[SPOILERS] swance bitten, twice shy

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

What could possibly prompt such a flurry of discussion and 6+ hour turn hold just from contacting a neighbor? Especially since, from the scout's positioning, they HAVE to have been able to see our borders in the fog last turn? Maybe they mistook our yellow for that of Gavagai's Egypt, with the trees in the way of the only tile of border they could have seen if they came from the SE, and are now switching a bunch of spear builds to axes? Or were they planning to attack their neighbor in the fog, and are reconsidering it having seen that it's spiky TokuZulu? I am tempted to switch our EP from Dreylin (about 1/3 of the way to graphs) to these guys, this does not seem suggestive of trust and good intentions.... I am also realizing that instead of taking a Polytheism flyer before Pottery.... maybe we'd better just get archery then instead, if we really feel we can wait another 5 turns for cottages and granaries... we can have it by around t51 if we do so, which should be in time to beat back chariots from ginger that leave now unless they're already on the way

Either way, definitely not safe to have cities with no defenders around now, so let's fix that post-haste.

yeah. i can only hope they don't have a warrior about to appear on our doorstep. i assume it's not worth delaying the third city founding to wait 3ish turns for an escort, right? at least contacting us from the south is at least suggestive that they don't ALSO have another scouting unit wasting time by trying to scout towards the same opponent from the north

One thing to note is that Ginger has turned out to be the mysterious civ in the fog with a size 5 capital already, so there's a good chance they're the food leader as well. That is not suggestive of a bunch of whipped axes of course, but it could be suggestive of a bunch of several slow-built chariots or something. then again if their capital has THAT much food i'd like to at least hope they are lacking for production?

Deep breaths. They do not have an evil plan that's specifically predicated on hitting you out of the fog on the first turn of contact. Take steps to defend yourself but it's HIGHLY unlikely that there's a warrior cropping up next turn or a horde of axes/chariots already on the way. 

Remember, you did this in PBEM19 with thrawn, and then again in PBEM20, to the point that by PBEM22 I knew pretty well that you could be manipulated into suboptimal panic moves just by messing with the scoreboard. So, lemme thwack you on the backside of the head. There's a hundred reasons to pause and post - "hey I want to run the numbers on our latest sim, don't roll the turn until I do," "hey we found Zulu on our borders, do we want to reconsider worker moves," "Our [foreign neighbor on the far side of ljubljana] did [weird thing], what do you think?"

Everyone right now is playing his own game and working on his plans. They're dealing with a fog of uncertainty just as you are, and while YOU know all your vulnerabilities, THEY don't, and the odds that they've gambled on doing the exact that thing that will screw you right now are very slim. So, keep calm, cover yourself against reasonable risks, and soldier on. 

(Sorry if I've missed something key, a)the Chiefs won the SUPER BOWL back to BACK suck it everyone else! so I've been distracted soaking in the afterglow, and b)I don't really grasp Civ IV micro mechanics so my eyes glaze over in the myriad discussions of sim and the nuances of micro and just try to skim for big picture geopolitical things, since that's more my wheelhouse).

[ljubljana]

yup, you are very correct thank you for the thwacking! i will do what i can to make this plant defensible, but currently i am noooot about to actually delay the city and waste yields out of wandering warrior paranoia. 10 player game which i've never played before? even i can acknowledge how pro-variance we should be in such a context, especially as concerns early-game snowball. which is why there's no escort for this settler in the first place (it would have delayed our settle by two turns) - i may be still searching for my chill pills but conscious brain still stands by that decision

you may or may not have noticed that uh, i have been noticeably NOT busy since sunday..... any guesses as to which city i'm writing this comment from? but congrats!! - frankly, it was your guys' year, and i think we still have a LOOONG way to go before we work off the karmic debt from stealing the warriors from oakland.... (plus my heart is still in pittsburgh and probably always will be so)

[ljubljana]

Turn 43 - Zululand

Operation Kirishima....



is a success, of course. Ordered up a warrior as per aetryn's dictum.

No pictures of Mongolian grappler ozeki Kirishima today, as I'm terrified to google him - he was going for yokozuna promotion in the most recent tournament, and my sumo friends and I haven't finished watching yet, so I'd get spoilered :O He's great though - after quite a few years in which "struggling ozeki" became something of a recurring theme, he got promoted 3 tournaments ago and then won another tournament last time (2 consecutive wins being required for yokozuna promotion). Another fact - he went by Kiribayama for the vast majority of his career, changing his shikona to Kirishima, as some wrestlers do, upon promotion to ozeki.

