[SPOILER] Close to Win

[Charriu]

I'm finishing a scout in T33 that can reveal all necessary tiles around the southern copper in T34.

[Charriu]

T29:

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I got graphs on AT. Here some interesting things from them:

• My GNP is better thanks to the sheep
  
• I seem to have better food tiles in my capitol
  
• I see now what other players already told me about the power graph and the power ratio in the scoreboard. That will need fixing.
  

I also got contact with Mjmd thanks to his scout visiting my scout. Now he could assume that I came from the northern side of the jungles. We'll see if that will be useful. I also moved my settler north and switched to slavery. Interestingly AT joined the game while I was in there and he too switched to slavery, so expect his second city to pop up soon.

[Charriu]

T30+31:

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My second city BerserkHalfling was found in T31 and I'm the third player to do so. Even faster then two of the four IMP players.

[Charriu]

T30+31:

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AT is still pumping espionage points into me, which is annoying, because I lost graphs on him this round. I'm working on getting those graphs back. I think it's very important to know if any funny Woodsman II Holkans are coming my way. This is also the reason why I won't to connect copper as soon as possible and get me some axeman.




Exploration in the west continued. I like that there is a bigger desert between me and Mjmd. That way the floodplain valley to my west is a lot safer from any Mjmd expansion.

[Charriu]

T32 - 36:

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I finally explored the south-east enough for my third city and the newly discovered corn forces me to rethink my plans.

Thanks to extensive micro planning my timings also have changed:

• I was actually able to double whip the next settler one turn early, so it's finished in T37
  
• The overflow goes into a worker but unfortunately the worker was 4 hammers short to finish one turn early until...
  
• I discovered that I can intentionally delay my scout one turn and still uncover the necessary terrain
  
• I was doing that by working a simple grassland hill forest instead of the grassland hill mine. This in turn produced 4 hammers of overflow going into the settler and later the worker, finishing the worker one turn earlier.
  

Did I already say that microplanning is awesome.

[Charriu]

T37:

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Things stay interesting down south-east. New exploration reveals that this really might be a peninsula which is awesome. And there's also an island down south for international trade routes. Unfortunately that means I have to adjust my third city placement again. I planned to settle 1E of the copper, but that spot denies a lot of potential city spots on the peninsula and might orphan some seafood east of my scout. I might have to scout that area to make sure of that. Unfortunately I need that scout to secure my settlers movement, but maybe Mjmd will cover for me with his scout (1NW of incense).

[Charriu]

T38:

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Say hello to CommandoPygmies. As you can see I decided to go with a spot much closer to home . It can share the pig and spice with the capitol and has the copper in its first ring. It's on flatland but also in my backline. Later when the capitol needs most of its tile it will succumb to a smaller production city with some farms from the eastern river.
I also put in some tentative dotmapping for the peninsula. There actually was a seafood east of the scout, but even with my old plan I wouldn't have orphaned it. I will explain my dotmap (and maybe change it), when I explored all of the peninsula.

Also Mjmds scout moved west. Hey ... you should have fogbusted for me.  

Now I think I'm first to third city in this game, but what I'm most curious about is Jowy and Giraflorens. So far I haven't seen a score increase indicating their second city planted.

[Charriu]

The age of high-speed turn paces is coming to an end. Giraflorens and pindicator logged in without ending their turn. They probably need more time to think.

Oh and Jowy settled a city. I can't believe this really is his second city, but it's still in a believable time frame

[shallow_thought]

T38:

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Say hello to CommandoPygmies. As you can see I decided to go with a spot much closer to home . It can share the pig and spice with the capitol and has the copper in its first ring. It's on flatland but also in my backline. Later when the capitol needs most of its tile it will succumb to a smaller production city with some farms from the eastern river.

That's going to be a sad little city once all the bg boys with their own food get up and running, and your cap wants its pigs back. But I can see the value in the short term, certainly during the phase where everything is getting whipped from a low happy cap.

[Charriu]

I totally agree. The sad truth is that every city around my capital that also shares tiles with the capital lacks its own food with the sole exception in the north. For the time being it will be useful. After the border pop it will have some options for farms across the eastern river, which will be needed anyway to irrigate the corn tile. Next city will be founded around T51 and it will be the western red dot. I need to secure that western floodplain valley against Mjmd.