[SPOILERS] naufragar is not a number; he is a free man

[naufragar]

I'll show Demos when I can bear the sight of them. They are currently garbage.

I can now tolerate them:



Ok. Ok. I'm just desperate for anything to post in these early turns. These demos mean nothing, when a single extra tile can raise or lower your rank by ten spots. (But who on earth has 45 food? I'll show you why this is impressive in a sec.)

Our demos are helped along by a new city. Please welcome into the world Hammer into Anvil:


I couldn't think of any decent Prisoner locations off hand, so I went with an episode title. Sue me. It's nice that HiA gets to work an improved tile from turn 0, but consider this: I've put 60 hammers into work boats now. That's more than a worker, since a worker uses food. Ugh, seafood resources are so tough.Oh well. Our tech situation started out bad and only got worse through my choices.

Here's an overview of the empire:


I guess I'm spoiling that I've got another settler in the pipe. I need to find a spot for him. I wanted to get 5 cities by turn 50, as a sort of internal, personal goal. We should be able to do that. Then we pause the expansion to grow, tech, get granaries, etc. We need defenses in several cities. Barbs will start getting serious soon, and I've got two cities on coast pointed directly at Mack and Pind. One of those cities is on flat land. I will repeat that I'm impressed with Pindicator's opening. He's keeping pace despite not having Imp. I'm not happy about this. Plus the EP thing I mentioned before.


Oh, I forgot. I was going to say why the 45 food opponent is impressive. I have 6 total pop in my empire, which is not particularly praiseworthy. Plenty of people could have this (or more) with something like a 4pop capital and a size 2 second city. My cities currently, however, are all working improved tiles. So I have 6pop working improvements (mostly food improvements) plus 4 free city center tiles and someone is still beating me by 10 food. That's insane.

I should also mention that I'm showing my demos now because hereafter when I whip, I whip off improved tiles, which does murder on our stats.

[naufragar]

Today we met two brand new neighbors! 


The warrior to the west is Mr. Cairo's, and he's guarding a settler. The scout belongs to Amicalola. I'm amused to find Cairo and me both neighboring Mackoti; we both neighbored him in PB38, too. Cairo is Darius (Fin/Org) of Aztec. During the pick phase I said this was 100% a Cairo pick. It's optimized for a slightly under-expanded empire to tech to the stars in the late game. Maybe a little mid-game pushing and shoving with Sac Altars. Will Cairo withstand Mackoti long enough to see the endgame? Will I? (Cairo and Mack have not yet met.)

I've started putting my EP into Cairo. Pindicator has drawn down his EP spending in response to me reducing my spending on him.


I was thinking a little more about Pindicator's combo (Cha/Phi of the Dutch). Here's what I said in the opponent analysis:

Busted, busted, busted combo. If there is any serious naval play to be made on this map at all, Pindicator won the pick phase.

Well, there's going to be tons of naval action on this map. Snaky continents, coastal cities, billions of islands. In Close to Home 2.whatever, Galleons require Paper + Astronomy. East Indiamen require only Astro and are 6 strength instead of 4 and can carry 4 units instead of 3. This is broken. Basically, Pind can do the standard naval beeline, while everybody else needs literally thousands more beakers to get worse versions of his ships. (Paper is ~1k and requires Theology (lol) or Civil Service (~1.4k), each of which have their own prerequisites that Pind can skip.) To beeline Astro, Pind just needs get 2 Great Scientists while avoiding Meditation. Oh look, he's Philosophical, so he only needs 120 Great People Points instead of the standard 300. I was going to talk about how amazing Charismatic is for the naval game, since 4xp (for 2 promos) is much, much easier to get than 5xp, but honestly, it's unnecessary. East Indiamen get even odds on Privateers, which are supposed to beat them and aren't available until much later. But once people do start developing enough naval tech to stand against him, he just needs 4xp (a couple great generals? A great general and a civic?) and he can take Nav1 to outmaneuver everyone or Combat2 to just straight up beat every boat until Frigates. Yeah. Pind's combo is busted. Here's a question: does he go for two Great Scientists immediately or is there anything that might tempt him off that path?

