[SPOILERS] Magic Science and Mr. Cairo in Pitboss 40

[Mr. Cairo]

I would only do the whole declare war ask peace thing if it's a neighbor who's spiking in power, you don't want it to become a habit you do with every other civ in the game all the time. Also, I wouldn't do it if the spike is from superdeath. If it is superdeath then he's either going to attack us, for which we're pretty much as prepared as we can be, so the advance warning serves little purpose; or he's going to attack someone else, and we don't want to restrict ourselves by giving him those ten turns of enforced peace. If he attacks someone else and it goes badly we want to be able to take advantage of that.

[Magic Science]

I would only do the whole declare war ask peace thing if it's a neighbor who's spiking in power, you don't want it to become a habit you do with every other civ in the game all the time. Also, I wouldn't do it if the spike is from superdeath. If it is superdeath then he's either going to attack us, for which we're pretty much as prepared as we can be, so the advance warning serves little purpose; or he's going to attack someone else, and we don't want to restrict ourselves by giving him those ten turns of enforced peace. If he attacks someone else and it goes badly we want to be able to take advantage of that.

Thanks for pitching in about this.

You are right to point out that there are instances where declaring war and offering peace isn’t the best move. I am still thinking about how to strike the balance between doing it and not doing it.

As it turns out, it was shallow_thought+Hitru who have been spiking in power. This makes sense, considering that they have whipped so much and so recently that Charson has managed to pass them in score. I was torn about rather or not I wanted to declare war and offer peace while playing Turn 78 and Turn 79, and I needed to move on from the turn and attend to some other things (like sleep ), so I didn’t do so on those turns. However, I now am thinking that it would be a good idea, so I am going to do so.

Sorry that I am falling behind on turn reports. I have my hands full with other things right now, but I hope to catch up soon.

[Magic Science]

Turns 78 to 82 – 925 to 825 BC
   
Teleportation mechanics really are dark magic, aren’t they? Quechua Two was teleported when CoT4E founded Malepartus, and he was inconveniently sent four tiles away back towards Geneva instead of one tile away towards the direction I wanted to go. My understanding of how teleportation works is that the game heavily favors teleporting in the direction of your capital, so I guess that this isn’t unexpected. Too bad that I didn’t think of it before it happened. I even saw CoT4E’s settler and correctly guessed what tile they were going to found on, so if I had considered the teleportation mechanics I could have sent Quechua Two to a different tile where he wouldn’t have been teleported.

Also, this seems like a good moment to mention that I think CoT4E’s naming scheme is awesome. According to Google Translate, “Traumhaft” (their civilization adjective) means “dreamlike” or “fantastical,” and all of their cities are named after locations from medieval German folklore. For example (according to Wikipedia), Venusberg is some sort of otherworld or fairyland, Malepartus is the labyrinthine castle hideout of a fictious thief, and Munsalvaesche is another name for Corbenic. Awesome.

   
Also, Superdeath is finally starting to pull things together over here. It has taken more than twenty turns since the Battle of Hittite, but he at last has a worker to improve The Flash's corn. That doesn't change the fact that this whole region has been a disaster for him, though. The Flash and Green Lantern are both awesome cities, with great food resources, many riverside grasslands to grow on and work, and many forests to get them started with granaries and ikandas rapidly. The lack of worker support until now has greatly held them back from achieving their potential. Two workers are a good start, but unless more come soon it will still be a while before they finally do so.

   
In military news, the graph revealed that shallow_thought+Hitru are the ones who have been increasing in power by such a frightening amount. That is less scary than if Superdeath or CoT4E were increasing in power by that much, but scarier than if RFS-81 and haphazard1 were growing in power. I think that I have a fairly safe and calm border with the Unlucky Orphans, but immortals scare me due to my lack of spearmen (working on it…), and I still think that they are one of the big sharks who could eat me eventually.

Also, the barbarian spearman suicided against a fortified archer in Geneva without incident.

   
On Turn 80, I noticed that CoT4E signed open borders with RFS-81. I am pretty sure that this is the first time open borders have been signed in the game. It is possible that CoT4E and Charson had them previously, but I think it is unlikely because I never saw anything suspicious in the Export - Imports category in the demographics screen.

