[SPOILERS] PB50: scooter's Big Cat Adventure

[scooter]

Now you could plant on eastern coast, right?

I definitely could, but it's awkward and a bit hard to defend because it's on flat ground adjacent to hills. I'm definitely considering it.


Turn 32-33





Cornflakes' very annoying city is here. There's really nothing I can do about it anytime soon. He's going to get a bowman or two in there as well, and that city will be safe for a very long time. There's also a real possibility he founds a religion in this city, giving it some cultural push.





Border pop end of turn, and Superdeath hasn't begun hooking his horses yet. Cornflakes hasn't either. It's a nice bit of extra info. I'm feeling better about Superdeath as neighbor only because I'll have tons of advance warning if he tries anything.





In a normal game, I'd be thrilled with this start and what it means for the snowball, but this isn't a very snowball-y game, so I'm not sure it matters as much. I'll probably be taking the soldier lead soon as I get a pair of archers out.

[scooter]

Turn 34-35

Right on cue, Cornflakes founded Buddhism in the border city. Good thing I'm Creative?






I'm going to lose a few land tiles at first, but I'll be ok. I'm still a bit annoyed at the way things shook out, but it'll be fine. I whipped the Archer this turn at Carole Baskin just in time to overflow into a Granary. It's going to be a bit annoying getting that complete, but it needs to be done. Joe Exotic meanwhile is starting to come online as the horses are now improved. It also needs a Granary next. I don't anticipate whipping it a ton mainly because its base production is so strong (and the gold so imperative) that it's of iffy value. Hooking the clams will allow me to more freely share the Pigs over to Carole Baskin, allowing that much weaker city to be a whipping post.


I'm slightly ahead of my original projected Pyramids pace, so that's a bit of good news. With Cornflakes choosing Buddhism, that suggests he's going Priesthood and Oracle next. He can Oracle Metal Casting about as quickly as I can tech MC. In theory this means he could definitely get an Engineer before me, but it would be a risky low-odds affair. I don't imagine he would run an Engineer for awhile for a 50/50 shot at it, but if he does, that's the last remaining path for me to lose this race. You know, short of death. I do have 3 archers now at least.

[scooter]

Turn 36-39

Very little of interest happened over the weekend domestically. I got a work boat out, and I'm getting granaries running in both cities. I need to get a chop into Carole Baskin both to remove the forest next to the capital and get the granary going, and then I need to prechop my forge in the capital. That's going to require a second worker too. Internationally though, one thing of note.









Yuris got himself a shiny new War Chariot, and he's already started to annoy Superdeath. This is probably good news to me unless he wanders east to harass me. I'm not sure what he gains out of that, though, so I think he'll leave me alone. I just have to be careful to stay out of range with my scout lest I donate some free XP.

[scooter]

Turn 40

I noticed Superdeath had a power bump recently, and realized I had forgotten to check for something recently.




Yeah, that's the supermarket armoury armory.





And there's a C1 axe that I'm assuming can promote to Woody2. I went back and checked past screenshots, and it looks like the building has been there for a bit, so the power bump I noticed was probably the axe. The good news is this and the War Chariot are likely related to each other. Superdeath sent his settler somewhere not near me, so probably the backlines location directly to his west. Yuris, surprisingly enough, did not settle the fish location between him and Cornflakes. Cornflakes is seriously hitting the jackpot on the early game here, and is in line to get 7-8 cities barring intervention. Anyway, Yuris' settler likely went southwest along the copper/river or west for the copper/fish. See the first post in this thread for reference.





As for what this means for me, there's a few things. First, I dumped 1h into a Chariot at Carole Baskin so I can whip it at any time. I should have plenty of advance warning. Also, I moved to chop the forest adjacent to CB. This will require any axe from Superdeath to move onto flat ground (thus resulting in certain chariot death without spear escorts) in order to attack me, which should be enough to keep that away. I needed to chop anyway to get the Granary completed here.

