[PB56] Lazteuq's Cool Facts about Space

[Lazteuq]

Turn 74

Breakeven research is already down to only about 40%, and it will get worse before it gets better. PRO trade routes are good, but they aren't enough to cover for all of my problems



Next turn, I'll found the city east of Turfan after chopping the forest. Don't want to waste those hammers! I'll try to get walls built in these newest cities ASAP for deterrence value. PRO+Stone means it's really fast.
Maybe I need to get the island city ASAP for traderoutes, but I don't want to lose any more continental sites to Noble or Gira! Also Sailing will delay Currency. Not sure what to do yet.

A couple turns ago, Amicalola wanted me to declare war and/or cancel OB with Noble. I didn't accept right away because I didn't want it to look like obvious collusion. I waited a couple turns, and this turn I did stop the open borders. Because I'm PRO, I wasn't benefiting from OB anyways. Amica and Noble are also at peace now though. So I might be in more danger now.

Gira's score, production, food, and power have all decreased in the last few turns. I don't really know why, but that sounds like a war to me. If it was just a lot of whipping, I would expect power to go up. If Gira is involved in trouble to the south, that can give me more freedom to settle and build improvements on our border.
Meanwhile, Noble continues to excel in demographics. Not good news.

Space Fact 25: Pressure waves can travel through the sun's interior, similar to how p-waves from earthquakes travel through the Earth. This is called helioseismology: https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/Helioseismology.shtml

[Lazteuq]

Turn 77
I'm feeling better about the situation. Nobody has declared war on me in over ten turns!
I now have 8 cities to Gira's 7, despite Gira having probably the best early expansion trait combo.
The culture graph shows a big drop for Gira a few turns ago. That must be a reasonably important city being captured. Very good news!
I was considering offering Gira open borders, but now I probably won't because I want to keep them nervous about an attack from me. I'm not actually planning an attack right now, but I want Gira to be worried.
Up north, my lone scout has met Ruff and Vanrober, who have apparently been at war. Ruff didn't accept my open borders, we'll see about Van. Here's the map so far. Noble's capitol is just to the south.

Noble of course has nearly 2 players worth of land after killing El Grillo/AT. I think Channel might have been one of their cities. That copper near Channel certainly isn't Noble's naturally.
This donut has a center island, but I probably won't be reaching it anytime soon. 
Amica seems to have a nice empire going, with lots of food and a few cottages already developing. Looks like Amica almost took Ruff's horses!

Space Fact 26: Lasers are becoming popular for satellite-to-satellite communication, with significant interest from militaries. In space, the lasers are not absorbed or scattered by atmosphere, so it is much easier to receive a signal from hundreds of kilometers away. Similar to fiber optics on Earth, it allows very high data rates without extreme power consumption.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 80- Remember what I said about about feeling better about the situation? Yeah, that didn't last very long.
I moved a lonely Axeman up north because I was planning to found a city and found this frightening sight of Noble's units instead:

(Noble has not yet played this turn)
Looks like he's setting up a sneak attack on my only copper source. He also surely knows I don't have horses because of the Turfan Incident, so he knows losing that copper would totally cripple me. Definitely a smart idea. He has a peace treaty with Amica right now, so it's a great timing for him.

Worst case scenario is that he attacks my axe on the hill with a combat 2 chariot and wins. Then he puts his whole stack on that hill, threatening both the copper and Thessalonica. I don't think I can prevent loss of copper next turn. My only hope is that he calls off the attack because he lost the element of surprise, or he decides to go after Nicomedia instead. He has good vision on my units though, and I'm sure he's doing demographics tea leaf reading, so I bet he follows through with the attack.
I sent Noble a clam for clam deal to indicate my peaceful intentions, but I don't expect cooperation.

Several great generals have been born or died recently. It's a violent world out there.

Space Fact 27: In 1983, a sounding rockets named Echo 6 sent a cloud of electrons all the way to the southern hemisphere and back along Earth's magnetic field lines. Check out this link, there's a cool picture: https://posters.unh.edu/private_media/6381/

[Lazteuq]

Turn 81- The situation is grim.

