[PB28 SPOILERS ] Fenn Presents: A Comedy of Errors

[spacetyrantxenu]

Without spoiling anything, the qotm is about how mardoc can't even write out a fully pessimistic post without having some optimistic ideas pop in. Thus, he can't do pessimism right. I laughed, he got the banner.

[Fenn]

"I'll update every day," he said. Get a load of this joker, eh?

Not much exciting happened. I hooked up Ivory a little while ago:


So that's 2 happiness in most of my cities

Metal Casting finished a bigger while ago, so I've been doing a round of Forge builds in most of my cities. I've belatedly got a few Galleys scouting around the neutral territories, and I should finally get some Settlers heading in that direction (or some soldiers - there's two barb cities just on the north coast of our island).

Code of Laws completed this turn, so now I'm saving gold on Calendar and thinking of where to go next. I'm not quite sure what to do long term. My only realistic chance of getting myself into contendership would be to eat Jowy and Mardoc quickly, but I doubt that that's possible - even if I get to CKNs quickly, I'd still need Construction too for Catapults, and while Jowy hasn't shown me anything more advanced than Chariots, he still has loads of soldiers and would surely not make it easy to kill him with 1-movers.

Just taking to the neutral continent would be a much safer way to go, but the only thing I'd be doing there is play catch-up to all the people who've already expanded overseas. So perhaps I might as well go for the exciting option rather than resign myself to being a marginal power. If I do that I'd have to delay Civil Service and Bureaucracy (very useful for my capital), since Jowy won't lack Feudalism forever. I have a feeling he would take a dim view of labouring under another turn split, even if my previous war with him was a brief disaster.

I'll check the graphs next turn and think about the whole thing some more.

[Cheater Hater]

"I'll update every day," he said. Get a load of this joker, eh?

Not much exciting happened. I hooked up Ivory a little while ago:


So that's 2 happiness in most of my cities

Metal Casting finished a bigger while ago, so I've been doing a round of Forge builds in most of my cities. I've belatedly got a few Galleys scouting around the neutral territories, and I should finally get some Settlers heading in that direction (or some soldiers - there's two barb cities just on the north coast of our island).

Code of Laws completed this turn, so now I'm saving gold on Calendar and thinking of where to go next. I'm not quite sure what to do long term. My only realistic chance of getting myself into contendership would be to eat Jowy and Mardoc quickly, but I doubt that that's possible - even if I get to CKNs quickly, I'd still need Construction too for Catapults, and while Jowy hasn't shown me anything more advanced than Chariots, he still has loads of soldiers and would surely not make it easy to kill him with 1-movers.

Just taking to the neutral continent would be a much safer way to go, but the only thing I'd be doing there is play catch-up to all the people who've already expanded overseas. So perhaps I might as well go for the exciting option rather than resign myself to being a marginal power. If I do that I'd have to delay Civil Service and Bureaucracy (very useful for my capital), since Jowy won't lack Feudalism forever. I have a feeling he would take a dim view of labouring under another turn split, even if my previous war with him was a brief disaster.

I'll check the graphs next turn and think about the whole thing some more.

Taking the neutral continent could work--have you read the inter-site demogame? I was on Team Gillette for that game, and we won by taking the huge middle island, even though we had to limp along to Communism afterward--I'm assuming the island isn't quite as big, so it wouldn't be quite as big of a hit on the economy. Then again, the main reason we won is because we were the only team that didn't all but abandon the game, so maybe that isn't a good example

Could you get a decent picture of the neutral continent and the map as a whole?

[Fenn]

Well, there's at least three neutral continents and the other two are in the process of being colonized already - it seems that both are mostly controlled by one player. Here's what we can see of the world now:



I have one Galley exploring and am building another in Scrofula which will transport Settlers/military to the continent, and evacuate the two Workers I have stuck in Monkey Fever - I'm leaving the Ivory forest alone for now.















Now here's the thing...Jowy made peace with Mardoc just a few turns ago, but his Power's still going up. Possibly he made peace with them to go take a swing at me, but tbh I don't think he'd go after someone better equipped to resist him. It's more likely to me that he wants to get out of war weariness and unit costs, but if he does come I'm not too worried - I have the edge in both production and research, and once I tech either Feudalism or Machinery+IW I'll be impregnable against his Vulture horde.

