Hi, my cat just stepped on my keyboard and moved my worker to the worst possible square. Would delay everything I am doing by 1-3 turns, including building early wonders (Stonehenge+GLH, where 1-3 turns is the difference between completion and sadness). This might actually cripple my game. May I request a reload here? Just to my login, so no one would lose anything. Pretty unambiguous that I wouldn't have moved this way, I feel. Cat banned from the room during Civ from now on.
(March 18th, 2021, 16:29)Kaiser Wrote: Cat pictures or it is not true!
Well I mean, I can't not oblige that!
Here is bad keyboard-meddling cat enjoying his morning; he's very smug:
Here are sibling-cats after they got in trouble:
In game news, I was waiting until we discovered copper to make another report. Well we found it, in a predictably thought-provoking and frustrating spot. If only I was Creative!!! I'm STILL not sure where the 2nd city goes..
The landmass overall looks to have a north-east and south-east land bridge, with a floodplains spot in the middle. The floodplains are very likely contested. I'm not sure we'll be able to fight peacefully for that, since we'll be tied up on wonders to some extent. Perhaps we'll need to tech up and fight for it the old fashioned way.
Well, 3 weeks in and it's Turn 25 so I guess it's time for the 25-Turn overviews to begin. This turn was 'eventful,' at least compared to the rest so far. My 2nd worker completed, and I revolted to Slavery this turn (the plan is to whip out a settler at size 4). I have a pretty precise micro I've worked out, and I'm totally paranoid I'm going to screw it up. Or someone else is going to screw it up for me. If not though, I think I'll be in a pretty good position.
I have been torn between sending the scout out searching for neighbours and keeping it close for fogbust duty, which is going to be crucial between T32-42 for reasons that shall be clear later. In my sims, an archer walked up on T35! I think I'm going to check out the floodplains so that it stays close, but I waste a few turns backtracking. It's something I should have thought about ahead of time.
We still haven't met anyone. I haven't wandered into anyone else's quadrant, and to my knowledge no one has walked into mine. I guess that's a good thing? It would be nice to have someone to dump my EP into, because graphs feel a lot more important in no-score. At the same time, I'm glad no one is warrior rushing me.
I feel a little bad for not doing any opponent analysis (although I stand by the reasoning - you should not listen to me!). To rectify that a little, I'm going to do one whenever I meet an opponent, which should keep things somewhat spicy, but also manageable without having to write a huge number at once. I wonder how many people I'll actually meet this game...
T29
Important news alert! Beauregard the scout has confirmed that the floodplains are not, in fact, contested! Definitely was not expecting that, and I'm glad I checked. This gives us room for something like 10-12 cities, excluding an early conflict or the like. It also makes GLH and Colossus look even better. I am wondering if instead the contested zone is the islands? There is that wine island in the shot, and a fur island to the south.
We're growing to size 4 on a warrior, and then chopping out another with overflow into the settler, which we will then 2-whip. The biggest weakness I found in my micro was that the ivory camp is unworked for a significant portion of the next 15 turns, but I didn't really have anything better for the worker to do, so I decided the camp was still the best move.
On a related note, I've been thinking about what starting techs were best here. Mining was crucial for chop/whipping ASAP, so I'm very glad I tossed Mongolia despite them being a normally better civ than Ethiopia. Hunting hasn't really done much though, and I think pairing Mining with Agriculture, Fishing, The Wheel, or Mysticism would have been better. Still, can't complain when I at least got Mining.
Still haven't met anyone; it's a lonely world out here. A lot of players are at size 4 now, presumably they didn't stop to build a 2nd worker before the settler.
Edit: I think I've basically scouted the entirety of 'my zone.' I count 106 tiles to look to be 'mine' (or intended as such), with 7+ on western islands, 6 on central islands, and 15 contested jungle tiles. If we assume the central islands and jungle tiles are the contested zones, that gets me to ~115 tiles, which was around the number quoted per player. So that means I'm either slightly overestimating 'my land,' or there's no Astro-land. Or maybe the western islands are also contested.
It's nice knowing what's in my area and being able to plan around it before I even plant my second city. It is getting a bit spooky still not having met anyone on such a nominally small map. After fogbusting during the early 30s, Beauregard is going to head out and find our neighbours. I'm slightly worried someone's seen my borders from the fog and is planning a rush without me being able to see their demos. I'm not sure if that's one of my nonsense fears or a valid one, but I hear the civforum meta is particularly known for early aggression...
