[SPOILERS] Tatan, as the glorious Shaka of France!

[Tatan]

Emailed a bit with Amelia. We both admitted there was nothing much to talk about, so most of it wasn't very interesting. She did propose Open Borders, though. I'm not quite sure why, though; we don't have a trade route connection and we also agreed on a no-scouting clause, making OB useless. But I agreed to it anyway, to bolster relations.

Turn 52 was fairly uneventful; I screwed around with my micro plan, whipped out the settler in Eegah! for some reason, and performed a few other boring activities. Yawn. I'll post when something interesting happens.

[Tatan]

The Great Lighthouse was built a turn or two ago. In a seemingly unrelated event, Open Borders went through with Amelia. And only THEN did I remember to check the Demographics screen and discover that she was the one who built it. If I had known that, I would've been more cautious...

The Mardoc Seven also messaged me saying that they will be trying to hook up to the railroads within 10-20 turns, so they would be willing to sign Open Borders. Sure, why not, although it might be a while before *I* connect to the rails.


The same turn as Luddite founds his fifth city, I found my fourth:



The warrior was overheard complaining that his predicament lacked its usual cheer. [/obscure references]

Also, notice that worker under the sign "2 INTO CHOP". One click, and 20 hammers went into a granary. Which is conveniently double-speed with EXP, making for a one-turn granary. :dancing5:

And as you can see at the top of the screen, I elected to go for Confucianism. To safe-guard against wasted research, though, I've been saving up gold; next turn, I can blitz through it and hopefully discover CoL in 6-7 turns.

[Square Leg]

MM dream...

[Tatan]

Quick report since I have stuffz to do...



Caught up to Luddite.


Unfortunately, this forces me to run another turn of 100% gold due to maintenance, but such is life.

[Tatan]

Okay, so remember how I founded my fourth city on Turn 54? And then another one on Turn 55?



Need to get some more workers, though, resources spreading thin.

Oh, and do you know what this means?





For the record, city count as of now:
1. Tatan, 6 cities
2. Luddite, 5 cities
3. Plako, 4 cities
3. MardocSeven, 4 cities
5. Gold Ergo Sum, 3 cities
5. Adlain, 3 cities
5. Amelia, 3 cities

What are those last three doing? Especially Amelia, she's imperialistic! I expected her to be using the IMP/ORG/zigguraut combo to REX all over the place.


In other news, I'm now tied for first in Food, but also one point under the sixth lowest person in GNP. Hopefully I can begin to work on that soon. Speaking of which, first hamlet at the end of the turn:

[Tatan]

I have been mostly just cottage-spamming for the past several turns; expansion has been slowed in order to grow a bit [not to mention get more workers], although I will be founding #7 over in the SE by the clams next turn [and another settler is in the works]. GES asked in-game for Open Borders out of the blue, which I accepted out of "why not?".

Speaking of weird things GES has done recently, check out this email exchange:

[snip]
How is it going in PBEM11?

GES

Hey,

Regarding PBEM11: honestly, not much is happening for me. I've been trying to keep up with Luddite in expansion, but all that did was get me last place in GNP while he continues to soar ahead. :\

Following your directions from aaages ago, I finally found Amelia, who immediately proposed open borders. I accepted before I saw that she had built the Great Lighthouse, so now I feel like an idiot; at least we're not connected yet.

Speaking of which, I'm kinda surprised you haven't built a wonder yet, although presumably you'll land the HG if you're still going with that plan.

Uh anyway I don't really know what else to talk about; despite the early contact this map seems to leave everyone isolated. One last thing: not to push you to give away too much or anything, but are you going for Confucianism?

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Sorry if I'm not being very eloquent right now.

-Tatan

I am not going for Confucianism.

I also gave up on the HG plan because I just couldn't get enough cities down fast enough to make it worth my while. I expect M7 to pop it any time now.

I tried to get TGLH but Amelia really went all out for it. It seems she destroyed her demographics doing it. I tried to avoid the same fate and she beat me there.

I could probably have grabbed Colossus, but I know plako was planning on building it and I would prefer to stay on his good side.

I mainly got Industrious for the half-priced forges, and I already have two of those up, which on this map is good for 3 extra happy.

GES

I just realized that Code of Laws is available for me. Not sure how many turns it would take. How far away from nabbing Confucianism are you?

GES

Unless you are going to snag Confu really soon, don't waste your time. I think it is going to finish in a couple turns.

GES

Hmm... So you just happen to realize CoL is available, then you ask how far away I am from it, THEN without any reply from me state that I have no chance of getting it. Right. Note that those last two emails were about 90 minutes apart, and in the middle of the night for anyone in America [and the crack of dawn for Europe]. It's far from certain, but to me it certainly LOOKS like he just tried to slip Confu out from under me. Fortunately, look at the first screenshot.


In other news, MardocSS just completed the Hanging Gardens, boosting their food to seismic proportions. A GS was also born somewhere, although honestly I am a little puzzled as to who spawned it; Plako is Phi, but he already generated one GP, and I would have expected his second to be another Prophet. Perhaps one of the stragglers have been delaying their expansion in order to run scientists? [GES?]


