[SPOILERS] naufragar is in for a penny

[naufragar]

Number of cities in the empire: 6. Number of cottages: 1.



I intended to found 2W because I hadn't seen the corn. I have a habit of leaving one fogged tile containing corn surrounded by visible tiles, apparently. The game suggested that spot, which made me worry I had missed a food resource. And voila. I had. The name was going to be my bitter joke about founding on flatland towards Mackoti, but with the city pulled back a bit, hopefully it's more defensible. A spear from the cap will go to bolster Harmony Valley's garrison. Speaking of Mackoti, he's still dumping his EP into me, which makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. On turn 56, he had a size 9 capitol and then he whipped it three times in one turn. Setting up to overflow into something? Hope he wasn't aiming for oracle, because Rusten just got it. Rusten's play has been nuts this game. He grabbed a religion without slowing down his expansion and now has the oracle which will get him his shrine. Aretas is in no position to contest (2 cities, no slavery), and I, perhaps shortsightedly, am focused on planting my own flag rather than tearing his down. A bit nerve wracking.

On the domestic front, I'm doing the newbish thing, where I look around and see I don't have enough worker labor and say, screw it; everybody build workers. The trouble with having this many cities (besides the terrible drain on the economy that Org doesn't yet help) is they need so many soldiers and workers to actually be viable.

On the tech path, I'm a bit rudderless. I guess in my head I thought "Writing is good. It unlocks Math and Currency." But it's going to be a while before I get libraries and I want Masonry for my stone + walls and Sailing for lighthouses + trade. (Water Garden is building a workboat to meet new people or defog a route to Rusten. I'd hate to make him even stronger, but he's my easiest trade partner and easiest means of finding religion.) And I'll probably go for both Masonry and Sailing before Mathematics. Saying it out loud makes it sound incredibly   . Someone talk me out of it...

[naufragar]

Do BtS barbs heal? I feel like barbs heal in FFH (and can promote, which is awesome). But I'm not sure about BtS. I ask because...



I got real happy for a second thinking that that bear had eaten somebody's scout before he found me, but now I think that's just the bear that killed New Jerusalem's warrior forever ago. (That combat log is from losing the warrior. Not this turn.)

Speaking of scouts, I moved mine away from the gems hill it was using to get vision on Rusten's nearby city. It finally healed up and I didn't feel like parking it their forever. (Rusten is of course using his warrior to always watch my borders, but Rick wasn't in a great spot. He got vision on the city, but there were fogged tiles that he missed and I could've been surprised by. Oh well. Hope Rick's up for another adventure. Would like to explore the wider world.

Had a funny thought while checking the demos. I have graphs on all my neighbors except for Superdeath, and I'm top in power among them (although Mackoti looks like he's climbing. Will have to watch). And yet my power is just a hair below the global average. Nice to live in a relatively demilitarized part of the world, I guess.

Edit: Another funny thought from demos: Researching at full burn, I have a little better than half the GNP of the rival best.

[RefSteel]

I'm getting behind on following this game (fortunately for really good reasons) so I just saw this:

Do BtS barbs heal? I feel like barbs heal in FFH (and can promote, which is awesome). But I'm not sure about BtS.

BtS (and RtR) barbs can promote, and will heal if they stay in place, just like a player's units (e.g. barb city defenders can become pretty highly promoted and keep healing to full health if attacked slowly and ineptly, e.g. by a woeful AI). Unlike in FfH though, BtS/RtR barb animals can't promote, and for all intents and purposes can't heal. (It's possible if one was trapped in place by peaks, water, and borders, it might heal then, but in practice, as long as they can legally do so, BtS barb animals never stay in place, but move somewhere every turn.)

Also: Thanks for your thorough reporting! I hope you're enjoying the game!

[naufragar]

I'm getting behind on following this game (fortunately for really good reasons)

What a coincidence! I'm getting behind on reporting. These next few weeks are going to be busy for me, so lurkers can feel free to have positive developments that take away from their lurking time.  I'm happy for you! I've found it difficult to keep track of different theaters when lurking in big games, so I'm glad you're enjoying.

I am very much enjoying the game although there's this constant itching in my brain that somehow everything is going to come crashing down. It's this weird paranoid pressure that comes from thinking that the mistake that kills me won't be the one I make that turn but the one I didn't notice making 25 turns ago. This map is very large (in # of players but more importantly in space between them). So we're not quite out of the early game, but soon I think I'm going to have to interact with the neighbors.