Teching is why I'm not building much military either. I don't want to pay for any more military than I have to, nor build Archers and Axemen that will be obsoleted by CKNs. If worst comes to worst, I have plenty of population to whip away and make life difficult for Jowy.

[Cheater Hater]

Thanks for the update--not sure what I can say (other than get to CKNs ASAP), but it's good to know you're doing relatively well. Of course, now I need to update my topic

[Fenn]

Iron Working's done and we have three sources; one north of Scrofula already mined (sweet, free hammers!), one at the spot west of Yaws that we'll settle eventually, and one under Mange. I wonder if that's a sign from the mapmaker that I should've founded 1W instead.

Calendar's 2t out, after which I'll head for Machinery;. We have one source of Spice in our borders already, and two Silks that need new cities to work them (one real city and one semi-filler). That draws me to building 2-3 more Settlers to found those spots while we wait for Machinery and CKNs. Still haven't decided if I want to go to war with Jowy again or play nice and trade silks to him for cash. Probably should make up my mind before Machinery pops!

[Cheater Hater]

I don't think settling on resources is that much of an indicator of bad settlement plans; look at me in PB27.

How are the power graphs looking for Jowy? I feel like with Jowy building up CKNs is the best decision regardless of whether you want to instigate the war or not.

If we're assuming there's 3 starting continents with 3 people each (I see the one already scouted out; I don't know if you've found the third yet), have any continents been free of war? I see Inca has all those islands; presumably they haven't been invaded during this time, and they haven't had to build an army to protect against the other two building up against each other. We probably aren't going to compete without expanding, and you've said the neutral continents around us are filling up fast--war feels inevitable

(P.S: I have a meaty update waiting for you as well; that's why I tried to put more effort into this response than "everything looks good, good luck ")

[Fenn]

Jowy's power has sort of leveled off lately, but it's still much higher than ours. I will be building some CKNs regardless of of my intentions towards Jowy, but if I go to war I'll want to build lots instead of just a few to garrison each border city/scare Jowy with.

As far as I can tell, Dreylin and Grimace had a conflict going on going by the doing heavy concurrent whips they did; that seems to have died down though.

The third continent houses Yuris, wetbandit and Borsche, aka the score leaders, and seems to have been free of war thus far. However, wetbandit was the last to play last turn but didn't go on to play this turn first so I think he's in a turn split. Will check the diplo screen and see if anything's going on there.

Beyond settling the neutral continents, my other major concern is going to be generating Great People to trigger GA's with so I can swap civics without anarchy. Grippe's hiring two Scientists and has lots of food, so I may add a Forge and Engineer. I wonder if settling that first Great Prophet from Stonehenge instead of saving him for a GA was the wisest move. Was having the extra gold and hammer generation worth delaying my first Golden Age?

[Cheater Hater]

You need to strike a balance with how much military you end up building: too little and you're an easy target, too much and you'll trigger Jowy to start building again, especially if you show it (through your border cities, the power graph, or whips via CivStats). Then again, if Jowy still doesn't have horses, what can really threaten CKNs? Does he have ivory for War Elephants? Would a stack of Cats be good enough?

Oh right, golden ages--I always seem to forget about those. We presumably haven't triggered the 1-person GA, has Jowy? Is Grippe the Stonehenge city? When is it (and the Stonehenge city) producing a Great Person? Is there any reason not to delay the GA until we get Machinery?

[Fenn]

Oh no, Jowy's picked up Horses since I last mentioned them; he has 'em in the trade screen and I saw a Chariot in one of his border cities. He does have Ivory - incidentally a sign that he's starting to expand overseas. I don't know if he has Horseback Riding, but I'm inclined to think he doesn't.

Plague, the capital, is our Stonehenge city, but I haven't been hiring specialists there. Instead I've been focusing on growth and cottages, because it has three food resources, lots of riverside grassland and a high happy cap. Grippe also has lots of food, but fewer great tiles so it's working on specialists at the moment. Neither we nor Jowy have triggered the 1-person GA, and I agree that we can probably wait until Machinery and mills to worry about triggering it.