[SPOILER] Dark Savant's thread: Competition for limited resources remains a constant

[Dark Savant]

Turn 64 (1440 BC)

superdeath doesn't have two warriors in the vicinity of our scout.

That's because he has three (at the signed locations):



That's an awful lot of warriors to be randomly hanging out in the middle of nowhere.  The warrior the scout is next to is a Combat III warrior, too.    I'm supposing this is where he's sending his next settler.  superdeath might not actually know we're neighbors; he probably has no way of knowing if the scout skirted past someone else.  (superdeath, not having Stonehenge, doesn't know just where on the map he is yet.)

We still haven't even seen a human barbarian unit yet (superdeath's warriors don't count, no matter how much Commodore might think so ), which in my couple test plays of this version for the mod is unusual for turn 60+, even with the long delay them in them being able to appear.  It's not like there's no place for them to spawn.  I do have one warrior on barb suppression duty in the southern tundra, but that's not much territory.

Great Lighthouse due in 4, two settlers in production.  Work boats for scouting will be nice but we need three just to work more food at cities #4 and #5, and sometime we need to get an island city going too.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 66 (1360 BC)

superdeath's failure to build another city turned out to have an explanation -- he built the Great Lighthouse!  

Well, that was a low-odds play, and I haven't actually chopped any forests into it yet.  Those will now go into a granary so Nairobi can grow ASAP.

Oh, we also found superdeath's borders.



So he's probably actually concerned we're going to attack him.  We're too far away for that, though I suspect superdeath does not actually know that.

I don't know if it's worth it trying to have the scout crash through superdeath's territory (via a scouting war) to try to find anyone else.  My best guess is that there is no one else, and that superdeath built the Great Lighthouse because he couldn't find anyone to attack.  We're just about the least appealing target possible with no military traits, I suppose.

The home situation now looks like this:



Our first three cities will soon each have a granary.  A settler is heading towards the northern site and another is about to be whipped.

Writing came in and I chose Mathematics next.  That's not the path to Currrency I was expecting, but I'm not sure who we're going to trade with if we get Alphabet. 

It's also on the way to Calendar so we can connect a couple more luxuries, and gets us extra chop power.  And maybe eventually a shot at the Hanging Gardens, though that's a lousy payoff with 5 cities even as Bismarck so it's not going to be soon.

[JR4]

superdeath's failure to build another city turned out to have an explanation -- he built the Great Lighthouse!  

Ah, Superdeath was busy building wonders. At least he can`t do that and expand quickly at the same time. Maybe settling up on Superdeath could be an option? Skirmishers are really strong defenders in the ancient era and if Superdeath doesn`t know the lay of the land yet - he might be content with slightly less than his fair share of territory.
Fwiw, capturing TGL would be pretty fantastic as the wonder will keep its power for a long time. An Astronomy rush could be worth a try.

[Dark Savant]

superdeath's failure to build another city turned out to have an explanation -- he built the Great Lighthouse!  

Ah, Superdeath was busy building wonders. At least he can`t do that and expand quickly at the same time. Maybe settling up on Superdeath could be an option? Skirmishers are really strong defenders in the ancient era and if Superdeath doesn`t know the lay of the land yet - he might be content with slightly less than his fair share of territory.
Fwiw, capturing TGL would be pretty fantastic as the wonder will keep its power for a long time. An Astronomy rush could be worth a try.

I have fast expansion in mind at the moment, but we're too far away to "settle up" on superdeath, really.

So is any kind of war, I feel.  That's just far away, not without horses which we don't yet have connected.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 68 (1280 BC)

Here's superdeath, moving out with a settler.



Not going to be able to contest that with that distance.

Our fourth city is planted; our fifth will be down in a couple more turns to claim the ivory.



No settlers are currently in production, as we recover pop after whipping (actually another whip is about to go into a work boat), but the next settlers need to claim either an island city, or land in superdeath's direction.

Demos still look less than ideal:



Well, we should catch up some, though man someone out there is producing 74 food? 