As expected, Noble declared war. My axeman on the hill won against the odds, but of course the second chariot killed him off. That was really fortunate, now I have only 1 chariot to deal with. Still a huge problem though. The plan is to let him pillage the copper with that chariot if he wants to. There's no way I can protect the copper right now. I should be able to amass enough troops to dislodge him after a few turns.
On the other hand, he might go for the dice roll and attack the axe in Thessalonica. If he wins that and burns the city, I'm even more screwed. At least I was already working on a settler anyways.

Gira took a huge power hit but gained a bunch of culture. I'm assuming that means they reclaimed a city. I'm banking on Gira being too occupied to attack me. That one fogged tile east of Turfan scares me though. If it has a road, Gira could take Angora with a chariot with no warning this turn. That would really suck. I hope Gira thinks about the big picture here and doesn't attack. If Gira destabilizes me even more, Noble will manage to take a big chunk of my land at minimal cost, that's a total disaster for everyone else. Noble's already running away in demographics as far as I can tell. If Noble takes 2.5 civs worth of land, I worry this game will have a quick end.

Space Fact 28: Most space plasma particles travel in spirals, not straight lines. The size of the spiral is called the gyroradius or the "Larmor radius". For some particles like low energy electrons it can be only a few cm, while others have thousands of kilometers. It all depends on how fast the particle is going, how heavy it is, and how much charge it has.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 83.

Noble attacked Thessalonica and razed it with his chariot. My big mistake here was whipping an axe instead of an archer. I totally could have prolonged the city's life, for at least a turn.
Then Noble moved his units toward Nicomedia.
I whipped out Walls in Nicomedia and reinforced it.
This turn, Vanrober offered a spare copper, which I gladly accepted. I'm guessing he's been doing some conquering, because there shouldn't be any extra coppers.

Most interestingly, Noble offered a peace treaty. I decided not to accept. I'm staying at war because I want to drag him down and cause damage. Hopfully Amicalola and I can get a nice 2v1 going.
I am officially no longer playing to win.
Noble probably thinks he's done enough damage for now that he can leave me alone and deal with Amicalola in a 1v1. I won't fall into his plans so easily. He wants me to faithfully continue playing to win despite being pretty thoroughly crippled.
I might have just thrown away the game even more, but who cares? I'm already 8th,9th,or 10th in every meaningful demographic.
I'm determined to not repeat the mistakes of PB51. I refuse to let global events just happen around me. I will be an active participant in geopolitics!

Noble's axes are on flat ground, so I decided to try attacking out. I hoped to kill the two axes on the pigs and then bring in reinforcements. Unfortunately my first axe lost a 68% fight though, so I gave up on that idea. This attack was probably a big mistake, Noble might actually take Nicomedia now that its 3 units vs. 6! I think its about 50-50. I'm not happy with that, but I don't think he is either. I bet he waits a turn to reinforce instead.

Man, it sure would be nice if I had chariots to counter these unprotected axes.
I could ask Gira for their spare horses...

Space Fact 29: You can see regularly updated space weather graphs and maps here from NOAA! https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ I think the solar wind plots are the coolest: https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/an...latest.jpg

[Lazteuq]

Turn 84
Gira offered open borders, and I accepted. I see a couple of Gira's chariots moving northeast, I'm wondering if Gira plans to join in this war. That sounds fun.

Noble made a surprising move and took his stack east. I honestly don't know what his plan is. Maybe he simply wants to settle that area, but I think its more complicated. Anyways, he is preventing me from resettling Thessalonica. That would be a big problem, except Vanrober is so kindly giving me copper, so I don't actually need Thessalonica! Maybe Noble hasn't noticed that in the foreign advisor yet.
The good news is that I've stuffed enough units into Nicomedia that he will have a very hard time taking it. The bad news is that he will probably get construction pretty soon. Then my walls and archers won't be so impressive anymore. Hopefully Amicalola attacks again and he is forced to withdraw some units.
I still don't know where my iron is, and probably won't for another 20 turns or so!
I've decided to delay Currency and take the detour for Sailing. Partly for the better trade routes, but mostly to mine that silver on the island. An extra happiness would be super helpful right now. Should be founded in about 6 turns.

The culture of Nicaea has expanded so now I can see Gira doesn't have a road 1E of Turfan, so my earlier fears of a sneak attack on Angora weren't necessary.

Space Fact 30: Sometimes comets crash into planets. This happened to Jupiter in 1994, and there are some really cool pictures of the scars in Jupiter's clouds.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 90. Time for a big update.

