[SPOILERS] Seven Russias Into the Periclous Fray

[SevenSpirits]

Yeah, I've been assuming for a while now that my copper is script-placed on an island or the other side of some mountains.

[Ichabod]

Demographics are looking pretty bad - they have been getting worse and worse since about when I settled my second city. I am 15 points behind Napoleon who has no early acceleration from traits, and behind HAK in every economic category.

Welcome to our world, Seven.

[SevenSpirits]

Anything to please you Ichabod.

Here are some screenshots (from the turn after my mini-report). t48:
















My exploring scout has died by now as you can see - in its second combat. It did find a few improvements and I managed to squeeze out the warrior turns to pillage them. One of them gave 0g (interesting fact: if your random gold amount is 0, you don't get an event log message that you pillaged anything); the other one gave 7g. My two exploring warriors haven't found any improvements themselves, so that's all I've gotten so far, unfortunately. I hope to get a unit up north to the hamlet to pillage that, but it doesn't look like anything can be in position for a while yet.

Affidavit is growing to size 5 this turn and the chariot from Beluga will act as temporary military police. Turn after that the library finishes - then we can hire two specs for 7 turns to make the academy.

[SevenSpirits]

So you know I have HAK's power graph. His military has been 1 axe and 2-3 warriors as far as I can tell, while mine is 1 chariot and 4 warriors.

Last turn his axe showed up 4 tiles from my capital. WTF, man. And good lord, why. Well I don't have metal yet so I really can't afford to give up any control of the area near my capital between now and when I get IW. So I gave up one turn of full capital happiness to kill his axe. Note, I also didn't want him pillaging my windmill. That's MY gold!




It was a clean win, and I offered a ceasefire. I don't want to offer a peace treaty in case he gets the bright idea to settle up at me in some ridiculous way that coincidentally steals iron.

Speaking of metal, good news, I found copper!





Oh btw, you may have noticed I have dropped down in score below Douglas "Got an obelisk and ran specs instead of a second city" Quaid, and am now only ahead of "Got my second city immediately razed by Mackoti" Gavagai.

[WilliamLP]

So only 23rd ring then? Inb4 Iron is on that same peninsula...

[SevenSpirits]

Got graphs on Haram this turn and apparently he has forest deer in his capital. First ring even.

So for starters, Haram got a 2t faster worker than me. To put this in perspective, if he then also chose PRO he'd only gain another 2t on that initial worker build. I wish the differences between starting positions were a bit smaller so we could measure the effects of the traits better. (But who knows, maybe it's just my capital that's worse than all the other ones, so it's still possible. But even so I wish I could be part of that measuring so I'd get a better intuitive grasp of it.)

Someone far away got a great general. Most likely IMO is Mackoti, who we know fought gavagai earlier and who is IMP. Second most likely is GermanJojo I guess. Also IMP, and low score so perhaps some fighting over there too.

HAK declined my peace offer. I offered it again this turn in case there was a mistake or miscommunication. Starting next turn, I'll ease off on the frequency so as not to be obnoxious. It's unfortunate I'm now having to wait to play each turn until after HAK plays, but oh well.

Slowcheetah has whipped off an incredible 12 points worth of pop over the last two turns. Just normal expansion, or something else?

[SevenSpirits]

t54 (1t ago - I took screenshots but didn't have time to post them until now):

First: HAK accepted my second cease fire offer. For anyone curious, I believe our militaries are now 1 axe + change vs 2 chariots + change. Not that it should matter, since we have that natural barrier to my south and a lot of space between us to my north.

By the way, my chariot went and pillaged that windmill (1g, woohoo!) and got some vision on fresh culture. Basically it looks like he settled E of the rice with his third city, after the second city went S for copper. It is also possible that he settled NE of the rice though. But then he would miss out on the cow, unless copper is really close by.



Here is my empire. The granary builds are not planned to be finished soon, they are just soaking up the leftover hammers from growth that wouldn't be able to complete units. I am just growing my cities to the very low happy cap for the moment, to build workers/settlers.



I found GermanJojo. He only has two cities and is at war with Haram. Haram's power graph seems pretty smooth though so I don't think there's been much fighting yet. In another 6-7t I should have GJ's graph too. HAK probably still hasn't met anyone but me - he's still spending 4EP/t. GJ and Haram are both still spending on each other, which suits me fine.





I guess my demos are average now, while I haven't put any resources into settlers lately. That's something.



Due to my fairly heavy scouting I now have a pretty good idea of the shape of my natural territory. I will have to consider which direction to prioritize in order to get more than that.


*Some settling towards A is probably necessary since HAK is already settled up against the mountains. And from there, A itself has the best concentration of resources anywhere in my land, including gold, and 3 of the 7 unclaimed food resources in my land. But A is kind of guaranteed to be mine...

*If I prioritize settling towards B, I probably get closer to Haram (I'm only guessing at his location based on other players' locations and where I've seen his scout), and I might be able to claim a stone.

*I have already settled heavily towards C, and if I continue to do so I will get closer to GermanJojo and at least get some more food. GermanJojo seems to be doing badly, so getting closer to him would be quite nice.

*If I prioritize settling towards D, I can probably claim the gems (which is equidistant from me and HAK), and I may be able to get a food or two for my northern cities. This puts me in more likely conflict with HAK. That's good and bad; good because he seems to be a bit loopy militarily, and bad because he seems to be a bit loopy militarily.

On top of the above, all of A/B/D include useful coastal cities which can help to settle an island; A and B help in the southwest, and D helps in the northeast.

Next turn I will know where iron is; at that point I'll start formulating some more concrete settling plans.

[NobleHelium]

Why are you so convinced that you have iron?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Why are you so convinced that you have iron?

[SevenSpirits]

I know it's a joke question, but a serious answer is that based on past games and current mapmaking practices I'm statistically very likely to have iron.

That said, I don't think I said anywhere that I expected to have iron. I said I would find out where iron is, which is a different thing. If I have neither copper nor iron easily accessible, that's also kind of important to know about.