[naufragar]

Happy Turn 50! In celebration, somebody grabbed Oracle. Below you see me trying to figure out who based on color. (Colors are my nemesis.)


I think based on the specific purple, TBS grabbed Oracle. This is quite good. Colossus will be a massive help on this map, so I assume TBS's plan is Oracle->Metal Casting->Colossus.

We're not doing as well as TBS, but we're holding steady.


We have 5 cities, 4 workers, 3 warriors, 2 traits, and a partridge in a pear tree. I'll say more about my fifth city "The General" when I give the cities tour. It was probably a mistake. We've done Joao of India things so far: trusting in an extreme farmer's gambit, hoping for no barbs or any enemy scouts, and now we limp to Pottery to grow onto cottages while getting some defenses up.

I can talk about what I've seen of the map so far. This map is chock full of good stuff. We need to settle every tile yesterday. With the rivers, coasts, and easy luxuries, it should be very difficult to completely ruin an economy. There are islands everywhere as well, for boosted trade routes. To my east there's some sort of land, confirmed by the flying camera, so we'll have to check that out and see if we have another set of neighbors.

Speaking of neighbors, check out Pind's rising power.


I don't think he's got any real units yet, and he doesn't have Sailing for any sly warrior-on-galley shenanigans. The geography is not great for any early land attacks, but we still need to at least pretend to pay attention.

Sticking with Pind, he's doing very well. He has no early game traits and he's keeping up with me and Mack in Crop:



And he's ahead in Production:



For completeness, here's GNP, although who uses that?


And why does mine slope down?

All this to say, Pind is playing a very strong game. He's keeping pace with the fast starters, and his traits will give him plenty of gas when I'm tapped out. Scary stuff. Here's the total demos screen:


Again, you'd think that #2 food spot is good, but Pind's at our heels and has much more staying power. I repeat my amazement at the top spot. How in the world did that person get to 50 food by turn 50??

But, as always, I know why you're really here. You're here to keep me honest about every tile assignment in my empire. Well, have at it.

The cap recently got out a warrior. I had planned to grow to size 4 for a 6 turn settler, but it's faster to just take the 7 turn one at size 3. I'm not very good at micro. At size 5, the cap can 5-turn settlers if I mine the plains hill. No idea what I plan to do with the cap.

I like this little city. I probably should have founded for the gold ahead of the copper, but this city has contributed. I think I'll log back in and change this warrior build to a work boat. (See. Farmer's gambit.) I constantly worry about Pind showing up with galleys, but according to the know-tech bonus UI, he doesn't have them yet. Moai probably goes here.

We never whip this city below size 2. We work that gold tile (and how excellent a tile it is) until the world is ours. This would make a decent Oxford location.

I'm pretty sure I only founded this city because I was going to build a work boat. I only built a work boat because I was going to found a city. It's a nonsensical paradox and probably means I've been founding cities too quickly. That fish is this city's only improved tile for a long time, which is more bad micro from me.

Lastly, this little minimum-distance nothing. There will be 4 cities in an area (including my cap) which share 5-6 food resources among themselves. Theoretically, I can make this work. We'll see. Really, I just settled this because I wanted 5 cities by turn 50. This is the height of managerial stupidity. I just set a random milestone, without thinking if it was useful. I won't have Animal Husbandry to improve the sheep for a very long time.

Well, that's the empire. We're doing ok for now, but we'll be in trouble if even a single enemy or barb unit shows up. And really, this is all we've got. Once we use up Joao of India's early game, we've dead in the water.

Perhaps I should mention future plans. Uh...there are lots of places to settle? I guess that counts as a plan.

[naufragar]

  Farmer's gambit in trouble!


You may notice that I haven't changed a single build order. I have moved workers around, which slows The General's growth, but means I can attack the barb with two warriors if he moves to pillage the corn.  Basically, I'm not playing around 10% outcomes (losing on the forest tile) or 3% outcomes (both warriors losing against the barb on the corn). This could end disastrously, but we've got to play a little loose to push our advantages. By the way, I'm still third in crop yield, which is amazing since I've been full-on pedal-to-the-floor expanding. Pind, as always, keeps pace in production and food. Ugh.

