He declared T92 (last turn) and took second half. Let me just reiterate that it's not a problem and he didn't get an advantage (other than making us think he wouldn't declare). It did make some sense though, as it signaled us that he'd had his chance to declare in the first half, so we could play. Due to the unit situation we've been careful to let him play before us since the last war, so as to not get an advantage for us. It was just weird.
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[PB74] Tarkeel and civacs Game of the Year
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Turn 94 (525 BC)
We expected the stab at the forest to be a feint, and it looks like we were correct.  He had two galleys on the island; one scouted out Catan and saw it was too well defended, and the other went down south to threaten Kingdom Builder. (There's also a third galley out of sight). We can (probably) save the city sacrificing a worker, and then dry-whip a spear to clean up, but we were already low on workers in this area. I wonder how scared plemo is of us that he feels the need to knock us down yet again? He's not gaining anything from this war, in fact he's pushing us us further away from being able to stop one of the other main rivals, Commodore. We settled on the island and west of the iron, but I forgot to get a screenshot of it so you'll have to wait until next turn to see them. This brings us up to 11, par for the pack, and the first time that plemo isn't ahead of us in cities by 50% or more. It's also 10 turns since he last settled, at which point we were down on 6 and the pack on 8, just to give you a point of how far ahead he is.  Forbidden Island is a co-operative game where the players try to keep the island from sinking under the waves while collecting four relics. The relics can be collected when you have enough cards of the matching colour; every player draws two on their turn, and you have to meet up to trade. If this sounds familiar, you've probably played Matt Leacock's earlier game Pandemic, of which this is mainly a reskin. The similarites are many, including most of the mechanics and challenges, and personally I'd rather play Pandemic.  Hanabi is another co-operative game where they players are trying to launch firework cards from their hand in the correct order. The challenge is that you only know what every other player is holding, and not yourself. Players take turns in order chosing one of three actions: Spend a blue clue token (from the communal pool) to give another player one clue (either colour or value) and point at all cards that match. Discard a card from your hand to retrieve a clue token (and re-draw the card). Lastly, you can play a card from hand (and re-draw). If your card is the next value needed for that colour, you've succeeded! If not, you lose one of the three lives. The true charm in Hanabi is working with your fellow players to find ways to let them deduce more from your hint that what is obvious. Because there isn't perfect knowledge and communcation is limited you also avoid the usual co-op pitfall of alpha-players taking over the entire game.
December 10th, 2023, 07:03
(This post was last modified: December 10th, 2023, 07:04 by Tarkeel.)
Turn 95 (500 BC)
Plemo did go for the 8% chance to raze Kingdom Builder, but only inflicted two rounds of damage on the archer. The chariot that took the worker disbanded (along with the worker) without pillaging the road. Net result is he lost 60h of units to kill a 60h worker, but forced us to do an unwanted dry-whip. But then he's also invested 100h in two galleys that are still alive and threatening.  In the south we're trying to squeeze out a new load of workers. Kingdom Builder will dump overflow into a worker, then regrow to 4 and whip it. Carcassonne will also grow to 4 on a workboat for the island then whip a worker, while Azul will hardbuild a worker and take back Carcassonne's corn after the whip so it completes in 4t (*). Ticket to Ride will just have to hardbuild some infrastructure, while the other fresh cities await worker labor. The two workers fill finish the iron next turn, then split up for a road to Puerto Rico. It will be some time before this area is profitable but it's important for our long term health. Math is due in two so the workers that were chopping in the north will delay slightly now that plemo's advance has temporarily halted, allowing the tech to complete first. We are entertaining dreams of attacking plemo with cats/wellies with support from SD on the other side, but then he's showing how perfidious of an ally he is and reopened borders and still has the ongoing horse for horse trade. *) Azul needs to finish it's spear first to guard against another chariot landing on the corn.
Turn 96 (475 BC)
Plemo decided he's had enough of this turn-split and offered a cease-fire. After looking arount to make sure we hadn't missed anything, we resent it. Superdeath seems to have woken up and offered war and stop trading with plemo (and adding every single city on both sides), while Commmodore wanted a reinforcement on the fish. Math will be delayed by a turn as we're a few beakers short; it was possible to wrangle up the missing beakers, but since the workers could easily delay another turn it wasn't worth the bother. We're also busy mapping out our peaceful neighbours; a workboat traversing the south coast, a scout mapping out Amica and the chariot that spooked Commodore. Should have some decent screenshots (and thoughts) for the T100 report.
