Gaspar and Lewwyn listen to backseat drivers Brick and Noble

[Gaspar]

So I told Lewwyn a few days ago that I would log in and do a big overview type report.  And then I haven't because I work too much and also I have no real idea what's going on in this game.  The reason I have no real idea what's going on in this game is because the way we play the turns is not conducive to a conversation someone who isn't playing the turns can understand.  Basically, Lewwyn pipes up and says let's play the turn and then posts little to no screenshots because his internet sucks and then he starts talking about whipping in Bob or Gnash and I have no idea what he's talking about so I silence notifications on the chat and let him and Noble figure it out and then I pipe up every 10t or so and chastise them for not having a better plan.  Sometimes that's useful - it led to the Pyramids build, for example - and sometimes it isn't.  But anyway, I present to you the t106 extravaganza, as if the save were being analyzed by an unspoiled lurker, which is basically what I am.

Okay.  So usually when I go to play a turn, the first thing I do is check the event log.  The last event I remember is us getting a treaty from Amicalola.  Since then:

• We founded two cities, Rakefire and Trencherman on the northern islands.
  
• We teched HBR and Construction for Ballista Elephants.
  
• We got circumnavigation.
  

That all seems relatively cool.  We apparently have 2t left on the treaty with SuperFlakes and 4t left on the treaty with Amicalola.  This explains why most of the Civ is on military builds.  Looking around a bit more, it seems relatively apparent that our position on the map and our reaction to it has created a lot of our problems.  The border with SDF was always going to be untenable - it reminds me of pindicator's border with SD in 52 - the only way out is through.  And the border with Amicalola is untenable because the land around it wasn't great so we deprioritized settling it (to my personal chagrin) and instread of having a nice choke point entryway to Amica, Amica basically has a welcome mat to our core, exacerbated by the culture fail at Bobolyne.





Looking at the overall world situation...

Wonders

Civac - MoM, Stonehenge
Us - Pyramids, Hanging Gardens
AT - ToA
Commodore - GWall
Jowy - Colossus
SDF - GLH
Gavagai - Oracle

Obviously, Civac has the biggest prize there.  The rest of the good persistent wonders are spread out, with us having Mids, Jowy having Colossus and SDF possessing GLH.  That's good for... Civac.  With nobody having in an inside track to economic competitiveness, he can continue to snowball is already impressive early lead.

City Count

Civac - 20
Gavagai - 16
Us - 15
Amicalola, Jowy - 14
Commodore - 13
AT - 11
SDF - 9

The bottom two are already out of it, with SDF waiting to be eaten by us or perhaps Amicalola if he gets his head straight and AT currently being chomped by Gavagai's War Chariot zerg force.  With 20 cities and MoM plus an impressive tech lead and the best leader in CtH... yeah, Civac is going to win this game.  The only way we can really make a meaningful impact on this is by running over Amica to become his neighbor.  Gavagai is best placed to turn a similar trick as he's in the process of eating AT, but honestly, I'd be shocked if Civac didn't win from here.

Tech

Nobody has Alphabet and I surely haven't been paying enough attention to do any C&D.  Things that seem interesting from looking at the tech advisor...

• We're teching Calendar at the moment, which Civac has had for a while and 2 others have.
  
• 5 Players have IW but only 1 has MC.  Consequence I guess of no IND civs but uh, Forges, still pretty good.
  
• Only AT has hit the top of the tree for Aesthetics.  Which he used to build ToA.  ???  GLib would certainly be quite good for us if we weren't in a persistent state of apocalypse with our neighbors.
  
• Only the Confu founder has CoL, which probably means nobody is deep on the way to CS most likely.  I can't be sure about the Feud line though, since we've teched none of it.
  

