[SPOILERS] Charriu, chumchu, and Magic Science in Pitboss 45

[Magic Science]

Turns 29 and 30
This one weird trick, invented by a local scout, will prevent anyone from ever declaring war on you again! Warmongers HATE him!

   
Mr. Cairo, beware. I am coming for you next.*
*In reality, probably not. There are already enough warriors to make scouting wars risky, and there will be even more warriors out on the map by the time Matthew reaches China. I don’t think that a Triple Perry Expedition is in the cards. 

superdeath became the first player to found a second city this turn, and I think that it is in a great spot. It must be for him to have settled somewhere other than by the sheep and pigs in the west.

   
Our own second city is scheduled to be established one tile north of the wheat on Turn 32. After that, my micromanagement plan runs out. Any ideas about what to do next would be appreciated.

I think that the actions of our second city and southern worker are obvious, they should grow to whip a garden and improve the wheat and pig, respectively, but Babylon and the northern worker have a wider variety of sensible options. Choices should probably be made under the assumption that our third city will be settled one tile west of the grassland hill pig, since that tile is the best unclaimed one left within reach. The reason to settle the city claiming it to its west instead of its northwest is the jungled gems barely onscreen to the south. If we settle one tile to the northwest of the pigs, we get more rivers and forests, but the gems won’t be in our culture until after Turn 94, and I think that we will want the happiness from the gems sooner than then.

[Charriu]

I would keep the northern worker in the north, doing some roads towards the copper there and chopping forests. My gut feeling tells me that horses may be in the NW of our capitol, there is enough space for them there.

EDIT: By the way the plain forest tile 3N of the capitol could be one of our coastal city spots with 2 floodplains, the copper, crab and lending the cows from the capitol in the beginning.

[Magic Science]

GeneralKilCavalry just eliminated Borsche from the game. This is kind of a big deal.

[Charriu]

That's really unexpected, because of the time and the players involved. This pushes GeneralKilCavalry in a top position.

[Magic Science]

The situation is dire. The factors that would normally make perpetrating a very early rush a bad idea do not seem to apply here, which leaves only benefits.

Usually, very early rushes set you behind because of the cost of building military units instead of civilian units. In this case, GeneralKilCavalry and boak did not need a large army for their attack. On Turn 33, they had at most 23,000 power, at least 15,000 of which is accounted for by technology and population. That does not leave much room for a lot of units to exist. You don’t need to the demographics screen to tell you that eliminating Borsche did not slow the Vikings down much, though, you just need to look at PBSPY. On the respectable date of Turn 34, they settled a city of their own, which brings them to three cities and six population. No one else has more than four population and two cities, and I bet that Borsche’s capital is of a higher quality than any of our second cities. Despite the rush, the snowball is rolling. What chance do the rest of us have to keep up?

Usually, rushing a neighbor early does just as much to help their other neighbors as it does to help you. In this case, espionage spending (no one we have met has spent any against a civilization we have not met) and the map settings (Big and Small, not Pangaea, right?) make me think that the Vikings and Borsche were on their own continent, so that does not hold true. If those two civilizations were on a different continent, then the elimination of Borsche means the Vikings will not need to worry about human military pressure for a long time, which is not a benefit any of the rest of us get to enjoy.

[Charriu]

I highly doubt that they were on different continents. That would have meant going for Sailing and building a galley before T33 more likely a lucky warrior stumbled into an undefended capital.

[Charriu]

Hey Magic. Anything interesting to report?

[Magic Science]

Hey Magic. Anything interesting to report?

Yes! I am very sorry for the unreasonably long delay between this report and the previous one. I will do my best to make sure that it does not happen again.

I highly doubt that they were on different continents. That would have meant going for Sailing and building a galley before T33 more likely a lucky warrior stumbled into an undefended capital.

I agree with you. What I meant to communicate is that I think the Vikings and Borsche started on the same continent, but the continent they started on is not the same continent as the continent we, nausten, superdeath, and Mr. Cairo started on.

