[SPOILERS] Stonehenge First: scooter's thread

[scooter]

You can see who owns what wonders in the top cities screen, as long as you've met the owner of the wonder. It's really not such a mystery.

Yeah I knew that. I just didn't bother checking. I kind of was enjoying the mystery of it all until AT went all spoiler on us.

[scooter]

T75-76 plan is working, but too slow

Code of Laws bulb happened as planned:



Caste will be useful once I get done with my prophet silliness. Courthouses will be important for me too. However, the main problem I'm facing is this:



Yep, Commodore got Great Library. I was hoping AT would swipe that from him. This is getting out of control. This is why I felt Pyramids was just so powerful - it gets rolling so much faster. Well, in the next 7 turns or so I should be picking up Maths, Civil Service, and Monarchy, all of which will be a noticeable boost for me. Since I got my bulb in, I need to finish Maths in order to unlock the CS bulb, so I turned tech on finally. It did make this look reasonable:



Hey, look, my GNP exists. Next turn I finished Apostolic Palace (which promptly fixed that MFG number too):



As you might notice, I also got that silver hooked. It's a bit risky - if AT has a large number of chariots in range he could do some damage, but I do have it covered by a couple units. If I had waited one more I could have gotten a spear, but seeing as Pin can't hit it (only AT), I felt OK about it. Civil Service prophet:



This is indeed the last prophet I'll intentionally generate - I'll be done working priests after this. I've had to whip this city pretty frequently, so it'll be nice to finally get it going. onto all this grassland I have.

By the way, with all the hills on this map, someone definitely should have picked Celts.

[scooter]

Well then. Commodore and AT squabbling is about the best news I could receive. Cmon AT, bulb your Machinery and get some xbows into the field and get your revenge.

Of course, if Commodore seriously KEPT the city as he is saying, that could be terrible news if his little invasion is seriously successful.

[scooter]

T77 returns to the top of the scoreboard

Apparently I still have wonder videos on:



That's an instant +12hpt with an additional +4hpt coming soon. More possible later. I'm about at the point where I'll settle my 5th city. Anyways, I think the city thing happened somewhere in this mess:



I do regret not being able to see more of this land. Also, note the Engineer being born - Commodore I think? Anyways AT's score dropped by 196 points between turns. Oddly, Commodore's score only rose by... 18 points. Huh? Everything about that looks like a raze and not a capture. I would have just assumed raze if they hadn't explicitly stated it was a capture in the banter thread. This is really weird. I need to think about this.

[scooter]

By the way, my GNP is up to 3rd when science is shut off. I'm 2nd with it on, but I sadly I can't sniff what Commodore is at when his is on.

[scooter]

T78-81 increases in optimism

First the bad news:



I'm pretty sure that's the Music artist dropping, probably to Commodore. I'm nowhere close to Music. The good news is I get my prophet on schedule:



Which means:



I actually chose NOT to revolt just yet because now I'm finishing Monarchy at end of turn. Next turn I'll double-revolt into Bureau + HR. I thought about tripling into Caste, but I don't want to leave myself vulnerable without whipping abilities for 5 turns as I'm soft in a couple spots, and I also won't use the extra slots for now anyways because I'll be trying to grow onto my new HR happy cap, so I'm remaining in slavery for the time being. Anyways, all this stuff results in these demos and this is BEFORE the revolts:



Now, this is still pretty precarious because of the soldier count. I'm overflowing into HBR and I'll get stables and then some HAs. I'm thinking about popping into Theocracy when they come out too just to get some extra oomph on the HAs. Then I'll need construction shortly thereafter. If I don't have these two things, I'll die to somebody's crossbows sooner rather than later, and that's not a pleasant thought to me. Anyways, I'm thinking about next turn doing my double revolt (staying in OR) and getting the stables up and then starting on HAs and some various military, and then swap into Theo after my 5 turn wait is up and finish a bunch of well promoted HAs. Then 5 turns later go back to OR. Lots of fun possibilities with Spiritual in this game.