Turn 98 (425 BC)
It's been nice to have some uncomplicated turns to play, but SD did reply to some diplo so it might not last. First he mirrored our fish/copper deal, then sent horse/copper with war and our city of Rococo, then horse with war and his (likely) border cities of Werewolf, Bandit Lords and Daemon. Civac thinks this is meant that he will attack with horchers and we should attack with axe/chariots, an interpretation I find likely. Somebody we know has HBR and it's a good bet it's Superdeath. We'll see what we can scrounge up to support the fourth iteration of this war.
Turn 100 (375 BC) State of the World III
The world keeps moving. Pindi wants us to join in a war against Amica in 10, and somehow none of the INDustrious leaders managed to stop plemo from building a 16-city Hanging Gardens. We've been pushing out the wave of workers that plemo interrupted earlier, slowly improving the land so cities have more than the resources tiles to work (and actually improving resources tiles too). We've managed to hit an impressive four cottages, the same amount Amica's rude pink-dot city is working on it's own. Math came in two turns ago just as our economy spluttered out, so we're on the famous limping to Currency stage. Let's take another look at what is and what could have been: The North Ravaged Lands This was our naturally available lands, and is some 30 turns behins on development due to the conflict with plemo.  Catan: Slowly regrowing after being resettled, has the important job of working the gold which is keeping our economy afloat. Augustus: We still haven't decided where to resettle this, but leaning on the marked tile where it can house boats to threaten the island and even have food if we retake it. Dominion: One of our strongest and most productive cities, it's been whipping out a lot of workers and settlers at 5->3 cycles. Agricola: Another strong city that we didn't get to settle until very late, and is only just now getting it's granary for the whip cycle. Rococo: Strategically important city to keep the border against plemo, but "both" of the food tiles are very exposed to seaborne raids. SaferFill: Pure filler city, claims a few grasslands, much coast and no food. That's right, those 6 city sites are what our empire would have looked like without war, and two of them aren't even settled as they don't have any food. Rococo could have been split into two lesser cities, and Agricola and Dominion could have been shifted to worse positions to allow a filler between them. With another civ than the Vikings to our north, we might have been able to get (and keep) the island, but it's about equidistant between us and this not clearly ours. Note that Aarhus is actually settled on plemo's side of the dividing line. Also note the complete lack of any worthwhile city sites in the north-western direction. The South Bright Future This is Dreylin's naturally available lands, minus the parts that Amica and Commmodore managed to take due to our conflict with plemo.  Carcassonne: This is pretty great city, but it's been limited by not enough workers available to cottage the river, so it's been a 4->2 whipping post for settlers, workers and assorted units. Azul: The greatest city in our empire has four 6-foodhammer tiles and 2 floodplains available. Has a library which is now carrying our research, which was built to help claim and keep the gems. Kingdom Builder: Has more food than it knows what to do with, and has a library to spend some of it (as well as put pressure on Amica). Has been whipped savagely, and is currently only happy at size 2. Ticket to Ride: Has to borrow the cows from Azul to grow, this will be mainly a fishing village with some cottages. Strategic importance for the canal effect. Hanabi: There really was no good spot to place this city, but it atleast can work the iron-mine until it's got some cottages down and the banana plantation. Puerto Rico: The barbarians dictated where this city got placed, but it's not in the worst spot. Will be an important commerce city when the lands are cottaged. Forbidden Island: Only just got the first worker love, but this will be a decently producing fishing village down the line. Even losing out two cities to Amica and atleast one to Commodore, we still have 7 cities settled in this area, and only Hanabi is foodless untill Calendar. For improvements, every city has their granary except the latest four which are still building it. Quite a few of our cities needed monuments as an early building; Catan lucked out with religion but all other border pops are monument fueled (even Azul). Agricola is one of the very few cities that can go without, and perhaps the fresh jungle and island cities can go libraries instead. Opponent Overview Since I never did an opponent overview before the game or when meeting people, I'll atone by analyzing the half