[SPOILERS] DaveV: The vampire bites! Goodbye level 9.

[DaveV]

Turn 16: no changes in score. Someone grew to size 3, and is ranked ahead of Thoth on the Top 5 screen. I think that means either Ichabod or gtAngel?



Someone has moved ahead of me in GNP. Probably gtAngel with a winery.

[DaveV]

Turn 17 demos, which I didn't post (not much happened):



Turn 18 was a bit more exciting. Thoth's scout is still hanging around, and apparently wants vision on my city. I see no reason to let him keep threatening my workers and maybe get lucky to gain an animal capturing promotion. 81% is pretty good odds, right?



Wrong:



So, I finished him off flawlessly with my scout:



Sigh. Now I'm short a warrior from my original plan. For now, I'll keep building the settler, since I've already lost most of the rest of my early advantage.



I offered peace to Thoth.

[DaveV]

Here's another double turn report. Not much is happening; everyone else is building units and growing; I'm 4 turns from having my settler finished. Oh, and Thoth accepted my peace offer, which means I have 10 turns of guaranteed peace with him.

Turn 19 demos:



Power numbers appear to be 8, 10, 10, 12.

Turn 20 demos:



Power numbers 8, 10, 10, 11? My guess: the guy with 12 lost a scout, one of the 10s picked up a population point. Someone is working heavy hammers, probably to finish off the last warrior before cranking out a settler.

[DaveV]

Turn 21 appeared in my inbox just before work this morning, with an apology from gtAngel. I squeezed in my turn and sent it off to Ichabod; I hope he can play this morning, too, so we can keep the turn/day pace.

Still building a settler. One of the bad guys is at size 5; everyone else (including Thoth) is at size 4. Someone also has an outrageous production number:



God King?

[DaveV]

It occurred to me that I can check on one of my opponents' civics. A quick trot to the civics screen shows:



So, it is Thoth who's running God King (also verifiable on the Culture graph, which shows he just revolted). He's running the irrigated wheat and three plains forests for 10 base hammers, pumped up to 15 by God King. Since he's also still running Religion, I'm betting he's building an Elder Council to spam out a Great Sage. If he were going to rush someone, he should have taken Averax as a leader; choosing Tebryn says he's going to go for arcane.

[DaveV]

I'll show a map shot next turn when I actually start moving stuff. For now, some graphs:

Thoth lost his third scout last turn. I hope I don't sound too unsportsmanlike when I say I hope he didn't gain too much map knowledge from it. Now he's sitting on two warriors compared to my warrior+scout.



Here's his impressive spike in production:



Of course, there's a price to be paid for such extreme moves:





Now, he's throttled back to more normal levels. Maybe his one-turn boost was just to maximize overflow into a settler.

[DaveV]

Here's the promised overview shot from turn 23:



Demographics:

[DaveV]

Time to move out. Everyone but the worker charges out to be animal bait:



Just kidding. Borders popped at Eot, meaning I'm safe until next turn. Curse that forest; I'd be able to settle without exposing any of my units.



The border pop shows me a beaver in the northwest, but no actual good tiles.



Demos are looking worse and worse:

[DaveV]

Turn 25: here's the barb's big chance to beat me. If they have enough griffons/tigers/wolves lurking in exactly the right bit of fog, I guess they deserve to win.



Now that my warrior is one turn from completion, I switched the capital to a worker. I'm going to be way behind on worker turns for a while now. I'm researching toward Education because I expect to be painfully low on commerce.



It appears that everyone else has one water tile in their third ring. No mirroring; I hope the others' surrounding territory is as poor in quality as mine...

[DaveV]

No killer units came charging out of the fog, so I plopped down my second city. That increases my costs from 0 to 2, so I'm saving up some cash. The scout will try to unfog a few more tiles.




A wandering elephant came to visit. Sorry, I have no peanuts for you. Go away.

My new city widens my land area lead:



Thoth got +1 culture last turn. I guess he's been running Religion long enough for the +10%/turn to add up to a whole number.