Western "scouting":



...which is in fact the opposite of scouting. After much debate, I have chosen the forest NW of the worker (thrawn)'s current position for our road, which opens up access to the northern plains and also speeds our workers towards the forest NW of that, N of the horse. Thus, all the tiles next to that forest are defogged by the scout, and we are not at risk moving there - next turn the scout will resume warrior-screening duties.



Ok, I'm starting to get the picture - these guys seem to have a silver floodplains region at a symmetric position to our gold. So that, at least, was almost certainly hand-crafted and thus hand-balanced.

Random screens, since I'm stressed out from the turn and want to take a lap to calm down...



Ginger now has a size SIX capital! Wow - I'm guessing we'll see a triple-whipped settler in the next few turns. Guessing, and hoping, as that is something other than a double-whipped chariot with overflow...



Not last in food, for the first time in a VERY long time. We will hook up the dry corn at the third city as soon as it hits size 2, at which point we might finally reach middle of the pack here. Note also 2k increase in rival best soldiers, which relievingly seems to just be a warrior (and why build those if you're rushing someone)



Ginger is dumping all their EP into us, which is consistent both with wanting to kill us and not wanting to be killed BY us. But I'm sticking with Dreylin for now as we're more than halfway to their demos.
 


Techs - someone has Pottery already, presumptively Ginger! A VERY early granary could explain their wild capital growth, as well as what they've been building that isn't workers and settlers while they grow to that size. You'd think that means they are missing or just now getting Bronze, or their start let them skip Hunting. Interested, and intimidated, to see where their opening goes from here...



GT being cute

Note: 90% science is actually, for real correct this turn - we are making exactly 20 commerce to avoid wastage, and it's the only setting that gets us Mysticism in 3 turns. I'm not sure we will NEED mysticism in 3 turns, but there's a chance we might want to start the Mitakeumi monument early, in which case it would be nice to have.

[Tarkeel]

After much debate, I have chosen the forest NW of the worker (thrawn)'s current position for our road, which opens up access to the northern plains and also speeds our workers towards the forest NW of that, N of the horse. Thus, all the tiles next to that forest are defogged by the scout, and we are not at risk moving there - next turn the scout will resume warrior-screening duties.

In general, zig-zags give you the best movement coverage per road built.

Guessing, and hoping, as that is something other than a double-whipped chariot with overflow...

Chariots cost 30 hammers, so you can only double-whip them when they're not prebuilt, and that's extra costly. More likely to 2-whip an axe/spear (which cost 35) and overflow into chariot.

Ginger is dumping all their EP into us, which is consistent both with wanting to kill us and not wanting to be killed BY us. But I'm sticking with Dreylin for now as we're more than halfway to their demos.

Also consistent with getting graphs on a neighbor and then moving on. I wouldn't take offense at any EP spending below 44.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

you may or may not have noticed that uh, i have been noticeably NOT busy since sunday..... any guesses as to which city i'm writing this comment from? but congrats!! - frankly, it was your guys' year, and i think we still have a LOOONG way to go before we work off the karmic debt from stealing the warriors from oakland.... (plus my heart is still in pittsburgh and probably always will be so)

 
Oh noooooo I'm so sorry! I wouldn't have been so smug, except I always think of everyone here as Europeans who turn up their noses at gridiron football. I remember how losing in 2020 felt, although the sting was lessened by, er, having just beaten the Niners the year before.

EDIT: Also, good Zulu! My FIL speaks fluent Zulu (you have to, living in Zululand ), but I only know a few of the basic words and phrases. But even that's enough to make quick friends with most Zulus you'll meet.

[ljubljana]

haha no need to apologize! i didn't detect any steelers slander in that which would be the actual unforgivable offense

oh i don't know any zulu, i stole that from you 20 pages upthread.... but please teach me some! in particular i have NO ideas for what we should name our warriors (coming in 2t...) and currently our flavor balance is definitely leaning towards the toku end of the tokuzulu spectrum...

edit: for scouts, i may go with

春子・冬子・夏子
haruko / fuyuko / natsuko = spring child / winter child / summer child, japanese given names that seem appropriate for the vaguely naturalistic vibes of a scouting unit

you will note that we are missing one, but i kinda like the idea of hiding the false information that we made four scouts in the naming scheme if anyone tries to translate :D

[ljubljana]

Turn 44 - Zululand

Ginger/civac logged in 3 times already and haven't hit end turn, and are now last to play, so they are waiting on SOMEthing.... I decide that for me to wait any longer would constitute playing clock games, or at least would come too close to that for my liking. If we lose because of this then so be it, I guess... They did at least move their scout on our southern border already, so I'm hopeful that means any warriors in the fog near Kirishima would have been moved as well.



