TBS finds Superdeath's title Ominous

[The Black Sword]

In other news, we have mostly been stagnating at 6 cities building our granaries since the last update. We had a lead in food of roughly 70f to 2nd place's 50f at some point, but the field has been catching up in that stat as we built granaries instead. Now that our cities are ready to grow and we've unlocked new city spots overseas it's time to push that number up again.




Guangzhou is about to 2-whip a settler for the fish/flood plains spot next turn. Beijing will also whip a settler for an overseas fur city. The gold city of Nanjing needs to grow to size 6 before whipping so it doesn't whip off resource tiles. Still it will get me a settler on T70 for the (inner?) eastern sea. Xian will whip a boring old lighthouse.



I split this flood plain region up into two cities, before I realised the island to the East was not part of Comm's landmass. I thought this way I had a good chance of stealing the clams as a creative civ, whereas usually I'd ignore any tiles first ring to a second landmass. I also did not have a good Moai city picked out yet and this new location fit the bill, with both the water tiles and the hammers to build it. The whales was another point in favor, though pretty minor, I expect to have happiness issues mostly fixed by the time we have Optics.

Anyway, instead it looks like we are potentially on a 6 or 8 person wheel with some islands to compete for in the central sea. So compete I will. Chengdu will whip a boat ASAP to bring the settler from Nanjing to that nice looking pig island.



In the north, Shanghai will build the boat for Beijing's settler. This WB will make sure Comm isn't preparing a welcoming a party his own. Comm also cut my two exploring warriors off from coming home with his axeman. I was hoping the land continued for me to explore East, but no such luck. Once I build the boat on the eastern coast I can evacuate them I guess. He's also go workers preparing the way to this river pig location.

[The Black Sword]

Yikes, Praets already. Guess it's time to hook my copper and spam axes. I had Comm down as the person who first discovered Sailing, but now I wonder if he has the tech for all this - he'd be up 500b on me already. Hopefully it was someone else. Anyway, I built my first cottage this turn, so we'll catch up in no time.

[The Black Sword]

Latest island city increased city+civic maintenance by 6g and immediately pulled in 6g worth of commerce itself. Also saved 2gpt in unit upkeep and buffed some mainland trade routes. Cities are just so cheap on these big maps. So let's keep growing ...

[The Black Sword]

Next time you want to duel Comm, I'm happy to play a separate game.

This is my thread btw, so I get to gloat when things go right, if you want to hear about how unlucky Comm got, you can go read his thread.   

Even odds he won't take peace so he can hide his iron hook-up anyway.

The whole thing dragged me back to the pack unfortunately, even if we still look good. Delaying the furs really hurt since we have so much food flowing around. I'm dealing with it in two ways:
1) building cheap libraries and running scientists
2) settling some filler cities early to split off resources that would go to waste.
Still I probably could have managed this a little better, even if the war didn't help.



Joshy's taking advantage of my distraction to spam out settlers into his wilderness, with little escort. I think I've had opportunities to move in on 4 different undefended settlers/cities with my wandering warriors. Unlike others, I don't try to piss off my neighbours as a point of policy though. (At least not unless I'm taking some land for it  ). For a brief moment Joshy even had more cities than me, with no early game traits.

[klops]

This is my thread btw, so I get to gloat when things go right, if you want to hear about how unlucky Comm got, you can go read his thread. 

Nice. I guess the galley did not have great odds.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, around 30% I think. I wouldn't have gone for it without the 2nd galley as backup though.

Comm still won't take peace. I don't really get the motivation. These islands are clearly 50/50 spots, it is slightly closer to his capital only because I settled my capital for the southern bananas rather than the plains hill. And it's too early to throw your game away to try reel in a potential run away. Even if I'm looking like I'm doing well, there's bound to be some screw up on another continent that some other contender takes advantage of, and then geopolitics comes into play. The goal should be to still be in the game at that point, rather than be a pair of also-rans with your neighbour.

Maybe he's already committed a boat to a similar raid in the inner sea for some reason.

[The Black Sword]

Today's turn report:

[The Black Sword]

I had 2 galleys to his 0 at the end of our last conflict up here. But I didn't go sailing around to his capital. What would I gain out of that? Beginning to regret it though.

