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

[Dark Savant]

Turn 74 (1040 BC)

We somehow have contact with Rusten now.



I don't see a unit of his anywhere.  It's not on this peninsula near superdeath that's apparently just about to end.



And superdeath and Rusten don't have contact with each other.  So Rusten likely pushed forward with a scouting work boat, then withdrew it.

Rusten is a concerning neighbor by sea, but then again, with who is playing in this game, who isn't?  My best guess is that he's playing farmer's gambit and doesn't want a skirmisher raid.

Good thing the galley, settler, and skirmisher for our first island city are all underway.  And we do really need to get out scouting work boats soon.

After wondering where the barb warriors are for many turns, we now have two incoming.




Not a big deal, we'll have good units to cover anything threatened.

Also, we somehow have two cities in the top 5.  (I forgot to grab a picture.)  Obviously Stonehenge got us one, but our capital is top-5 as well, and we're not even Charismatic for the larger pop cap.  No one apparently has a city larger than size 6.  I suppose using the extra happy for hard whipping is the cool thing to do this game.

[Dark Savant]

It's Thanksgiving vacation in the United States, and apparently we have a lot of people who don't have the week off?

Visited Las Vegas, won $429 at poker.  We spent about $800 on hotel and meals and entertainment; I'm not good enough at poker to make a net profit or do it for a living.

Turn 78 is up and PYFT is pressing ... I'm behind reporting by three turns already, let me do that first.

Turn 77 (950 BC)

There's some bad news:



We're at the top of the scoreboard!  Well, until I whip some population just now.  Our score is inflated by Stonehenge, which I expect anyone paying attention to know, but I still don't like drawing attention to ourselves like this -- we're not the top contender.

Boy, do we have a lot of barbarians inbound in the north.



Dar es Salaam is currently ungarrisoned since I had the axe move out to kill a barb warrior in the east.  I'll need to have the worker build the road just so it can return next turn against the two other incoming barbs.  We'll need more units just to cover against barbs!  Fortunately, they can't pillage any food up there.

There's also that one barb warrior in the south, who isn't having the decency to get close to our lone skirmisher in the area.



superdeath is continuing to put 4 EP into us, which is more evidence for him not having any other neighbor.  Rusten isn't putting any EP into us at all.

Current demographics look like this:



Whipping pop into settlers will make that low for a while.  Also, we really need more workers, but I think it's also important to stake a forward claim and get an island city or two going.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 78 (925 BC)

Rusten's religion is Judaism, not Hinduism as I had originally thought.  He's also in Organized Religion.

We have a trade route with superdeath now:



There's much more luxury diversity on this landmass than I originally thought.  That's still a lot of silk near us, though!

Our axe is now on defense against northern barbarians, who may cut a road:



The northern barbarians are now also the only barbarians, since the southern one had the decency to suicide against our skirmisher.



Our first galley is about to be produced, and will get a settler and worker for the nearby island.  The skirmisher to garrison it will be a couple of turns behind; I doubt anyone is that close by water.  It's also high time to get some more water scouting going.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 79 (900 BC)

Yet another warrior is arriving from the north!



That's one of superdeath's warriors.  It's a Woodsman II warrior too, so it's got extra movement.  All cities should be covered, but I have to watch out for possible worker captures on the frontier through forest now.

One of the barb warriors committed suicide against our lone defending axe (instead of cutting the road ), and I cleaned up the other barbarian warrior on offense.

superdeath planted two new cities this turn, which puts him up to six.  We have the settlers out for seven ourselves, so we're at least keeping pace.

superdeath has the Great Lighthouse in his capital, incidentally:



superdeath also still has lots of screening warriors at his frontier.  We're not going to be able to surprise him at all, even if we decided to attack at this distance.

[Hollybombay]

How do you see the borders shaping up? Any plans for blood?

[Dark Savant]

How do you see the borders shaping up? Any plans for blood?

superdeath is still too distant to really know.  I also should return my scout to see where his just-planted cities are.

There are no plans for blood, I just don't have enough scouting information to even have a reasonable target.  The couple of skirmishers I built recently were enough to drive power from near lowest to above average.

[JR4]

Rusten and Superdeath are not the best neighbours around. Is there any way of winning short of eliminating Superdeath? A culture attempt could be interesting - especially with the Sistine Chapel.

On this map an Astronomy beeline makes some sense but organizing a naval attack is going to take a lot of resources and planning. Maybe a Knight rush could be worth the trouble?

[Dark Savant]

Rusten and Superdeath are not the best neighbours around. Is there any way of winning short of eliminating Superdeath? A culture attempt could be interesting - especially with the Sistine Chapel.