This event caused me to think some more about what CoT4E may have obtained with the Oracle. If they Oracled Alphabet, why aren’t they opening borders with anyone? Being able to open borders is one of the main benefits of Alphabet, isn’t it? It doesn’t quite make sense at first glance. However, the other possibility, that they researched Alphabet under their own power and took something else with the Oracle, doesn’t quite seem to make sense either. If they had enough research power to get Alphabet before getting the Oracle, then why didn’t they research Mathematics under their own power instead and take Currency with the Oracle? They would be blowing this game out of the water right now if they had done that! My best guess is that they did take Alphabet with the Oracle, but they did so because they wanted to build research, not because they wanted to open borders with people for commerce. In fact, they may have opened borders with RFS-81 and haphazard1 only because they wanted to make the situation around Malepartus and Space Love a little less tense and awkward. Malepartus actually had some roads built in neutral territory by RFS-81 in its first ring.

   
Meanwhile, Jem (the quechua I sent scouting west) found himself in a pickle, surrounded by Orphans. This situation was what finally prompted me to declare war and offer peace. I wanted to make sure that shallow_thought and Hitru knew that I meant no harm, and, of course, I was still worried about their growing power. They accepted it without rejecting and sending it back, so Jem, and my civilization in general, are much more secure now.

Considering Quecha Two’s delay due to dark magic, Jem may end up being the one who discovers Charson first.

I don't think that I can add any more attachments to this post, so I am going to split this report in two.

[Magic Science]

   
The plan to found Quebec City worked perfectly, and I will settle it next turn with the crabs netted right away. It should whip out a terrace seven turns later, and I should be able to have the whales netted exactly on Turn 100 with another workboat from the mainland (although I haven’t planned far enough ahead to know where that workboat will come from).

Quebec City should be joined by Lhasa on Turn 86 and by the still-unnamed eastern city on Turn 88. That will leave me with a nine-city empire for a while, until either war or Iron Working, probably. That number is disappointing compared to what I could have had and what some others will probably still manage, but I think that it should be enough to keep my demographics at a mediocre, rather than awful, level for a while longer.

   
I was proven incorrect in regards to my predictions about the barbarian city. It must have spawned with warrior defenders, so the Psychedelic Warlords razed it easily. Quecha Two didn’t even manage to learn its name before it was destroyed.

   
To round off this mega-report, here’s an overview screenshot.

You can see my first hamlet by New Hong Kong, and other cottages are going up everywhere. I hope to be working at least ten cottages by Turn 90, but I haven’t planned far enough head to be sure of its feasibility (I am pretty much at the end of my plan now). Sidon should finally transition from the whipping-post that it has been to the cottage center that it is well-suited to being. It will probably build a library, and New Hong Kong may build one too. I hope to build barracks across the empire in the coming turns, but I probably won’t be able to do that for a little while. I am still sixth in power, and I need more actual units right away to garrison the unnamed eastern city and Lhasa before I can invest in making future units better promoted.

You can also see the tense border with the Injustice League. We can both see each other’s garrisons, and the corn-for-corn trade isn’t doing much to defuse the situation. We are also in a culture war for each other’s first ring tiles, but I think that the situation will remain stable as it is now that all of our border cities have expanded their culture to second ring. I will be guarding my workers while they go about cottaging the riverside grassland tiles north of New Hong Kong, that’s for sure. A second axeman will come to guard once the workers currently near Sidon come over to help cottage. This isn’t just paranoia either; there is an impi who can reach all three of tiles I want to improve over there in one turn of movement.

[Magic Science]

Turn 83 to 84 – 800 and 775 BC
   
There are two notable things in this screenshot.

One is that there is stone on this map, and the Unlucky Orphans have a copy of it. I had only seen marble until now; I even had the idea that maybe there was only marble and no stone in this game. I will need to keep this in mind if I ever want to try for a stone-boosted wonder. I wonder, is there stone in the contested region with CoT4E to my east, by Nobiskrug? Or did I simply never have a chance to get stone?

The other is that the ivory tile no longer has a jungle on it. This means that the Unlucky Orphans must have Iron Working now. This makes sense, considering that they just settled a city north of the area this screenshot shows, and the only food source it can reach is a jungle-covered rice (which is visible in this screenshot). This solidly puts an end to my thoughts about potentially settling the jungle belt between us some day. There is no way that I am going to beat them to it now, and I will simply have to be content with Lhasa.

   


Jem made a very important scouting discovery these past two turns.

