[SPOILERS] naufragar is not a number; he is a free man

[naufragar]

Well, nuts. I'm in a settling race.


I suspect Pind's going for the hill near the corn. Based on nothing but that worker on a hill, I'd bet I have three turns before he founds there. He hasn't played yet. I found my own city in three turns (whether I can keep it is an entirely different question). So I give myself about coinflip odds to win the race if Pind doesn't double move me. Of course, he doesn't know he's in a settling race, but if I tell him, he has every incentive to start killing off my scattered units in the area, so letting him know is out. Well, we'll see how this shakes out. I'll try to keep playing before him. Horse archers are scary, and I don't want to be distracted from building forges. Give me like 4 turns! Then we can tangle, ok?

In the tech thread, Frozen/Dullland wondered about turn order rules. This confused me since their Ichabod war has been going on for a while.


Ah, that explains it. They are incredibly audacious, which explains why they're doing well. Grabbing an island of Mack and my coast wasn't going to fly. Let's see if they're willing to put some teeth into their ambitions or if they're just expanding where they can do so without tears (aided and abetted by the polite resignation of their neighbors sans Ichabod ).

Speaking of Mack, take a look at the banana tile:


Let me make a mountain out of this banana mole hill. He's got an archer and an axe on the tile, so he doesn't trust me to refrain from a chariot snipe. He's also using the "build plantation" command instead of "chop jungle"+"build plantation" so that his units keep the jungle defense bonus for as long as possible. People wonder about Mack's sixth sense, but a decent chunk of it is just extreme caution. Apart from knowing that Mack is cautious, we learn that we ourselves should be careful of border snipes. I've got something like 5 cities defended by an axe or worse that he can hit from the fog with galleys. I hope he doesn't ruin my game with galley snipes (because I would burn with the fury of a thousand suns), but the fact that he's thinking about me sniping means that he's thinking about his own snipes. Projection, baby. Do I think he's going to? Not while my army is decently bigger, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened sometime this game. Hopefully we're each happy to live at peace and eat our other neighbors (Pind for me, Cairo for him). We'll see.

[naufragar]

Yup. Settling race confirmed:


Sent Pind a PM to let him know, although it should be obvious when he sees my settler on the hill by the rice. He could try to fight me off the spot. I think I can get enough stuff into the city to hold it, but I was dog tired playing the turn so I could have made a mistake. I was not too tired to notice that Amica caught up to me in city count. Ugh. Why are my opponents good?

[naufragar]

We settled our spot.


Forgive me. I've fallen off the naming scheme. The game's taking an hour+ of my time every day, and not thinking about Prisoner references is a mental cost saving measure. 

Our spot does not invalidate a Pindicator plant on either the Iron or 1NE of the Iron. Those are good cities with good tiles, but, crucially, they're on flat land.

I wonder when Pind's capital is getting its fourth cultural ring. It would steal some of Hornblower's tiles and make it a bit vulnerable. Pind's cap has a library, a monument, and an academy. It's gotta be soon.

[naufragar]

Why are people ragging on Superdeath in the tech thread? He's an exemplary member of the community with a very high PYFT rating and always a diligent admin. And when you've got Joshy saying things like

What time will you be able to make a turn? If you're back before me then I'm happy for vanrober to take the turn for me

The delay is almost certainly caused by a war between the two in which Superdeath is going second. (Actually, with even more coffee grounds reading ( ) I'd bet Joshy's also in a war with somebody who plays before him too.) Tech threads! They're great! We'll probably get verification soon enough:




Speaking of wars, I'm not sure why my power is so high.


I've built a couple of garrison units, but otherwise my army is unchanged since the Pindicator war 30 turns ago. I guess I've got some pop points, but all this graph is telling me is that people have realized how farmy their farmer's gambits can be. (Except Frozen who apparently really is going at it hammer and tongs with Ichabod.)

I don't know how scrappy Pind is feeling, but he could try to make a play for my encroaching city:


He could kill two of my chariots and face my surviving 2x Chariot, 1x Axe, 1x Spear with his 1x Chariot, 1x Horse Archer, 2x Axe, 1x Spear next turn if he uses his three workers to road 1N of his city. The turn after I can reinforce with a spear (and a warrior if I'm especially desperate). I don't think I'll lose the city, but I especially don't think Pind would roll those dice, but you never know.

[naufragar]

Take a look at this foreign resources screen:


Where's all the silver? I see just about every other resources except for silver. What's more likely: Lewwyn left off one resource or there are Astro islands with the resource? (The latter.)

Where could those Astro islands be? Here-ish.


I had a chilling thought. I wondered if they weren't in fact Astro islands, but islands accessible through coast tiles from the jungle islands. I doubt this as it would be insanely unbalanced, putting players in a race they don't know they're in and screwing the losers. Nevertheless, just because I'm a paranoiac, I'm going to try to get a boat to Frozen's island to double check.

In the wider world, Amicalola has passed me in city count (this is what gave me the nasty thought about the gated islands). This game gets tougher and tougher. On the other hand, apparently more and more people are declaring war in the fog, which, while currently irrelevant for me, does make my little heart grow three sizes.

[naufragar]

Naufragar and the awful, horrible, no-good, very bad day.


Well, I sure hope Pind's galley is completely empty.  This was an inexcusable error. That city has 150 hammers of infrastructure in it. There's zero reason it couldn't have an archer already. Damn. To make matters worse, look at the city numbers in the player list and notice that Amica has added yet another city, bringing him +2 ahead of me. Notice also that Mr. Cairo only has 3 more cities than Pind, who lost five in a war twenty turns ago. Christ.

