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RBP7 [SPOILERS] - The Chronicles of Nyania

Still not confirmed for sure whether ASM is connected, though it's looking more likely.

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot2369.jpg]

The unfortunate news is that Rainbow Dash has ended his turn next to a lion. Fortunately he's on a forest though, so he should have pretty decent odds of survival. Still, fingers crossed.

Down south, there's a slight ray of hope - we've found a single desert-hill Gold.

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot2368.jpg]

Still no visible food though, and that Gold's going to do us little good in an otherwise barren environment. Let's hope some substantial food starts appearing nearby soon. smile
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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Watching Civstats, it seems another tech was just popped - by Sunrise, who already popped one a few turns back. So, he's the first player to pop two techs in this game. Wish we could be as lucky...

Incidentally, our Scout will have 78.7% odds of survival in this situation. Not quite as high as I was hoping, but hopefully high enough. We'll see soon enough anyway.
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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That gold seems nice. Hope it comes with fish and pigs. (Sorry for being absent, this weekend was crazy).
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nabaxo Wrote:That gold seems nice. Hope it comes with fish and pigs. (Sorry for being absent, this weekend was crazy).
No worries. smile

Fish and Pigs would have been nice, but it didn't quite turn out that way, as you'll see in the next post...
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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Rainbow Dash survived, though with only 0.3/1 health and a measly 1 XP. Would take 7 turns to heal... and given how many animals/barbarians/foreign units are out there, I'm wondering if it's even worth bothering to take the time to heal. Might be more efficient just to run as fast and far as we can until we're stopped - at least that way we might reveal more territory.

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot2371.jpg]

Oh, and ASM turns out to be connected to Team Googly by the way, which is good news.

As for the Gold spot... well, there's food, but only one source and just about the worst kind: Clams.

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot2370.jpg]

That'll require us to research a technology and build a 30-hammer unit to hook up. Even unirrigated Rice wouldn't require any further investment to hook up. Oh well, I suppose we should just be grateful we have any food at all, right? rolleye

We'll also have to settle on the grassland hill if we want to get access to the food resource without a border pop, which is less than ideal. Not much choice though, since it looks like we won't have Mysticism until post T50. (Bronze Working and The Wheel are too critical to delay.) Ugh.

Also, it's starting to look like we're connected by a land bridge to a larger land mass over in the east. This is probably bad news as well, since it means that not only do we have crap land and a close western neighbour with awesome land, but we probably have other belligerent civs to our south and east that will cause problems for us too.

If there was ever a hand-crafted situation to ensure that we have next to no chance of surviving the early game, let alone winning the whole thing, this is probably it. lol Ah well, we can always try to inflict the maximum possible damage if we're on our way out.
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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So just how badly are we screwed? Well, here's a good idea.

The average distance between players in this sort of setup should be about 13-17 tiles. There are 2967 land tiles on this map (from the mouseover of "Land score" in the scoreboard). With 18 players, that works out to an average of 2967/18 = 165 tiles per player. With me so far?

Okay then, so let's see what we got.

[Image: Civ4ScreenShot2372.jpg]

Taking the equidistant line between us and Carthage. We each have 6 tiles in our "spheres of influence". This doesn't mean that we absolutely can't settle further towards them than that (or they can't settle further towards us)... but it does mean that such a city would be closer to the rival player than to the founding player, i.e. much harder to defend. Sticking to your "sphere of influence" is always the safest bet early on, unless you have exceptional circumstances.

Now working on the assumption that we're connected to another landmass with more civs to the south/east (which is looking extremely likely at this point), then based on the average distance between players, our "sphere of influence" to the south will likely be 6-8 tiles (half of the 13-17 tile average distance between civs).

So, what does that leave us with?

Best case scenario (8 tiles to the south): 67 tiles. Worst case scenario (6 tiles to the south): 62 tiles. A far cry from the 165 tile average per civ.

But it gets worse: of those 62-67 tiles, 12-14 are useless flat tundra, flat ice, or flat desert. So in reality we have 50-53 useable land tiles within the sphere of influence around our start.

It doesn't finish there though. Check out how many food resources we have outside our capital in our sphere of influence: a piddly 4. Unirrigated Wheat, plains Sheep, Clam and Fish. Two of those four (Sheep and Fish) are stuck in the relatively useless north with no hills for hammers in sight. In the west, we have the Wheat, and that's it. In the south, we have the Clam, and that's it.

The land to directly across from our capital is looking almost certainly like part of a larger continent now - and thus probably within someone else's sphere of influence rather than ours. As for the island to the north... if it even is one, it's unlikely to hold much besides tundra and ice. Even if we do have a bit of extra land available in a marginally settleable island or two, that's massively worse than having that extra land reachable by land units, due to the investment and time required for Fishing + Sailing + Galley before you even get the Settler.

So basically, we have a grand total of 50-53 accessible and useable land tiles around our start, and just three relatively crappy city sites available within our sphere of influence: one with next to no hammers (north), and the other two (west and south) with hardly any food.

Meanwhile, the average player has 165 land tiles available to them, and a few will have more than that to make up for our own massive shortfall. (Those 100 tiles must have gone somewhere else, after all.)

In terms of available land alone, we're three times worse off than the average civ in this game. Let alone the luckiest ones.

We are so screwed. lol
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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Pish.

Screwed. Schmewed. Just get some Water I Adepts our there and you'll be fine.

OH!.

Right.

Wrong game.

NM..

tongue
fnord
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Looking forward to see what you make of it!
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Thoth Wrote:Pish.

Screwed. Schmewed. Just get some Water I Adepts our there and you'll be fine.

OH!.

Right.

Wrong game.

NM..

tongue
lol I certainly wouldn't complain if I had some FFH units mysteriously appear under my control. Don't think it'll happen though, unfortunately.

regoarrarr Wrote:Looking forward to see what you make of it!
Any last hope now lies with the strategic resources we (and our neighbours) may or may not have. So I guess we'll see soon enough whether we have just a slim chance or no chance at all in this thing. wink With no strategic resources (or poor/badly located ones), I'm not even sure we could survive long enough under a determined invasion to escape to an island (assuming there is one).
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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Incidentally, I'll be interested to see after the game if we genuinely got THE worst start out of all 18 players. We'd certainly have to be a contender for that position, I imagine. If anyone else is actually worse off than us in terms of land, then I really feel sorry for them.

Actually, if you take into account our crappy civ/leader draw as well as the awful land, I'd be highly surprised if we didn't rank as having the worst luck of all 18 players. wink

Ah well, we can always just get back to the basics: try to dig in and at least hold on long enough to not be amongst the first civs eliminated.
Lord Parkin
Past games: Pitboss 4 | Pitboss 7 | Pitboss 14Pitboss 18 | Pitboss 20 | Pitboss 21
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