Seriously, I should probably just start thinking about conquering Rome. Usually I'd say Comm is too good of a player to efficiently conquer in a big game but that's because he's usually smart enough not to play like this. He's falling behind because he's throwing all these hammers away, now 6 cities to my 12. We'd need CKN or Knights to deal with Praets though.

I just hope it wasn't him that teched Metal Casting just now. It looks like he had tech off recently, so probably not, the Industrious Amicola would make a safer bet. But if he goes for triremes I probably have to follow him, and we can waste some beakers together as well as hammers.

Joshy's got some units a bit far forward for my liking:


So I sent him a 'friendly' rice for rice. I'd really prefer not to whip out even more troops. 



This settler was originally scheduled for the inner sea island here, but had to run around to the other side of the empire instead to settle the horses. The transportation galley is needed to deal with the latest Roman incursion. That's the main economic cost of that so far. I had to whip Hanghzhou and Chengdu for units also, but they were pretty good whips anyway, the cities were growing onto weaker tiles and the whip counters were almost free.

[The Black Sword]

Haven't had an overview shot in a while:


Most of my land is settled. There is a filler going in soon by Shanghai - it will split off the pigs to make use out of the food surplus, get a granary chopped at size 1, immediately hook a silk upon founding and grow onto some unused river tiles.

There is also some land north east of Nanjing, but I don't want to settle that yet so that I can give the forests to the Mausoleum's construction.

Finally there are the two Western islands that need to wait for Iron Working.

Got to admit, 18 cities was a bit bigger than I was hoping for when I signed up for this game. Guess I should thank Comm for trying to save me from late-game empire hell.

Speaking of which:


This looks like a move that will snowball well for him. Pillaging the furs doesn't even really hurt since I've had enough time to hook my southern copy. He's continuing to build power though, has now overtaken me.



He has a galley sailing around being annoying to the north that I should really kick out soon. But I still need this second galley to ferry units around down here a bit longer. I'm also a bit worried that Yanghzhou might stretch Joshy's better nature. It's the 2nd of two 50/50 islands between us that I settled and uses resources from his part of our wheel. Hopefully I've built some goodwill from ignoring all his empty cities, and I can buy some more by gifting my 2nd silk source when Calendar comes in. It doesn't look like I have any good trades available with it for a while and I think the goodwill is probably worth boosting my neighbour. It's nice that he's not connecting his horse up too, which makes the decision on garrison units easy.



We look like we'll make our T94 Calendar date thanks to the upcoming Academy. We'll have a decent 200g in the bank for that, unfortunately I had to finish Maths for some chops, and to start this Aqueduct, and couldn't save more. The overflow chain is set up nicely and we have some chops available. We should have a very good shot. I was thinking earlier to use the Great Wall on top of these for my overflow chain, but it was just too many hammers with the war going on.

I'll also probably try for the Hanging Gardens once the MoM is finished, since I'll already have the aqueduct completed. There's just way too much food on the map to justify trading hammers for food right now, but once we get the influx of happiness from Calendar it will be a great wonder. The MoM takes precedence though and I don't have a second city with enough hammers right now for one of these projects. It's quite possible the aqueduct and food considerations will turn off everyone else though, no-one wants to lose HG because you get no failgold for the aqueduct. I needed to build one anyway for the overflow chain.



Getting the route to the other continent was great, and upgraded all my mainland trade routes to 3c. Previously I already had a couple of 3c trade routes to superdeath's islands but he just cancelled this turn as he got my graphs and city count. So great timing! I'm trying to get as many OBs as possible while people can't see my city numbers. Currency also looks like a really strong tech, if it wasn't for the MoM attempt I might have gone for that over Calendar. 

Demos are still looking good, but someone in the fog is catching up(and I do have two early game traits):

[The Black Sword]

On the topic of Commodore btw, there were two less serious thoughts I found amusing. Firstly, I like the AI's take on the matter:

Secondly, I realised I misplayed when I was voting on city gifting. The mod has turned city gifting off, which means you can't properly express your displeasure by asking for all your enemy's cities. Pretty big oversight on my part.