Lax reporting frequency, but I should at least adhere to the usual milestones. Consider this a belated T50 status report.
Current mood: Optimistic
Cities:
Spongeworthy: Growing to size 6 on cottages. Then switching to ivory+mines and getting a worker on size 6 while waiting for masonry to finish and stone to be hooked up --> whip worker at 58/60 into Pyramids with stone bonus.
SummerOfGeorge: Settlers and workers. Possible HE city, so we'll pop borders with barracks. Might put hammers into The Great Wall here at some point for failgold. Surely someone will build it eventually?
As you can probably tell from the build plans the 2nd wave of expansion will be extensive.
Demos:
We're still miles ahead on food, and as shown we also have a granary in every city, so the crop yield lead might be even greater in practice.
GNP: Considering many of our opponents have inflated GNP through creative culture or holy cities, this is also looking quite good. But it's T50, so I don't care much about this stat.
Hammers: Among the bottom, but who cares? Food is the main source of production in the early game anyway. Besides, this will change in ~5-6 turns when our capital has all the river mines+ivory improved and starting on the Pyramids.
Tech: Masonry is next. Following that the plan is monotheism for religion, but depending on the timing we may need to insert sailing first for expansion purposes -- our island can't hold that many cities.
Best case scenario: We discover Donovan's border to the north and capture all of his wonders.*
He just finished the Oracle on top of the early SH, and being FIN I imagine he did it with the intention of getting MC and the Colossus, which means even more hammers put into wonders. At that point he'll be so underdeveloped it's becoming a farce -- almost playing OCC.
Worst case scenario: He's started next to a strong competitor who gets a free colossus and a lot of room to expand.
Since this was taken the wb has circled the eastern island, but nothing of interest was found.
Overall a pretty uninspiring sight, but I guess it's the same for everyone. We're hoping the north holds more food. Also resigned to the fact that the gold has to be settled with a city on the mainland -- was hoping to pick it up with a city on the island/other landmass.
My least favourite part of pitbosses is having to wait around for game-defining wonders to be built. No way to speed up the process, can only sit and wait for other people to play. Agonizing waiting period.
Demos show that SD is completely choked and dead to Commodore, but knowing him he takes pride in being tough to beat so I expect his capital to be full of archers all the same. Rival worst of 35k soldiers supports this. Commodore is in for frustration.
Turns out we can work around the pig discovery. Decided to settle 2N of capital pigs for a few reasons:
-Capital doesn't need pigs right now (can starve on a hill until Pyramids). This speeds up its growth significantly. It can later use the clam permanently leaving just the pigs for the desert city.
-Settling on the desert tile will enable the clam without culture requirement.
-We have 2 settlers coming within a few turns of each other so there's time to settle both this marginal desert city and also an overseas city for better trade routes.
-Settling only the desert city would leave too many tiles unclaimed on the mainland -- including 2 grassland tiles that can be irrigated. On a map as brown as this any green tile is treasured. We'd want a mainland city at some point and this seems as good a time as any.
So the new aquisitions are:
ThePuffyShirt:
Granary --> galley (probably chop+whip on size 2) --> gather as much commerce as possible.
YadaYadaYada:
Granary --> Lighthouse --> gather as much commerce as possible.
Our lull in expansion due to Pyramids meant people caught up and tied us in crop yield, but we are now back in the sole lead. Also leading the pack in hammers.
Down to making 13 GPT on full tax slider, but this will improve once we settle our overseas city and can start working capital cottages again. Long term I have no worries about science rate if we complete the Pyramids. Wonder is due eot 71 IIRC. Something I consider a very early date, but being on a deserted island it's ok to go all-in on it like this -- it's one of a select few game-defining wonders. I'd be shocked if we don't get it, but I've been shocked once this game already.
Imgur is having difficulties, images will work soon. Fixed.
It's probably been reported in the other thread already, but we've made our first contact.
Naufragar is not the best neighbour (DZ), but certainly not the worst. We got along fine in PB38 -- hopefully this will be a repeat as we both have a lot to gain from overseas foreign trade. A couple of turns have been played since and he chose not to declare war to scout our territory with his wb. I'll take that as a token of friendship and him not wanting to ruin trade route yield. I offered a corn for rice deal to get things started.
The bad: The way the map is made he can access us through the fish tile thanks to its culture but we can't access him. Very annoying and there's nothing that can be done about it. Now based on where his WB came from I believe there's another bridge to the north (there better be!), but it doesn't change the fact that we're at a tactical disadvantage until astronomy.
(December 4th, 2018, 05:42)Rusten Wrote: The bad: The way the map is made he can access us through the fish tile thanks to its culture but we can't access him. Very annoying and there's nothing that can be done about it. Now based on where his WB came from I believe there's another bridge to the north (there better be!), but it doesn't change the fact that we're at a tactical disadvantage until astronomy.
That said, he has made at least 1 other contact and thus probably has other borders to worry about, so there are pros and cons to being in our situation. Overall I guess I take the 1 (supposedly) friendly neighbour and a tactical disadvantage over multiple neighbours at even ground. If we're forced into conquest it really sucks (at that point you may want more options/civs to attack), but it looks like there's green land to settle to the north (scouting wb). I hope his land is not as green as the jungle I scouted to the north though. If so even the Pyramids might not be enough to keep up.
Either way, it's an interesting situation and map. Imbalances can be fun and I prefer this over a handcrafted map that attempts perfect balance.
Looks like I was right about superdeath being a pain to finish off for Commodore. Rival top power sank by around 25k from one turn to another and a GG was born, but no relevant score increase/decrease shown. I'm very curious to read about all of this later. Looks like a failed attempt to take SD's capital from where I'm sitting. There's been a turn in between, so there shouldn't be any mopping up of wounded defenders, but I suppose it's still possible that something can happen later this turn.
2T left for the 'mids. Should be a certainty. The one civ I was slightly worried about was Gavagai as he was lagging behind in expansion. I figured he was getting a wonder, but as expected he prioritized the GLH. It makes more sense for everyone other than us to prioritize that one. Would not surprise me if failgold was awarded a few places.
Naufragar accepted the corn for rice trade. Neither one should need the health right now, but I'll happily take it. Sadly I will have no spare luxuries to trade, ever, but I still have crab over him so maybe I can trade that if he suddenly shows up with something.
Besides, this will change in ~5-6 turns when our capital has all the river mines+ivory improved and starting on the Pyramids.