Our tech rate is pretty decent tbh.  We're #2 in GNP saving gold.  If Civac weren't kicking so much ass, I'd feel pretty good about our chances.  The big problem for us is we're at one of those stages of the game where you either dig in for a big tech push or a big military push.  And the logical thing, given our irritating neighbors is a military push.  Unfortunately, we're going to be slamming classical armies into each other at parity.  Now, do I generally think our superior experience plus a pretty good Classical unit can mean we win?  Yes.  But all Classical wars are slow and bloody unless you have something like War Chariots overrunning someone who decided to build ToA while you were amassing an enormous amount of power.

A few other mildly interesting screens...



You can see we've got 27 cottages down, with 17 in some stage of maturation.  Granaries in most of our cities, as you'd expect as EXP.  Monuments, a necessary evil are our next most built improvement.  5 Barays is probably too many and 4 Walls is definitely too many but we did have stone before the culture fiasco and Lewwyn really likes them for some reason passing understanding.  Its just about the right time for Barracks, as the first semi-serious 2-movers are rolling off the line.  We've spammed a lot of Archers, which is a thing I think I like a lot more on normal than quick.

Here's BUGs broken ass F1



I could have played with this some more to get more info I shouldn't have, but just a quick feel here. You can see none of our cities are particularly food rich, with Cumberworld and Scobberlotcher tied for the 7th most foody city in the world. Even saving gold, only Raggabrash and Scobberlotcher break the top 10 in gpt. Beakers tells nothing here, because we're not burning. Gnashgab and Cumberworld are tied for 5th in culture, which makes sense, since they have our wonders. Cumberworld, Gillie-Wetfoot and Fopdoodle are 7th in production.

The biggest thing you can see there, besides a bunch of information that shouldn't be there, is that most of our cities are small and not producing much because we have a lot of island burgs. Those pay off in commerce, between better TRs and the natural commerce from working coast but are never going to be powerhouses.

I'll do a follow-up post going through the cities.

[Gaspar]

Cumberworld, the capital

Focused on production at the moment, obviously.  There are a lot of cottages it is sharing with its close neighbors.

Raggabrash, FIN too stronk

You can see lots of shared cottages with the capital.

Gillie-Wetfoot, Barb XP farming frontier

Lewwyn does love him a 1/2/0 tile.

Fopdoodle, not quite a pink dot

Fopdoodle is the city we founded to push towards SDF.  Quite a nice little city, with more coming when calendar comes in. 

Gnashgab, home of plants

Pretty sure that HG build will be the peak of its contribution to the empire.

Poltroon, better later

This is the gold city we "negotiated" with SDF. The only negotiation that will make it strong is the elimination of Carthage.

Scobberlotcher, brilliant name

Just a little dry coastal city, though the horse means it doesn't take forever to build things. That Baray is pretty questionable.

Bobolyne, archive of my frustration

This is the city that was planted to give a buffer between Amicalola and us that we forgot to get culture in. Its got a Baray and walls, though, so there's that.

Dalcop, Robo's nemesis

The less said about this island, the better.

Muckspout, future Moai?

This will be a nice island city in the future, its location makes the decision to put Moai there questionable, it also makes the cottages questionable - if we do build Moai, we're never working those cottages. But on the former point, the assumption is that eventually all of that red culture is Aztec green. (Why are we Aztec green rather than Khmer blue again, btw?)

Wandought, wastenought?

See Dalcop.

Skamelar, ty for skam

Dyes and Fish. Would be a good Moai if we had to build it somewhere "safer."

Mumpsimus, not Hadrumetum. Why did Hadrumetum get the works? That's nobody's business but the Khmers.

It is a lovely name for a city. Obviously going to need IW and SDFs elimination to reach full flower.

Rakefire, island iceball

Hurray for furs.

Trencherman, dance to the nightingale tune

Hurray for whales.

Not sure there's any trenchant analysis in there but there's at least two song references, so

Any questions, ask Lewwyn.

[Lewwyn]

T108 I did what we had planned mostly. I decided to send the worker in Gillie NE of the copper to road towards our new city and speed up settler movement by 1t, it means no chop into the second settler but settler takes 3t build, then 2 pop whip overflow finishes the WB. If we still want to chop into the settler to speed it up we have a worker on the galley from muckspout which can land on a Gillie forest this turn and chop it. Pic is from after ending turn. I logged out after so we can keep playing after Amica.



