we need is that mack and TBS someshow shoot themselves in the leg as well..
Oh, and in other news. It seems mackoti was following our plans and grabbed Music before us. And in more positive news we completed Heroic Epic :yay:
Keeping it short here, the main news in our corner were Toku declaring on Elkad:
As discussed Elkad is quite weak at the moment and that stack should see some success. The call will be made next turn, but I don't think we are going to just watch the show. As a result this turn was quite a heavy effort of Astro and military logistics.
In global news the real enemy, mack, took the hindu shrine from Rusten. Come on guys, organize a pile!
Additional edit: Our scout found dtay and I offered OBs. What is actually going with him? I haven't spotted any wars in the civstats log, but he does not seem to be doing so hot. I was expecting him to be a real contender here and if he is in the mid-tier without real drama I'm a bit disappointed.
Toku presses forward in the east and we join the party in Elkad's west. Carthage should fall in any case next turn, Elkad might be able to fill Kaesong with a bunch of spears, but in the end that's just a delay as those are almost free XP to our swords and xbows.
(Did not bother with highlighting our military, but we have approx. 20 units around for the effort. A mix of swords, imms, maces, axes, spears and xbows)
Our Astro expansion continues. Our workers are pretty overloaded as we try to secure our share of the continent before TBS. If all goes well at war front we will reach the 20-city milestone next turn.
Our scouting WB has officially found a passage. I was mistaken here, somehow I was looking at the ice and thinking that the mapmakers in essence made this cylindrical, but OH always had more faith. Our fog-gazing efforts implicate that there is a decent chunk of land not far from here. Let's hope we are A) not mistaken B) too late
(I think there is a decent chance that we still can grab a bunch of Astro cities. Teching Astronomy is easy-ish if you had a good start, say like mack and TBS, but from others doing worse, like us, it requires quite a bit of effort and sacrifices and I'm not sure if many have made that call)
With the lack of commerce cities, war and our astro expansion our economy is suffering quite a bit (Monarchy makes GNP better than it is), but there is no way around it, we will try to push it to the limit here in order to improve our long-term position.
Elkad is still in the caste so we are not expecting an immediate pick-up here. Fingers crossed that the majority of his resources go into defending his core from Toku, but I can see if he would feel betrayed here and would want to stick it to us..
It's very nice to take a little break and come back to find that the team has set me up for easy city captures and has turned the logistical nightmare of overseas expansion into a carefully thought-out plan. Starting with the city captures because blood is what you guys want. Elkad has been very generous and moved his forces out to hit Toku rather than just become XP for our units. Which leaves us two empty cities to walk into.
Carthage gives 9 gold and no infrastructure, and will have 3 turns of anarchy. Kaesong gives 26 gold and a granary with the 3 turns of anarchy.
We feel lucky and will push on to try for more cities. We can take Chonju next turn and fill it with immortals if Elkad doesn't twig. Otherwise we're moving a force next to Ulsan next turn and will come back for Chonju later. Toku might beat us to Ulsan, but we're gambling that he's going for the more valuable (and better defended core cities). This leaves the battlefield thus:
OT is still clinging on while we bombard his walls. We'll send swords over to help put him out of his misery, but probably not for a couple more turns as the visible galleon is off to settle the small island near GJ's coast.
On astro isle we settled our third city and spotted TBS' next location.
We're hoping to get the iron/cow city and will decide if that's on t145 or a little later next turn. We should take the barb city t146-7 and settle for corn/gems about the same time. We'll probably settle 1W of the sign because then we can put a canal city 1S of the peak. In the east we'll backfill the gems area when TBS blocks our further expansion. TBC if we settle one or two cities there.
On the international stage we've now met everyone except for the plako/Gavagai axis of angst which seems to be locked into a death spiral and probably isn't going to be contending for the win. The diplo screen is getting crowded. Earlier we wondered why dtay hadn't got the stellar start he normally does. Having BGN, Dreylin and TBS as your neighbours is going to restrict your progress somewhat, although it looks like he hasn't fought anyone so perhaps he just over-expanded and is limping to catch up on tech? With our 3 cities gained this turn taking us to 21 we're now just 5 behind TBS and Mackoti and 4 behind dtay.
