Freeciv LongTurn (LT57 report)

[HansLemurson]

Turn 27

Top 5 Cities:

The pack races ahead with the Inca keeping the lead.

Demographics:

Still #1 in population, but worryingly low in Land Area.
If I have the most cities on my team, and I'm #4, then this doesn't bode well.
The other team must have gotten a bunch of easy islands to settle, probably with shallow-water connections so they could use their triremes, while we've had to squeeze all of our settlers through the bottleneck of "1 longboat per nation".

Science:

Given that my main strategic limitation right now is Ocean Transport, why in Vectron's name am I not beelining Magnetism?



That's more like it.  Paid 9 bulbs in tech-change costs, but that's small-change.

Colonization:

Making the most use of my shipping...

The new longboat is ready, and the settler hops on board.


The "disband trick" moved my time-table ahead enough that I have two settlers on screen at the same time.


One had already landed and was free to move though.  Hopping onto the river, it used that to explore the island.


I opted to settle in place rather than spend more time exploring.  Hopefully I haven't missed any critical information!
I think I'll call this island "Livonia".

Overview:

Meideborg is going to be building a Migrant this turn, so that it can add a population to Mount Vectron to help it grow faster.
Migrants cost half as much as settlers, and only consume 1 population.  You can use them as cheap workers, or as easy population transfer units.
Vectron's Glory will have the Colossus done next turn, which will add 10 Trade to the city.  There's also a settler in there in transit to settle on the Peat.
Wismer will build a settler that will make a city on the plains peninsula 4 squares downwards from it.
Lübeck is just gonna keep growing.

Exploration:

Important discoveries!

The Slovakian Longboat discovers island [15], which cgalik will give a "Cast Away" theme.  
It's surprisingly close to where we suspect enemy control is, so he's a bit nervous about how to settle it.



kamBLR's Badian longboat discovers the Antarctic, as island [19].  He also catches a glimpse of shallow water on the east of his path, indicating yet another island.
He suspects it to be the home island of ste and the Czechs.


YKnot is sailing is longboat a wee bit close to enemy waters.  
It's not a good idea to inform the enemy that you have important business nearby.
Will ste suspect another island nearby?  Will the Bretons have to deal with a contested island?

Time will tell...

[civac2]

How does turnplaying work? There is a webserver you log on to?

[HansLemurson]

How does turnplaying work? There is a webserver you log on to?

This is how I connect.

The game is hosted on the Longturn, each match has its own port number.

This is the official webpage for the game, where you register to sign up:  https://longturn.net/game/LT57/
LT57 registration is of course closed since the game has begun already, but there are future games planned too.
Once you've confirmed your participation, you'll get an email notification that the game is going to start (or you can check the LongTurn Discord channel), and will be able to log in as shown.

You are then greeted by a regular Freeciv game, but but with human opponents instead of AIs.  
Freeciv was designed to work multiplayer from the ground up, so even when you want to play a "single-player" game, you still create a local server and then connect to your local machine.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 28

Top 5 Cities:

Same 5 characters.

Demographics:

Population is high, and Land Area is also better now that I have more island cities.
Production is artificially low because of the annoying auto-rearrange of Vectron's Glory after its growth.

Science:

No pic, but I finished Seafaring.  Harbors and Explorers now available!

City Plans:

I have decided to name island [7] to be "Avalon"

I consulted with the Irish on where to settle, and we agreed to this plan.  Initially I'd wanted an extra city at A, but we agreed that there would be too many tile-swapping problems across borders, so A, B, and C2 will all go to Ireland.


Back on my home island, you can see a Migrant 2Left of Mount Vectron, with it's blue shirt and sack of worldly possessions.  It will help increase the population there and speed up its growth time-table by 2 turns.
Will that be worth the extra cost?  I sure hope so!

Overview:

Mount Vectron at size 8 now
Hannober newly founded
Settler sitting between Hameln and Estland, ready to settle a city on the Peat, the last city location on my island.
Vectron's Glory is building a Temple both for its own sake, but also as a prelude to the Temple of Artemis.  This will make temples super-effective.
Also notice how its getting 2 trade from so many tiles?  The Colossus is very nice.

