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

[DMOC]

Turn 153 - 860 AD

Bison's latest response was, if anything, slightly more bizarre. I've bolded the part that's confusing to me.

hi again =)

concern city, i talk by observation and experience. i've seen a lot of game, with players who played since many years, and very top players. at this moment of the game, nowhere, nobody invested in a city at this size. in general, a 17 size city can be switch into 2 or 3 city ( fonction of number of food ) who produce more than one. a lot of good player practice the " maillage sérré " ( in french ) = make more city with a few title ( ~ 12/15 ) because it's more effective than big city who need lot of unit's or mood ressource to be effective.

your plan was not so bad, because you have land who will be ready to your plan of produce your UU. but in long term your development will be not good enough if you not take a land who will be already dev in science
for Epic's, there no means i produce this if i havent the accelerate bonus ( marble ? ) so, i havent tech yet. but i tech in the future to go on cavalry.


( concern yuufo i dont tell you criticizing him, just dont underestimate his choice =) i've dont tell you some of information we've decide at this moment, but our original plan was to attak Asterix with maceman, but his great spy change the game and it's that we have choice this civic ETC... )

concern sutree, he tech the astronomic line.

concern arki, if you want help, i can tech guild fast ( that is in my plan for next so that's not too expensive for me ) and help you by giving you some unit's. but only if you sign a agreement. as long as you dont sign anything, i will considering an attak of you and make some things to that.

i'm considering with very attention a cooperation with you. but you really dont know i have potential and experience.
i give you some stats next turn and you will see that with your eyes.

i wait a propose of you for the future.

Bisons

I guess the main thing I'm confused about is why he says having a size 17 city at this point in the game is bad. For reference, here's the bulk of my land this turn, followed by Bison's land.

The capital is size 17 because that's an effective size for it to work its cottages and to generate lots of Great People with the National Epic. (Washington, up north, is now size 16, and we've got a good number of 12s and 13s here.) There are lots of players who are better than me, so I'm confused why Bisons is criticizing my decision. I just don't get it. The city up north of the capital, Caltech, is the true definition of a filler city, and yet it's already a decent size 8 city that will produce multiple soldiers. (It already has a barracks.)

The other thing Bisons said that confused me was his threat that he would upgrade his units. He's got a sizeable number of axes and a few maces by our border. But I just checked in the game, and upgrading an axe (35 hammers) to a mace (70 hammers) costs 125 gold. Even if he can generate 500 gold a turn, that means shutting off his research for a turn equates to upgrading four axes to maces. And logically, he'll want to upgrade his axes to rifles or grenadiers, which are even costlier -- 245 gold just to upgrade one axe to a rifle! Upgrading a spear to a pike costs 95 gold, so we'll have to watch out for that.

Here's the size 16 city, Washington. 1-turn a maceman, then probably a stable I guess, so we can put more overflow into cataphracts? With Vassalage, we can get 7 XP cataphracts.

Our cities are now clearly in military mode. We've got two civilian buildings finishing up, and those will be it I guess, unless we get massive whip overflow.

Technology. Unfortunately, Bisons will get Liberalism. The one time I wish SutOxy got this tech...

Power.

Demographics. Don't forget that we'll be in a Golden Age next turn.