[SPOILER] Dark Savant's thread: Competition for limited resources remains a constant

[Dark Savant]

Lots of thread updates elsewhere.  Drama elsewhere in the world that we're not a party to?

Turn 42 (2320 BC)

Stonehenge was not built this turn.

Our scout finds a cow, and thus a potential three-food city site.



That's a tempting place for a city, but it'd be a serious reach to plant as a third city.  (It'd be in some danger of being overrun just by barbs.)

Rusten and pindicator join the club of rivals with three cities.  We haven't started our settler for the third city yet ...

[Dark Savant]

I visited the Louvre while in Paris.

• I would have thought that The Raft of the Medusa would be the third-most famous painting there, after the Mona Lisa and Liberty Leading the People.  But it wasn't treated that way either by the crowds or the Louvre itself, which surprised me.  It's this giant, eye-catching painting almost right next to the latter, too.
  
• You can walk from the French revolutionary-era paintings directly to the Italian renaissance paintings.  And it's like the Louvre opened Photoshop and dramatically turned up the saturation level; all the colors were so much more vivid.  People apparently do that in real life, too!  
  
• The Louvre actually has a small Anglo-American paintings section.  It's 100% pastoralism.  The moment I noticed they had a painting by John Constable, I couldn't help but notice that all the hay wains actually were carrying hay.  (The Hay Wain, probably England's most well-known painting that isn't of a monarch, doesn't actually depict hay.  Yeah, that one got me when I was researching hay bales being a modern phenomenon of industrialized farming.  )
  

[Dark Savant]

Turn 43 (2280 BC)

Stonehenge was not built this turn.

Okay, so we have at least a coin flip.  I chop the other two forests at Porto-Novo (yeah, it's not actually a port; I hope to get to that later) into Stonehenge.



It will complete exactly to the hammer with no overflow.  

This also feels more like "we won't fall behind" rather than "we're going to take some kind of lead".  Well, unless a score lead counts. 

I couldn't move our scout as planned, because there's yet another lion in the way.



   (The scout is now on a desert copper, it's a bit hard to tell from this screenshot.)

Gavagai's research history suggests he got an expensive Ancient tech on t39, then a cheap tech on t42.  That might be Polytheism (can't be Meditation since Buddhism is still unclaimed  ) then Priesthood.  He's got many reasons to want to build the Oracle to sling Metal Casting.  My inclination is that we should not challenge him for it; I don't think we can build the Oracle before about t59, which is probably too slow if Gavagai tries for it seriously.  I think we should pursue the Great Lighthouse instead.

If we want that, it is likely better to get the settler out for that ASAP rather than build a fourth worker first.  I'll have to look into that, but I have to decide that by next turn, as a chop at Windhoek is about to go into one of those.

(edit: also, I logged in and worked the 2h2c unimproved gold instead of the 3h tile at Windhoek, which will get us Pottery next turn)

[JR4]

A massive 24 point increase has got to mean that we got Stonehenge, right? That would be pretty fantastic and Porto Novo will expand borders very quickly. I don`t think barbs will be a serious problem but having visibility on most of the tiles on the continent is nice. 

Fwiw, I agree with pursuing the Great Lighthouse next (and building a quick Settler for a third city). What would the eta be of TGL? It could fall before t70 if someone really goes all-in so we might have to sacrifice some growth for maximizing the chances of landing it. EDIT: And yes, it`s a big prize on this kind of map.

[Dark Savant]

A massive 24 point  increase has got to mean that we got Stonehenge, right? That would be pretty fantastic and Porto Novo will expand borders very quickly. I don`t think barbs will be a serious problem but having visibility on most of the tiles on the continent is nice. 

Fwiw, I agree with pursuing the Great Lighthouse next (and building a quick Settler for a third city). What would the eta be of TGL? It could fall before t70 if someone really goes all-in so we might have to sacrifice some growth for maximizing the chances of landing it. EDIT: And yes, it`s a big prize on this kind of map.

Yeah, that's Stonehenge completing.

I haven't had time to play the turn yet; I have work to do (yes, at 10:30 PM local time) and need enough time to sit down and come up something vaguely resembling a new micro plan.

It's actually also possible that Gavagai researched Sailing then Masonry.  Both of those also take about the same amount of time as Polytheism then Priesthood.

Turn 70 for the Great Lighthouse sounds like a decent non-Industrious speed.  I think that can be beat.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 44 (2240 BC)

We get Stonehenge, as hoped-for.



We also now have Pottery and begin researching Sailing.

I can reasonably produce a settler on turn 49.  (Yeah, that's late for a third city settler as Expansive!)  I could go into contortions to squeeze the settler our a bit sooner, but it won't matter for Great Lighthouse speed anyway since we won't have Sailing for several more turns.