Exploration:

ste rushed a unit in Teplice.  Was it a Trireme that could sink the Breton Longboat?
Fortunately YKnot didn't stick around long enough to find out.

Intel:

Nova Scotia faces a security problem:

Triremes have the ability to sail up rivers and can unload troops for immediate attack.
They only have 8MP, but this can be boosted by Small Wonders and Veterancy, so the rivers outside of Hamilton are within striking range of an attack force from "What do you get".
To make matters worse, Triremes can cut corners on rivers, so both the Plains that I marked with a 10 and the forest below it are valid landing zones.
jwrober will eventually need to fortify troops at both locations, and has also prepared a small navy that could guard space 9.


Ghamath, accidentally forgot to check the "allies only" button in chat, and revealed coordination plans with xandr.
Happens to the best of us.

Fortunately this is no sign of invasion, but rather ghamath using his Longboat to ferry settlers or workers from "Aleutia" [10] to "Sixteen Tons" [11]
Presumably xandr's longboat is sailing the seas, looking for land.

But he may not know that there aren't any more in the north.  Our team has found and ID'd every northern island using our cartographic wizardry.  Xandr and Ghamath are alone in the north with no additional islands to the East or West, and enemies to the north.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 29

Top 5 Cities:

Inca being hipsters again.  Trying to be Size 12 "before it was cool".
Well I grow on even-numbered turns, thank you very much!

Demographics:

Population still growing fast.  It should even speed up soon once I can afford the infrastructure to support larger populations.
Production and Econ are now poking into the triple digits.  Technically Production isn't there yet, but, you know.  Pretty close.
Don't like being #2, in city count and Production, since it means that there's another monster out there besides me.

Science:

Here's a grand view of the status of Research as it currently stands.  I can feel the pull of magnetism as the technology draws near.
The other fun thing about Magnetism is that it gets to feature my artwork!  The Bigger ship isn't mine, but the smaller Caravel is.

Plans:

I made landfall with the settler last turn.  I debated on where to settle, but decided I wanted to secure the north first.
So the settler jumps onto the river for fast movement next turn, while the longboat heads back to the mainland.

Overview:

And here's the mainland.
Ossenbugge joins the club as the final member of the "Cities on the main island" club.
I technically could have fit a 16th, but it would have made Vectron's Glory less glorious.
VG, as my biggest city, is getting ready to build "Copernicus' Observatory", which is a Small Wonder granted by astronomy that gives +1 science per citizen.
Stacking all your "per citizen" bonuses in the largest city in your empire leads to great synergy.  But also great sadness should it get destroyed.  Fortunately they'll all be obsolete before that happens.
Mount Vectron and Lubeck are preparing to grow beyond the Aqueduct limit, which they are allowed to do by virtue of their river adjacency.  Should I have put Hamborg next to the river too?  Perhaps.
Riga will have a Settler ready for the Longboat's return (visible in upper right), and Meideborg and Duorpm will also make settlers.  These will have to twiddle their thumbs for a while until I get the shipping capacity to send them out, but a settler isn't useless: It's still technically a worker, and so can do some minor roadwork and irrigation.

City Spotlight:

Haven't shown a city screen in a while.  Here's Vectron's Glory, my bestest city in the whole world.
It is personally responsible for 25% of my total production output, and 20% of my economy.
I hope it will continue to grow and prosper!
And it will.  Once it gets the Observatory in here along with a nice Library, it's science output will easily be triple what it is right now.

Exploration:

Icelandic exploration has located India, on Island [14], just as our cartography had predicted.
Zoe's Longboat can now return to settler-ferrying duty.
I wonder if Mumbai has a hidden inlet of ocean, or ghamath is just trying to troll us by building one tile from the coast.

[HansLemurson]

Turn 30

Top 5 Cities:

Here are the 5 again, marching upwards towards infinity.

