No worries.
The next break might be a bit longer than usual for me.
Gwangju is going through a bad (for Korea) outbreak and there's talk of closing the PC rooms. One of my students and one of my coworkers were exposed to confirmed cases, which is the closest yet I've come to the virus here. I taught online the last two days.
Playing and reporting on
Turn 30 simultaneously because why not
Then it's out of this room to grab some dinner and enjoy a rainy evening at home.
Here was the situation midway through turn 29, after moving the settler/scout but before attacking with the warrior:
And the situation at the end of last turn:
The scout in the north I
believe is from the horse camp, but I can't be certain. It may be possible to prevent him from skulking home to his wretched friends in the desert, but we'll see. Situation at the start of turn 30 stood as shown below:
The slinger stood pat, failing even to attack the adjacent warrior, interesting. I really should try to figure out barbarian behavior at some point. If the slinger is from the camp we cleared, did he march around the eastern side of Lake Huron to reach the city? Then he should be in kamikaze mode since his camp is destroyed. But he is not - is he from a separate camp? But that would mean a new camp spawned so close to the old one, AND I never saw a scout (I don't think) from the old camp. The barb scout, meanwhile, crossed the river to come between yet-to-be Kings and Blues.
Well, opening moves are obvious. I found
Halifax Kings, the citizen naturally works the 1/3 hill, and purchase a builder.
At the capital, I order a renewed assault on the jerks faffing around in the forest near the city's pastures. Our brave boys in white finger their clubs, then wade in with extreme prejudice:
We catch a bit of a lucky break and roll high for damage - the slinger is totally destroyed as victorious Canadian warriors rampage through the woods, running down and clubbing to death any barbarian they can get their hands on. Soon the pathetic survivors are fleeing for the hills and the builder is clear to head south to pasture up our last sheep.
That leaves only the injured scout, standing exactly halfway between the two cities.
After some thought, I opt to take a swing at him with my own injured scout. No other barb units are nearby, and I need to rest to heal the scout anyway. If I can keep him from reporting, then I wont' have an eruption of barb horses to deal with, which would be a mega-bummer right now.
Now either our slinger or the scout can finish him off, then we'll heal up and resume exploration. In the south, I begin to recall Warrior #1, who is up to 64 health, to finish healing at the capital. Then I'll send him probably to the west to find more city-states in that direction, while the scout returns to the north and our final warrior clears the desert camp in company with the sligner and Kings' warrior.
Let's see...let's peek at scores now that we finally have joined everyone else with two cities.
I...do not think everyone else drew as tough a start as we did:
Most players save Sub have 2 civics finished. Woden and Kaiser have 3. Ichabod has finished 5 techs to our 2 (Animal Husbandry, Pottery, and most of Irrigation, for the record), and everyone else has 3 or 4. Our population is the smallest by 1 point, trailing Ichabod by fully 4 points. That's the main source of our laggardly scores in all categories, I think - we'll naturally have weaker science and culture this early with no districts, until we can start to match everyone else's growth. Plus no one else seems to have had barb issues quite like we did - I lost a fair number of builder turns waiting to improve due to barbs, plus the Craftsmanship bonus. Net it adds up to only a handful of lost production, I hope. We have a steeper hill to climb than any other player, and don't have the early game bonuses of Egypt, Phoenicia, or even Brazil's adjacencies, so we really do have to be as sharp as possible. But hopefully the others spent their starting gold on tile purchases or monuments or something (to explain strong early culture), which I think won't snowball quite as hard as our early builder at Kings. A sort of poor man's (rich man's?) Ancestral Hall, that.
Well, we're embarked on the Dry Kings course now! Next couple of turns for the weekend, Archduke, since I'll be out of town in Busan on a field trip (yes, a field trip even though Gwangju is the new Daegu. Go figure).
1)Military units to act as you see fit. Priority is
a)survival and safety first
b)the defense of improvements from pillagers
c)elimination of the enemy scout
d)clearing the visible camp
e)Exploration after security needs are met.
2)Builder at capital builds pasture (duh).
b)Builder at Kings improves rice and then horses to grow to size 2 (horses -> rice gets us a better tile faster, but delays the housing. I don't know which is optimal).
The final charge can be spent improving a luxury, probably? We're going to hit amenity penalties at the capital soon, and could use the wines connected once Irrigation comes in from the rice tile. That seems more impactful than getting a crappy mine or saving the final charge for a chop, I think.
Builds are military, I think, until State Workforce comes in, then we can lay down the Plaza and start to work on Writing.