[scooter]

Turns 41-43





Yuris was poking around with this War Chariot a couple turns ago. I was thinking this was actually a second War Chariot rather than the one shown previously based on the movement and positioning I saw. I was briefly nervous he'd harass me, but I couldn't imagine why since those in opposite positions are kind of natural allies. Also, one of the western players landed Hinduism. I didn't check the scores to see who it was, but I gotta imagine that's going to cause some border tensions.





Couple turns later, the WC disappeared again (back towards Superdeath I think), and Superdeath has since removed his axe from his capital and built a spear. That definitely seems to be in response to Yuris. I'd like to get a closer look, but that's hard to do without losing my scout.





Chop completed into the Granary at Carole Baskin last turn. Next turn it will be whipped to completion. Joe Exotic finished the Granary end of turn, and it will build a 4T worker next, and the two workers will move on to pre-chopping my Forge. I'm planning to put all 3 forests into it. I haven't really seen signs of Cornflakes setting up Oracle, which is nice. It's possible he's setting it up in his capital (especially since I haven't seen workers recently), but one of my top concerns was him chopping it into his confusingly named second city and causing me more cultural headaches than it's already causing. There's still time for him to do that of course, but it's looking less likely. At the very least, my paranoia over some Pyramids weirdness with a low-odds Engineer looks increasingly unlikely. Knock on wood.

[scooter]

Turn 44-45

I've noticed Superdeath is shuffling units around, and Yuris has disappeared from my view. These two shots are from consecutive turns.








He's been shuffling this axe/spear around, so presumably he and Yuris are at least pressuring each other a bit. The big winner continues to be Cornflakes, with me a lesser beneficiary.





I've been looking for signs of a power dip indicating actual fighting, but nothing yet. Yuris and Cornflakes both have those small dips, but I think those are just whips. I'm getting quite low, but I do have a half-complete chariot in the queue and less need for units, so I'm not too concerned.


I'm getting the Forge chops setup now for when MC comes in later this week.

[scooter]

Turn 46-47






There's actually a lot going on here.


1) Superdeath's capital is once again "emptied" (except for the Archer that still can't legally move for a few more turns), so he's definitely shuffling units around still, which suggests an active threat from Yuris. His power has also spiked to #1, FWIW.


2) Superdeath has lost some 3rd ring tiles to Egyptian culture. This confirms that Yuris settled towards him and founded Hinduism in the border city, sparking tensions. So basically, what Cornflakes did to me, except way worse because they're closer, and Superdeath isn't Creative.


3) Cornflakes got the fish site between himself and Yuris as I feared. He's in a very strong position, no doubt.






Yuris apparently seems to be putting on all this pressure with... smoke and mirrors? Well, that's not quite right. More like, behold the power of 2 War Chariots, which I think comprises almost his entire military. I have just 3 archers completed, and I'm nearly dead even with him. I do know Superdeath has built at least one spear (probably 2?), so I would think he could seriously pressure Yuris with this kind of discrepancy. Honestly, he might take the Hindu holy city. Add to this the fact that Yuris just got a reload for a misclick, and he sounded pretty concerned about it suggests it's very much a hot war over there.


My flatline looks bad, but I think I'm fine. Cornflakes' power is only higher because he has to seriously defend two border cities, and he's doing so. He could theoretically try to choke me, but why risk that with 2-movers on your other border, and a strong position. Superdeath's power spike is real, but he's clearly busy.

[scooter]

Turn 48

I decided to play riskier with my scout given that there seems to be a hot war (that wouldn't waste attacks on a third party scout), and the fact that I have another one.






Well this is odd. So, yes, Superdeath is attacking Yuris. I'm trying to figure out why there's an uncovered axe on flat ground moving into the player with War Chariots, and also why it's still alive considering Yuris played after Superdeath. The axe must have been out of reach because I know by power graphs that Superdeath has other units in the fog. Also, note that the axe has Shock. When you have 3 promos available thanks to your arguably slightly busted UB, surely you take Formation if War Chariots are your concern, right? Instead this looks like Praet insurance. It makes me think this was part of a larger stack? That would mean Yuris killed some units, but I'll have to wait a bit to see if that's true.

