[SPOILERS] Welcome to the Kuro Corporation! (Kuro and BaII)

[Kuro]

Right. You know, I've seen that before, but I've never really thought of using it properly for some reason, I always 1-whipped my Axes...I should remember to do the 2-pop trick in SP too, it'd be really useful.

Anyway, turn!

With the capital at Size 4, we switch to Fish + Corn + 2 Plains Hills, which gives us 7 production per turn (6 from two Plains Hills + 1 city tile), with 5 hammers in the Lighthouse proper. 7 + 7 + 7 = 21, 21 + 5 = 26, 3T to Masonry, so we will have 26 hammers into the Lighthouse when Masonry comes in, which is pretty excellent for whipping. That should get us something around 26 overflow in addition to 80 hammers from chops = 106 of 200 hammers. We'll need to slowbuild the rest, which likely means building Plains Mines ASAP and working them OR finding something else to two pop whip (We could 2-pop whip Axes every time we got to Size 4 to get 30~ hammers into TGL, which might be a good idea...could we whip Workers for that? Mechanics question to Lurkers/BaII!: What hammer # gives the most overflow when whipping an Expansive Worker?)

It's Turn fiddy, so let's give my fiddy cents on our civilization, along with some pretty city screenies.



Our capital, Standard Oil, which will be pursuing the above outlined planned to get TGL. With something like 2-pop Axe whips to toss in 30 hammers after regrowth, TGL should be done somewhere in the T60-T65 range (T70 if we're really bad with hammers, which we shouldn't be), which I think means we will get it, as that seems very fast for a Normal speed game, especially because Sailing + Masonry are not techs one simply picks up along the way. Turned off Avoid Growth FYI as I realized current whip anger expires in 4T anyway...plus we whip in 3T. While we build TGL, I recommend using the Plains Hills while we grow over the Deer for maximum hammers, as we still grow very fast while doing so but get, with a hill, 4 hammers per turn, which is not at all neglible. Aside from that, not much to say.



Sam Walton. It looks like it is at it's happy cap, but it has 1 whip anger which goes away next turn, so it will NOT grow into unhappiness...not that it matters, as the Lighthouse here will be immediately whipped when it hits Size 4. I recommend then starting on a Worker to keep it from growing w/ whip unhappiness, to bolster our Worker force (We only have 2 for 3 cities) and because, with 6 food from Corn and 5 from Clam, we get good production for the Worker even though Food does not work w/ the Expansive bonus. After that depends on what we have: If Pottery is in, we might want to chop a forest for a Granary here or something. Otherwise, maybe Axe overflow into something or an exploring sea unit.



David Buick is just here for copper. It'll build (veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly) it's Lighthouse, get a 3 food lake and then just work 2 cottage Grasslands and ocean for poor production but good commerce, bolstered by +2/+4 (Depending on if foreign or not) commerce from TGL. We should probably give it the Plains tile from John Dodge due to the fact that it could use the single hammer (Even if it can borrow those hills over there for production at times). We might want to consider actually farming one of the Grassland so that this city does not grow at an eternal snail's pace: +4 food surplus isn't good, but it'd be servicable with a Granary and allow us to at least whip out really small items like Libraries. Probably not a good Moai Statues candidate due to the lack of seafood.

I'd say our overall outlook is PRETTY GOOD. Despite putting an extremely high amount of resources towards The Great Lighthouse, we have kept competitive in city and Worker count, we are #2 in food even while working two Plains Hills (30 food, 23 world average, 13 worst), Sam Walton presents us the ability to whip out, say, Settlers or build Workers or anything from there while Standard Oil is preoccupied. TGL greatly improves our standing, as just from our three cities and no foreign TR we'll get +6 commerce, which is a high scale village or town. If we can get foreign TRs, we become especially strong.

I recommend that after Masonry we go for Pottery, as we do need cottages due to a good deal of Grassland yearning for it. The next city we found should be John Dodge, I feel, as it can at worst use the 3 food Grassland Deer to grow if we get it out before Hunting.

I think we should consider slotting Mysticism in quickly. Our land layout means that almost all of our cities need a border expansion to do good. I will also admit that a religion is tempting: It'd be an easier way to border expand (Put overflow into Missionaries!), we could greatly use Organized Religion (Because we have low production, so 25% is more important, plus we may want an early MC which means OR Forges.

