[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Fintourist]

Turns 83 & 84

Two turns have again passed. Turn 83 was a nice turn because I grew 3 pop points. In Turn 84 I celebrated that by whipping 3 citizens away and finished a bunch of useful stuff:



My capital double-whipped the settler for my 7th city. This will hopefully be the last time I whip it for a good while as Bureaucracy civic is getting closer and closer..

You can also see that I finished my 2nd Axe and 3rd Galley. Next turn I will turn on research again. That 190g should be enough for finishing Monarchy and CoL.

The puzzle of the day involves my northern island city where I whipped granary this turn:



So the question is, what little trick helps me here to optimize the growth?

Ok, this might have been easy to some and my question leading, but for me this will be the first time ever when I will use the avoid growth option.

I'll turn the avoid growth on next turn (T85) so that the city remains with 22/22 food at size one. That way I get on T86 four additional food into the granary storage. At the beginning of T87 I will have 12/24 food in the box and can grow to size 3 in two turns (EOT88).

If I would grow normally, I would get three additional commerce from working crabs at size 2, but I would only have 10/24 food in the box at the beginning of T87 and thus grow one turn later to size 3. That will alone make up for the missed beakers.

At least for me this was an interesting new way of optimization that can be sometimes used in cities that just received granaries.

Ok, let's get back to the bigger topics. Circumnavigation is so.. close.. I need a smiley here that tears its own hair apart:



If I'm lucky and I understand the rules correctly I could reach it even next turn... Aaargh! And yeah, there is a stone resource 1000 kilometers/miles away from my core.

In other parts of the world expansion continues as Hydra settled his 6th city. Azza is still only one with 7 and Sareln is now only one with 5. Both Azza and Sareln have been doing a reasonable amount of non-military related whipping so I guess they will add new sites soonish too. I'm pretty sure that this game will soon become more interesting for lurkers as the distances between players start becoming smaller and smaller.

[Old Harry]

Nice puzzle - you should gather all of these into a thread in general discussion at some point... Might be good advertising?

I solved it of course!

(I think circumnavigation will take 2 turns won't it?)

[Fintourist]

Thanks I'm not sure whether these "puzzles" are interesting enough that they would deserve an own thread. In the end these are pretty common micro situations that everybody can find in their games. Although that actually makes them useful and possibly interesting... Well, for now they must remain in my spoiler thread anyway.

About circumnav, If I move for example SW-W and there is an island 2W (or NW-NW or W-NW etc.) of the tile where I end that could actually be enough. If I'm not mistaken there are only 3 columns where I need to unfog a tile left. Fingers crossed...

[Old Harry]

I'll bet you it's four columns.

Also you need your southern galley to link up too don't you? How far off is that?

[Fintourist]

I'll bet you it's four columns.

Damn you, if you're right. Have you taken into account that the tiles I've revealed at the top of the screenshot?

Also you need your southern galley to link up too don't you? How far off is that?

That should be already done

Wait, it looks like we are having different assumptions regarding what is enough for circumnavigation. According to my knowledge you don't need to reveal an actual circle. One revealed tile from every row and every column should be enough.

[AutomatedTeller]

Pretty sure FIntourist is correct. You just need to have seen a tile on each column, as it were.

[Old Harry]

Really? There goes yet another misconception!

I think you've still got 4 columns to uncover though...

[Fintourist]

I'll do a proper report again after two turns have passed, but here are the latest news:

• Harry was right, it was 4 tiles.. In ~24h you'll experience a lot of head-banging or bananas..
  
• Sareln settled his 6th city on an island.
  
• I believe Azza finished IW
  

And here are the T95 demos, I think I try to post them about every 5 turns for now:



My GNP is boosted by getting 46 % bonus while teching Monarchy. Rival best is Sareln, who I belive gets 32 % bonus for researching Currency. Sareln's culture output is slightly bigger that mine because of 2 wonders, 4 cities with Buddhism (incl. holy city) and 3 libraries, but the difference is small. Damn that GLH is powerful, when Sareln has Currency his island cities will get 12 commerce from trade routes immediately after founding. I guess it's about time to close borders with him. However, I think I'll try to defog a trade route to Viqsi that not goes through Sareln's borders and get closer to MC first. I do need couple of triremes asap.

At this point I have to say that things could get dangerous for Hydra. He is the rival worst in soldier points with no archery and no other units except warriors. Well, he probably is right that everyone is busy with expansion, but that is still quite risky..

[Fintourist]

I'll do a proper report in a while. But first things first, why did I not receive circumnavigation bonus?? Not during the turn and not when I ended it:





I've spent now a good while googling this issue, but I have simply no clue. Why did I not get it?? I checked the event log about ten times and I'm absolutely certain that nobody else has received it.

[Fintourist]

Turns 85 & 86

Apart from confusion with circumnavigation (If the bonus has not fallen when I get my next save I really start wondering) everything is going more or less ok. Here is the empire excluding Wimbledon that grew to size 2 this turn:



After an uneventful T85 I received 3 pop points and finished Monarchy this turn. Next I'm going for CoL. 2 settlers and a lighthouse will be double-whipped during the next 2 turns.

Here are the other negative news from the turn:


Azza settled his 8th and 9th cities this turn! Everyone else still has only 6! He is surely pushing those IMP settlers out there and claiming land. Azza's position has been continuously improving during the last 30 turns. My timeline for the cities 7-9 is next turn, T92 & T93. I'm more or less 7 turns behind Azza in this stat. Small consolidation is that despite having three cities less I still have more pop points. That will unfortunately change soon though..

His new city site has crabs in the second ring and thus conflicts with my dot map. I guess I will settle next to crabs and try to win them culturally. That will surely cause negative feelings so I have to be able to support that site militarily. Yeah, it looks like I will have tense borders with both Sareln and Azza in the near future..

And again, does somebody have ideas for the name of my next city