He finally met Charson, which is quite exciting. I really enjoy exploration in Civ IV.  They have seven cities, just as my Cloak and Dagger predicted (I haven’t been doing much Cloak and Dagger, but I have been tracking cities being founded), which all seem to be named after Final Fantasy creatures. All espionage spending has been reassigned to Charson until I get graphs on them. At that point, I will have graphs on everyone and will have to think about who I want to try to work towards research visibility on (probably either CoT4E or Superdeath). 

It should also be noted that Charson and shallow_thought+Hitru (I really need a combined name for those guys. shallow_ru? ) have a crabs-for-crabs deal. This means that they have friendly relations, or at least that they are trying to be amiable, and it also means that there must be a trade route between them. Jem hasn’t seen any road connections yet, so I guess that one of them has Sailing. I wonder if one of them already has settled their island, or if I was the first one?

   


Somehow, founding Quebec City pushed me up to THIRD PLACE in Crop Yield and GNP (it did turn an immediate profit)! This is huge!

The assumption that I have been acting on for the past 40 turns since the Great Injustice of Turn 43 is “I am doomed. I am a small, weak minnow, and it is only a matter of time until I am devoured. There is no hope. ” However, these two turns have challenged that assumption. Certainly, I haven’t surpassed Charson and Superdeath by very much in Crop Yield or GNP, but the fact that I am even on their level is huge. Maybe I am not actually doomed after all? Could I survive until the end of the game? Victory still seems unlikely when I compare myself to CoT4E and shallow_thought+Hitru, but could it be faintly possible? Things aren’t as bad as I thought, it seems.

[Magic Science]

Turn 85 and 86 – 750 and 725 BC
   
I’m starting to think that Charson may have the highest power. Thanks to the two-turn delay on graph updates, the graph in the screenshot is showing the situation on Turn 84. On Turn 84, I had 94,000 soldiers and the top power was 141,000 soldiers. None of the other lines on the graph seem to be higher than my line by that significant of a margin. It could be that I am bad at reading graphs, but I don’t think so. I think that Charson’s line is the one that is far above mine, and I simply can’t see it on the graph yet. I won’t know for sure for about ten more turns (assuming that Charson keeps putting their espionage points on me), but I am feeling pretty confident about this.

If Charson is the one with the top power, that would be excellent for me. I would prefer it if my neighbors did not build large armies, and Charson is the only team I don’t border on this map. If they are going to go to war, then there is absolutely no way that it is against me.

Really though, the most damning piece of evidence for Charson having the largest army is right there in their thread title. They are clearly concerned with winning the postcount war, and one good way to stop your opponents from updating their threads is to wipe them out. Maybe they are trying to destroy CoT4E, their most prolific opponent?

   
Back to the actual game, I founded Lhasa this turn without incident. I had a moment of panic when I saw an immortal nearby, but then I remembered that the Unlucky Orphans are locked into peace with me for a few more turns. A lone immortal shouldn’t pose much of a threat to my archers anyway.

I timed a mine on a forested hill to finish this turn so that Lhasa could get a chop into its terrace and have a mine to finish it quickly right away. It will work the mine for the next two turns (finishing the terrace), then switch to the floodplains farm to grow. I am considering paving over the farm to build a cottage once Lhasa has grown to size two. It would work both floodplains cottages for a surplus of +4 food, then whip/grow onto mines. I am also thinking about paving over the farm at Sidon in favor of a cottage as well. Sidon in particular has a ton of food, so losing one food for a cottage wouldn’t hurt very much. Losing the food in Lhasa would hurt more because it has so little, but four food would still be enough to grow up to my current happiness cap at a decent pace.

   
Quechua Two managed to find a crack in Psychedelic culture to slip through, but then he ended up threatening a worker. With so many axemen nearby, I am worried that he might get killed by RFS-81+haphazard1 simply because having him nearby is inconvenient for their micro. I considered declaring war and offering peace to show I meant no harm, like I did for Jem with the Unlucky Orphans, but I think that the chances of having to go through their culture within the next ten turns is high enough that I would prefer to leave the option of declaring to get through open. Instead, I decided to offer them a crab-for-crab trade to show peaceful intent. I was able to do that because of CoT4E building a road in the correct place near Malepartus. Thanks guys! While I was at it, I decided to send a crab-for-crab trade to them too. I might as well try to be friendly, right? After all, the Incan League desires peace with all of its neighbors… for now…

   
Some of those neighbors don’t make it easy though. There are now three impis hanging around where I am trying to improve my tiles. Two of them (the ones in The Flash) are within one turn of movement of the tile where I want to build a cottage for Almaty. Like I’ve said before, I trust the corn-for-corn deal not at all, so I will need to send down the axeman in Almaty to help defend when it comes time to improve that tile.