Here is an overview of the Babylonian League on Turn 45:
   
(screenshot from the simulation because I forgot to take a good one in the game )

I am pleased to announce that everything has gone according to plan between this turn report and the previous one. Zanzibar was just settled this turn, and La Venta has a garden. I am less pleased to announce that during lunch the day after I had irreversibly committed to the plan that guided us up to this point I thought of a slightly better one. Oh well.

   
Our demographics are surprisingly good. I anticipated that all of the whipping we have been able to do thanks to gardens and Charismatic would allow us to keep up in city and worker count the non-Viking teams, but I thought that it would depress our demographics because the yields from whipping population don’t register there. That it has not is a good sign.

Other things you should know about the past turns but that are not visible in the screenshots include:
• Matthew killed another animal, which gave him enough experience to take Woodsman II, so he can continue to scout safely even in the Age of Human Barbarians by moving one tile per turn through jungles and forests. Also, he is favored to survive against barbarian warriors if they attack him while he is fully healthy and fortified on a forest/jungle hill. In my dreams, Matthew uses this to become the first staring scout Heroic Epic unit in Realms Beyond Pitboss history. In reality, it probably just lets him be a better fogbuster when he is done scouting that land protrusion east of Zanzibar.
• GeneralKilCavalry and boak settled a fourth city on Turn 38! Scary! I suspect that they did not have enough workers and workboats for all of those cities, though, and they have not settled another one since.
• nausten, or perhaps Rustgar, settled their second city somewhere we have not scouted and their third city to the south by the cows. superdeath and Mr. Cairo have not settled third cities yet.
• Mr. Cairo is where I thought he was, across the jungle belt far to the south, so we will not need to worry about competing with him for land until Iron Working.
• Mr. Cairo and superdeath both declared scouting wars on us, but we are at peace again now.

   
North to the future! I think that our fourth, fifth, and sixth cities will be founded in this region. The clam and copper city east of Zanzibar could be settled in this time period, but I think that it is a worse option than all three northern ones. The northern ones can all either share tiles with previously established cities, have some of their improvements worked on in advance because Babylon’s culture is so expansive, or both. The clam and copper cannot do either, because Zanzibar cannot afford to share its only food resource. We will not be able to get a workboat over there to instantly improve the clam until at least some time in the early 60s, and we should have settled three more cities by then.

Dotmapping: for the gold city, the dry desert hill is the only tile that will have both the gold and the floodplain missed by Zanzibar in its BFC, so that will be the spot we settle on. For Ormus, the plains forest is the only tile that will have the floodplains missed by the gold city and the crab, so that will be where we settle it.

For the rice city, there is choice. I favor C3. C1 starts slower, because it is farther away and cannot share the horse or corn tiles, and is worse long-term because it has so many desert tiles in the BFC. It does steal nausten’s copper and give us a good position to claim the deer tile from, but I do not think that those benefits are worth it. The theft of the copper will only be temporary, because nausten can settle for it first ring, and we cannot win a culture war for someone else’s first ring tile forever, so the theft needs to offer some kind of advantage soon after it is made, and I do not think that it will. nausten can research Archery if they see that their copper has been taken, and Archery would allow them to survive an attack. The copper theft could still be worth it if by pushing them back onto the defensive we can take more contested land, but that is not the case on this map, because there is only one contested resource between us besides the rice: the deer. The deer is not a strong enough tile to be worth all of the future tension that will arise from having our rice city and their copper city so close together and in constant conflict for each other’s first ring tiles.

C2 takes the worst of both C1 and C3 and combines them. It is too far away to share tiles and has a bunch of worthless deserts like C1, and, like C3, it does not steal the copper or oasis tiles. Also, it is on flatland, always a problem for a border city. C4 is a wild card that has most of the problems C2 has, but comes with a silver lining: it is coastal. C4 will still probably not be of much help for settling the islands, because all the island are far away from it to the east, but it could use those forests to chop a water wonder for us. I still like C3 the most, but C4 is worth keeping in the back of our minds.

There are two other things to think about for the near future. One is what order we will settle the three northern cities in. We are committed to settling Ormus first, but the order of the gold and rice cities is undecided.

