[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[DMOC]

Turn 125 - 250 AD

If Rome is going to continue playing until there's 1-2 hours left, I think it's actually in our best interests to play earlier since that would give us more of a window to play, and means we have more time to think over micromanagement plans carefully.

Anyway, as far as this turn went, here are the major highlights:

1. SutOxy had a busy turn. They completed the Parthenon, Alphabet, bulbed Philosophy with a Great Scientist (IIRC their second Great Person) to get Judaism, started a Golden Age, and switched to a bunch of civics. (See screenshot below.) The demographics indicate that they've lost a ton of food, so they are working Great People in probably multiple cities, as expected.
   
2. In our domestic news, I kept research to 0% to collect more gold, shuffled around some city tiles, did worker actions, etc. I whipped the capital for a settler and that will hopefully be the last time we need to whip for at least 15 turns.
   
3. I canceled the stone/spices deal with bandit/Catwalk (they had forgotten to do it), so now we have exactly one source of spices. (We are trading two away, one to SutOxy and one to DT.)
   

Information about SutOxy:

As well as general technologies for them and Cat/Bandit:

Quick analysis:

• SutOxy: They have Alphabet, Aesthetics, Literature, Music, Philosophy, Iron Working, and Metal Casting. We only have Construction on them.
  
• Cat/Bandit: They have Alphabet, Civil Service, and Metal Casting. We are up Iron Working, Construction, Meditation, Priesthood, and Monarchy.
  

So much for SutOxy being ahead of Cat/Bandit in tech, as suttree said in his email corresponding to 5 turns ago.

Note: the techs missing (can be seen via scrolling) from the screen are: SutOxy can research Machinery, and Cat/Bandit can research Iron Working, Construction, and Machinery.

I was browsing around in the game, and saw that Arkipeller for some reason is working two unimproved plains and one plains forest. Huh?

He logged into the game, and I pointed this out to him via chat. He said he has that there for a reason (must be 1 turn away from completing something), but I can't help but feel that this is incredibly suboptimal play. We unfortunately need him to be stonger to serve as a future buffer between us and SutOxy.

By the way, here's the Roman front. I'm actually thinking that we might want our 15th city to go north of the marble. In other words, next turn we move our settler south. Here's my reasoning. The best place for us to have a marble city if we could ensure an NAP with Rome is 3 tiles south of Illinois, but that will get Rome's attention immediately and probably provoke a DoW. So what if we founded it north of the marble? This way, we will eventually get control over that silver tile, giving us a way to potentially move a full stack of 1-movers one tile away from Antium at the start of a war (rather than requiring two turns to do that).

Putting the city there also facilitates a road connection with Yossarian/Caledorn.

And if Rome is actually going to go after us with 1/3 of their praetorians, if they decide to divert some to attacking the marble city, I don't really mind that since it's not a huge investment for us. Of course, the downside is that the city will only have a 3 food tile for food but the point of that city is more of a cultural/resource battleground.

Here are the final city builds:

Here are the end-turn demographics:

So the biggest question now is where to move the settler.

Micromanagement Stuff (Mainly for my own records)

I micromanaged Georgia Tech so that it can get the courthouse on turn 127. Next turn, it grows to size 8. We finish a mine, so the 8th citizen works that mine. Then we move a citizen from the 3f farm to a 2f 1h forest. That way, the courthouse (which will be at 100/120 hammers) can be built with 0 hammers of overflow. We get 16 base hammers + 4 from the Organized Religion bonus, resulting in exactly 20.

The advantage of doing this is that we avoid whipping the city and we still get the courthouse quickly.

I switched Wisconsion to a market. Right now, Wisc has 54/150 hammers into the market. Next turn, it will be at 60/150. With the 6 base hammers plus a 30 hammers from chop, that's 36 ==> 45 hammers with Organized Religion, so the market will be at 105/150 on turn 127. We also get another citizen; we can put him on 1f1h1c plains and the market will be at 112/150 hammers on turn 128. This is the max hammers possible we can get while still whipping for 2 population (1 whip = 37 hammers with OR). We thus have the max overflow possible into the courthouse following the whip on turn 128.