ALso note on the demos that COmmodore likely has his tech shut off or doesn't have a tech selected, as his GNP was in the 150s just 6 turns ago, so surely he can do better than 121. However, it's still nice to have made a decent economic recovery. Also note I've grown into unhappiness in a couple cites in anticipation of a swap to HR, so those first 3 numbers will nudge up a bit further. The other problem I have is I"m just missing a TON of techs. No Iron Working, no Metal Casting, no Construction, no Archery/HBR (I'm about to 1-turn those though), no Aest-Lit, etc etc. I'm significantly behind in a lot of techs, although surely I'm the first to Civil Service. I've just taken a totally different tech path from the others. Will be interesting to see if the religious path pays off here or not. It was very slow starting but it's picked up a bit.

This game is very competitive right now which is fun. Commodore has to be the favorite with the Pyramids, but his total lack of economic traits does hurt him more than a bit. AT was actually about as scary as you can get, but then he had his city fiasco with Commodore, so that bumped him back. Pindicator seems to be struggling a bit - it's really hard to tell what he's doing or what his plan is. It really feels like he's the only one without a real advantage. Picking ORG really hurts him - it really has almost no value on this map. I mean, I got my Courthouses up in no time. I don't think he's doing bad by any stretch, he just doesn't seem to have any sort of edge like the rest of us have (Commodore = Pyramids, AT = xbows, me = AP + SPI).

[scooter]

T82 flips the switch

Monarchy is in:



Double-revolt to Bureau + HR and it's time to take over the lead economically.



Here is exhibit A for why I was leaving some of my workers unprotected:



Why lose both workers and military? I don't care, that lowered unit costs and those units are about to be replaced by a far more robust defense (HAs + Catapults and then longbows shortly thereafter). I'm more upset about giving him XP than anything. Demos now look much shinier:



The one stat that's going to get me killed if I don't hurry is that soldier count. Full emphasis on that now, you'll see that in the next report. The graphs. First, my exciting GNP recovery:



Pretty drastic all things considered. Food/MFG:



The spike is getting a real happy and being able to explore growth again mainly. MFG:



The dip here is temporary and related to jumping onto food tiles to grow a bit towards my new cap while waiting for military units to get unlocked. And here's the graph I'm working on now:



So happy to see those Commodore/AT scuffles. THat was a timely break for me. Next two turns coming up very shortly (had to get these screenshots posted before they became too badly out of date).

[scooter]

T83-84 trains horses across the nation



You know what that means...



The plan right now is to finish the stables and start some HAs while waiting for my revolt time to wear off. As soon as it's over (in a few turns) I'll revolt to Theocracy and immediately finish 4 HAs that turn. The exception will be the capital where I'm going to build 1-2 before then because I can 1 turn them, but the other cities will follow this pattern. I could have 1-turned just about anything this turn but in the end I chose Aesthetics over Construction. The main reason is I'd like to sink hammers into the Parthenon while I'm still in OR, and I'll be building the HAs before the catapults anyways, so they wouldn't be immediately useful. I can still get Construction in about 2 turns of break-even (!!! for how big a change this is from 12 turns ago) so that's no real delay to catapults. Seriously though, I'm now getting 64gpt at 0% science. Feels like such a boost from the days where I was staving off strike by working suboptimal tiles at 0% . Once I feel safe I'd like to sneak in a 5th city in the jungle, but I need significantly more military to be able to defend that so I'll leave it for now. T84 demos:



Soldier count is getting closer to a sane level and I've only finished 1 HA at this point. The power graph I'm checking every turn:



Still VERY worried about Commodore right now. Surely he's seen my spikes all over the place. Hopefully the bulk of his forces are still at the AT front and at least take forever to get to me.

[mackoti]

Man you like living dangerous.

[scooter]

Man you like living dangerous.

I'm tired of my conservative play resulting in me finishing 2nd in so many games. Boom or bust is the name of the game here . If I can just have no giant stacks in my land for like 3 more turns I'll be golden.