Demographics:

I'm number Two??? That's almost like losing! 
Then again, when you build 3 settlers in one turn, you can't help but to expect your population to fall a bit.
I wonder who the other team's leader is?
Again, some economic stats are a bit low due to Vectron's Glory growing, and the default tiles being suboptimal.

Science:

Astronomy next turn, then I get to gnaw on the beefy challenge of Magnetism.

Plans:

Another settler loading onto an offshore boat.  Gotta keep that colonization pump flowing.  I'm tired of having only one ship.  Magnetism can't come soon enough.


Bronswiek grew beyond its happiness limits, but I anticipated this!  A Warrior from Bremen was sent south to provide more order in the city, allowing it to complete it's Worker.

Overview:

Mount Vectron and Lubeck are scheduled to cross the "Aqueduct Threshold" next turn.
Hamborg joins in the growth fun, and will need some Order next turn, since it was 1 production short of finishing the Temple, and I ran out of gold.
Hameln also got some direct investment so that its granary could be finished on the same turn it grows.
The Tribal Worker near Bremen got promoted to level 4: "Hardened".  This grants it a 225% work speed, which still leaves it short of the golden "5 WP" threshold that allows for fast irrigation.
If it were a normal worker, then it would have 6.75 WP, and also have 4.3 MP, allowing it to walk into forests and hills and complete a road on the same turn.  Maybe I should upgrade it...
East of Duorpm, you can see two Settlers acting as very expensive workers.  This is the tragedy of a Shipping bottleneck.
Vectron's Glory is pre-building a Small Wonder so that it will be able to complete The Observatory right after I research Astronomy.
Ossenbrugge, Riga, and Wismer are pre-building ships so that I'll be able to get Caravels out and sailing as soon as I discover magnetism.
Estland was going to do that too, but it has excess production, so rather than building a useless trireme, it will make a useful worker, and then start re-accumulating.

Exploration:

Enemy sighted!  cgalik's island [15], "Cast Away" has another resident.  The Incans will contest his hold over this land.  This news lead to a lot of discussions and worrying on our team, since Slovakia is our weakest nation, and bamskamp is the owner of the biggest city in the world.


cgalik is nothing if not crafty, though.  He bought a trireme in FedEx, and used it to expedite the shipment of a settler onto the island.
This showed that bamskamp had NOT, as feared, settled next to the river, so enemy river-boats will not be a major concern.

On the other side of the world...

We also had another discovery, and more contention!
YKnot found Island [44], which implies that my island [2] is a completely safe backwater.
The Bretons are the closest nation to [44], and the discoverers, but I expressed my concern that since they have a partially settled island next to enemy territory, and an economy half the size of my own, that they wouldn't be able to afford to colonize it and adequately settle their island [38].
With absolutely no conflict-of-interest whatsoever on my part, I offered that the Hanseatic League be the nation to settle and secure this island.  


Internal team negotiations on the matter are...*ahem* "ongoing". 
 

[HansLemurson]

Turn 30 World Atlas!!!
A map of the known world, with the islands labelled and noted with my thoughts about each one.

This is the world as we know it, with all the islands named as best as possible.