[Dark Savant]

Turn 70 (1200 BC)

Wait, right.  We do have horses in a more convenient location, right underneath the warrior suppressing barbs in the south.



So there's no need to rush a city to the awkward northern horse.  Also, that was last turn, the settler there just planted city #5 this turn.

Also, ayup superdeath just planted his next city there.



superdeath has no real military that I can see, but he's just too far away to attack:



None of this "first-ring city already has border conflict" that I had gotten used to.  That's a looong way for any attacks to go in either direction.  It's also fairly normal on this map script.

Our power rating isn't so hot, incidentally.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 71 (1160 BC)

I'm not going to antagonize superdeath by trying to scout through his lands.  I probably would if I thought I'd find someone else, but I bet we won't.

So I'm going to have the scout finish defogging.  Uh, that's another screening warrior there.



I suppose Charismatic is being put to use by way of "we don't need any military for MP". 

Here are our five cities:



Ivory is now hooked up, so I'm growing our largest cities to the new happy cap.  Our four workers are now not quite adequate for five cities.  (It was OK before, as we needed so many work boats.)

We also now have graphs on superdeath.






They don't show anything I didn't already know: he's at a low city count and low power, as expected for someone who evidently thought he was isolated and built the Great Lighthouse.

Stonehenge has doubled in cultural output, which means we're now #1 in GNP for whatever that's worth.

[JR4]

Superdeath is clearly interested in the area SE of Narrator. There is still a good deal of empty land but I expect that to change soon. How do you see the border shape up in, say, 30 turns? Getting a Settler up to claim the wet Corn SW of the big freshwater lake would make it much harder for Superdeath to get a foothold in the vicinity.

Another option could be to settle island cities quickly in order to stake out a claim as surely there is at least a couple of distant neighbours across water too.

[Dark Savant]

Superdeath is clearly interested in the area SE of Narrator. There is still a good deal of empty land but I expect that to change soon. How do you see the border shape up in, say, 30 turns? Getting a Settler up to claim the wet Corn SW of the big freshwater lake would make it much harder for Superdeath to get a foothold in the vicinity.

Another option could be to settle island cities quickly in order to stake out a claim as surely there is at least a couple of distant neighbours across water too.

I didn't think about taking a skirmisher/settler and staking an advanced but not in-your-face claim.  It would be awkward to safely do that, but having Stonehenge actually helps significantly because it'll push away so many barb spawning points.  (It helps much more for that on Snaky Continents, I suppose.)

And I do want to start to settle island cities sooner, not later -- I'm building that galley for a reason.  It's not just for ICTRs, it's to stake claims against rivals.

Speaking of people beyond superdeath, there is a decent chance a contact exists beyond him; but I think that even if there is, our scout won't make it that far, either because superdeath will snuff it, or it'll run into some barb unit.  superdeath very much behaves as if he doesn't have any close neighbors, but there's nothing that says he doesn't have a second far away neighbor.

[Dark Savant]

Turkey vacation week is underway in the United States.  I'll be variously in Los Angeles (currently), Las Vegas (going to play poker, of course), and Death Valley (it's not stupidly hot this time of year) before Turkey Day proper.

So I'll still be busy, just not at work, though I should always have time to get to the turn in time.

Turn 73 (1080 BC)

The game is suggesting that we build a wonder!  But not the way you'd typically see in multiplayer.



All we need to do is build ... 11 libraries.  That's, uh, more than twice as many libraries as we currently have cities. 

It's not the kind of reward worth hurrying for.  +2 research for anyone, if you have the Great Library it increases the number of free scientists to 3.

Let's check out this peninsula east of superdeath he seems so keen to settle quickly.  (No, we're not going to be able to contest it.)



I wonder how far it goes.

In other news, demographics are now vaguely competitive:



Who is that producing  85! food?  Probably OH or Rusten; they have high scores but no wonders or Creative.  Rusten has a higher score at least partly because I think he founded Hinduism.

49 hammers is also a notable number, but that's nowhere near as awe-inspiring as 85! food.