T35
Still nothing interesting is happening, but I'm near the bottom of the page, so you get a report. Still haven't left my quadrant, or met anyone inside it. I am now sending the scout out to find people though, we'll be in someone else's area soon.
Here are my power-demos. The world must surely fear Ethiopia right now:
Stonehenge better be worth it. Assuming we manage to land it, that is. More on that in the next report!
I've been avoiding talking about wonder dates, because I've read a few times that it's a bad idea to do that. The issue is: that's boring. So from now on, we'll be talking explicitly about wonder plans and dates; I plan on building at least a few. Hopefully that makes this thread more interesting to lurk too.
With that in mind, Cocoon is founded this turn. It's an incredibly strong city, once the borders pop - before that, it sucks. The problem is, culture's hard to come by, since we aren't Creative or Charismatic. So we're going to try and brute force some pseudo-Creative:
In theory we finish EoT42.
My micro has been done with Stonehenge in mind, which is why we're doing so badly in the demos (see last report). We built a second worker before our settler, to start chopping, and we've generally invested a tonne of worker turns. I'm not sure it was worth it, but IND made it too tempting. If we don't land Stonehenge here, we're pretty boned. The main competition is players who start with Myst (especially Naufragar), who could build it in their capitals. My hope is that T42 is just early enough to be safe.
I didn't play the first 40 turns very efficiently, which is a bit sad. I've been covering workers and settlers extensively. This was because in my sim a barb archer stymied the chops on T35! I had taken this to mean Emperor had way more/earlier barbs, but no such appearance in the real game; we haven't even seen an animal on-site yet. It looks like my sim was just very unlucky. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
---
Cocoon competes with Pagan Poetry and Unison for being my favourite track on the album, so I'd recommend this one especially. There's nothing special melodically, but it feels more 'intimate' than any song I've heard before. It's nice that it gets to be such a strong city.
I officially met Mr. Cairo this turn (who settled a gold site like me), so you get the first opponent analysis:
Mr Cairo as Darius (Fin/Org) of Aztecs (Jaguar/Sacrifical Altar)
Jowy has totally sold me on Organized Aztecs during PB58. The Sacrifical Altar is real good, even if the other uniques are pretty trash. Darius also has that nice new combo with Org and Financial lighthouses, which will be interesting to watch. He's basically the economic king of Civ 4, but has nothing else to get him there. I'm not sure if I prefer FIN or IND with the new nerfs, so I am interested to see how we compare. This is a clear builders combo, and isn't built to attack someone early.
Mr Cairo strikes me as a very solid player. In every game I've seen him play in, he tends to be middle of the pack. He's definitely a builder at heart, so combined with his builder's combo I expect him to play defensively until knights, at least. He won't try to explode outwards; he'll try to gradually build up and overwhelm us with a tech advantage.
Builder-Cairo with a builder's combo is pretty much the perfect neighbour for me this game. My plan this game is to land several early wonders, and build a lot of forges, and being left alone is obviously pretty crucial. Using the gradual advantages from both, I hope to overwhelm Cairo before he can make full use of his traits, but it's too early to speculate there.
While we nervously wait for Stonehenge to finish or bust, here are some other thoughts about the game so far.
So far I'm not enjoying no-score mod. I've actually been quite anxious wondering what's going on in the world, who's doing well, etc. It also leads to me stressing more about my micro, since I can't see how others are doing. I'm not sure how much of it is due to my own personal quirks, or if other are finding the same thing; I'll have to ask them after the game. To be fair, I imagine no-score shines in the mid and late game, as it makes ambushes and sneak-attacks way more possible, as well as giving EP value. So my opinion isn't final.
I'm sad about the lack of efficiency in my early turns. It was partly due to a tech misplay, and partly due to over-worry about barbs. It hasn't killed my game, but it is a significant setback, even if I get my wonders. I'd like to get more resilient (both life and civ), so I will say that this just makes it even more impressive if I manage to keep up.
In my sims, an archer walked up on T35! I think I'm going to check out the floodplains so that it stays close, but I waste a few turns backtracking. It's something I should have thought about ahead of time. 
Beauregard the scout has confirmed that the floodplains are not, in fact, contested! Definitely was not expecting that, and I'm glad I checked. This gives us room for something like 10-12 cities, excluding an early conflict or the like. It also makes GLH and Colossus look even better. I am wondering if instead the contested zone is the islands? There is that wine island in the shot, and a fur island to the south. 
