[SPOILERS] Seven Isabellas of India

[SevenSpirits]

You probably shouldn't read this if you're playing in PBEM 6. We're playing with active espionage off, man! Wall of text:

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's
got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third
mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering
the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber
weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts
through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body
has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty
jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never
deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway - might want his car,
or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a
fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times
the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have
to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.
The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled
it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave,
wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought
they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took
out his gun, centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger,
fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his
hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning
sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up
holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on
his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.
Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment
and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always
been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid
of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no
demonstrations.

All right, that's it. I'm not going to include the full text of Snow Crash in my thread; you'll just have to go acquire the book if you want to read it. Which you should. Not the best book in the world by any means, but fairly excellent. Anyway...

[SevenSpirits]

So, the first two picks were Suryavarman and Shaka, and I (going third) chose a Civ. Why? Basically, Surya is the only leader I valued significantly higher than the rest (you know, since we like EXP and CRE), but I was pretty interested in being a solid civ without a single time period of dominance. For one, I don't want people to metagame against that ("uh-oh, he's going to get Cataphracts... better screw him over right now!" or even just "better prepare my defenses soon"). But in general I'd rather have a flexible, spread-out advantage than a concentrated one. This goes against the principle of needing extremes to win a multiplayer game, but it goes very nicely with the principle of avoiding extremes in a political free-for-all game. So yes, India. Fast Workers are cool.

On the way back I got to pick a leader, and was pretty much bound to pick EXP/X or CRE/X. After a bit of waffling, I decided that CRE was less interesting given my starting Mysticism. Half price Granaries are the best, and Worker discounts are nice if I get a plains forest hill to start, and because I already have Mining for a fast Bronze Working.

I went with Spiritual as my second choice because it's always mildly cool (and is very flexible, not committing me to wonders or melee units for example), because I think I'm relatively likely to get an early religion which makes it better (for the saved turn or revolt, mostly), and because events are on. Yes, if we get those annoying slave revolts, I'd consider not always being in slavery. It's also convenient to be able to slave out the first worker without anarchy, if I don't get a 1-pop 4-hammer setup to build it quickly and manually.

[SevenSpirits]

My basic plan was to almost certainly tech Bronze Working first, and then diverge based on my surroundings. I'll build a Worker or Warrior depending on the tiles. Ideally I get a religion founded in city #2, but it's not critical. I think we'll have to wait for the map to make other decisions. I picked a flexible combo on purpose!

After seeing the other players' leader and civ picks, I've added another step to the beginning of the plan, namely to not spawn next to Boudica of the Romans.

[SevenSpirits]

Oh yeah, about me.

I've only played single player CIV before this. I feel correctly challenged by Immortal difficulty. I generally abort the game when it's clear I'm ahead, because man, the early eras are the best part! So I have very little experience with Industrial and later eras. This is going to be a big problem for that whole winning thing, so I can't say I'm too invested in a victory here. I mean, I'll play to win of course (that's part of the contract!), but personally I'm here to enjoy the progress of the game.

Also, I haven't played much for about two years. We'll see how that turns out.

[dazedroyalty]

I'm looking forward to seeing your game play out!

[Ilios]

All right, that's it. I'm not going to include the full text of Snow Crash in my thread; you'll just have to go acquire the book if you want to read it. Which you should. Not the best book in the world by any means, but fairly excellent. Anyway...

And like that you have given me a theme for my next game! Baroque Cycle it is!

Thanks man...

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks guys, I think it will be fun!

[SevenSpirits]

Turn 0!

(Note: 0! is actually defined to be 1, so I guess it's just turn 0. Much less exciting, oh well.)

So what do we see?



Our mapmaker LOOOVES Hunting, HATES Agriculture, mildly dislikes Mining, and probably likes Fishing. I see basically two options:

1) Settle in place. Unfortunately there is no way to get 4 hammers for the expansive worker bonus without first growing to size 2, and we destroy a grassland forest. We can immediately work the plains forest deer.

2) Settle 1E, on the sheep. This gives us +1 food, effectively until we would have improved the sheep. This would let us grow to size 2 in 2 fewer turns (only 6), and then also subtract a turn from a manual worker build at size 2 (and after that, keep on providing extra food!). It keeps an extra forest, and still keeps all visible resources... but we lose the ability to build a +2 food +1 commerce improvement. I actually think this might be worth it.

I moved the Warrior SE for the best view on tiles we'd gain by moving east. It turns out that those tiles are ocean tiles, and we'd be losing unexplored coast, possibly with resources. So I figured I'd just settle in place after all.

Also, moving the Warrior revealed the borders of a barbarian city! Further, it looks like we may not have easy expansion room (and thus, sacrificing long-term city quality for a quick boost might be pretty bad). This being clearly quite weird, I decided not to question the mapmaker any further and just planted the city as directed.



From the demographics, with everyone getting the same beakers, hammers and food, it looks like everyone else made the same choice. And I'd guess anyone without hunting is researching hunting, because that's pretty good here.



Not only does hunting give 2 great improvements, it's a prerequisite for AH (with a start where agriculture is much less useful than hunting) and archery, which is probably neccesary in general with Raging Barbs, and possibly amazing against the already planted barb cities.

Though my tech plan was previously to go for BW (and Agriculture - oh how little I knew...), that's pretty clearly bad here. I don't have great prospects from chopping; the only thing I really want to rush out is a single worker, and if I teched BW to slave him ASAP he could only chop... much better to get hunting I think, most likely followed by AH or archery depending on what the warrior sees.

[SevenSpirits]

T1 was just moving the Warrior 1S.

It looks like the barb city is on a grass hill with grass flatland next to it, but I'm not sure. I'll be able to see it with the warrior next turn, presumably without walking the warrior into any danger.

[SevenSpirits]

By the way, I hadn't realized before now how unnerving it is to post without reply in your own thread and have other people posting in the lurker thread. Am I even playing the right save? WHO KNOWS!