Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 58-61.

We are in fact still playing this game.  Over the last several turns we have greatly expanded our knowledge of the map, although many things remain unclear.



We have found Rusten and Lewwyn west of SD.  We asked them for OB for scouting purposes and they accepted.  The current plan is to defog that horse city which I previously thought might be the equivalent of SD's stone location (which also has a jungled banana), but maybe it's not.  After that I'll try to deduce where Bob might be and then head in that direction.  Bob might actually be southeast of where the scout is, there is a lot of black in that area and not a lot of black further west.

Lewwyn and Rusten each settled a city.  SD still has his unused settler which might be heading to the tile SW of the clam near the stone.  He would settle there next turn if that is in fact the case.



We have also settled a city, named The Beacon because it will light the way for our Moai city. (The Beacon is also a zone that you move through to get taken to an island to fight the god of the sea in the game.) Unfortunately we have probably orphaned a clam in doing so, which is a possibility that we considered (that there was unrevealed seafood) but it didn't really fit our plans to try to account for it.  If we wanted to plant SE of its current location, then we would want culture over either the fish or the cow first before planting the city (preferably both), and thus we would want to plant the Moai city before this city.  But then we'd have to build a monument in the Moai city and we don't want to deal with that - we want to get a granary, lighthouse, Moai in the city to get it into a powerhouse as soon as possible.  And it will grow all the faster when it is starting with both fish available immediately.  We also don't really have anywhere else to send this settler, because the ST worker was out of things to do but we don't have enough units to defend a forward city out from HB. We also thought there was a good chance any seafood would be reachable from an island, since one is already to the south and there may be another to the east.  From the looks of things there is more ocean and less island in the east though, so the clam may be gone for good.  C'est la vie.

NobleHelium
any eulogies for the clam?
Gaspar
Rip clam
Youre in a better place now
NobleHelium
well i guess you're not very high on my list of internet friends to ask to deliver my eulogy
Gaspar
Sad
Here lies NobleHelium. He's facing west and he'd want you to get that right.
NobleHelium
haha
that was pretty good actually
Gaspar
Just need the right inspiration
Clam doesn't really excite me

Up in the north we have a settler ready to settle The Ascent in two turns.  HB is building a galley for the Moai spot, and the capital will produce another settler on the same turn that it completes.  You may have noticed in the previous pictures that it was building a work boat - that will be heading over to Beacon shortly.  And in the far southeast ST's border expansion revealed marble on the island.  So we'll want a piece of that in the near future, once the galley scopes out where we want to plant the city.

Also, I forgot to mention that Serdoa asked us for OB on t58 immediately after he completed Writing. We considered accepting for friendship points, but given that our trade routes are shot for another 10 turns or so and he could scout us while we don't have the units to do so, we decided to decline and offer him fish for fish when we got a trade route. Which was this turn with the border expansion, so we'll offer that next turn, hence the sign.

We are getting somewhat low on the soldier count, but it doesn't look like anyone is getting frisky on the graph.



SD may have one axe, Serdoa may have two axes. He has just the one warrior in his border city though.

[pindicator]

Here lies NobleHelium. He's facing west and he'd want you to get that right.

I laughed longer than I probably should have at this.

[NobleHelium]

Played turns 62 and 63.



We finally found Bob on the other side of Rusten.  It looks like Bob is the closest to the other end of the continent and Lewwyn is second closest.  So we will be competing with those two for the islands in the ocean.  Bob is the only one with Masonry and he also has Polytheism, which means he is going for Judaism.  So we cannot get Judaism and will probably have to get Christianity for a religion of our own.  We were mulling over making a run at Judaism after Mathematics which is a strategy that we've employed before.  We are still expecting Rusten to build the Oracle to get Code of Laws and thus Confucianism. Bob is also the only one with Archery.



The width of the black area is 17 tiles.



We founded The Ascent.  We have big plans for this city, as hinted by the name. (The Ascent is also a snowy zone in the game which aligns with the tundra spot.) Hopefully things will pan out as planned and it plays a very large part in our eventual victory. Deer will be camped next turn.