of the field we've met, ranked by approximate current standing 7: Dreylin as Mehmed II (EXP/ORG) of Portugal (fishing/mining) Neighbors: Amicalola, Commodore, TarVac. Dreylin is a returning veteran and thus something of an unknown, but we decided after his elimination that "competent but rusty" would be a good summary. I don't particularly like his combo. While Mehmed is a solid pick mixing economy and starting bonuses, it has no synergy with Portugal whose uniques are most definitely "meh". The starting techs are good if they line up with your requirements, which they didn't do here. His starting city (Cod/Carcassonne) is one of the stronger available with three 6-foodhammer tiles, coming in at 6f1c, 4f2h1c and 3f3h allowing a fast regrow cycle to whip out those first settlers and workers. The location is limited by only having one direction to expand into, but the first available cities are rather strong. I'd probably have settled the copper-city (Anchovy/Azul) 1S so you can get both the gems/sugar city (sweetsparkle) and floodplain plainshill cities. These combined with a fifth near where Amica's city of Comben would be a pretty good core from which to push hard against Amica with early horse archers. Unfortunately for Dreylin this was not to be. We'd deduced that we needed to do a chariot rush to stand any chance in this game, and it arrived just in time to stop Dreylin. 6: Amicalola as Ragnar (AGG/FIN) of the Ottomans (agriculture/wheel) Neighbors: Commodore, Pindicator, Dreylin TarVac Amica can be an extremely dedicated player, but he's been trying to take this game more casual and it really shows. He's even missed a few turns, and been close to missing quite a few more. Yet another combo where I like the pieces individually, but with no obvious synergy.  His starting city (Larkey) seems to be some sort of cruel punishment, having not a single river tile and twin (bad-)seafood without a 4fh tile and the only 3h tile in the outer ring. In total coming in at 6f, 4f2c and 4f2c after 60 hammers worth of workboats. He also didn't have the best land to expand into, a narrow strip of land north of the jungle. As such Amica is perhaps the biggest beneficiary of our early war against Dreylin, and even more so plemo's first invasion of us. This allowed him to both claim cities that would have been naturally Dreylin's (Comben and Powell), but also not die to a horcher rush from either of us. He seems to be currently having some skirmishes with Pindicator about the jungle between them. 5: Bing as Napoleon (CHA/ORG) of Khmer (hunting/mining) Neighbors: Commodore, Pindicator Bing is a prolific player (almost on the level of Superdeath). He has an admirable stance of taking every turn as it comes, and plays every turn competently (and at times very aggressively), but is lacking some of the deeper strategic plans. I like the parts of his combo, but I'm not sure that they line up that well; especially Baray's want to be paired with EXP to be more cost-effective, but CHA is also a decent early-game trait.  His starting city (mainframe) is hands down the best capital we've seen, with twin forested deers, fish and sheep. That comes out to 5f2c, 4f2h, 4fh2 and 3f2h1c, with crucially a 2f2h unimproved tile available for worker or workboat. We don't have enough data about his lands for a complete analysis, but based on the shape it seems he's been pressed hard by both Commodore and Pindicator in the early settling races. Despite that, he's managed to settle a decent amount of cities, 10. 4: Superdeath as Louis XIV (CRE/IND) of Babylon (agriculture/wheel) Neighbors: Plemo, ??? (+?) This seems to be the game where Superdeath tries to be a builder, and until very recently had a very low power rating. He did manage to build the Pyramids and a fair amount of cities, and doesn't seem to have been called on his farmer's gambit. We literally have no data on his lands, and I can't be bothered to recreate his start from the graphs. We're pretty certain Superdeath has atleast one other land-neighbor beside Plemo, both from common sense and EP scrying. 3: Pindicator as Zara Yaqob (CRE/ORG) of Sumeria (agriculture/wheel) Neighbors: Amica, Commodore, Bing Pindi can be extremely good when he's focused and on high morale, which he seems to be in this game. His combo is one I really like; Sumeria is already pretty good with early courthouses, getting them cheap with ORG has probably solved any economic woes in this game. He's also got CRE-culture backed by vultures to claim land.  We don't have any detailed knowledge on his lands, and I can't be bothered to recreate his start from graphs either. He looks to have won the settling race, taking land from both Bing and Commodore, and is currently competing with Amica for the jungle. He already has a strong economy fed by a shrined religion and the land to grow even scarier. 