Anyway, we just wait and see if the barbs decide to screw us this game.

[naufragar]

We defeated the first barb, only to have a second take its place.


My forest warrior will be healed up, but it would be very, very bad if the barb decided to pillage the gold. We'd only have about an 87% chance to remove him using both warriors. I'm notoriously cautious, so I might not take those odds. Ugh. And it should go without saying that this is the second turn that barbs screwed up my worker micro. Of course the first two barb warriors I see show up right when I need to move a settler to that area. No other barb spawn would please Sid Meier. 

While I'm here, BUG makes tons of silly design decisions. For example:


This is from the foreign advisor screen. In vanilla, these smiley faces are the total numbers of diplo modifiers. Who in the world thought, "hey, I'm making a UI mod which is designed to show the player more info at a glance. I'd better remove the numbers from the foreign advisor so my emoticon-addled audience can read faces for diplo info or tediously mouse over every one they need." Beyond silly.

[naufragar]

Yup. Barb decided to be annoying.


As I said before, I can't risk losing two warriors attacking that gold hill, so I moved my warrior to cover. This meant I had to burn several worker turns. If the barb dies fighting against my warrior, very well. If the barb makes any other move, I have to whip an axe (whipping off the gold tile. ). God, this is miserable.

The demos show why:


Barbs have cost me something like 6+ wasted worker turns! And the only thing Joao of India has is his speed. If these are our demos on turn 55, we're pretty much screwed. Some of this is my fault, of course, but the barbs showing up exactly where I was improving and moving to settle really sucks. They couldn't appear in the North or South? 

Pseudo-edit: Who the hell has 62 food? Seriously, how?

[naufragar]

Hey naufragar, what have you done with the incredible speed of Joao of India?


Absolutely nothing, dear reader. I've completely wasted my advantages. 

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that I aggressively trespassed against Mr. Cairo. 


I offered him peace. I'd prefer not to lose my scout. He might take it. My scout is Woody 2 0.9/1 health. He could lose a warrior attacking it.

[naufragar]

This game is such bs. Observe: our 3rd barb in 6 turns. We get to enjoy a barb every two turns.


Oh and look, it's attacking the same spot as the other two barbs. So we keep lighting worker turns on fire. I could have whipped the axe, but then we don't work the gold tile and our bad economy gets even worse. Instead, I moved up a warrior to tempt the barb. There's a second warrior in range in case the barb wins the coin flip. The second warrior is wounded but Combat 1. It's unlikely the barb wins, but if you keep rolling dice, you'll eventually see every outcome. The barbs will get a lucky win someday.

Our demos are still trash (and again, we have the fastest combo so this is really bad):


Oh well. I'm sure my neighbors Pindicator and Mackoti won't take advantage of my weakness.

[naufragar]

I feel like I've been complaining a bunch, so let me change my tune. I take back all the mean things I said about BUG. The combat odds panel makes up for all of it:


What a nifty little feature. The barb beat my first warrior (it was a 50-50 and the barb only took 2 hits (10% outcome)) but then I was able to beat him with my second. (The second warrior survived with only 5hp. A 9% outcome as you can see in the pic. But this post will have no complaining about the very lucky barb.   )

On the subject of no complaining, the blame for my bad start doesn't lie with the barbs but with myself. I've built too many roads. Look at all this:


That's a lot of burned worker turns. Now some of it is necessary; it takes a lot of roads to connect my copper, but the rest is a bit silly. Oh well. 

[naufragar]

Back to complaining. BARBS! 


I'm demonstrating great restraint. There's a barb spear in my north that I could also complain about, and next turn I have to whip two axes for the two different barbs. Nothing more fun than one-pop whipping axes.

Pind's Crop Yield is very good, which is very bad.


So yeah. Tough game.

I realize my last few turn reports have been nothing but a demos screen and a barbarian. I'll show broader shots when I start to make moves. Right now, all we're trying to do is improve our land and settle cities, while the barbs screw our start.

By the way, I really, really like the map layout I've seen so far. Maybe one day I'll show the lurkers.