I'm trying to get some scouting chariots over to Amica. I suspect he's been able to increase his city count by gobbling up the islands in between the continents. This would have been difficult for me:


See how these jungled islands are off the mainland of other players, meaning I would have to extend further to grab them?

But I shouldn't complain, since it's no easier for Amica:


It's just that instead of competing for territory with Mackoti and the Teutonic terrors Frozen & Dullland, he's competing with Superdeath and Mr. Cairo. (Superdeath who is Imp and not settling spots twice as close to him as Amica, who is Ind/Org.)

So now Amica more cities than anybody around, each of which is insanely profitable thanks to the Great Lighthouse, and he borders two cripples, Pindicator and Mr. Cairo. Pindicator is my responsibility. I chose to weaken him for reasons already laid out. It was necessary. Cairo is a good guy, and he has won games, but when people put him high on their tier lists, it's coming from his survivability, not his disruptive potential.

I'm completely geopolitically screwed. If Cairo were swapped with any of my neighbors, that would've been a huge improvement. Swap him with Pind and I don't have to care about crippling the Eastindiamen. Swap him with Amica and then Pind's other neighbor is a guy who would let me eat my meal. Swap him with Mack and I no longer have to neighbor Mack. I know I'm whining.  But it's my thread.  How come (almost) every game, I have a ridiculous position to play out.

I'm not even doing that badly.


There's room for improvement, I grant you, but it's insane that with demos like this, I'm still completely under the gun due to the geopolitics of my corner of the world. And this is all with the second worst leader for this map. (Superdeath's Imp/Pro is just absolute trash on this map.  No way he could've known that ahead of time.  )

Why does everything have to be so complicated?

[naufragar]

Looks like Pind's galley is empty.


Soon, however, I'll need to close borders, so he can't watch me too carefully.

Mackoti is gearing up for war.


The catapult builds are always sensible, but the swords are straight offensive units. A shock sword does fine against a defending axe. I wonder who he's going to attack.

His power is climbing:



While I'm showing graphs, Cairo finally turned on the juice:


I'm very happy, but I don't know what he does with this.

Especially since his crop yield is barely better than Pind's.


The graphs also show Amicalola outproducing me in every metric. I'm higher in crop (although not by much), but that doesn't matter since my extra food is working cottages or mines that don't bring me close to his GNP or Mfg. We're still in a bad spot. Again, there is literally nothing I can do but keep pressing forward with the Pindicator attack plan. Once someone has an advantage on this map, they keep it forever, barring sloppy play. My attack is still a long way off, but we'll go as fast as we can. Still utterly, completely screwed. And cranky.

I'm feeling peevish, so here are the demos again:


With 90 hammers, I'm at #6 Mfg. With 94 hammers, I would be at #4. My demos are excellent, my empire is strong, and my game is completely lost. Hell, that's frustrating.

[naufragar]

Turn 110:

[naufragar]

Mack continues to scare me:



With the usual caveat that maps and mapmakers are always perfect I do have a concern:


Admittedly, I haven't scouted all of Amica's capital yet, but two Agri resources next to each other are very, very good. The reduced travel time is great; the ability to go off to whatever techs you want after Agriculture is incredible. Ethiopia (Amica's civ) starts with Hunting and Mining, and yet he was able to get Stonehenge and the Great Lighthouse easily despite the tech constraints. Well, looks like there were no constraints. While everyone else I've scouted needed multiple food techs, Amica was free to pick up Sailing and Mysticism.

Compare the above cap to Pind's:


Pind did get a 6 food Agriculture resource, but he also needed Hunting. The time to improve both these resources is the same as Amica's because farms take a turn longer to improve. Ok, maybe I'm complaining too much. Yes, Amica's start is significantly better than Pind's, but it's only really the difference of one tech and there's only so much you can do with an early tech lead (like Great Lighthouse/Stonehenge). If you discount the multiple turn headstart in the wonder race, they're pretty equal.

But let's look at mine. 


Yup. Not only do I not have a 6f resource, I also require Animal Husbandry for my second resource. On this map, it costs 72 beakers for Amica to unlock his capital resources totaling 11 food. It costs me 252. (252.) (Yup. 252. More than triple what Amica needs.) (And that's for only 10 food instead of his 11.) Holy smokes.

I believe Mack was similarly screwed. I saw him farming over his sheep in the early game. Although his food resources were also next to each other, so at least he could pretend to improve them faster. Admittedly, I haven't scouted all of Amica's cap, so I could be pearl-clutching over nothing. Perhaps he has no seafood? Otherwise, I'm unsure how these starts were balanced. And I know I don't have to tell you clever and attractive lurkers, but seafood is absolutely terrible, doubly so when it's taking extra beakers from an already beaker intensive start.

Again, maps and mapmakers are lovely things and people. I'm just posting this because I'm trying to give readers a glimpse into how freaking tough every aspect of this game has been, from my pick (second worst leader) to my starting area (worst on my continent as far as I can tell) to my neighborhood (the less said about this the better).

[naufragar]

I've missed a few turns of updates. Have a brief one for 113:

I call this picture "Border Tension."



I hate everything about it. Notice that Mack has built a fort, so his ships can assemble in the fog without being seen in Bursa. Bad. Notice that Mack put a library in Marsin, so now I have to respond in kind otherwise I lose the clams. Bad. Notice that Vercingetorix has been born in a foreign land. Maybe not bad? Cairo was the other person logged in, and he's at war with Pindicator. (I probably forgot to mention this.) I worry that Cairo could not have gained enough general points from what looks to be a simple island skirmish, so this is probably a Pindicator general, so let's still chalk it up in the "Bad" column. Bad.

For my part, I've closed borders to Amica and Pind. I still had places I wanted to scout in Amica's lands, but the both of them were watching me closely, and I'm not fond of voyeurs.