(Spoilers) Cheater Hater eats what he cooked

[Old Harry]

Is it turn 32 yet?

[Cheater Hater]

Is it turn 32 yet?

Not quite yet
Again, there isn't that much to talk about if I'm not willing to do that much C&D, and while I certainly can do that stuff, at the moment I'm having trouble getting motivated even to check if the turn had rolled (though admittedly yesterday was an aberration brought on by lack of sleep).

T21 pictures are here, and there isn't much there--I'm sure all my competitors are doing stuff like calculating who's getting techs when and such based on score, and I should be able to tell some of Krill's techs based on the power score (none of that's changed in SMEG, right?), but I'm not feeling up to it at the moment. Still, Krill's power is especially important since it determines whether or not I need to prioritize BW (or Archery technically; I still don't know how much I should prioritize what is still a dead-end tech even if a powered-up Slavery (since it doesn't require an anarchy turn) has been stuck there), assuming I don't find any Horses with my Warriors.

The interesting thing there is Warriors; my new plan is to build another Warrior since it finishes exactly when I would grow to size 4. I don't know if this is the right plan (I think I did the exact same thing in PB18, and I was the only one to grow to size 4 before the Settler), but it seems decent enough, especially since I don't know where I'm settling quite yet (I think I want it to be for horses just in case Krill tries to do something crazy, and my southern land is really weird--again, I really need to make a dotmap once I have my other three cardinal directions mapped out a bit).

[Cheater Hater]

I meant to post a report last turn, but T27 demands a report for one reason: we met pindicator!

The main reason I haven't posted a report yet is that I'm delaying my dotmap


(that screenshot is from T26, and dots might pop up on it soon if I get time)
Even my second city isn't set in stone yet--I'm settling the horses/corn site obviously, but I don't know if I want to settle 1SE of the corn or 1N of it--the 1SE site is much better and has horses first ring, but the 1N site lets me settle the site 1NW of the pigs, making better use of my tiles and not wasting the oasis.

After that settler finishes (with a chop) I don't know if I want Settler 2 or Worker 2 next--I guess if the plan is to 2-pop whip it, I want the Expansive hammer bonus? I'm surprised that pindicator already has a second city though--that feels early, though I guess pindicator is IMP.

[Cheater Hater]

It's been a while, but not much is happening--I founded my second city right after my last report, and my third city will be settled on T44. I need to get a handle on my dotmap, but other than that I hopefully can keep up. My pictures for T42 are here if you're interested.

[Cheater Hater]

Sorry I haven't reported much, but this game is really kicking my butt--here are the pictures from the last 7 turns (I don't even care enough to separate them by turn like I normally do), but as a summary I'm last in score by a decent margin, last in all three demos (GNP, Production, Food), I'm falling behind in cities (seriously, how can pindicator have 5 cities at this point?) and now I'm being overrun by barbs. I mean, I know I'm not spending nearly as much time as I should be on the game (consider that I've played 4 turns today) and my play quality isn't the highest, even by my standards, but I don't know how I'm managing to fail at everything simultaneously.

I have a bunch of cities marked on my map, and they don't seem that bad (assuming I can ever settle them--the only reason I don't have barbs in all four directions is that one of them is mainly water)--I think one of the biggest problems is my third city in the west, since the Pier/Lighthouse/Work Boat changes apparently make seafood-dependent cities absolutely horrible (and I still think that's the worst change of SMEG by far, especially the way Krill half-assed it to avoid a lot of coding). I'm also starting to get a bit annoyed by Torusworld's weird land formations (especially like the stuff in the west), but that's a minor complaint. If there are any lurkers out there, is there anything obvious I'm doing wrong besides that third city? And honestly, I'm starting to lose a lot of enthusiasm I had about SMEG in the first place--then again, if I'm only going to be able to focus on one game, I'd much rather have it be PB23 (where I'm tasked with not ruining the great position BGN left for me, and my indecision/self-doubt has almost done so).

[Old Harry]

Not that I know how to play smeg, but your cities are quite far apart, meaning they'll be stronger later, but slow starting without shared food, and harder to protect from barbs.

How many workers/wb/granaries have you got?

[Cheater Hater]

Not that I know how to play smeg, but your cities are quite far apart, meaning they'll be stronger later, but slow starting without shared food, and harder to protect from barbs.

How many workers/wb/granaries have you got?

Oh right, city placement again--I was bad with this in PBEM58, was much better in PB18 (Zulu) and PB23, but apparently my bad habits are starting to creep back in here. That means city 4 would probably be better in the north since it shares food with the capital (and gets copper, which isn't insignificant even with horses and Skirmishers), and then city 5 in the south should be fine since I can get a workboat ready right away.

I have 3 Workers, no Workboats, and 1 Granary I think--I'm Expansive, so I've been focusing on Workers a bit more than average, so that might be why I have fewer cities, especially when you combine that with having to build Piers.

Edit: I played T61, and am actually putting a picture in my thread for once:


I know you said farther-apart cities are harder to protect from barbs, but that still doesn't explain why I've seen 6 barb warriors in range of my cities (the 4 on screen here, plus two more I've killed by Djienne, not counting all the ones I found while scouting). I know SMEG changed barbs so that the only animals that spawned were Wolves, but this still seems like way too many barbs for only 60 turns in--am I just remembering wrong, or does the spawn rate appear to be higher (like, instead of going Lions->Wolves->Panthers->Bears->actual Barbs, it's going Wolves->actual Barbs, and much faster). Then again, I don't know why the animal distribution had to be varied so much (other than just removing/weakening Bears).

[Old Harry]

Closer together one chariot can cover two or even three cities. On the barbs - I think they have a set number based on size of landmass which they aim towards, but they only spawn in dark areas, so if your neighbours are spawnbusting better than you more will pop up for you... or it could be whatever crazy things you did to the code .

[Cheater Hater]

Well, things aren't completely imploding now, and even though I still have absolutely no chance anymore, have an update:


My biggest problem is that getting overrun by barbs has really set me back--not only have I fallen way behind on cities (I'm at 4, my opponents are at 6/7), all of my worker improvements (and I'm not really exaggerating with that) were pillaged. I guess I can try to be competitive, so it takes 3 turns to conquer me once someone gets Cats instead of 2 turns

[Cheater Hater]

What the heck--have an update from the bottom of the ladder:


I've managed to get up to 7 cities (and the 8th is getting settled next turn), and the barbs have finally stopped spawning around me (but not before taking one more worker, because I forgot they could use neutral roads), so it's kinda respectable, I guess? I also have Metal Casting, which means cheap Mints, but I feel like it's too little too late--I'm already starting to have city sites poached, and multiple people have swapped into Vassalage (this feels way too early for Feudalism though--the Civic screen says it didn't move though), meaning I'm way behind in tech. But at least I'm not dead last in everything:


My production also has to improve once my cities regrow from the recent round of whips, right? Of course, that will be about the time someone decides to attack me, and that's when I'm retiring to AI, especially if I'm still warring in PB23 at that point (which seems likely, though the turn pace in this game has been slowing down a little). Why couldn't this just have been the quick-and-dirty stress test PB like Krill originally proposed? Of course, the next version of this is going to remove active espionage just because someone said one wrong thing to Krill earlier, so it's not like it matters.

All this is showing is that I should probably stick to one game at a time, if that--once one game actually gets interesting, all my other games suffer--the same thing happened with PB23 once plako invaded; I started just wandering around aimlessly. Even if I wanted to add another game (like, say, pindicator's position in PBEM64, or the upcoming 50 player PB27), I couldn't give it the attention it deserves.