Other plans:

CM: Take pigs t126 to grow to size 10, re-evaluate from there. (Overflow into colloseum to take advantage of creative civ bonus -- we have 18 hammers of overflow.)
Stanford: I started a market there because I figured we can't let it build wealth all game, and Stanford is a decent city and has lots of future potential since many of its cottages are still young.
MIT: Still on wealth, will wait until either Rome attacks or if Hindu spreads to switch to something else.
Berkeley: Still working Gsci (6 more turns!) and courthouse. No changes here.
Illinois: No change, still on barracks.
Caltech: Keep growing on the Hindu missionary, but whip once it gets to, say, size 6? That missionary should go to Berkeley or MIT, depending on which one will use the Organized Religion bonus the quickest.
UCLA: Next turn chop will go into granary, so configure it to get 11/22 food on turn 127 (i.e., when granary completes)
Princeton/Michigan area: I'm grouping these two together since they're sharing the corn. Michigan still gets the corn for now, but we'll cottage some more tiles and in a few turns (perhaps after Michigan whips the courthouse) we can give the corn to Princeton for a few turns. Princeton is working an axe to get a hammer there to avoid a possible whip penalty; next turn it should change to something else. Any ideas?
UT Austin, Cornell, UWashington: Grow on courthouses. I avoided whipping any of these since it would have cost too much pop and we can get better overflow by waiting.

By the way, with OR bonus, the "thresholds" for whipping are:

Courthouse: 8-44 hammers will whip 3, 45-82 will whip 2, and 83-119 will whip 1
Market: 38-74 hammers will whip 3, 75-112 will whip 2, and 113-149 will whip 1.

Not much to say about worker micro, but I've got a worker on the dyes right now. he'll road next turn (t126) finish road turn 127 and another worker can move in to facilitate chopping on that same turn.

LAST THING: I've got a ton of diplo to catch up on, will do so tonight.

EDIT:

Current draft of my thoughts to Arki and Blame Caledorn. Still waiting for Catwalk/bandit to reply to my last message to them.

Blame Caledorn and Orgynized,

I'm including the three of us in this email just so we can be crystal clear on ay future plans that we have.

1. We were fortunate that SutOxy agreed to an imbalanced trade with us up to turn 150. We'll keep open borders with them (was added as part of the deal) up to turn 150. We will re-evaluate things as needed.

2. Arki mentined attacking SutOxy on turn 150(ish). Do you have any ideas on the composition of your possible army at that time, in terms of quality and quantity? If you're researching Alphabet soon it might be worth getting some spies in theor lands. They just started a Golden Age, and they'll probably add another Golden Age via 2 great people and then tack on Taj Mahal for three. =( What assistance will you need from EggHeads, if any?

3. Blame Caledorn -- apologies if I added any pressure to play after Rome. Since they appear to be intent on waiting until the end of the turn, perhaps we should just take the start of the timer (if needed) if it will help improve our empire-wide planning and micromanagement. By the way, I'm thinking of founding our next city one tile north of the marble between us, so that we can get some valuable tiles under our cultural control. It also facilitates a road connection between our civilizations.

4. We'll be keeping track of SutOxy. Right now they're working lots of specialists, as we're now #1 in food. I'm guessing they hope to tech unblemished to cavalry, riflemen, and cannons. I think the three of us would all benefit by cooperating with each other. I know it's a little challenging for at least Blame Caledorn due to Rome.

5. By the way, do we know anyone else who'd be interested in trying to join us, i.e. the "Anti-SutOxy" pact? I think we should get Catwalk/bandit involved (but all other teams seem not to care about the game anymore). I've already sent them a message a few days ago and am awaiting their response. They built The Great Lighthouse, and I think we should all keep open borders with them. We want as many non-SutOxy civs as strong as possible.

Once we get our future plans ironed out, we can then discuss other things, such as what we hope to accomplish post-turn 150, and extend any of our joint NAPs. In case you're wondering, here is the current agenda for EggHeads, assuming Rome doesn't throw everything at us:

1. Research to Civil Service, then beeline Guilds.
2. Build an army of cataphracts, and attack India (hopefully). =)

If Rome attacks Blame Caledorn and tries to defend the north instead of attacking, we'll probably gift some of our catapults/axes stack to them.

-DMOC
Team EggHeads