My name is Ozymandias, King of China: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Hahaha I'm not as on the ball as I used to. Blame playing after waking.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I'm still kicking myself for detecting Sian's vulnerability, pouncing, but then screwing up and not taking advantage of it properly. Argh. I could have freaking crippled his growth curve. Now I've just made myself a mortal enemy and failed to slow down the phract rush.

Yes, Sian cut it fine, but he also screwed up by being so reckless. He got really lucky. I have to be less smug.

My advantage is that my empire is better developed than his. We've spend approximately the same number of hammers on Wonders (2/3rds of way through 'mids, vs 'henge and Oracle). I am about to settle city #4, his city #3 has been crippled for a while. I have 2 and a half granaries, he does not. Sian built a barracks, I am not until later.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

EoT 50 Pyramids OH YEAH! Part 1 of my world domination plan complete.

Assuming I don't ragequit from how slow the save's been moving at times.

Pictures once I can get my screenshot function to work again.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Namely, my screenshots are failing, and the only thing appearing in my screenshots folder is FrozenScreen.tga

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Happy belated post-T50 post-pyramids update!

Firstly, the 'mids came in. Whew, I had alot riding on the thing. I could have had it as early as T46, but I decided to (a) save a 3rd ring chop, (b) whip a settler, and © build an axe. That... could have ended badly.

Other wonders I've been thinking of: Hanging Gardens in capital (to do Nobes' patented "get free citizen's yield on the same turn it completes trick), Parthenon, Paya, and the SoZ.

Capital. Gonna grow next turn, and grab a hamlet from CD4. Needs more workers for more cottages. Even excess are okay, because I can have filler cities work them.

2nd city. I dumped alot of overflow from a worker into a Library. Next turn, I'm going to switch to an axe (which is sitting at 22/23), and more overflow into the library. When MHC II takes one of the hamlets, I'm gonna grab a farm. A worker is 2/4 from finishing a second farm. I'm also going to

3rd city. Library is sitting at 6/60. Next turn, it's gonna grow to size 4, and I'm going to grab an unimproved floodplain (boo, hiss), and a worker is going to chop the forest to have 21/60 into the library. The turn after, will be a 2-pop whip. I'll need that extra culture from Holy city + library to steal more of Sian's tiles. I'll even build a monument, every bit counts. Sian's actually making the most culture in the game, but not where it counts. But even then, I'm not confident I can overpower his 1st ring. Damn it, why did I have to choke and trip and fail to raze that stupid city?

Things to be wary of: Sian chopping that tile, that will let him be able to road and move onto the hill or forest. Of course, that also depends if Sian want construction. It's not on his Guilds beeline.

What a slow start. I've been going max hammers for a while, for Monument at EoT to get the sheep into play. Next up, a granary to make my lack of food bonuses work out. A warrior is chopping that forest to speed up the granary. The granary will be 6, 11, 29, 34, 39, and damn I wish I had an extra hammer to get the granary down a turn earlier. Once the granary is up, I'll work the sheep and a couple of floodplains farms to get a good food surplus going, and probably not work the gold tile for a long time. It'll also need some kind of Library whip as well, for the culture and scientist slots.

Tank is mining his copper. Fair enough, get some spears available. No Gaspar warrior gambit here, no siree.

I was originally planning to get another turn of visibility on Sian's core, but that fell through because of a misclick. Oh well, I'm going to bring him west to sentry the Tank approach, and bring my current sentry back home to garrison CD4.

Horse city incoming. Who knows, if I can get a pair of chariots onto the hill 6 of TCR, I could surprise Sian with a surprise city raze. Something to think about. I won't have any forces to deal with Sian's horse city, unfortunately. It's a bit too far away. I was originally going to send a taunting message in the banter thread about me spending even more hammers on wonders than Sian, but still having more cities, but I've thought better of it now

Military screen. I need more workers. Right now, it's 5:4 workers:cities. And on quick speed, you want more than 1.5:1 considering relative inefficiencies. And I'm gonna be settling another city soon. Lucky that specialist economies don't need that many tiles, right? And the fish tile is like the only other 5-food tile visible in a long distance. This ain't a lush map .