On this map an Astronomy beeline makes some sense but organizing a naval attack is going to take a lot of resources and planning. Maybe a Knight rush could be worth the trouble?

If there's no one on this landmass other than the two of us, peaceful coexistence might be tricky.

The turn finally rolled in the middle of the night local time, and between birthday celebrations and work I haven't yet had a chance to play (it's fairly normal, I'm pretty sure I'm the only player whose normal window is late at night on the North American West Coast).  So I'm very late in turn order again (in fact I'm still at work), but this time superdeath is also very late in playing even though he usually plays very quickly.

I haven't yet reported the most recent turn, but the important point is that superdeath just showed up with Iron on the trade screen .

So he's not building Woodsman II axes.  Woodsman II swords are the actual hotness.

The distance between us is still large and narrow enough that I'll probably have some warning when they start moving ... unless he actually kills our scout, which is its own warning.  But if there's actually anyone else on the other side of superdeath, whomever that is likely a better target, since we have skirmishers and they don't.  If that doesn't exist (my guess is no, superdeath hasn't moved away EP spending) ... well, we're the only target.

I was on my way to hooking up horses, for chariots to counter axes, but there's not much point against swords; and if I want scouts, which chariots normally are much better at, I should probably just build actual scouts.  In fact, even spears are probably a waste of hammers, which sounds like an odd thing to say.  No point in building anything other than axes and skirmishers for military.  Catapults and horse archers would also be on the table if I get to them, but I'm very reluctant to stop Currency.

Our northern city, and the next city planned north after that, are fortunately both on hills anyway.

If superdeath withdraws his Woodsman II warrior screens, he probably wants to spend the cash to upgrade them to swords.

Also, I should chop down forests just so superdeath can't easily move around in them.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 81 (850 BC)

Here's the Iron I saw last turn, just so everyone has a picture.



Gavagai cranked out a Great Engineer from an early forge, and promptly slam-dunked the Pyramids.



superdeath's advance warrior ... pulled back.



We have to observe a turn split at least for now, since in principle either he could move his warrior at Woodsman II speed to some mysterious location if he double-moves me, or I could have my axe double-move his warrior and kill it.

You can see the axe/settler/worker triad I have on that tile now.  As long as we observe the turn split, a single warrior can't disturb me.

Our scout, instead of doing unfogging, goes to find out what superdeath is up to.  Where are those newer cities?



They don't look like they're in a conga line in our direction ... nothing I can see has changed.  (Also, Filmore already has 6 pop!)

We now have ICTRs!



Also we're still crawling our way towards Currency.

superdeath shows a power spike on turn 80 consistent with finishing Iron Working and lucking into Iron already hooked up.

He's also showing a sudden production spike.  I should see if he keeps this up.

I'd love to know whether superdeath has a second land neighbor or not.  (2+ other land neighbors is possible, but unlikely with both this script and the way superdeath has behaved.)

Points in favor of him having a neighbor he's attacking instead of us:

• He has to realize that attacking me-of-Mali is not a great combination to attack with Woodsman II units.  Not like I'm going to forget that possibility again.  Also, he probably doesn't like having Mali as a neighbor.  We're too far away to Commodore (Commodore (v.t.): to skirmisher-choke like in PB41) him, but I think he didn't know that until he saw our borders and settler triad.  (I probably would have Commodored him if he were much closer.)
  
• His warrior just withdrew when it didn't really have to.
  
• His other screening warriors are acting more of making sure I'm not Up To Something than anything aggressive.
  
• He doesn't seem to be plonking down cities in our direction.  (I have an excuse for this latest city his way -- it's got four food, how do I not put a city there?)
  

Points against:

• He's still putting EP into me.  He ought to be putting that into any neighbor.
  
• His construction of the Great Lighthouse suggests he initially thought he was isolated.  Though actually, he might also have built the Great Lighthouse to support any expansionist wars.
  

I'm unwilling to provoke superdeath without good reason, though.  No killing screening warriors; no scouting wars, not when I'd have to probably have to squeeze through by land, and I can do lots of scouting by boat without having to get work boats all the way up there.

Not while there's land to grab and wonders to build.

Also ... it did not occur to me that we were in a turn split until I wrote this out.  Oops.  Had to deal with work and personal stuff today, wouldn't have helped much.  Logging in as I finish writing this up.

[Dark Savant]

Also, I didn't notice this until I played the turn, but superdeath played before me.  I'm assuming he's not going to double-move to hide his scouting warrior.