[PB74] Tarkeel and civacs Game of the Year

[Qgqqqqq]

Do chariots get defensive bonuses?

[Tarkeel]

No, but it is promoted C2 shock so it has decent odds. Well, Persia's chariot UU does, which Amica used to good effect in PB64, showing why mounted usually don't get it.

[Qgqqqqq]

Ah, makes sense!

[Tarkeel]

Turn 86 (725 BC)
Oslo has an extra chariot defending, and a road completed NW of it. Our chariot could potentially kill both of his defenders, but with the road it's easy for him to shuffle in backups, so we pull back the chariot.


We also (finally!) settle Agricola on the CattleCorn spot, for the last of our truly good cities. We still have the island and jungle city which are also decent.


Agricola is the worst wargame ever, except it isn't about the exploits of Gnaeus Julius Agricola, and instead is a classic euro-style point-salad game. Each player manages a medieveal family farm, trying to gather enough food and other resources to not starve (and possibly even grow the family). The core mechanic is worker-placement, so be prepared for those ahead of you in turn-order to always take the actions you were planning for, which can lead to pretty slow gameplay at times. Personally I prefer the more streamlined Caverna.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 87 (700 BC)
We finally finished our first Cottage on the floodplain south of Kingdom Builder. Carcassonne whips out a galley, which will overflow into an axe, heading for Illinois. The axe that killed the bad barbie city is ready to board next turn, after a pair of roads was constructed right under it's path.


Then there's just the matter of finding a city to spit out a settler for Spiceland. We did finally decide on a tech, settling on IronWorking since we need to clear the southern jungle.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 89 (650 BC)
We finally get our first luxury of the game connected, the gold that was in our capital BFC from the start. We can start connecting the second luxury soon, as Azul's borders will expand in two or three turns. We're not quite sure, as the monument doubles in two turns and if that happens before culture is processed, then it will be enough to expand the borders. We have a worker pre-roading it, so we can start mining as soon as it's claimed.


Meanwhile the first axe landed at Illinois this turn, which is still defended by three warriors. If we were desperate enough to take low odds we could storm the city next turn, but will instead take our time with sure odds from the axes. Kingdom Builder and Carcassone will both regrow to 4 from their very recent whippings due to the insane food in the south, and they will whip out settlers for Spiceland and Green Lagoon.


Dominion will slowbuild a settler in the north to replace Augustus, and after that we only have two filler spots left.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 90 (625 BC)
There's rumours coming in from foreign lands about a great pile of stones, and scrying reveals that Superdeath has built the pyramids. I fear that plemo will go take it from him by force now. Meanwhile, Commodore returns our earlier rudeness in the south:


We have an axe heading south that is likely going to cause some heart palpitations when he settles. While we'd rather have that site for ourselves, it's not really worth fighting a prolonged war for. Adding in the three cities in the south and two in the north, we'll end at 13 for two civs worth of land. That feels... Bad. Dreylin would have managed to take the Comben and Powell sites from Amica, and possibly two or three more jungle cities towards Comm, as well as our filler against him, ending up on 12 from his lands alone.

Also note that IronWorking came in this turn, revealing iron at GreenLagoon which we planned to shift one W, but not sure if we still do that with Commodore stealing the sugar filler.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 91 (600 BC)
Azul's borders expanded, so the monument did get extra culture the turn it doubled, so we're on track to hook the second luxury. Our heroic axes charge the remaining warriors of Illinois (renamed to Puerto Rico), and barely capture it with 71g.


Commodore planted a nice pink-dot as expected, 10 tiles N of his capital and 6S3E of ours. If we weren't busy trying to hamper his biggest opponent for victory in this game, this would have been a declaration of total war.

In other world news, Christianity is founded in the fog and Miguelito seems to have burned a bulb straight after turn roll. Something tells me those two are connected. Good to know there's atleast one game-leader out there in the fog. Superdeath finally closed borders with Plemo, but still has an ominous horse-for-horse trade going (which earlier fooled us into thinking plemo wouldn't have chariots).




Puerto Rico is one of the classic heavy-weight euro-games, and gets the honor of being the worst good game I've ever played. Players take on the role of the ruling elite on Puerto Rico, "recruiting" workers that arrive on ships to perform work on your plantations. Mis-representation of slavery aside, I couldn't quite figure out why I disliked the game, as it looks very much like what I love to play. Then I read a review pointing out that Puerto Rico is not a game where you play to win, but try to prevent the player after you in turn order from winning. Or as this article on Kingmaking articulates it:

In Puerto Rico, the strong impact that player order has on the game can easily lead to Kingmaking via sub-optimal play. A superficially beneficial turn may actually benefit another player more... such as taking the Governor when the benefits to you are less important than populating buildings/plantations for the next player, or shipping a few products on a larger ship, allowing subsequent players to ship more goods than necessary for an efficient game.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 93 (550 BC) The Third Viking Invasion
We've been dancing with plemo's units in the north for some turns now; first checking the defense in Oslo with our chariot, and then plemo advancing a spear/axe combo on the north flank. We've also been moving up unseen defenders to backstop Rococo, which we could have moved up to claim the forest NE of the city.


It's a good thing we didn't, as plemo brought some chariots to the party. If he did have some workers in the fog, those chariots could have massacred our forest axes. This wasn't unexpected, and is the reason why we decided to not defend the forest, instead playing zone defense behind the city. (Note that Catan needs two good defenders, as it can be boated from the fog on the island)

We believe his goal for this invasion is to use the axe/spear as a screen on the forest to let the chariots break through into the backlines for harassment, but we should have the troops to stop that. The other thing he could want from this is enforced peace so he can go after Superdeath, who has built wonders instead of units:


It's probably slightly too early for that though, as Superdeath does have CREative culture defenses which should stall out an ancient era army, and did finally build some units the last turn. We expect plemo to go for Construction and axe/cats or wellie/cats, which is the CivForum way.

This is increasingly a game where we play two different empires; the war-torn north and the growing south. Balancing the different needs is starting to get harder, especially in regards to tech. Settlers are in place to found our last two good cities next turn, and after that we can claim four Calendar-resources, three Market-boosted-resources and two Forge-boosted-resources, which in total should give our cities free reign to grow tall. Unfortunately the northern situation won't allow us to tech peacefully, and rather demands Construction and HBR instead. For now we're teching Maths, which will boost both civil and military needs.

We also met Bing in the far south last turn, and judging by hoe much EP he's spent on pindi and Comm, we think he's at the end of the continent. He'd also met Amica as of last turn, and not spent any EP on either of us just yet. There should be atleast one more contact beyond plemo and SD, which makes nine players on this continent, which is a lot more than expected.

PS: Our of curiosity, what does the lurkerati think of playing both before and after someone the turn you declare? It doesn't have any practical implications, as this previous turn was the first turn we could double-play him without getting a movement advantage on reinforcements. His earlier login did make us discuss whether we should play though, but we figured if he wanted to declare he'd had his opportunity.

[Mjmd]

Did he declare 2nd part of last turn or did you declare this turn? Both are slightly weird although if he declared last turn that is weirder and kind of iffy.