F2 screen.

A few graphs and demos. In general, things look good. I've got the same number of cities as SAT, who have been doing the EXP thing, and despite sinking ~224h into wonders, more than Sian's sunk into wonders, I've still got more cities and population. I guess I don't need any early traits

Finally, I've been pondering what tiles Sian has visibility on.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I've been spending the last half dozen turns or so after writing, saving gold. Tech is parked on Fishing, and no specialists have been hired to accumulate beakers.

So what next to do? I've been roading towards horse city. T54, the road up to horse city will be complete (I'm not going to road the city tile itself, I don't have enough worker turns).

T55, I move onto the city tile. T56, I start the road on the horses. T57, it is complete. Hence, I want to settle on T58, and on that turn, I'll have 2 workers to half-pasture the horses. On T59, the pasture will be complete.

What to do before then? That means I'll need to start the settler build on T54. Whip on T55. Move halfway to new site on T56. Move onto the plains forest on T57. Settle T58.

What about other cities? On T57, I want to set up some builds in CD and TCR that will be available for 2-whipping next turn. T58, I 2-whip, with the intention of overflowing ~20h into the next build. T59, 1-turn 2 chariots. On T60, 1 chariot will be on the staging tile, which will get roaded. If there is but a single axe, road the sheep and attack on T61. If I see spears, I abort.

I've decided to road the sheep later, so as to give minimal warning about having horses connected.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

What else to consider? Tech paths. I've been saving gold for the last half dozen turns, right now I have enough for 7.5 turns of max research. I'm on #2 in GNP, with 'mids and a holy city for culture GNP. Nice!

Fishing is requisite, it can feed ~4 of my cities. So no GScientist-Engineering bulb for me

Two paths available:

One path is Mathematics-Iron working to get an aqueduct down, then stone hooked up, Hanging Gardens built. I have vision on Sian's stone tile. SAT's economy is in the stinker, he's settled city #5 and his GNP dropped considerably. I can probably eat the costs. I think I will go down this path if my chariot attack succeeds.

The second path is Aesthetics for Paya, Parthenon, and SoZ. That way, I can boost my front line culture, and get some complementary SPI/'mids wonders up. I will go down this path if I abort my chariot gambit. If I go down this, then I can skip Monotheism as well.

So that's still another half dozen turns saving gold, before making my decision. Isn't Civilization 4 fun!? It should be noted that I'll have libraries completing in MHC II and CD4 fairly soon.

Finally, I've noticed that Sian has got Forges up already in Loincloth and Chiton. Some Colossus failgold economy cheese? This could prove useful: that gold won't be useful for a good half dozen turns, and he'll be militarily vulnerable while putting hammers into what are basically wealthbuilds. Afterwards, though, he could very well snipe the wonders I've been eyeing.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Argh, I made a mistake 2 turns ago. 2 turns ago, I put hammers into a worker, intending to do a whip. I did so while working plains cow, plains wheat, and 2 grass farms.

However, I should have taken the grass mine from the capital, as the food was useless, and made the capital work a plains hill and started the settler that turn. Argh, oh well. I traded a hammer for a coin out of the deal.

Sloppy, sloppy.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I had a quick look at some old saves.

On Tank's T56, he connected horses. Uh oh!

On Tank's T55, he had a power spike (because graphs lag a turn behind, from my understanding, graphs update at end of everybody's turn).

So whew. I have a spear finishing soon. I'll need two, both on my border cities against Tank. Let's wait until he plays and sends it on.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

A minor power spike by Sian.

A massive one my SAT.

A ton of recent posts in SAT's thread and the lurker thread.

I hope Phract man is getting attacked