Lastly, and a non-sequitur for this screenshot, CoT4E completed Stonehenge this turn. I can’t see which city it is, so it must be either Schilda or Munsalvaesche. They didn’t have stone for the build (although I would guess that they have Mathematics by now).

[Mr. Cairo]

Sorry for the lack of commentary, I have been following your latest updates. I had to agree with your assessment earlier, we are certainly in a better position than previously assumed, early hiccup notwithstanding.

About paving over the farm at Lhasa, I'd probably keep it a farm for the time being, and give the other fp cottage to Sidon, a much better placed commerce city. At size 4 Lhasa can work that farm, the marble quarry, a plains hill mine and a grassland hill mine for 12 hammers/turn, which makes for a nice unit-pump. Once at size 4 that you can whip the ph-mine off as needed, and the farm allows you to grow back fast enough to make the whip cost-effective (if it takes longer than 7 turns to regrow after whipping off of a 4-hammer tile then you've actually lost hammers in the whip).

What's our tech rate right now at 100% science?

[Magic Science]

Sorry for the lack of commentary, I have been following your latest updates. I had to agree with your assessment earlier, we are certainly in a better position than previously assumed, early hiccup notwithstanding.

In case it wasn’t clear from earlier turn reports, I really am very surprised by how well we have managed to catch up. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I think that I have played decently well for a greens game, but I am hesitant to claim that great skill on my part has been responsible for our catching up. There don’t seem to have been any (real) wars between other players, so it can’t be that. We do have a very strong early game combo, but most of the other players have fairly strong early game combos too, so I would say that it is about a wash in that area. I’m not sure. I will be interested to read about the time period lasting from the Great Injustice of Turn 43 to now from other perspectives when the game is over. 

Whatever the cause, I am glad of it. Although, I will say that being doomed is somewhat less stressful than having a chance.

About paving over the farm at Lhasa, I'd probably keep it a farm for the time being, and give the other fp cottage to Sidon, a much better placed commerce city. At size 4 Lhasa can work that farm, the marble quarry, a plains hill mine and a grassland hill mine for 12 hammers/turn, which makes for a nice unit-pump. Once at size 4 that you can whip the ph-mine off as needed, and the farm allows you to grow back fast enough to make the whip cost-effective (if it takes longer than 7 turns to regrow after whipping off of a 4-hammer tile then you've actually lost hammers in the whip).

I like your way better than what I was thinking. I am now thinking that it is better to let Lhasa focus on hammers and Sidon focus on commerce, so I will leave the farm at Lhasa intact, and I am pretty sure that I am going to pave over the floodplains farm at Sidon for a cottage.

What's our tech rate right now at 100% science?

I don’t know it off the top of my head. I will get that information for you when I play my next turn. It isn’t that good, though. Our GNP is well-ranked more because most other players have bad GNP than because ours is particularly great. Hopefully that should change soon, though. Sofia (the name I have decided on for our ninth city) will drag down our GNP a little bit more, but then it should be growing quickly again for the near future.

[Magic Science]

Turn 87 and Turn 88 – 700 BC and 725 BC
We live in interesting turns, that’s for sure. This turn the diplomacy was flying thick and fast. To start, CoT4E returned my crab-for-crabs offer. In line with the advice Mr. Cairo gave back when Superdeath and me set up our corn-for-corn deal, I rejected it. Hopefully CoT4E sees things the same way I do and understands that rejecting the deal doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be friendly. RFS-81+haphazard1, on the other hand, accepted the crab-for-crabs deal without even re-offering.

   
That wasn’t the end of the diplomacy, though. I then received a copper-for-copper offer from Superdeath. Very interesting. This must mean “please be my warfriend,” right? If he had simply wanted to double-down on trying to be friendly, then he could have offered something like crab-for-crab or fish-for-fish, but he didn’t.

I thought about the offer for a minute, and then I rejected it without re-sending. There are only two civilizations that me and Superdeath could reasonably attack together: CoT4E or shallow_ru (I’m going with that name, okay? ). I’m not sure that attacking either one of them in the near future would be a good idea, even with help. I don’t think that I have caught up to them, they are still stronger. I am willing to consider attacking, but I would rather wait and see what happens for now. I don’t want Superdeath (or anyone else, if he were to actually accept the copper-for-copper trade) to perceive that I have committed to any wars yet.