[1] Hansa: My home island.
[2] Lemuria: The island I've been colonizing.
[3] Arctic: Vast frozen no-man's land.  Inhabited by one unlucky Slovakian settler.
[4] Scotland: jwrober's home island.  Near enough to the Arctic to have tundra on its western tips.
[5] Ireland: ilkkachu's home island.
[6] Slovakia: cgalik's home island.
[7] Avalon: My nearest island, given to the Irish for ilkkachu to colonize while I sailed north.
[8] Nova Scotia: jwrober's colony.  Shallow-water connection to the enemy.  Will likely see fighting.
[9] Greenland: Zoe's extra island.  Connected by shallows to Iceland, it's basically an extended home island.
[10] Aleutia: xandr's home island.  Not what cgalik was hoping to find when he went searching in the predicted lattitudes.
[11] Company Store: xander's colony.  Shallows-connected to Nova Scotia, but bigger and richer.  Could have become a war zone had jwrober settled sooner.
[12] Iceland: Zoe's home island.  Very few early food surpluses here, unlucky.  Slowed her growth.
[13] Prismatic Springs: Zoe's colony.  Named after a "map feature" on the island.  Sizeable island, but only one city.  Hopefully safe for now.
[14] India: ghamath's home island.  We think he might not have any colonies since his longboat headed north and we control all the islands north of him.
[15] Cast Away: cgalik stumbled onto this on his second voyage of discovery.  Probably fairly isolated.  Its numbering also proves there's a vast open ocean all the way to Aleutia and India.  No more islands there.  bamskamp has also founded a city here.  This will be the site of a colonial war for sure.
[16]-[18] Undiscovered.
[19] Antarctic: The West Pole.  Or East Pole, depending on how you look at it.
[20]-[29] Undiscovered.
[30] Cze?: Controlled by ste, and touched by frost.  Is it a Home Island or a Colony?
[32]-[34] Undiscovered.
[35] Teplice: ste's colony.  Named after the only city I saw.
[36] New Belarus: kamBLR's first colony.  Named after first city, but probably would have been named this anyways.
[37] Beladen: kamBLR's Home island.  Nation is technically Baden, but kam is always Belarus.  So I merged the names.
[38] Bronn: YKnot's colony.  A good chunk of land.  Named after its biggest city, which was founded on Wheat for fast population growth.
[39] Bretonia: YKnot's home island.  Long and narrow, with the capital sadly at the wrong end, next to me rather than his colony.  Good resources though.  Lots of coal hills.
[40]-[41] Undiscovered.
[42] Hillburg.  kamBLR's second colony.  Name inspired by its first city "DealWithHill" which is, unsurprisingly, built on a hill.  Presumably for enemies to deal with.  Shallow water connection to New Belarus.  Not that it matters.
[43] Undiscovered.  (We know where it should be though.  Must be somewhere on a line between [42] and [44])
[44] ?: Newly discovered island.  No name yet, but has caused a bit of trouble.  No settler will set foot on it until Turn-34 though, so there's time to think.
[45+] Theoretically possible, but no signs yet.


And for some context, here are all the players of the game!  (This is the Diplomacy screen)

[HansLemurson]

Turn 31

Top 5 Cities:

Maybe Drop City will suffer some bad luck?

Demographics:

#1 in population again!  Not #1 in cities though, and definitely not #1 in production.
I think I'll hold the mantle for #1 in Science for a while, though.

Science:

I want my Caravels!!!
My research should increase next turn when I build the Observatory.

Plans:

Longboat will sail north, dangerously low on fuel, not stopping in Danzig.
Settler in north will settle city to allow Longboat to refuel.  Sadly, the swamp will not be cleared in time, and I'll have an icky swamp-city.
Danzig will produce another settler as soon as it can afford the population, which will head north so that it too can be ferried to island [44].
That's the plan, anyways.

Overview:

Vectron's Glory will build Copernicus' Observatory, which will give me +1 Science per citizen in that city.  That will represent a 20% increase in my research rate.
I underestimated the Military Police requirements in Lübeck and Mount Vectron, and had to do a bunch of shuffling of warriors.  
As a result, Hamborg is going to spend a turn at -1 food, using entertainers while still being productive.  It shouldn't slow the growth too badly, and it will hit the Aqueduct limit soon anyways.
I've added a lot of irrigation around M.V. and Lübeck, and I believe they should be able to maintain a +10 surplus.
Estland is going to end up growing to size 5 without a granary.  I think I switched it to make a warrior after this image was taken.
All my cities need to grow tall now, and it's going to be quite the juggling act to keep them all growing on schedule.

[civac2]

World map is appreciated. There could be some fireworks soon.

Several of your Hanse cities have odd spellings.

[Brian Shanahan]

World map is appreciated. There could be some fireworks soon.

Several of your Hanse cities have odd spellings.

They seem to be local dialectical spellings, for example Duorpm is the local Low German dialect name for Dortmund. And when you consider the provenance of most Hanseatic cities, it's obvious that they're mostly Low German dialects, as the Low German language is centred around Northern Germany.