Actually, that might not be true. I'm noticing now as I'm writing that up that my power is showing as .6 of Superdeath's on the scoreboard. How does that figure work? I've never used BUG before. Is that "live" data, or does that just reflect what's on the power graphs? I didn't notice any power graph dip (both him and I were flat), but I was at .5 last turn, implying he dropped relative to me. Anyway, I'm inclined to believe now there was some fighting, especially when I see both players thread updated and the lurker thread updated too.






Enough about all that, let's look domestically. I'm whipping Carole Baskin next turn, and I'm slow building an axe in Joe Exotic while growing. I'm going to be working some non-ideal tiles, but it's the cost of setting up this Forge triple chop. It's lining up really nicely. Next turn my top worker (which has prechopped that forest down to 1T) moves 1E and chops. The new worker chops in place, then will move 1N to finish the prechop. That will put 60h into the Forge in the first two turns and should move things along nicely. I badly need to get some FP farms down, so that'll be the next priority.

[Charriu]

About BUG. It is the same power as in the power graphs, but I haven't tested if this is any different in a pitboss.
You can also adjust the power ratio to two decimal digits. It can be found in the BUG menu (top-left) and there under scoreboard.

[scooter]

Thanks Charriu. I made the 3 decimal point change, and I'm a fan of that for sure.


Turn 49-50

Big update for T50.





Saw this last turn, and this would seem to confirm a skirmish that Yuris won. Given there was an untouched axe on flatland and two wounded War Chariots, almost certainly this means Yuris attacked two units and killed them both. Probably two axes. Weird that Superdeath would move in a stack of axes uncovered though when his opponent has War Chariots. I don't quite understand that. Maybe there was a spear, and he sacrificed a unit into it? I'm not quite sure. This leads to the current turn.





It's T50, so Yuris can now move his super archer down to Memphis to help defend. He's got 5 units in there already (though no pure defenders), so Superdeath must have something truly massive. Given where his power is (more on that later), that seems to be the case. That said, this is a city on a hill with culture and a river. There's... no way he's taking this pre-catapults. I suppose he has a window right now if he's got a huge stack in the fog, but once that archer arrives it's lights out. The fact that Yuris is moving this archer indicates that Superdeath's stack is not a total joke. Eh, I guess it's a change he wants to make regardless. I wonder if Yuri will go on the offensive soon once he gets that archer in place and his War Chariots healed. I'll be watching with great interest, and I'll try to get a few units over this way, though I'll surely be too undermanned to do much.





I dumped CB overflow into a settler. I'm going to swap away from that next turn. I'll probably do a couple whip overflows for the time being until I can get into double whip range. The settler is for the southern island, and I'll need a galley (and Sailing) first, but it's going to be a pain getting this settler out in general since Joe Exotic will have other things to do, so I'm getting started on it now. My workers are continuing to prep for the Forge chop. Finally, the Chariot is just going to poke around and help the scouts be less vulnerable. It obviously can't do much of anything on its own.





Cornflakes is starting to pull away in the traditional demos. I'm being forced to work some unimproved tiles thanks to this forge chop, so things are hardly ideal on the development path right now, but my start is unconventional in a lot of ways. It just reinforces some urgency to get some value out of my post-Pyramids tech situation before Cornflakes gets too out of hand.





Serious quantity vs quality war going on to the west. Superdeath is in trouble if he doesn't take Memphis soon. His problem is his traits and civ give him almost no catchup value. The peak of his leader/civ combo relative to the field is pretty much right now, and he's had both neighbors successfully settle towards him, and one of those is a well-defended holy city right in his face. I'm adding units now so he doesn't think to turn to me, but frankly I don't think he'll be able to with War Chariots just 1 move away from forking him.





Superdeath and Yuris are seeing some painful growth curve deflation as they whip themselves hard. Cornflakes is the only person playing conventionally right now, and that + Garden is paying off hard. I did underestimate the value of the early Garden when evaluating civs. That's a really strong UB.





Not super interesting as it's just people alternating between working production and whipping on just food.





Another confirmation that Superdeath has a lot of units, as I think he's paying non-trivial maintenance already.