I think Mack took Rusten's hindu shrine which puts him even further ahead of the game... Luckily as the 4th place team it's not our responsibility to haul him back into the pack. With our latest contacts we're getting a better idea of the shape of the world and I'm wondering if our exploring work boat (the little blob at the south pole) is heading for inhabited land or more astro-islands?
To keep tabs on the ongoing wars the war weariness is currently:
GJ/Donovan 0/22
Toku/Elkad 23/0
Mack/Rusten 171/3
We move in to take Ulsan. Chonju gained an archer this turn so the sneak attack is postponed - we'll have another go using the highlighted immortals next turn if he doesn't move the axe/archer pair that we think is next to the city into the city. Donovan signed peace with GJ, so we should look out for GJ trying to dick with us. Also Toku turned down the offer of OBs last turn.
In the new world TBS didn't settle for copper, so we're hoping he goes for the cow/rice spot or 1W of the cows - if he goes for the site we wanted he'll get our fish.
Anyway it means our next island city needs to be this one. UFO was another massive time sink when I was a young 'un. Gotta kill those aliens!
With these new cities our economy is in slightly creaky shape, so we could do with some courthouses - perhaps using OR in the upcoming golden age. Cities with high costs:
AC 6.44
BG 7.34
DA 6.9
G 8.21
Morrow 7.27
Quake 6.69
Red Alert 6.83
UFO 7.28
We have loads of cities with costs around 6, but as the NE city I think AC needs the extra spy specialist slot. Goldeneye can build one fairly quick and the costs for cities on the new world will rise quickly as they grow. However we could just build one courthouse over there and then chop the Forbidden Palace... If we also get cities on the theoretical northern/southern continent then we'll need State Property...
We meet Gavagai, whose galley is on top of a netted clam - indicating that a city here has been razed (or captured very recently). For some reason his name still has a ? next to it - any ideas why?
Oddly Toku signed peace with Elkad this turn, so we're worried he might wheel around and hit us, so we war/peace him. If he doesn't accept then we need to go all out on unit production.
We're poised to hit Ulsan anyway. So here goes.
- CR3 Sword vs G1 Archer behind walls on a hill - 61%... LOSS (3 hits)
- CR1 Sword vs G1 Archer behind walls on a hill - 24%...
WIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 (2 hits and 4XP)
- 3XP Sword vs injured G1 Archer - 99%... WIN!
That's a lot of cash! We see a stack and wonder what it consists of - should we burn the city? Naa - how bad it possibly be?
Ah shit.
3 Hwacha are scary, 3 Axes are fine, they die to Mace and xbow, Welly and HA die to the spear, 8 spears are odd, and could actually cause a bunch of trouble... Hitru simmed this a few times and it looks like the Hwacha would damage our units enough that the shear number of spears can clean them up. We don't want that to happen so we just put a G2 crossbow into the city and promoted the sword to shock. He can't hit our other units, but we can hit him back if he does take the city back. I'd guess he'll take the city back and offer peace - which I think we'd be happy to take - if he tries to take Kaesong then I think we'll be strong enough to hold the city. Unless Toku is attacking us after all... (Also note the stupid misclick that means our sentry Immortal will die. I shouldn't be playing this stuff after midnight. )
Toku turned down our peace deal and offered a ceasefire instead. Elkad turned down our peace offer and took his city back. We killed one and nearly killed the other two Hwatcha, but getting bogged down here is the last thing we want with the whole of the new world to settle.
So we fall back and offer peace again. If Elkad wants to come for Tomb Raider we can pop borders eot147 and we can also complete chicken pizza. Giving up Tomb Raider might even be the right thing to do, although I think we can hold that city pretty easily (would be easier if it was on a hill though!) Given that Toku is very close to getting guilds (he got Machinery 3 turns ago I think) I'm really tempted to complete the pizza (even though 470 failgold would get us guilds in 3 turns ourselves).