2: Commodore as Darius (FIN/ORG) of Maya (mining/mysticism) Neighbors: Bing, Dreylin TarVac, Pindicator Commodore is another player with different modes; he can easily be entertained by telling the story of the underdog, but in this game he seems to have found his focus. I'm not too impressed with the Maya, but Darius could be the best economic leader in MONarch.  The aptly named capital (Civilization) is one of the best early starts, and was only slightly hampered by the need for an early AnimalHusbandry, which wasn't such a liability when Commodore lucked out with BronzeWorking from a hut. He's got a wet rice (and not dry corn as I'd assumed), riverside pigs and cows for 6f1c, 5f1c and 4f2h. No wonder Commodore was an early leader in cities despite not being IMP, and the land he had to expand into is some of the lushest I've ever seen. There's barely a tile that's not riverside. As such he seems to be the main competition for winning this game, as his economy is in tip-top shape and is likely to field knights against archers at this pace. It does help that he got more of the jungle towards Dreylin than he'd get if not for our wars with first Dreylin and then plemo. 1: Plemo as Victoria of Scandinavia (fishing/hunting) Neighbors: Superdeath, TarVac, (+?) Plemo is one of the scariest players in the field, and has proven once again that he'll do just about anything for a win. He lucked out with a great leader and perhaps the best civ available for the map. It's not an overstatement to say that we wouldn't have been in this position if it wasn't for the viking movement advantage. While we haven't unfogged much of his lands, decoding his graphs revealed that he has a grassforest deer and riverside plainswheat right next to it rival Bing for best start, even if there are no other food resources which there surely are. Where do we fit into this? It's hard to tell, but I'd probably place ourselves somewhere between behind Amica and ahead of Superdeath.
Turn 102 (325 BC)
A small update since there's no turn today. There's not been much happening on the home front, we're trying to let our cities regrow onto useful tiles but it's slow going. Three of our neighbors now have Currency, and it's not unlikely it's the same three that have Calendar. There's some tension growing out there however:  That's 7 vultures (with free shock) and 2 spears for Pindi, vs 10 axes, 4 spears and 1 archer for Amica. It's going to be a bloodbath. Also take note of the power ratios, plemo continues to add forces at an alarming rate, and we're quite worried about Superdeath who is getting ratioed almost 2:1.
Turn 104 (275 BC) Weserübung
I must confess to having withheld some information in the latest updates. We alluded to some diplo with Superdeath on T98, which quickly coalesced into a vague plan of yet another skirmish round with plemo, with hopefully SD attacking from the other side with horchers. We hope his low power is due to hiding completed horchers in the queue. Our part of the plan is simple:  Agricola whipped out another galley, while it and Dominion built two more chariots and Catan pushed out some more axes. The chariots loaded the galleys last turn, and will now land to threaten Lødøse. The axes were meant to threaten Oslo, but gets a free threat on Aarhus on the way.  Those galleys outside Lødøse could be an issue; they are most likely empty and intended to kill our scouting galley (they are three tiles from where it's usually parked). If they are loaded with spears to reinforce Lødøse we have to retreat, but they could also hold chariots to threaten Agricola. He'll have to get through our galleys for that though. Lødøse itself is defended by an axe/chariot pair. If we luck out here, we've managed to kill two inconsequential border cities and one decent city, but the main hope is that Superdeath can do something on his side. Let's also be clear that this is not a winning move, but I don't think we have any of those left in this game. Normally I wouldn't engage in this kind of meta-game retaliation, but I think it's well deserved in this instance. Also, apologies for the poor joke in the title. We also birthed our Scientist in Azul, which is slated for an Academy. We're holding it for next turn to decide if it's turned into a GA instead.
December 21st, 2023, 16:17
(This post was last modified: December 21st, 2023, 16:49 by civac2.)
I accidentally ended turn before Tarkeel could grab an after screenshot to go with the before picture. But I found this image
![[Image: 246GjVy.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/246GjVy.jpg) I sent while we were discussing the turn. The stack next to Aarhus (on the tile marked 104) encompasses 8 axes and a spear. In the north, the chariot landing party is just visible. Next to two green charioteers we also have two C2-Shock Homerian heroes in the landing force. |