For those interested, a City-Count:
1. Luddite, 7 cities. He founded his 7th almost immediately after my 6th.
1. MardocSS, 7 cities. He founded 2 cities simultaneously a little while ago, and another last turn or so [pushing for max HG pop gain, obviously].
3. Tatan [that's me!], 6 cities. I'll found the 7th next turn.
4. Plako, 5 cities. He's been at 5 for a while, actually.
4. Amelia, 5 cities. She slammed down two almost immediately after building the Great Lighthouse.
6. GES, 4 cities. C'mon, I know you probably were off wonder-chasing and commerce-whoring, but cities are cities.
7. Adlain, 3 cities. Uhh, hopefully I'll have turned out to be incorrect after the game, but from right here it seems that someone's been smoking the magic weed a little too much. Seriously, though, he's ORG, he should be trying to expand ASAP. If half of the other players have twice as many cities as you, then you know there might be a problem.

These positions are actually pretty accurate indicators of game position right now, although I would probably place myself a few spots lower and MardocSS at the top.

Demographics:

Yeah, this is bad. I'm keeping up with expansion, but my GNP is simply getting slaughtered. I better be able to improve that soon, or I'll have yet another game where I'm hopelessly behind in tech on my hands. Note the Rival Best Food; that would be the HG in action.


Let me see... Oh, yes, one last thing:

[Tatan]

The city count continues to be a relative dead heat:

Luddite: 8 cities
MardocSS: 7 cities
Tatan: 7 cities
Plako: 7 cities
Amelia: 5 cities
GES: 4 cities
Adlain: 3 cities

Or at least at the top. At this point, I would rate the players into loose tiers [listed in ascending order]

Weed Tier:
-Adlain [sorry, but it's kinda true]

Bungled Tier:
-GES [you are FIN/IND, but that is no excuse to get stuck at 4 cities]
-Amelia [Great Lighthouse hurt expansion a lot, but she could still possibly pull out via trade routes]

Solid Tier:
-Me [keeping up with the leaders in expansion, but I'm having trouble actually pulling up alongside them]

Gold Tier:
-Luddite [expansion leader with a still-intact economy as far as I can tell]
-Plako [a little slow in expansion, but with very good vertical growth]

God Tier
-MardocSS [they are quite literally killing everyone else in GNP and Food, and are probably the expansion runner-up]


To reinforce this, Demographics for turn 64 [last turn]:



:\ So obviously, my primary goal right now is to boost my GNP. Food could also be better, but that should improve [or at least maintain itself] naturally; after all, my biggest cities are all size 5, while others are sporting size 7 and 8 cities [I was too busy building workers!]. Hopefully, now I can start growing those cities onto cottages. My GNP this turn [65] was already looking better [I was 4th at 100% research], due to cottage growth. It's an uncreative plan, but cottage spamming is probably the best option for me now.

Of course, there is something else: the Pyramids. I seriously expected someone else to have built this by now, but no one has so far, so I might make a serious attempt at it. I've already poured some overflow at BC into it, so 6 chops and a little more overflow should do the trick. If GES or someone is going for the Pyramids, I'll still probably lose it; but at least I'll get some shiny gold for deficit research.

Anyway, not much else happening. My empire one turn ago:



The spot marked 'DOT' in the top right of the picture will be settled in 3-4 turns. As you can see, I'm researching Monarchy right now; I discovered Monotheism last turn, so I plan to double-revolt to HR and OR after finishing Monarchy [we Frenchies like our singular overlords!]. I'll revolt to Confucianism after that.

Oh, and KS has turned into a surprisingly great city:



Everybody say WORKER CRANK! Of course, I'll also want to grow on to some juicy cottages, but until I get the excess worker labor to do that, KS itself will produce workers.


Lastly, since I finally found everyone on the map, I tried to use Flying Camera Mode to take a mind-boggling picture of the world.



Yeah, didn't really work out to well as a map, although I certainly did boggle my mind. The problem was that I physically couldn't get a wide enough angle; zoom out any more, and the distant Plako and GES would start getting gobbled up by shadows. So I whipped up a crude map in Paint using the Military Adviser screen, although it appears that a six-year-old hijacked it when I wasn't looking:



Even with that large swath of map still fogged up, I would say that this map is still reasonably accurate, and I think I could draw up the entire thing almost flawlessly if I had the time or inclination. Interestingly, something I hadn't really noticed until now is that pretty much every player is a neighbor of pretty much every other player, although some are further away than others; for instance, I don't have a very close connection with Plako and Amelia. The close universal proximities will be something to keep in mind as the early game closes; I suspect dogpiles will be that much easier to form.


Anyway, I was going to add something else, but I forgot.

[Tatan]

mmm stuff is happening. Another city founded recently by the northern cows [my eighth?]. GES finally expanded. Not sure if Adlain did. Double-revolted to HR+OrgRel last turn, and revolted to Confu this turn. Something important might happen next turn, but I don't want to jinx it [and thus just did ]. I just realized how much commerce I'm missing out on for not having Sailing.

Lastly, I have no idea what my plan is in this game.

[Tatan]

Aaaannnnnddd I closed the window instead of hitting 'submit reply' and lost my post. And it was actually a real update, too, instead of my usual piddly half-paragraphs.

Executive Summary of What I Did In Post


- for researching Monarchy

- at other players' game questionable decisions while ignoring my own

- about my horrible teching

-: over this:

[Serdoa]

Good job Tatan

I wanted to ask you what your plan is going forward but obviously you answered that