[SPOILERS] DaveV is not clowning around. Well, maybe a little bit...

[DaveV]

I offered a map trade with Brian, and he accepted. He's snug up against Aurorarcher's borders, a painful place to be with the Kurio world spell. He appears to have built a temple of the hand in his border city.

It looks like it's Coldrain - me - xist across the bottom of the map. Bing may be in the south or central part of the map; it's hard to judge based on the borders I can see.



Meanwhile, I'm preparing to settle an island city unless something catastrophic happens before my next turn. Note the kill team 4S of Krusty.



I have a shock warrior and my strong freak ready to be upgraded to swordsmen in Bozo. Might as well take advantage of my Ingenuity trait. They can make it to Krusty in time to defend it. If the warriors try to bypass the city, I should have the firepower to kill at least some of them.

Edit: Brian just finished the White Hand, and someone grabbed Octopus Overlords.

[DaveV]

I just played turn 84. The city of Oleg Popov has been built on the island, and I'm ready to build another city NW of the copper. It won't be a great city, just wheat and irrigated plains for food, but it should have good production, and I need to crank units.

coldrain conquered Ultigar, the barb city between us. I rejiggered my dot map assuming I wouldn't get that city, but he's awfully close now (another city will go 2N of wine if I have time for that). The log shows that Barnaxus died last turn, which I believe is the turn after he conquered the Ultigar. So either a counterstrike by the barbs, or he's in a hot war with Bing (the only candidate, I can see that he's not at war with the other three).



A new barb city spawned between xist and me; it has the C2 spider lurking nearby and a gorilla for extra defense.



I promoted my northern galley to Buccaneer and am exploring the shipwreck just off Auro's island. More negative diplo points, but I need to do something to change the direction of this game.

[DaveV]

The exploration of the lair completed at the beginning of my turn, and it was not good:



As I recall, a named barb unit means a BigBad result, the worst class of bad outcomes. Bad outcomes are more likely than good ones, although there are some very good results to tempt players to try their luck. You can see why I said that this would hurt my relations with Auroarcher. If I'm lucky, the drowns will head Auro's way and the sea serpent will guard the channel and prevent him from attacking me navally.

On the island of Oleg Popov, I popped the graveyard. Exploration of graveyards is immediate, and the results are more likely to be positive (60:40). Best outcome is a free tech; I wasn't that lucky, but did get some loose change:



That's enough for 1.5 warrior->swordsman upgrades, thanks to my Ingenuity trait. It also lets me keep researching at a deficit toward Trade, which will give me a nice boost in GNP.

Finally, the barb kill team moved to a position where all they can do is attack Krusty.



My guys are on a hill, and the barbs are attacking across a river. I'll be really mad if I lose any of these combats.

[sunrise089]

Thought I was clicking on PB83 but ended up here. Read the most recent post. Thought “you know, I should fire up FFH, it’s been a while.” Out of practice so let’s go Increasing Difficulty but starting on Noble instead of Prince or Monarch.

Eliminated Turn 0, score of zero points. If that isn’t a message from the Civ gods I don’t know what is.

[DaveV]

Thought I was clicking on PB83 but ended up here. Read the most recent post. Thought “you know, I should fire up FFH, it’s been a while.” Out of practice so let’s go Increasing Difficulty but starting on Noble instead of Prince or Monarch.

Eliminated Turn 0, score of zero points. If that isn’t a message from the Civ gods I don’t know what is.

Bait and switch !

[DaveV]

Here's another two-turn report. Last turn, xist showed a poisoned, highly promoted warrior bloodpet in our boundary land. I guess that means he took out the spider (with some pretty good luck, by my guess). On turn 87, he moved into my territory, presumably to heal.



Meanwhile, the stack of drowns are moving my way, even though Auro's island city is closer to their spawn point than my cities. I started this mess, so I can't complain.

My galley was already in Buccaneer mode; with a CI promotion, it got pretty good odds:



And the stack is down to 3 drowns. My galley is at 6/5 XP, 1.5/6 HP.

I finished Trade at EoT, which means I can see everyone's techs:







With enough work, I could figure everyone's exact tech situation. As I said at the beginning of the thread, though, that's beyond the scope of my low-effort game. As my physics textbooks used to enjoy saying, the answer is left as an exercise for the reader.

[Qgqqqqq]

Heh, I've been feeling the single player itch as well Sunrise. Could do a succession game if you were interested?

[DaveV]

Heh, I've been feeling the single player itch as well Sunrise. Could do a succession game if you were interested?

I'd play a succession game after this one is over, or if the game was somehow engineered to require minimum time and effort.

[DaveV]

I've been chugging along in my mid-pack position, and that doesn't look to be changing in the near future.

The drowns were midway between my city of Emmett Kelly and Auro's city of Minas Morgul. I stuffed a bunch of units into my city to try to drive them off, but they moved my way:



I attacked with the galley, picking off another drown. 9/10 XP, no damage to my galley. And then there were two. But at least they succeeded in interrupting my worker who was farming the jungle tile E of the city.

In the south, I'm trying to settle a city to culture flip the barb city. A lizardman appeared at the worst possible time:



He can attack my freak at something like 27% odds; if he wins, I hope he'll stay where my swordsman can finish him off. The road SE of the settler stack is pre-roaded, so I should be able to settle 2SE of the stack if the lizardman doesn't get lucky.

I've settled two new hilltop cities on my border with coldrain, and failed to rename one of them when I thought I had done it. I guess that shows how much attention I'm paying to this game.

[DaveV]

The two remaining drowns attacked into Emmett Kelly, doing a fair amount of damage to my Heroic Strength freak.



Meanwhile, in the south, the lizardman moved next to my swordsman, who almost died attacking at 97% odds. Look at all the bears! There's a bear den 2S of my new city. I was lucky to find the city tile unoccupied, I guess. Maybe there's iron or gunpowder or mithril or something there.



Yes, I'm still settling cities on turn 93, hoping to flip the barb city in >15 turns. I'm disturbingly behind in power, but the top guys seem to be somewhat stalemated and I'm expecting the game to drag on for a while.