TBS settled iron/cow city. We'll grab the corn/gems city but our other settlers are now setting off for the other new world. TBS' aggressive settling here would have caused us to be grumpy if we didn't have (potentially) good options elsewhere. As it is we hope he sees that fighting us is counterproductive for him in the long run and we have a long and peaceful co-existence on this continent.
Australia comes without enemy culture, so we'll accelerate the settling plans there.
New city! We'll get the barb city next turn or the turn after.
Demos and graphs.
The top cities are owned by TBS, Xenu, Mack, BGN and Commodore. Our dinky size 12 capital is a bit of an embarrassment really...
There are only 15 minutes 32 seconds left on the clock when I start, can we play in less than a minute? First off the barb city in the new world has three archers.
- CR2 sword vs archer 98%... Wow! We WIN but our sword is down to 2/100 HP!
- CR1 sword vs archer 87%... WIN (4 hits)
Do we take a chance here? Of course we do!
- Immortal vs archer 60%/4% retreat... LOSS (archer down to 1.3/3)
Ah well, we'll take the city next turn. Down south our caravel has found the north coast of Australia - not all that far from GJ's south coast! We'll circle around the western coast to see if TBS has started settling here already.
And our first loaded galleon finds the south coast of the continent and unloads our units on the likely looking hill ENE of the galleon.
Australia is huge. Presumably it's archipelagic, like the new world, but even if it is I bet there's room for 20 cities! I *think* that the two (loaded) galleons approaching from the SW should see land next turn, although they may not reach it to unload until the turn after.
Our scouting immortal hunkers down in GJ's city in the hope that Toku's chariot will accidentally attack and die against the city walls.
We settle Wesnoth on a small island chain in the tropics. It'll go workboat first as I didn't think to send one from the mainland. To that end it'll work an artist to pop borders and then work the copper to get the boat. This one may take a while to get profitable. The other islands here are even worse sites, so once Wesnoth has it's infrastructure sorted it can make the settlers for those.
Next turn we're settling two cities and capturing a third which will fill up our alphabet. With the pause-skimming I didn't compare city counts with anyone else, but I think we're neck-and-neck with the big boys now. With only one courthouse so far though the economy is slooow, but we'll build a bunch of those soon and the new world cities should start to contribute during the upcoming golden age.
Demos and power.
I ended turn at 14 mins 18 secs, so not a minute turn, but pretty close...
Persia is in the middle of interesting times at the moment. It feels like we have 1000 priorities that we are somehow trying to balance.
Our Astro-beeline is so far paying off. After probably settling 2 new cities this turn we are only 1 city behind TBS and even with mackoti. Of course city count is only one indicator and we are behind in population, city improvements etc, but it feels like we are getting closer and closer to relevancy.
In the process we are dumpstering our economy, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Our cities are starting to hit their no. of cities maintenance cap so new cities are getting cheaper and cheaper. In addition we need only 2 more turns and we can launch or 2nd MoM-powered Golden Age that hopefully kicks off some kind of a snowball for us.
Our military is only #10 in the world, but as you know, we are still waging opportunistic wars. Goodwill from Elkad is now gone, but he is down to only 8 cities, which does not yet equal irrelevancy, but should be manageable. We have a long border at our mainland with Toku and Astro expansion stretches us further, let's see if our card-house stays intact for the next 20 turns. If we are given that amount of time, I think we should be able to convert our position into a decent military force.. And I would be surprised if there aren't any opportunities available at that point..
Starting with the city captures because blood is what you guys want. Elkad has been very generous and moved his forces out to hit Toku rather than just become XP for our units. Which leaves us two empty cities to walk into. 
core cities). This leaves the battlefield thus:
With our latest contacts we're getting a better idea of the shape of the world and I'm wondering if our exploring work boat (the little blob at the south pole) is heading for inhabited land or more astro-islands?
)