I also want to bring up a possibility, though I am not sure it is feasible: What if we slung Metal Casting, or at least researched it with, a Great Merchant?

Here are the tech preferences relavent.

Great Merchant:
Currency
Banking
Economics
Corporation
Metal Casting

Economics and Corporation are, of course, of no great concern. Neither is Banking. The only one that is of concern is Currency: Currency would block us and requires either Mathematics or Alphabet. With NTT, Alphabet is easy to avoid, but what about Math? I don't think we desperately need Math for anything (After our initial forest burst, we're kind of bare...), we can obtain Code of Laws for our economic tech if we want (Writing + Priesthood), and so on. The other question is: Would it go fast enough? TGL gives us +2 Merchant Points per turn, which on Normal is 50T: Which means we probably wouldn't gain TOO much of an advantage from it...BUT, we can run a Scientist for just a few turns (+3 GPP ofc) to not dilute the odds of a Merchant by much but get it faster. We could probably work it to only take about 30T or so to get the Great Merchant, at which point we easily sling MC. That would mean Metal Casting in the range of T95-100, if we got TGL done on T65-70, which seems pretty good to me: We are, after all, on Normal speed. And all that time, we could research non-MC things, then get Forges up.

SO, the tech path question is large. We need Pottery first either way IMO, as Cottages allow us to research whatever goal faster. AND THEN: We must decide on the order OF:

Writing (Library for Great Person generation, Open Borders for The Great Lighthouse)
Hunting (Deer resources, Spearmen)
Animal Husbandry (Cow resources, Horses)
Mysticism (Border pops, possible religion)
Any Other Religious Techs (Priesthood for CoL: Polytheism/Meditation for Religion possibly, or we could just beeline Monotheism as we want OR anyway)

Personally, I am extremely torn on this. On one hand, Deer is a pretty necessary resource due to John Dodge, but AH decreases Writing's cost. All the same, I think we want Writing early due to TGL + Libraries. I also think we need an early Mysticism on the simple basis of the fact multiple cities require border expansions to be useful, including pretty much anything up in the icy reaches. Even John Dodge needs an expansion to get it's Wheat.

I like soemthing to the tune of Pottery -> Hunting (Cheap) -> Mysticism -> (Religion, Optional, Depends on status of world's religions) -> Writing. At our current speed, that would be:

Pottery - 6T
Hunting - 4T
Mysticism - 5T
(Meditation - 8T/Polytheism 10T/Monotheism 12T)
Writing - 13T

...With all times likely going down due to Pottery and TGL. I like this tech path due to opening the path to religion (Border boosts without whipping, which might be painful given some cities we'll need to place), Writing looks to come on about time (Roughly in the range of 28T at minimum and, at the most of all times staying the same and going Polytheism -> Monotheism, 50T...okay, if we had to go that it's late, but I doubt they will cost as much then) and...well, we can move our Cows/Clams city, as I will show in this screenie:



We replace a non-riverside Grassland with a riverside Grassland, move the clams to first ring (Which means we can just have the city work Clams + Flood Plains until AH gets in) and all it really loses is some coast. I might prefer it to the original spot anyway. Also, something to note: If our research time goes up drastically, we might be able to fit in AH before Writing for the discount and not really lose turns.

SO, BaII, here is what I want to know my teammate's thoughts on:

Do we go for Great Merchant -> Metal Casting?
Do we go for a Pottery -> Hunting -> Mysticism -> (Religion) -> Writing or, at the least, a religion/Mysticism?
Do we move the Cows city?
If we move cow city, do we found it or John Dodge first?
Am I being too cuckoo for cocoa puffs here?

Personally, I think we go for it. We don't have a start where we can just sit back, run trip gold and tech until we reach the golden goose. If we land an early MC and get the Colossus, our empire suddenly becomes great up until Corporation/Astronomy, but by then we will have hopefully (By Knight/Curassier?) invaded someone or something. We get Forges for badly needed production bonus. We NEED culture generation because almost all of our ice cities cannot be placed in any reasnable location without putting food in second tier culture.

I feel we should flip the coin. We stand to gain everything.

Graphs remain stable. How about some Demos?



We're looking good in the Demos, I'd wager. Dat food.

This concludes our second big ol' recap.