The other is what tech to research after Pottery. We will have a few turns to decide, because whatever tech it is, we will need to build up gold before starting on it. I favor Fishing, followed by Sailing. Our tech rate will decline with all of these new cities, and I think that we need to start working on obtaining galleys now in order to have them before the good mainland spots in reach run out.

[Charriu]

I would keep the northern worker in the north, doing some roads towards the copper there and chopping forests. My gut feeling tells me that horses may be in the NW of our capitol, there is enough space for them there.

EDIT: By the way the plain forest tile 3N of the capitol could be one of our coastal city spots with 2 floodplains, the copper, crab and lending the cows from the capitol in the beginning.

Wuhu, I was right about the horse location. And yes I totally agree about the placement of Ormus and going for it next.

After Ormus I would go for the western C3 city. I think C3 is the right city mainly because it's on a hill. The gold city dotmap is also ok, but it's a backline city and we may settle it when we run against the happy limit.

Fishing is a must after Pottery for Ormus. After that it would be a hard choice between Sailing for the reasons you mentioned and Writing to start on a cheap library and early scientist.

Anything new about our (very posting-active) western neighbor?

EDIT: Also what are your thoughts about visiting naufragor with some chariots, now that horses are in reach?
EDIT2: Oh and try to chop the forest on the Ormus tile. Every hammer counts.

[Magic Science]

Congratulations about the horses! Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to predict the location of iron. My bet is on the desert tile two tiles north of where our floodplains city will be.

About Ormus: Fishing is actually not that important for Ormus. A crab with a workboat is only one commerce better than a floodplains with a farm. Eventually we will want to improve the crab, but that can be put off for a while.

Chopping the forest is a good idea. I almost missed that.

About nausten: I have fallen behind in my clock and dagger (I have records of all the needed data, just haven’t done the grunt work for the past few turns yet), so that limits what I can tell you about them at the moment. I can say that they are doing quite well, surprisingly well for a team with a workboat start and no very early advantages. Also, it seems that something exciting may have happened to them on Turn 49. naufragar usually plays his turns quickly and in one go, but this time he spent a long time playing and logged in and out several times.

I do not think that harassing nausten with chariots is a wise idea. It will slow them down, but probably not that much, because by the time chariots could arrive at their territory (about Turn 60, I guess), they should have enough units and productive capacity to stop us from actually burning a city, and an attack would slow us down relative to the other three teams as well. An attack could still be worth it if setting them back can give us an advantage relative to the rest of the field, but, as I mentioned when considering where to settle the rice city, there is no other quality contested land for us to claim at their expense, and I am not sure what other advantage a chariot attack could provide.

Turns 46 through 48
   
Mr. Cairo settled his third city of Titan this turn, one turn before superdeath settled his third city of Cheeto Fuhrer. Either Cairo’s land is bad, or there is another resource in the fog, because what Matthew has seen of Titan is not high-quality. The clam is slightly worrisome because Cairo could use it to feed a city that claims our copper from his half of the jungle. That would be an aggressive spot, though, and not a strong one, so I am not too concerned about this.

Also of note: Buddhism was founded at the end of the turn. I see no reason to doubt that GeneralKilCavalry and boak were the ones to do it. Everyone else has other ways to provide culture to new cities.

   
The human barbarians have come out to play in the south. We only have one real combat unit to defend two cities, so the situation may look precarious, but it is not. There is a decent chance of being forced to deviate from the optimum plan, which has us build very little military, but there is no chance of losing a city. Thanks to Creative, La Venta has enough advanced warning to whip a bowman to completion if a one-mover comes out of the fog, and Zanzibar is close enough to La Venta that even if our bowman needs to trail the barbarian warrior all the way over to the city tile, he could reach Zanzibar in time to defend it from a one-mover coming out of the fog. Zanzibar itself will also be to the point that it could whip a bowman to defend itself if necessary in two turns.

There was a barbarian warrior in the north at well, but our scouting warrior killed him, and now everything is fogbusted. No need for a picture.