If anybody would like to know what my nightmares look like:



I got superdeath's graphs this turn, and his power is high, but I don't get the feeling that we're close. Mackoti, on the other hand, looks like he jumped 13 or 14k points. I think that's Horse Archery for a tech and then who knows. Perhaps a barracks? Perhaps a chariot? It gets better. Last turn Mack whipped twice, so if graphs are two turns delayed, those two whips could perhaps be horse archers? (Idk, helped by chops or queue-upgraded chariots?) So, I have to think as of last turn he has at least two horse archers and a chariot. It looks like there's quite a bit of rough terrain between him and me, and I have one spear covering already. I'll keep an eye on his power. I really, really, really don't want to die to a horse archer rush. It'd be too cliche for one thing. Perhaps he intends to hit Aretas. In the long run, that's not much better for me.

Good news and bad news:


The tile the axe is on got a forest growth! So, hurray for free hammers. Annoyingly, that tile also has one turn invested into a road, and the forest growth will slow down getting a trade connection. You can see Plex Anthill slowly working on that axe that I queued up when I thought I was going to tease Rusten. Right now I'm really wishing it were a spear.

Some more cottages are getting built but aren't being worked yet. Our cities, although numerous, are all low pop. I need to stack up whip unhappy in some places getting infrastructure, although maybe after that we can grow onto our cottages while slow building military. Still need a couple of settlers still. Who knows when we'll get around to that.

[naufragar]

I fell behind on my sandbox so now my turns are taking longer because I have to think in game. Also means my worker efficiency, which wasn't great to begin with, drops through the floor. But this turn was interesting. Found the ocean.



Those of you with eagle eyes can see where the ocean floor drops off. Ocean tiles are a touch darker than coast. I chose to keep scouting up the coast rather than the islands.

I'm continuing to remedy my poor scouting. Moved a spear to a hill to defend better against this lion and found a Mackoti colony. Mackoti also produced a Great Scientist. Look, Mack absolutely terrifies me, but I'm still very excited to get a front row seat to his play. RtR Phi is really good in competent hands. Should be neat seeing what he does. (I had vision of his cap once, so I should be able to see if he puts an academy there, I think.)


Can you spot that touch of red to the Southwest? Either WilliamLP or Mr. Cairo. I forgot to count in game and had trouble with the screenshot, but the distance between that city and Mackoti's capitol and mine make me think that that city is not a capitol. I wonder if there's any actual advantage to be gained by having borders that are hard to identify. German grey is pretty standout. I'm thinking about the rare case in which some aggressive player gets a glimpse of borders and then can determine if the owner would be a good rush target. Just curious. It really doesn't matter.

In the shot above, you can see me absolutely butchering the development of Harmony Valley. (Edit: Just kidding. You can't. Trust me. It's bad.) New Jerusalem is even worse; almost all forests chopped. One improved tile. 3 pop. Well, two post-whip but about to grow again. Just bare ground all around until borders pop in like 11 turns. (I don't know if the barracks produces culture on the turn it's completed. Don't think so.) I built more cities than I had the workers to support.

[naufragar]

We got a second turn in today, which is nice. Hope I wasn't too asleep at the wheel. Demos look okayish, but that GNP is the result of saving gold for forever, so I'm still very far behind in research. Tech path is masonry for walls, sailing for lighthouses (at which point I should have a second coastal city), and then mathematics on my way to currency I think.


Soldier count will be remedied. Currently building 4 units, two of which complete next turn. Mine is a very large, unwieldy empire. Need way more workers and units than I have.

I should probably look up the "years at peace" bonus for trade routes.


Because if I want to follow the coast, I have to declare war on Rusten. I should have made a note of where Rusten's city is, but it's almost certainly 3N 1E of my boat. I think it has had one border pop. If that's true, I'd need to remain at war with him for one turn in order to avoid getting teleported in the wrong direction. (Fun fact: my search for teleportation rules turned up a thread here from before Ref played Civ4!) I've need to have a good long think about the benefit of declaring war. I feel like a work boat is even less threatening than a scout, but I also don't want to unduly piss Rusten off. (And I've also been dreading using civ's pitboss diplo interface. It's seems like the most awful thing in the world.) I'm almost certainly going to declare, unless I find some reason that work boat trespass is the vilest sin. I have been putting the tiniest trickle of EP into him just because I've got the graphs of all my neighbors already and need something to do with it. Hope he doesn't react violently. The worst thing he could do is move his warrior into the forest in a show of anger. This would be a bad move, because he knows I have metal units and it would make sense I'd have one in that border city. Since I don't, it would be pretty embarrassing for me if he sees how light that border is.   (A unit is whip-able next turn.)

I know I said I wasn't allowed to complain about dice rolls for the rest of the game after Rick survived his bear fight. So I won't complain.


This is me not complaining about the results of my 98% odds battle.

Miscellany: I checked Mackoti's capitol. He used his Scientist for an Academy, as expected. Size 7 cap with academy on turn 64? (He got it last turn.) Not shabby.

[naufragar]

War. Declared on Rusten (right as his power's climbing, too   ). Won't be camping on any of his resources, so hopefully he takes this in stride.



