[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

T32 will fight all of you at once

First I was greeted with the splash screen:



That's nice but we knew that already. What's new though is that we are now at war with the entirety of human-kind:



Yeah I'd rather not get KO'd by that warrior so I slipped over to the jungle grass hill... Though I do want to head southeast to take a look at Commodore's land and such. What's funny is I almost didn't notice I was at war with Serdoa until I went to the EP screen and saw me spending on him. Huh? Then I found this little guy:



Oh that's cute. I went ahead and finished the road on the Wheat so that if he gets too close, I'll just whack him with the warrior. Surely he sees the warrior though and won't risk it. I also moved the FP worker onto the corn as planted and finished the road:



That allowed me to do this. Granary finished in Simple Math, so next will be a worker that I will chop to completion. I got ahead of myself though - my scout ran from Serdoa onto the jungle hill and saw Serdoa's land:



I'll probably (carefully) take a look at what he has here. I don't want to die, but I'd like to see what he's done thus far. Thankfully I know exactly what tiles are where, so I can land on defensive terrain.

Anyways, Mysticism was next. At 100% I can't 1T the tech (can't afford a turn of 100% anyways), so swapping to 0% then 100% would mean teching it in 3T, but I can run break-even and get it in 2 so that'll be the plan:



Also I've been floating my warrior on that tile for a few turns because of me chasing Lewwyn with 2 warriors. I'd like him to trek back to Simple Math, but Holocene will need a garrison here pretty soon so such is life. I adjusted EPs:



Maybe Serdoa will think I haven't met anyone . I'll adjust EPs on Lewwyn/Brian as needed to keep demos, but I didn't need it this turn. If I can subtly encourage them this way to stop spending on me too, that would be wonderful. An oddity:



Every time I look at this Brian is at size 3. Taking advantage of that Sacrificial Altar? My question is if he's taking so long to grow after whipping, does he not have a granary or what? Weird. Also finally, I began improving the pigs:



The pigs will complete next turn. Actually I'll probably swap onto the pigs next turn which may delay Mysticism so my 60% thing probably was irrelevant. Anyways, one worker will finish it next turn and the other will begin chopping the Holocene roaded forest. I think that covers everything. Any questions?

[scooter]

T33 sees Lewwyn play with fire



Oh so Lewwyn's going to get cute. bad idea. Ok so first I'll reposition my warriors like this:



That'll prevent him from getting on the forest. Now, him getting on the floodplains could still be annoying because I'd have to attack from across the river. Here's the thing though - I want to get Holocene to size 6 soo...



Problem solved. And for good measure:



That should ensure that I don't have to attack from across a river if I play things the right way. This way Lewwyn is unable to head up towards No Light (I was mildly concerned about that because of all the hills!), and if he continues to advance on Holocene he's dead. Anyways, No Light finished and swapped to the pigs:



Jumping off the gold does hurt the research, but I was still able to finish Mysticism this turn by bumping up research to 80%. The idle worker headed towards Holocene to start chopping a settler:



That's the next build there after this warrior and growth complete. Simple Math on the other hand is about to get a worker chopped:



Second worker came in from Sante Fe. Both will finish chopping next turn which will complete that worker. They'll then move onto that grassland forest and chop again (probably another worker actually - I need them bad), and then farm that grassland. Demos:



GNP sure looks brutal now that I'm off the gold and have no tech selected. Food/MFG sure look pretty though.

[scooter]

Okay so I'm thinking about the current state of Holocene, and... I'm realizing Henge is still there and would be trivially easy to get really fast. I can get it in 4 turns with just 2 chops and no stone. It's 80h, so that means the following plan lands it:

[just finished T33 fyi]

t34: 0/80 size6 +13h (+13h chop) +4f (11/21) [2workers complete chop together]
t35: 26/80 size6 +13h +4f (15/21) [2workers onto grass forest]
t36: 39/80 size6 +13h +4f (19/21) [workers begin chop]
t37: 52/80 size7 +15h (micro'd to work weird tiles**) (+13h chop) +4f (23/21) [workers complete chop]

** That means working a flat plains over FP cottage which yes that's gross but probably worth it

Note that this plan assumes working the plains forest hill 0/3/0 over the grass forest 2/1/0. I also simmed out the 2/1/0 which speeds growth to size7 but it came out 1 hammer behind so it's not worth it.