The tense western situation as I attempt to road through the forest. If my calculations are correct, the closest GT's warrior could be is one tile west of the wheat, so there is a good chance they step onto the wheat next turn. If they do not, well, our scout has become a one-move unit, since we can in no way afford to end the turn next to their warrior.

Note also GT has joined us on 3 cities, which again is some kind of hopeful sign that they're not going for some all-in early game attack.



In the south, greenline has a larger lake than we do, but apparently just one silver. I'll turn east next turn, though unfortunately it looks .like we have a pretty thick band of hills to deal with in so doing...



We have one worker turn into the pasture at Mitakeumi's horse, and 3 into the cow pasture at Kirishima, which will finish next turn. Mita's warrior is needed in both the north and west, of course, and I'll have to think about what to do with them... if I move 2N along the road, we will be in position to get into Kirishima in response to an enemy warrior appearing if need be, but on the balance of things, the west is more likely to have close encounters with warriors (like the one we've already seen heading towards us) than the relatively out of the way NE,,,



What was that about Ginger triple-whipping a settler? Well, it's nice that we're a few turns ahead of them on expansion seemingly, though if they start whipping every 10 turns out of BOTH their cities we may not remain so.



I am seeing seven warrior-sized jumps in milpower from GT - what in the world is going on over there? One of them is presumably AH tech, but the only other 2k tech they didn't start with is Sailing, which would be a strange pick this early. Are they really planning to try to choke someone with the 4 warriors they've apparently built since BW came in? Or is this three scouting warriors and 3 city garrison ones?

[williams482]

One of the standard approaches in singleplayer is to go worker -> warriors until a pop threshold (2, 3, or 4 depending on tiles) -> settler. That could explain the first three. It's separately quite possible that Ginger simply hasn't considered the virtues of scouts as superior scouting units, or is worried that you are about to show up at their doorstep with a couple impis.

[ljubljana]

yeahhh the first 3 make sense if they built zero scouts, and the others i guess most likely represent a semi-excessive city garrison. ofc i wouldn't at all mind if impiphobia is partly to blame for this

Turn 44 - Zululand

it's hERE



so ginger is highly likely to be our eastern neighbor, and mita's warrior will get here just in time. the first thing i do is switch our EP over to them, ieven though we're just two turns away from graphs on Dreylin - obviously the one who is actually in position to cause us harm is a bit more urgent  i have someee hope of saving fuyuko here, as we are on a forested hill AND across a river.... should be a 50/50, which if I were Ginger I don't think i would take.

this is also a strong indication that dreylin is to our southeast given that we met one of their scouts in the south and another in the east, so despite my loathing of backtracking i am indeed going to sent haruko the southern scout to the SW to maximize the odds of making a new contact



no GT warriors in the west, at least that i have seen... we go for the first half of the road on Scary Forest here.

ok, NOW do i declare on ginger and claim the second half of a turnsplit? i think we'd better do so; it's the difference between us getting to improve the cow this turn and THEN chop out a second warrior or having to go for the chop right away. and in theory it gives us a chance to attempt to immediately peace out and then not even have to chop another warrior, though i imagine they're not going to take it. but i'm gonna hold the turn for now for a couple hours with the workers unmoved and war undeclared to give yall time to protest this.... and for me to look for a good gif to send them in our wardec pm lol

also, high chance i'll go for archery tech after this instead of straight to pottery. i do NOT relish this idea lol but it is what it is... with ginger right here it's now really unlikely we can get a copper hookup before the t60ish one in the south comes online, and i think there's a good chance we'll need archers in the meantime. depends on if ginger accepts our warpeace i guess, but i'm not really expecting them to

edit: re worker turns, we can't finish the kirishima cow pasture.... we NEED a road hookup to get the warrior into the city in time, and we NEED the horse hookup to start real units obviously. so that's 5 worker turns with our 4 workers in the area (horse has 1t into the pasture already), and we have to spend the rest moving 3 workers onto the forest to chop. so we're going to have some kind of growth curve delay as a result of this if we end up chopping :| but obviously that's better than if we were less paranoid and therefore about to lose this city! and yeah actually for the same reason, if we move workers to chop we don't have enough to both finish the road and chop and can't get 2 warriors in the city in time, so we still really need the second half of the turnsplit

[ljubljana]

plan is to send them the following pm

we claim the second half of the turn split - catch you on the battlefield </3

- the ljunatics

and DoW, offer peace, and use our workers to finish the road to Kirishima and get to 3/4 turns on Mitakeumi's horse pasture, unless someone talks me out of it in the next 90 minutes