Peace with SD has ended. He has a numid on both sides. I covered our worker south of Fop with an HA. Both Fop and Poltroon have ballista elephants. We will likely whip a cat in Mumpsimus and a BE in Gnash. Whip the BE in Dalcop, put the cat on the galley and then put the BE on the galley next turn.

Ragga I put overflow into an HA, but I want to start a BE and the whip the BE and again over flow into the HA.

Amica appears to have teched Currency last turn. I doubt he gets construction and cats fast enough to take advantage of the culture at Bobo, I think we're out of the woods. We can see he's pulled back the axe and spear from the forest on our border for the moment.

We finish Calendar EOT.

Demos:



We are at 3rd in soldiers now above both SD and Amica. Maybe they are coordinating, not sure. but I expect both to have cats in the next few turns. We need cats and superior eles. But yeah it might be a slog.

I set EPs each turn, we are getting EPs from Jowy, Amica, Civac. We have a pretty good amount on SD for now, but jave to keep an eye on all 4 of these.

[Lewwyn]

I haven't updated in a bit, mostly just too busy. I'm in Shanghai quarantine now. 2 weeks and then I can go home and quarantine for another week. So I guess I should start updating again. Probably do a proper report today. Basically we're going to be last in turn order every time now. We don't trust SD or Amica, so we're ina state of perpetual turn split vs. both of them. We have been keepign the second half against both for the last 5 turns and will continue to until SD is dead. Which might take a while. We aren't attacking yet. Basically SD, Amica and us are all just gearing up for war. Very annoying. Luckily Civac also appears to be eschewing teching and is whipping up an army. I'm not sure if that's good news or not but maybe it will slow him down and put pressure on Amica.

SD has elephants and cats now, so attacking him is going to be annoying as hell. Luckily his numids are fairly worthless now.

[Lewwyn]

So it looks like Superdeath waited until the last few minutes of the clock to play and then let the time expire while he was in game. Did he do this to claim that he gets the second half of the turn split? I mean what? How is this legal? We haven't played our turn so we need to reload anyway but I don't even know where we reload to? 

Can we please get Lurker ruling on all of this? I mean we clearly have been playing after SD and Amica for the last 5 turns. You can look through the log. We're nt trying to play clock games. We are clearly in a war situation and we have been following the rules regarding turn splits in such a situation.

[NobleHelium]

Fuck SD. Why is he admin of all the games and then plays in all of them? He has the worst judgment of anyone on the forum. He has no business administrating or judging anything. Why do you think nobody responded when he suggested multiple times that he could be arbitrator in 53, LOL.

[NobleHelium]

SD is SUPER quick to add time whenever it benefits him. I am seriously demanding that he be removed of admin of all games.

[Lewwyn]

SD is SUPER quick to add time whenever it benefits him.  I am seriously demanding that he be removed of admin of all games.

To add to this, in this instance Superdeath knew we had not played our turn. If he knew that, why did he not add time? I bet the fact that we are in a war situation and it benefits him has nothing to do with it. Clearly an abuse. He knows he's in the wrong as well. Why else did he log in and pause the game but make no comment in the tech thread?

[Lewwyn]

I am well and truly angry. If Superdeath misunderstood our observance of the turn split, he could have paused asked for a ruling before playing. Instead he waited until the end of the turn and played as it rolled. What did he think was going to happen? That we would just let it go? 

I think Superdeath is acting out in frustration like a child. He ragequit earlier, and now he's back pulling this shit. 

When have we wronged Superdeath? We have had 2 wars, one he initiated and one we initiated. By virtue of the map we were locked into a permawar state. I've never had anything personal against Superdeath, but this leaving the game in the lurch and now coming back and doing this has made me very upset. I'm just playing a game and I'm keeping to the rules and code that we all play by, but this was clearly done in bad faith by someone who purports to be an admin on the game.

[Old Harry]

You aren't at war are you?