We got a forest growth at Broken Bridge. SD did in fact plant his new city near the clam to claim the stone. It kind of cuts Serdoa off from the rice area so we might go for that now. Dry rice is really bad though and there isn't a non-awkward way to also claim the cow, which is just off-screen to the south. The cow is also only 4 tiles from Serdoa's capital, as the bird flies anyway.



Lewwyn got a trade route to us (I don't think we have a route to him) so we can see his resources. He has gold too, and ivory. But we will be getting ivory ourselves shortly as well as silver. And those extra luxuries will be needed for the capital which is accumulating a lot of whip unhappiness. Note that Lewwyn does NOT have horse currently. Rusten is also just starting to pasture his horse.

We offered clam for clam to Serdoa because he does not have fish. He accepted, which he wasn't supposed to since other people can see it now. You're supposed to decline and reoffer to signal acceptance. Serdoa does have both copper and horse.




Our civ is finally starting to do things. It has felt like an eternity to get to this point, but we finally have relatively secure borders and are hopefully kicking into high gear. Mathematics is due eot66, which is very early.

[NobleHelium]

Bob is no doubt posting in his thread that we made contact with him but he can't see how.

[Gaspar]

Played t64 and t65. Remember when this thread was highly populated? I don't think there's any argument that the Noble:Gaspar ratio in posts and the noise level are directly related. Noble is just boring.

So yeah, unfortunately I can't make this super exciting, though we are blessed to live in interesting times. In fairness, the times are only interesting because there are things to do and see done. We should really just start all these normal speed games on t50, because the game doesn't really start to hit stride til you have enough cities that there are multiple decisions per turn. Or you know, go back to quick so IMP isn't mandatory.

So on the exploration front, we've been moseying our way through Rusten-lands after making our last contact with Bob. There are a variety of reasons we stopped after meeting Bob and backtracked, 1 of which is that the game is sort of striated into tiers and Rusten is in the interesting tier and Bob isn't. Another is we'd like to find trade routes that don't require Superdeath for uh, no reason really. Anyway, here's what we know of Rustenlandia:



Some things to note from that screen:

• Hmm, must be nice to have a 6f tile at your capital. Or you know, anywhere in your empire.
  
• Desert incense is worse than grass silk, for sure, but the logistics are better here.
  
• Rusten has a PoE related naming scheme, same as us, but his city names are pretty terrible. CoC (PoE shorthand for Cast on Critical Strike) is just god-awful and Assassin is also a terrible name for a capital city. Mjolnir and Corrupted Soul are ok, I guess.
  
• Those 6f tiles must be a handicap, as Rusten is working 2 unimproved tiles at his capital.
  

Anyway, we'll sally forth along the south coast for the next bit, hoping to find the Rusten/Serdoan border.

Back home, we've improved the deer at The Ascent and Noble fell asleep this turn while debating whether chopping the forest to speed its monument was better than camping the ivory. #justnoblethings I guess that's actually not a Noble thing, normally I fall asleep while he debates it. Beyond that, we're working on finally making up our worker deficit - we've lasted this long with just three. Two went in the hopper this turn. Also in the hopper is Oriath, our future Moai city. We will settle that in 2t.



Nothing really going on here just yet, but I figured I'd show a picture of Solaris Temple because it is the reason we are competitive in this game. Currently working on a lighthouse so we can have another food positive tile to grow on.



Mathematics comes in at end of turn. It seems even when I don't intend to follow the Gaspar Road, the Gaspar Road finds me.

Oh, and when this happens on t65:



The map is too small.

Last two turns of demos to follow...




I'm not gonna do graphs, but the top 3 on everything meaningful is Us, Lewwyn and Rusten in some order.

[Gaspar]

Apparently, I'm just as dull as Noble.

Anyway, we played t66 and t67. The story is much the same as it was last report. The news that Lewwyn achieved circumnavigation meant we decided we might be able to make it happen with minimal investment, so we turned the scout around in the west to see if we can reach the left coast, while our galley that dropped off the island settler is going to try and poke away in the east. We're not going to amend the gameplan to sell out for it, but we have a few turns before we need the galley again so we're going to try and take advantage of it. That said, we did settle our long proposed Moai city:



You can see revealing more of the landmass there tells us it could be the other end of the main continent rather than an island. We sure hope not, because that means two negative things - firstly, that we're going to be awful close to Lewwyn and Bob and hence we'll need to have a lot more defense in our coastal/island holdings and secondly, that leaves a whole lot less land for us to settle than we were hoping. You can also make out our worker chopping the monument in the north so we can get all those quality tiles in borders sooner.