I'm still at war with Noble, but not much else has changed.
Noble declared war on Vanrober, which cut off my copper supply. I guess that's because the only viable trade path was through Noble's land or sea. Oops. I should have thought of that. So I really don't have copper after all now.

Gira has been non-threating. However, Gira has open borders with Noble. I'm not expecting any cooperation. I've got a scout travelling through Gira's land, it turns out Jowy is the southeastern neighbor.
I sent Gira a corn-corn deal just to clarify my peaceful intent (for now). Gira is pretty thoroughly scouting my land with chariots. That might be a problem.

Noble has settled a city next to my copper. I'm not sure what to do about it. Presumably there are still a lot of units over there, but I don't know because I can't see the city itself. Once Nicomedia's borders expand, I think I'll have vision. I want to threaten that city from the nearby hill, taking advantage of archers. I can't approach it without him noticing though, because that hill gives him wider vision

Antioch creates the first great scientist in 3 turns.
I founded the city Trebizond on the silver island. Will get +1 happy in 4 turns. Nice economy boost from overseas traderoutes.

I've been building Pyramids here and there to farm some stone-boosted failgold. I would try to actually build them. but I don't have a city prepared for it. Maybe I could have done it if I hadn't been forced to panic whip and chop in response to Noble's attack.
Ah, on second though, maybe it's still worth trying to build mids in Constantinople.


LIST TIME:
Definite Big Mistakes (chronological):

• Accepting peace with Gira after the scout choke. This allowed Gira to freely settle Turfan.
  
• Not settling the Turfan spot earlier. I underestimated how quickly Gira would go for it.
  
• Not having warriors in position to take Turfan ASAP
  
• Delaying Archery.
  
• Not exploring more, especially to the south.
  
• Neglecting to watch the northern border by Thessalonica.
  
• Not building very many axes.
  
• Whipping an axe instead of archer when Noble attacked Thessalonica. I might have been able to hold the city otherwise.
  
• Not building any cottages until turn 80something. Meanwhile my Financial peers already have hamlets and villages.
  

Possible Mistakes:

• Settling Nicaea so aggressively... The plan worked, but it hasn't been a very good city.
  
• Researching math early. I might have been able to bulb it instead. Would have lost quite a few chop hammers though...
  
• Not sharing more food tiles with the capitol.
  
• Not taking peace with Noble..... Time will tell if this was a mistake or not.
  
• Not attacking Gira to retake Turfan already.
  

Things to be thankful for:

• I got lucky with settling right by copper.
  
• Gira is distracted by someone else
  
• Aside from the horse locations, the map balance seems OK.
  
• Noble didn't take Nicomedia or Nicaea, or even pillage very many improvements.
  
• This is a big map with 10 players remaining, so I think there will be lots of fun wars before we have a clear winner. 
  
• I've been able to make good use of the Protective trait.
  
• Buffed PHI is in action, so my first few great people are coming soon.
  

Space Fact 31: Nearby stars to our solar system are moving at tens of kilometers per second relative to us. That is fast enough to notice over thousands of years. Astronomers from classical Greece observed stars in significantly different places from where they were cataloged again in the Renaissance.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 91.
Noble made peace with Vanrober, so we have a trade connection again. I sent Vanrober a copper for pig deal. Hopefully he's still feeling benevolent.
Also I offered Jowy and Vanrober open borders. I'd like to meet the remaining two players, Cairo and Mjmd.

I might launch an attack on one of Noble's cities from Nicomedia next turn, depending on how he reacts to my movements. He has excellent vision on my units, which is frustrating. I feel like he can just run circles around me. I don't think I'll make much progress unless Amicalola and Noble get into another war. Unfortunately Amicalola might be busy worrying about Vanrober as well.
Noble has about double my economic output. It's kind of amazing how spread out everyone's scores already are.

Great scientist in 2 turns. I think I'll save him for a golden age once I have slightly better developed cities. Academy doesn't seem worth it, since I don't have any standout commerce cities. Capitol would be OK I guess. Then I should get another scientist during the golden age. Maybe I'll go for early Astro and do some naval adventures with Privateers.