Otherwise, a quiet turn. Somebody founded Judaism. (Xenu, I think.) Next turn, I should be able to move the workboat to the north, offer peace, and then get bumped out. I think I'm ok with enforced peace. I don't see any high priority spots Rusten and I might race for.  I thought there would have been a declare war button in the diplo menu, but I guess the only way is to just attack. Seems uncivilized.

[Coeurva]

I thought there would have been a declare war button in the diplo menu, but I guess the only way is to just attack. Seems uncivilized.

While holding down <ALT>, you can click on a name on the scoreboard to declare war on the corresponding player.

[naufragar]

Nifty! Thanks. (It says that on the mouseover, doesn't it? D'oh.) Of course, I'll never, ever declare a war for the rest of the game. Just gonna grow my cabbages cottages.

[naufragar]

Hell of a way to wake up.



New Jerusalem whipped its spear. I'm getting so, so sloppy and just kinda playing turns one at a time. Case in point: that worker stopped what he was doing to put a turn into a road. I had some crazy notion that I'd snipe Mr. Cairo's chariot if he starting taking the hilly way. Probably a waste of a worker turn.

Remember how I said I couldn't complain about dice rolls? Still not complaining.  



I've got several spears, and half my cities are building more. Why, you ask?


Edit: Aretas' dip is a lost warrior. He's not in slavery.

I feel like bewailing terrible demos is kinda my schtick. So, here.


Before anyone gets on my case for being sad about above average numbers, let me decipher this screen. I'm going full bore science at an unsustainable rate on a tech with a prerequisite, and I'm barely above the average. I settled yet another city, so my break even rate is pretty pathetic. My Mfg looks solid until you realize I have 7 cities, so 33%-50% more build queues than many others. Those hammers are getting divided into useless little chunks. Crop yield is the one highlight, but lately I've been losing my dominance. (Who has 89 food?!? I think I checked the graphs and it's no one I know.) I let my foot of the gas after my initial round of cities. I didn't have the workers or soldier to keep expanding, and now I worry, as I keep losing spots on the Food charts, that my Imp bonus is losing steam and I didn't get all out of it I could. Soldiers, I'm actually fine with. I've spotted Rusten and Superdeath cities without garrisons, which I don't have the luxury for with my dotmap, but I'm confident enough that I can survive a scrap if I see it coming. (I can easily handle Mr. Cairo's chariot. The question is whether I'll be decisive enough to kill it or if I'll waffle until he gets into a place he can do some opportunistic damage.) Land area, eh. Nice to have tiles to grow. Comes from having lots of non-overlapping cities that need their own garrisons and labor force. The story of the demos is this: the next forty turns (let's call it the "early mid-game") are almost as important as an optimal start and my demos show a civ that's slowing down both absolutely and in comparison with the neighbors. There's that itching in my brain again that tells me if I'm not going forward, I'm going backward.

Speaking of neighbors, let's talk about Mr. Cairo. Pulled my scattered EP off the neighbors to put on him. He's piloting Saladin (Spi/Pro) of Russia. Russia's basically a straight upgrade of Germany. Both start with Hunting/Mining, but the Russian UB (Research Institute (+1 free scientist over normal university)) might actually be early enough to do something. Saladin is good, because of Pro. If Mr. Cairo wants the micro headache that is Spiritual, he can get a lot of great stuff out of the trait. The way I understand Spi should be played is that your entire civ does something (improve tiles in Serfdom, pop great people and slow build in Caste, finish stuff with whips in Slavery) as a whole and then the entire civ transitions to the next objective and you switch civics. My head hurts just thinking about managing that, but if Mr. Cairo can, Saladin is really good. I don't remember games I've lurked with Cairo playing. Will have to take a look. I need my own scout to figure out where he is. There's at least one more city I want in his direction. (Have I mentioned how I'm annoyed at myself for falling off expansion?)

Looking over this thread, I realize all my commentary has been accompanied by very specific pictures, so here's the known world.


Things to point out: 1) I forgot to rename my new city. Shows all my care and thought.    2) There's just a ton of land per player. Holy smokes. Why am I not building settlers??? 3) I started a library build in Fort Survivalist, but I may log back in to change it to a unit. I'd wait for the pop growth if I were going to build a settler. If I did build a settler, it would have to go to that desert spot 3E 1S. It would be a while before I got workboats to those seafood resource, though. I had planned to switch off a workboat at Water Garden for a lighthouse when sailing comes in next turn. Thinking more about it, Water Garden is going to be happy capped for a while, so maybe I don't need the extra food. (Turning down food in Civ? What will we think of next?) 4) Damn it. Thought of a fourth thing. That Mackoti city closest to me got a borders pop. I would bet good money it used a barracks to do it. Need to build more spears... Trying to keep the swearing to a minimum. Fill in the blue streak yourself.

This week was very busy for me. Next is probably worse, but if a stack of horse archers show up on my door, I promise to let you know.