Those diplomatic occurrences were interesting, but none of them were actually the most interesting thing to happen this turn.

   
Because this occurrence takes the cake!

Could Charson be launching a serious war against CoT4E? That would be amazing for me. I doubt that they would be able to make enough progress to propel themselves from their current position to a dominant lead (this is the age before catapults or very powerful two-movers, after all, and I don’t think that their forces are that overwhelming), but it could certainly set CoT4E back substantially. Even if Charson couldn’t take anything, the unit whips from CoT4E and the future animosity between them would be nice for me.

That’s before even considering Superdeath’s offer in light of this new information. Charson must have declared war before Superdeath played his turn, so he would have seen what had happened. It seems plausible that the copper-for-copper trade is saying “Do you want to dogpile CoT4E?” Maybe, I’m not sure. If the Dreamlike-Interdimensional War turns out to be real, and if Superdeath piles on, I would need to strongly consider it. Of course, attacking Superdeath to take Green Lantern and The Flash while he is distracted would also be an option.

I’m not sure what will happen next, or how I will react to what happens. However, I need more military units to react to any opportunities that arise, so I will be building a few more over the coming turns.

It is worth noting that there has been quite a bit of chatter in the lurker thread recently. Maybe it is because something exciting is going on? Of course, knowing the lurkers, it is also plausible that they have gone off on some random tangent and are now arguing about 27th century Martian politics.

   
Quechua Two is threatening three Psychedelic workers now. Hopefully RFS-81 trusts our crab-for-crab deal. He should also be able to tell that I mean no harm because I have double-moved him a few times recently.

It should also be noted that the Psychedelic Warlords now have Iron Working. I guess that they were going for that while I was going for Sailing.

   
Back in the Incan League, interesting things were happening too. Cape Town expanded borders and discovered another island. I don’t think that it is possible to reach it before Astronomy with cultural expansion, so it will be a long while before we can settle it. It already looks like a decent city spot to me, and a second intercontinental city to supply internal intercontinental trade routes would be nice. Perhaps most interestingly, if every player has similar access to islands (which seems likely), then there are Astronomy islands north of Superman and Rungholt too, making at least three Astronomy islands in my ocean. Whoever gets Astronomy first could probably claim all of them, threatening the cores of the other two players (in addition to having some nice new cities). I will be interested to learn if there is another island to the east of Quebec City when its borders expand.

My galley has been sitting there since it dropped off the settler for Quebec City a few turns ago because I haven’t thought of anything useful to do with it. Now that I type this, I realize that I can send it to the southeast of the newly-discovered fish tile to get a slightly better view of the island. I’ll do that next turn. Also, if I do go to war, then the galley may play a role in it.

   
I am not quite sure what my next round of builds is gong to be in some of my cities. Sidon could probably make good use of a library, but I am not so certain about most of my other cities. Do I go for barracks now and then some more units, or do I go for units right away? I am leaning towards going for units right away in the cities that don’t have infrastructure to build. That way I can be ready to react if an opportunity arises.

I also founded Sofia, which did not increase my maintenance by nearly as much as I was expecting it too. I went from making 15 gold without it to making 13 gold with it, which is still an increase from last turn, when I was making 11 gold.
Mr. Cairo, to answer your question, here are the numbers that I recorded for our research/gold rates at various percentages. All of these numbers are from what you can see by the science slider at the top left, not from the demographics. Also, keep in mind that we have hired two scientist specialists currently.

100% research: 90 beakers, -64 gold.

20% research (roughly breakeven): 24 beakers, -3 gold.

0% research: 7 beakers, +13 gold.

We currently have 122 gold, so I think that I will turn research back on and head for Mathematics soon, maybe even next turn.

Like I said, we live in interesting turns.

[Mr. Cairo]

It might be worth considering getting alphabet before maths, an OB agreement could do wonders for our economy, and it'll let us build research inc ities without anything better to work on.

Also, if I were in your position, I would have re-offered the copper-copper deal to superdeath, then stabbed him in the back when he attacks Couer. But that's just me (and maybe I shouldn't be saying this considering I just signed up for a diplo game :D)
But really, after superdeath killed Hong Kong, I don't see how he could possibly trust us, or expect anything from us other than emnity, I don't what he's thinking here, asking for an alliance from the civ who's chance of winning he ended.