Whipping a lighthouse in Adrianople was probably a mistake.
Constantinople is unhappy. It has more food than I can use, because Thessalonica isn't sharing the food tiles anymore. A lot of foodhammers are just being wasted. It's a micro tragedy. I haven't been able to whip much because it already had a lot of stacked anger. I guess 3pop whipping a settler next would be alright.

I haven't found a clear path forward yet.
If Gira gets into another fight with Jowy, I should probably snipe Turfan and then go for Cataphracts. For now, the plan is to keep building trust with Gira. I might try to attack Turfan from multiple angles to block reinforcements.

Space Fact 32: If Earth had no atmosphere like the Moon, the average temperature would be much colder: about 250 Kelvin, or -20 Celsius.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 93
Last turn, I got some very perplexing deals from Vanrober. I don't know what message he's trying to send, but he apparently doesn't want to give copper for free.
First, he offered Copper+war with Noble for me fighting everyone.
Then, he offered Copper+war with Noble for me fighting Jowy.
Maybe I'm being dumb, but I just don't see the meaning.

Amicalola offered horses for clams. I think that's horse which they just took from Ruff. Ruff is apparently collapsing. Anyways, I gladly took the offer. I'll definitely work on some chariots right away, because I might lose that horse at any moment.

I got open borders with Jowy. Then, he gifted me a copper this turn! I have no idea how he has a second source of copper, but I'm thankful. Too bad this is an AI diplo game, I would have some very kind words for him.
I'm still in this! No longer militarily crippled, only economically crippled!

I moved an archer to get vision on Standstill, Noble's city by my copper. An appropriate city name. It's pretty packed with units, I can't take it any time soon. There are probably more units lurking somewhere near Explore, poised to strike if I move out. Or, if I go try to attack Explore, he can send the Standstill stack toward my capitol. Noble could probably send the units in Standstill toward Constantinople right now. It would certainly hurt me more than him.
Whoever gets to construction first will have an advantage (probably Noble). I don't think I can afford to delay Currency though. Currently my breakeven rate is only 28bpt at 40%. In other words, I'll probably have to stay on the defensive as I build up gold and tech for a while.
4 people already have HBR. Including Gira, who is showing off a Keshik in Turfan.
I met Civac. Civac has declared on Jowy twice. That means Jowy was probably in a 2v1, might explain why his score is pretty low.

I bet Noble isn't happy being locked in war with me, but I see no reason to make peace. It's better to keep vision on his units by staying at war.

Just had a fun thought: Would I be able to get amphibious cataphracts? That would synergize really well with getting early Astro. (if I get that far)

Space Fact 33: NASA rockets don't all launch from Florida. You've probably heard of Kennedy Space Center, but there are two less famous ones used for unmanned missions: Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California, and Wallops Flight Facility in Maryland.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 94

Noble's army is very axe-heavy. I'm thinking I might be able to quickly spam some chariots and throw them at Standstill. My main concern is whether retaking that land is even worth the hammers. I'd probably need about 10 chariots, 300 hammers. That's 10 pop whipped. I guess I could do it...Whipping chariots sucks though, because there's no way to make a good 2 pop whip out of it, unlike axes.

I pulled some archers back, because I wasn't doing anything useful. Noble continues to slowly build up units in Explore. I'm becoming worried about the safety of Nicaea as well. He can fork Nicaea and Nicomedia with chariots if he wants to, but it would be costly.



I think it's necessary to pack cities together tightly here. I'm about to put another city 3N of Antioch. Might settle south of Antioch later, but I bet Gira will take the site first.
Looking at the KTBs, I don't feel like I'm falling too far behind yet. One person has IW and 4 have HBR, and of course some people have gone down the religion path. Nobody has currency, alphabet, construction, metal casting yet... I fear I will fall behind soon though. Even at 100%, my beaker rate is only 60ish.

Comparing to PB51, which was a similar map size and type, I had 8 cities on T92 and got Currency T97. PB51 was a very nice geopolitical situation compared to right now though. I like to think I've played a little bit better than I did in PB51 so far, but I'm also in a much tougher situation. And importantly, I don't have help from RefSteel Himself this game.


Correction from earlier: I still haven't met Mjmd. 

Space Fact 34: Some meteor showers can be traced back to specific objects, like comets or asteroids breaking apart. Each "meteor" we see is a small chunk of ice or rock, rarely large enough to reach the ground.