[SPOILERS] scooter's thread: how to finish second

[Bigger]

why aren't you updating!! you're going to make me hafta read someone else's thread to figure out whats going on :/

[scooter]

why aren't you updating!! you're going to make me hafta read someone else's thread to figure out whats going on :/

Hah, well basically it's been a so-so pace and normal speed combined to make not very much happen. but I've actually been stockpiling screenshots, so I'll go ahead and put those together into a report now. So expect something in 30 minutes or so.

[scooter]

Ok when we last left off, I was chopping into a 2nd worker. I finished that, and my scout finally made it's way up the spoke (if you imagine the land like a wheel with twisty spokes which seems pretty much how it's laid out)... Well first, I see somebody's copper:



That's... pretty different from my copper. Mine is certainly nowhere near the water. Although granted, given that we have this absolutely enormous jungle buffer, I don't think the copper really matters at all to be honest. It's just nice to have that 2/4 tile right in my capital. Anyways, Rego showed up at my borders and... declared war.



Well that's obnoxious. Good news for him is I had switched to a granary a few turns ago. Bad news is I did have a few hammers invested into a warrior, so I could get it out quicker. Anyways, I halfway thought he'd just park on the copper which would have been terrible, but thankfully I only lost use of it for one turn:



That was fortunate, and probably a mistake if he intended to hurt me as it let me get the warrior out MUCH faster, I guess he just wanted to defog my land though. One thing I was really fearing here was that Ichabod would pile on and also cover some of my tiles, but he chose not to do so. I will most likely remember that kind gesture at some point later . Unless he does something nasty to me later in which case all bets are off . Spied Pindicator's capital, completing my set of contacts:



He's obviously teched AH a bit quicker than me. Defogged his capital next turn:



I'm going to avoid war with him and just skirt around his land, I want to get back and locate everyone else with this scout so I know who is where. I did some fun dancing with Regoarrarr's scout:



I was cottaging that grassland tile with the "1T road" & worker on it, but what I didn't want to do was open him up to camping on my rice for a couple turns. I didn't want to abandon the chop at 8 Mile, so in the end I chose to cover the rice with the worker and just complete the road on the rice. My warrior completed, Regoarrarr saw that, and offered peace:



I hesitated, but ended up taking it. I wanted to try to trap his scout and kill it, but if he beelined it out of here, there'd be nothing I could do. I think I'm going to go take my warrior and station it on the 3-tile wide passageway and just kill any other scouts that try to come in. I'll let Ichabod do his thing since he was nice to me, but nothing else gets in. That'll let me continue to build almost zero military too, which is nice. I don't plan on hooking up that copper for awhile.

I'm trying to get these granaries down relatively quickly. Woodward will ideally get several cottages going (I don't like that they've been delayed this long as is, but such is life). The basic plan is to get these two granaries early and do a few whip cycles on settlers/workers to get me started, and then push from there. Next on my agenda is to try to map out a rough dotmap, which is actually a little bit tricky here. Everything that's green gets a cottage of course, yay FIN.

[scooter]

Update time. So I used a warrior for this:





Except Ichabod because he was nice. Pindicator landed Hinduism:



Regoarrarr landed Buddhism around the same time. Ichabod had a huge turn:



He got Stonehenge and his 3rd city at the same time. 3rd cities just now falling for him and Rego. Mine will be a few turns later as I went for a 3rd worker first:



I'll plant it up on the sign between cow and silver. Woodward is almost finished with a granary. I'm going to go settler next, double-whip it, and then finish the granary while growing from sz2->3. That should let me get back to sz4 pretty quickly. After that, probably grow to sz6 and triple whip another settler? Not sure yet, I'll think about it.

Dotmapping is a hassle right now - the placement of 8 Mile completely ruined all those coastal sites. Granted, there's not food directly east, but the complete lack of a legal coastal spot on the east coast is going to hurt me I think. Not much I can do about it now - just unlucky.

[scooter]

Ok, not much going on still - only 3-4 turns have passed. Anyways, I realized Ichabod's scout was nearly trapped, so I decided to do him a favor that hopefully he'll return eventually:



The very next turn Rego showed up offering this:



I guess he saw my OB with Ichabod and figured he'd try? He was nowhere near me, so I'm not sure the point. It made me wonder if he had defogged a trade route to me or something, in which case I don't want to give him free routes when I don't have any with him, so I rejected it. Even if he was just randomly doing it, he declared on me and set me back a tad, so I'm not doing him favors at this point. Anyways, whipped the settler:



That let the granary finish the following turn. So my third city will be settled on T49:



That makes me several turns behind the others who got to 3 cities, but I'm hoping the fact that I already have 2 granaries and 3 riverside shareable cottages up will help balance that out. We'll see.

[scooter]

Oh and yes I do have Writing (the open borders stuff), so I'll be getting a library (and academy) in the not so distant future. Not immediately, but it's coming.

[scooter]

Wow, turns flying today - this is my second and third. Also, things are becoming vaguely more interesting. I was greeted on T49 with an OB proposal from Ruff:



I denied, and he offered again on T50 and I denied again. This leads to a question on how trade routes work, which I'll ask in a second. Here's a shot of everyone else - only OB is the temp deal I gave Ichabod to get through:



Pindicator and Ichabod have yet to meet each other, but everone else has met everyone. I settled Gratiot:



Promptly pasturized the cows with two workers. Anyways, I open T50 and see this:



(I suppose I should be griping that he got gold and I got silver right? Nah I'll skip it, I'll trust it's ok overall)

Also note the trade arrows. So here's my question. Does this mean I'd get routes if we signed OB, or could that signify that there's only a one-way route? Because, here's the thing, I don't even know where Regoarrarr is at.



I'm betting he's the "spoke" nearest me, which would explain why he could defog to me. So for sake of example, let's assume he is (please don't confirm/deny obviously). Under that assumption, does this mean he could get route income from me, but I could not get it from him? Since I obviously have not defogged up to borders, but it's very likely he has defogged up to the newly settled Gratiot borders. Also, the route popped up when Gratiot settled, so that seems to be further evidence.


Anyways, I have the weakest military:



Not surprising - 1 scout, 2 warriors is what I have. Demos:



Slightly better than they look since Woodward is still at sz2 and filling its granary right now on the way up to 3 (leaving my glorious copper and a cottage-going-on-hamlet unworked).

[Bigger]

one way to find out: sign open borders with him. that certainly means someone gets trade routes, so if you don't have it the next turn just cancel the open borders .

[scooter]

one way to find out: sign open borders with him. that certainly means someone gets trade routes, so if you don't have it the next turn just cancel the open borders .

Once you sign them, you're locked in for 10T. I'd rather not hand Rego free gold since I don't expect that to buy me his loyalty. However, if I could get routes in return, I'm all for it.

[Bigger]

well, yeah, there is that . I think that sign does mean you get routes as well, but I'm not certain, nor can I discern how you would have them when you haven't defogged any of his cities.