Ok so the question I need to figure out is... do I go for it? Dazed is out of town so I'm not sure I can bounce the idea off him - though I'm going to try to message him anyways. So ok, let's do a traditional positives/negatives.

Negatives
1. Starting with this because there's one glaring issue - it pollutes my Great Person pool. I'd be no longer guaranteed to get a Merchant. If I got a GP that'd drastically slow down my Currency time.
2. That's 2 chops that are going into a no-modifier-enhanced Henge instead of turbo settlers or workers.
3. Someone might be working on it now and I might miss it.

Positives
1. The duh factor. I'm currently looking at building a ton of monuments because there's no way I'm getting an early religion and I'm not creative. Brian is creative, two others have religion, but I'm one of two (unless Brian grabbed a religion, I dk really) with nothing to pop borders with besides monuments. Might as well get them from one place yeah? This would let me get Granaries/workers out quicker from other places.
2. A Great Prophet could still be put to good use if it popped. If a GM popped, I would get it sooner so this would actually enhance my Currency time. Also, I'd start the merchants as soon as Henge finished, so I'd be getting +6GM and +2GP per turn, so that means 9 turns would give me the great person at roughly 75% odds of a merchant which is pretty good. (that's how it works right?)
3. Even if I miss it, the failgold would certainly be useful.

[scooter]

t34: 0/80 size6 +13h (+13h chop) +4f (11/21) [2workers complete chop together]
t35: 26/80 size6 +13h +4f (15/21) [2workers onto grass forest]
t36: 39/80 size6 +13h +4f (19/21) [workers begin chop]
t37: 52/80 size7 +15h (micro'd to work weird tiles**) (+13h chop) +4f (23/21) [workers complete chop]

Fixed:

t34: 0/80 size6 +13h +4f (11/21) [1 worker onto grass forest. other continues chop - 1t left]
t35: 13/80 size6 +13h (+13h chop) +4f (15/21) [1 worker complete chops. other begins - 2t left]
t36: 39/80 size6 +13h +4f (19/21) [1t left on second chop]
t37: 52/80 size7 +15h (micro'd to work weird tiles**) (+13h chop) +4f (23/21) [2nd chop complete]

If I avoid stacking workers I can 1) save worker turn and 2) re-purpose a chop in case Henge falls part-way through the plan. I could even delay completion of that first chop until T37 if I really wanted to be sure the chops went into Henge... Which I'll probably do. And yes - I've already invested 1T into the roaded grass forest chop in case that wasn't clear.

Anyways, briefly heard back from Dazed and he likes the plan as much as I do, so I think this is a go. First time I've gone for Stonehenge in a MP game.

[scooter]

Some random graphs I took shots of this turn that I didn't bother posting earlier, but they were sitting in my screenshots folder so why not dump them.



My GNP isn't QUITE as awful as it seems when techs are selected. Plus those guys have culture. Stonehenge will likely double my GNP .



As expected. I'd really like Serdoa's graphs.



Also as expected but wow that's a lot of hammers by Lewwyn. That kinda makes me think he could be running max hammers to get Henge or something. Although his capital has been at size5 for several turns now so I would think it would have hit 6 by now unless it was building settlers. So who knows.



Take that suckas.

[scooter]

I know I'm probably wayyyy too meta when I say this, but I have noticed that since unveiling my Stonehenge plan there was not a single post in the lurker thread - hasn't been for days. Now, if I was lurking a game where one player announced his intentions to pursue a wonder and then another player unveiled exact plans to get the wonder, I'd probably have some comment to make in the lurker thread on who was going to win the race and/or the effects of said race. I've lurked enough games to know that that's a pretty common discussion to happen. However, if only one player was pursuing the wonder, that's a boring non-issue so there's nothing to talk about in the lurker thread.

