[SPOILERS] Bismark of Sumeria (luddite + Atlas1998)

[luddite]

Had a chat with Plako and he explained what happened:

plako: I guess you've followed civstats
me: haha yeah
I noticed you captured a city...
plako: essentially we had the forces to take it, but we signed a peace deal
that included it

So... that clears up the mystery of WarlordDr. I feel really sorry for WarriorKnight. He said he hadn't looked at the game at all before coming in, so he had no idea what he was getting into lol. I wonder if he still would have agreed to play if he had known? Plako will probably finish him off as soon as whatever NAP they must have signed expires.

So anyway... this gives Plako 4 cities, while most other players still have 2 (the Dutch settled a third this turn). That worries me a bit- Plako is a strong player, and 4 cities gives him a big early lead. Hopefully my wonderspamming will be enough to overcome it, and maybe this will focus the other players attention on him.

[luddite]

So these are the new demographics. You can see how the "rival best" for both MFG and food has shot up dramatically, thanks to Plako's expansion. He didn't increase in GNP though, because of the maintenance costs.

On an unrelated note, I've been trying to figure out what to do in regards to great people/wonders. If I build the ToA, I'd like to get at least one great person out of it. I think I'm going to pair it with the colossus in city 3 and make a Great Merchant farm there. I can actually build the ToA before the Colossus, because I really doubt anyone will even try to build the Colossus. City 4 will run an engineer to produce the Great Engineer who will build the Great Library down south, in the fish n' pigs city that will become my gpp farm. It's not quite as good as having the ToA in the same city as the Great Library and National Epic, but if I delay it that long I'll risk losing it, and I really want to have those last wonders in a city with a big food surplus.

[Krill]

For some reason a lot of the pictures in this thread don;t show properly for me. Is anyone else having issues?

[luddite]

Hmm is anyone else having problems? I've been using the same site (tinypic) to host all the pictures.

[Bruindane]

No image problems here. C&D question though, why does it list gnp rank as 2 if you are tied for 1st?

[luddite]

No image problems here. C&D question though, why does it list gnp rank as 2 if you are tied for 1st?

As I understand it, it gives rank 1 to whoever gets to 1st place first. I'm not sure about that, though.

[luddite]

Anyway I guess I'll continue with tinypic for now. I can switch to another host if it doesn't work for other people, though.


That's the situation with my cities now. I planned out my opening build so long ago, it's been quite a while since I've had to worry about anything but now I have to start planning again. I'm building roads on as many forests as possible, but getting the workers into position to chop the oracle as soon as bronze working finishes. Then I can whip a settler from Murphy's, and send him down to the site for city 4, which will build a forge and run an engineer. That should get out just in time to pop a GE before the GP from the oracle.

I'll almost certainly win the oracle at this point. My only real competition was from Adlain, who started with mysticism and I assume got Buddhism. But he just founded a new city this turn, which would be a strange move if he was planning on building the oracle.

[luddite]

Krill asked for a T50 report, so I'll do that here.


I have a fairly large population overall, since I grew quickly to work cottages.



My capital is producing quite a lot of science for this early in the game. I'll have it build a forge after the oracle and settler finish. I won't whip it though, I need to keep up the research to get the worker techs I've skipped. I'm also wondering if I might be able to snag hinduism. Eventually I'd like to cottage over everything in the capital except the 3 bonus tiles. The bonus tiles will give me a food surplus of 7, and I'll need 9 food to cottage all the hill and plains tiles, so I'll have to make up the difference with Great Merchants.


Murphy's has increased its production to finish the oracle. With two forest chops from my 3 workers, it will have exactly enough hammers to finish the oracle in 3 turns. Actually, I could probably delay it more than that, but I might as well finish it now just to make sure. I'll allow it to grow into unhappiness now, and then 2-pop whip a settler after the oracle is done.


I have a strong lead in GNP over everyone except Lord Parkin, and his is mostly culture. Plako also has a lot of culture because he's creative, so his research speed must be really low right now. I'd estimate that Plako has only about half my research power at the moment.


Not doing so well in mfg. It's better than it looks though, since most of what I've built have been workers, granaries, and the Oracle, all of which give me bonus hammers that don't show up on the graph.


I'm OK in food, although my cities have no room to grow right now.


I should be able to make up the missing techs before I really need them. Fishing will only take 2 turns to finish.


Not a lot in the way of units right now.


I'd really like to make contact with more people, if only for the tech discounts.

[luddite]

I've discovered Bronze Working this turn, revealing copper in a really useful place:

However, this left me with a dilemma. Is it worth delaying the Oracle to mine the copper? I'm preeeetty sure no one else is building it, but not 100% sure. After some wrestling with myself, I decided to use 1 worker to mine the copper while the other 2 chop forests. This will only delay the Oracle by 1 turn, and hopefully allow me to get the settler out faster. If I end up losing it by one turn, I will be greatly displeased.

Also I'm somehow back to 1st place in score lol.

[luddite]

So, this happened.

The gods have granted us knowledge of metal.
I have almost double the score of the bottom two players now. It won't last of course, but it's nice to see!

new demos. I've gained quite a bit in gnp. That's just from culture though. The real benefit is the 775 free beakers for metal casting. I might even win hinduism lol. I know it's normally a terrible idea to focus so much on religious techs early on, but this is the right map for it. I've got plenty of room to expand, and secure borders on both sides.


And, I'm about to found another city! This one can claim gold, hopefully as the hindu holy city it won't even need a monument.


This is what I can see in the west. I sent my scout down into a deadend.


And this is what I can see in the southeast, in land which LP has agreed to let me settle. I wish there was a gems or ivory there.


This is really confusing me.

Why is it getting 4 food surplus? It should only have a surplus of 2. Does the unhappy citizen not eat anything when producing a settler? Well anyway I'm not complaining, it works out great for me. I'll switch to slavery as soon as polytheism is finished, and then 2-pop whip the settler.