Part 4: Gond Home
Update 4: Gond Home
Gond remains open during normal business hours on public holidays. Gond also has no places of business and no holidays and no calendar.Salutations and good to hear from you. Last time we backslid on our pure and selfless intentions to acquit ourselves as model citizens and maybe just a teensy bit killed everyone again BUT ANYWAYS it's a new day and we're going to spend all of it doing the most exciting thing known to Gond: building things!
6-Civilization 2 - Aristotle's Pupil
As soon as we tell these guys to buzz off.
Hut times four, shut the door.
Hut times five, still alive.
Hut times six, pick up sticks.
Maybe these things grow on trees and they're just big, misshapen fruit. Christ, I've got huts for days.
Know what else I've got?
Too many explorers suckling at Gond's teat. Let's be blunt here: Gond's in trouble. It needs turning around. It can't turn around if it's hemmed in by upkeep for a zillion thirty-foot carnivorous babies.
Speaking of turning around, here's another, different way to get rid of upkeep.
Ta-dah.
(CLICK HERE for RHYTHMIC CONSTRUCTION THUDS)
Moira, you do you. Look at that. Already overflowing with food, bustlingly productive, and about to only get more so once it taps into those grassland tiles.
First things first: finding a place for our citizens to maul each other.
....man, we've really got to make some less aggressive infrastructure.
wait what where i don't see
oh.
Y'know, I'm not entirely sure that counts as a horde. A hordeling, maybe.
Alright. Next on the agenda: the ruins of Thrut. Get making that road, little guy.
(CLICK HERE for suicidal wails and tears)
see this is why you're meant to attack in HORDES you idiot
Parcae once again comes in on time and under budget.
It's exploiting the crap out of its nearby spice deposits* and still booming, so once it gets that next citizen it's all sea and fisheries from here to Friday.
*what are we doing with these anyways? eating them whole? sprinkling them on ferns and carcasses? snorting them? it's never made clear.
For now, though, we'll have some more egg
The wonders of congregating in giant blobs of bored, lazy losers are now open to us. The next step is obvious:
Getting them to do something useful.
More useful than these guys at least. Not only have we run out of land to our west, our poor fish has run out of coast.
We'll fix all that.
There; our last extraneous burden on Gond has been snipped and our fish has been given a very special assignment of Travel West Until You Hit Land Or Someone Eats You. Efficiency is a blessing unto Gond.
Hut number seven, send me to heaven.
There's some real stretching for adjectives here.
Oh goddamnit I just got rid of the last batch of
Oh.
Well now. That changes things.
Brachiosaurus has the same attack (5) as our vaunted Oviraptors, only one less movespeed, sees everything two spaces away instead of one, and has nine defence. It's not so much a defensive wall as a defensive mountain.
Also it can attack air units and has double defence against them, ignores city walls, and cooks a mean goddamned casserole. The only thing it can't do is dance.
Hut number eight, set me straight.
There are a few things to notice here: Parcae's just finished its Oviraptor; our coastal highway is REALLY putting work in; and we've crossed some invisible tech line - I think Collective Behaviour - that caused us all to renovate our giant dirt nesting mounds in favour of big piles of bones. Hey, if it'll work for the Paleolithic...
...You know what, I think we've got enough of a good thing going here that we can afford to get ambitious. Let's try something big.
Also, this is our fish. He is still our friend. He is still for Gond.
He is very, very, very far away right now, and he could use a hug.
But nobody will give him one.
We've run out of west; there's nothing back there but more Gond. We're going to swallow our courage and shove east with our Oviraptors; heading as far away as fast away as we can with them. The Brachiosaurus will lumber up the rear and use its absurd vision radius to fill out the rough edges of the map.
You know what, Gond?
You can think big, too. We need some civic pride in this burg. This will be step one.
(CLICK HERE for GNASHING OF TEETH)
Moira is going to finish growing just a liiitle bit and then it's going to pop out our first Maiasaura, which will fulfill step two of Gond's makeover: urban renewal.
Oh! Right!
Doesn't unlock any techs, units, or buildings. Just makes you feel good.
It's tempting, but.....
...given we've been conducting trade for seventy million years, we should probably try to figure out how the hell it even works. That could be useful.
More useful than cooperation, at least. Why were we even-
Oh right.
Yes PLEASE.
Hahaha you're darned tootin' they are and I love 'em for it.
Another hordeling rears its head. This one actually dies before I can even see it attacking.
We finally rule as many subjects as can be found in such majestic metropoli as...uh...
...the city of Barrie, Ontario. Almost.
Well, ours are BIGGER.
Hut number nine, sage and thyme.
I'm not sure why you need one tech to understand 'telling someone a thing,' and another for 'telling more than one someone a thing,' but Civ 2 has this issue in its vanilla form too. Like discovering the Alphabet, then Writing, then finally developing Literacy so you can understand what the hell you've been scribbling the last thousand years.
Hut number ten, you're a big fat hen.
WOAH there. That's irrigation. That's roadwork. You know what this means? A new start! A new leaf! A new day, a new dawn, a new life!
And we're feeeeeeelin.... good.
Or at least, less dictatorial.
But not very softy or fuzzy either. You want to feel happy, eat some berries or something on your own time. Gond ain't paying for it.
And as Gond renews itself with the promise of truth, justice, and giant slavering maws for all...
...and as we come face to face with our new (third try!) neighbours...
...we finally have a title that doesn't look like a hiccup.
NEXT TIME: REMINISCENCE, THE PIONEER SPIRIT WITH LESS MALICIOUS INTENT, FUN FAX N TIPS
New Units