Not much going on beyond that really. We had some concerns that SDs settler that he whipped a few turns ago was headed to the dry wheat north of Broken Bridge, but we moved a unit out there and see nothing, so it looks like much ado about nothing.

Otherwise, a whole lot of nothing going on. We completed Mathematics this turn and we are going to clean up a couple Ancient Era techs before probably heading to Metal Casting for cheap forges and Currency for all the goodies it brings.

[novice]

Thanks for the updates. None of you are dull.

(I can post here and not trigger a dogpile, right?)

[NobleHelium]

You might as well post in the other thread, the dogpile was already triggered for that game.

[Gaspar]

We played three more turns. We are blessed to live in interesting times.

I suppose the most interesting news of the turns is that Serdoa wardec'd SD and captured Chengdu. I don't have a good picture of it, but you'll just have to imagine.



While I think Chengdu was a foolish plant in that it had little value right now, I'm not sure if I'd have been as annoyed by it as Serdoa clearly was. I'm sure to some degree he was feeling boxed in since we got the choice spot of Solaris Temple and now SD boxing him on the other side, obviously SD is an easier mark than we are, so he went for it. Still, if this gets SD to point the tilt machine in Serdoa's direction, I'd call that a win. And if it doesn't, I still don't really care what happens at Chengdu. We aren't building mids so I'm not really bent out of shape about stone. I guess it would be nice for Moai, but not nice enough to settle a city that crappy. Now if I could get stone on a nice island with some grass sheep, that I might be interested in...



Oh.

There's a lot going on in that picture. So this is the result of our galley exploration, which we decided to do once we knew circumnavigation was easily attainable. (Insert rant about maps.) The sign for The Beachhead (a unique PoE map, which is the result of us deciding to use post-campaign locations for the island naming scheme) is a priority settle because its basically our Iwo Jima. If Lewwyn were to settle that island he'd have any easy staging location for attacks on The Ascent and Oriath, both of which we anticipate as critical cities for us. So that site isn't just about expanding where there's expanding to be done or adding to domestic ICTR counts, but just basically so we have advance warning of anything coming for us. If anyone settles that location before us, we would have to capture it.

Meanwhile, Lewwyn shit out yet another settler and you can see it unprotected on that nice sheep/stone island. My kingdom for a unit on that galley. Anyway, that's going to be handy for Lewwyn. This game suits Lewwyn's skills quite well - shit out settlers, ask questions later. The preparation micro is easier because everything is close and IMP +free TR from circumnav means he can keep shitting them out at no cost to crash his economy. We're pretty well certain that he will be our primary rival this game. Rusten's micro is quite sloppy from what we saw of his lands.

In the far west, we got OB with Bob and are heading west apace to try and cinch circumnavigation. Here's a picture of Bob's interesting city of Mona.



Farming the floodplains and settling on the PH sheep, which hardly qualifies as a food resource but still odd to settle on. Smart though, since it stays defensible on a contested border with Rusten. He also managed to make it the Jewish holy city, so Mjolnir's 1st ring tiles will eventually be threatened if Rusten can't get a lot of culture in there.

That's about that. We've cleaned up Masonry and Archery over the last 3t and will be heading for Metal Casting next. Circumnavigation is probably 3-4t away and will go a long way towards defraying the costs of our little burst of settling that we've paused for a round of workers but will follow up with another burst of settling. Beachhead, the dry wheat and the marble island are the next additions to the empire, in some order.

Anyway, Lewwyn is definitely winning at this stage, but I like our position. (You can see on Noble's new demo format, our lack of quality exploration + being last in the turn order means the export/import game hasn't been very favorable to us. We'll see how it shakes out.




Anything you lurker types are interested in that I haven't touched on recently?

[NobleHelium]

Turn order no longer matters for trade routes.