Also, at this point EVERYONE is pretty much updating with decent regularity, so... I'm going to go ahead and say I feel pretty good about getting Stonehenge. I mean it's not like it's gamebreaking or anything - plus we have a Creative civ, a Terrace civ, and 2 religions out there that may or may not have been founded by the 2 non-cultured civs, so my odds were good anyways. But still.

[SevenSpirits]

Cue meta-meta lurker thread posts.

[scooter]

Cue meta-meta lurker thread posts.

I nearly said that in my post actually, that I expect to go to bed now and wake to notice a half-dozen new posts in the lurker thread that would suddenly make me paranoid as I wonder whether the posts are meta-meta or if it's lurkers laughing at me because someone else IS working on Henge, and they just hadn't gotten around to commenting on it yet.

Guess I'll find out in a few turns.

[scooter]

T34 starts to stack creepy rocks

Myst is in:



So the big creepy rock statue began as planned:



Again, working the plains hill forest comes out ahead of working the grass forest and growing 1T sooner, so that's the plan. Workers also continued as planned:



One onto the forest, the other putting 1T into that chop. So the first chop is roaded and can be finished in 1T, so I can wait a couple turns to finish it, which in a perfect world I'd like to do. Now, the problem is figuring what to do in the meantime if I did wait. Ideally I could have the worker on the road join up with the worker south of the lake and speed that grass river cottage, but since it's 3 tiles away (and only 2 are roaded), I can't do that without burning a worker turn moving. I could build a cottage or farm on the tile 1W of the forest for No Light, but that's not particularly pressing. My other option is completing that road on that grass hill. That would require a turn burned moving, but it's gotta happen at some point so might as well be now right? Also:



(yes I moved citizen off the 0/2/0 plains hill)

I'm going to have a worker here in Simple Math next turn. That worker could do that "1T road" himself. Alternatively, that new worker could actually start a mine on the tile 1W of Simple Math which I could use on the last turn of Stonehenge and avoid working a 1/1/0 plains tile on the last turn of the Henge plan. So in all this tangled mess, here's what I'm thinking for T35:

1. Worker on grass forest with 1T chop moves onto 1T roaded hill.
2. New worker in Simple Math moves 1W and begins mine on that hill.
3. Workers on the plains hill both road so one of them can join the grass hill mine the following turn. The other will head to the grass forest 1SW.

Hopefully this isn't too boring - just needed to walk through this myself to make sure I don't screw these up and I figured I'd include it in the post. Anyways, worker micro over, let's look at scouting:



I carefully moved west in such a way that won't get me trapped the following turn. I ended on flat ground which was moderately risky, but I could see his lack of nearby roads so I knew I was probably safe for his next turn. If I ended up cornered, I'll just end turn on a +75% defensive tile and dare him to risk a warrior on my scout, which would be foolish for him to do. Top cities has an interesting newcomer:



Brian's city dropped off (odd given the culture he likely has there) and Serdoa now has a size 4 second city, so yeah he's likely the guy high up in the demos compared to me. Speaking of:

[scooter]

Ok a little whip management situation that I puzzled over, so I'm recording my thoughts here for the curious and for critique if possible. This was my view of Sante Fe this turn:



I sat and considered whipping the granary, and finally decided not to. My thinking was I'm working 2 improved tiles and I'm 3T from growing onto a tile that will be improved when I get there (FP cottage)... And if I whip, it's not like I'll automatically re-grow, but rather I'll have 3 more turns of size 1. In the end here, I guessed population was more valuable than the immediate granary which wouldn't even "kick in" until I get to size 3 from size 1. It seems here that it's better to grow to size 3 and eventually 4 while building the granary and then do something like double-whip a worker/settler at size 4, at which point I could immediately regrow to size 3 (granary active) where I'd be working 3 good tiles for a +8 surplus in a city with a granary. That seems like a far more efficient plan than whipping down to size 1 for a few turns and then building something random like a barracks/warrior while waiting to grow some more.

Critiques welcome here (turn is done so you're not impacting my decision) - I normally don't pay close attention to these kinds of things, so this has been an interesting thought exercise for me, and I THINK I'm planning this correctly.