Current overview:



My current rough draft micro plan can complete the Great Lighthouse at blue dot by turn 68.  And that takes advantage of the copper mine that blue dot can use.

That's not especially fast.  The Oracle would complete by about turn 58, and I was considering logging back in to swap plans to that, except that doesn't sound especially fast either.  (Yeah, settler move then Stonehenge takes a lot of early resources.)

Looking at others who look like they might be threats:

• Adler is Organized, and on t38 completed an 8-turn tech, but he just 2-pop-whipped something, which suggests a lack of interest.
  
• GeneralKilCavalry hasn't completed a tech since turn 33.  Not sure what he's up to, but it shouldn't take 11 turns to get Sailing.  It also can't be Monotheism; I don't think he can even have Polytheism yet.
  
• Commodore just completed researching a 10-turn technology.  He might compete even at the full 260 hammers.
  
• BaII is Organized and recently planted a third city.  Hmm.
  
• Borsche still only has two cities and is Expansive/Creative, so he's a pretty strong candidate for taking a stab at it.
  
• Gavagai might actually be trying to build the Great Lighthouse instead of the Oracle.
  
• BeardBeard has two large-ish cities, and hasn't shown up with a tech for 10 turns.
  

It's already rather late to be planning for the Great Lighthouse with no plan whatsoever.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 45 (2200 BC)

Nothing much as progress towards our third city settler is made.  I had to move our scout back just to cover against the possibility of a wolf or panther eating a worker that left our borders.

Porto-Novo will expand borders next turn and I can then finally sic our workers on the wet corn so we can climb out of this moved-off-a-plains-hill, building-early-wonders hole:





There is drama abroad, as Buddhism was founded in a distant land, and again I can't tell who it was:

• BeardBeard apparently isn't the one who got Hinduism (so Rusten did), and my read is that he then probably tried for Buddhism; he hadn't showed up with a tech for more than 10 turns.
  
• pindicator might have tried; he's playing Arabia and hadn't showed up with a tech for 9 turns until this turn.
  
• Elkad might have, he hadn't showed up with a tech for 10 turns until this turn.
  

That might have been a three-way dice roll.

[Dark Savant]

Still tired from the trip and also caught a bit of a cold, so I haven't had much energy lately.

Not a lot has happened here anyway, though, what with the still total-absence of contact.

Turn 48 (2080 BC)

I finally have the wet corn online at Porto-Novo, and our crop production rises all the way from awful to average!

We do in fact have multiple Calendar resources ...



... as I found incense.  If it's all by itself, it was probably placed by TBS and not the map script.  That ocean fish will also be awkward to fit into a dot map, won't it.

I 1-pop whip Windhoek for a settler this turn.  

In foreign news, Gavagai built the Oracle this turn  presumably slinging Metal Casting.  That's decidedly early; there was no way we could compete with that.

A majority of our rivals now have three cities.  The ones who don't are Commodore (building granaries), Gavagai (built the Oracle), Krill (built a granary, and just 3-pop-whipped a settler), superdeath (slow starting traits), and TBW (not sure why that's going slowly, could be an axe rush).

[Dark Savant]

I'm still tired from the trip even though my flight was four days ago.  It's probably because of that cold.

Turn 50 (2000 BC)

Our scout keeps pressing north.



Boy, there's a lot of land to be scouted.

Not that this is really a surprise; there are about 200 land tiles per player.  Yeah, there's a ton of land out there; we haven't actually explored more than our share of land yet.

This turn, I planted Nairobi at blue dot (which brings the entire river into our culture and thus we now have mutual trade routes).



Yes, it's working a lake tile now, just for the food, which I need just to whip into a lighthouse.  It can't reach the fish yet, the copper won't be online for a couple turns (and I'm squeezing out a last couple of warriors before copper gets hooked up), and it can't actually build a regular lighthouse yet anyway.

I chopped the last forest at Windhoek into a work boat, as an item we'll need while also permitting regrowth to size 4.  That work boat can scout a bit while Stonehenge works on expanding borders to the fish.

And yes, we're still contactless on turn 50.  I have no idea if someone is going to throw the full 260 hammers at the Great Lighthouse, which must look like a better deal to everyone else now that the two Industrious players have claimed wonders.  Someone mostly building straight out with a bunch of mines at their capital won't complete that long after us (so chops and whip overflow could be enough to win the race), but I value the GLH enough to try anyway.  I'll need to work out micro so that forests get chopped as close to the end as possible.

[JR4]

It`s nice to see that the early Stonehenge play paid off. Let`s hope that Gavagai is busy building Colossus and doesn`t bother trying for TGL. Someone (non-Ind civs) will certainly try, though but they have to sacrifice some growth in order to have any chance of getting it before us. I wonder if the game actually will go all the way to Space with this amount of land available. 200 land tiles per player is a lot. Did I mention that TGL is awesome on this kind of map?

Btw, is circumnavigation on?