[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Fintourist]

Also if Azza has gone in a grudge mode now, which isn't that unlikely knowing Azza, that would keep both Azza and Mardoc behind you, for long enough so you could take both of then with knights. So a fast peaceful expansion isn't so bad.

Yeah, that's what I'm hoping here as well. Although maybe there is no grudge revenge and Azza just realized that he should not settle aggressive cities that he can't defend. 10 turns of enforced peace is also a long time that allows one to cool off even if one was pissed off initially.

Well

This evening I played through from Fintourist's t86 with a few tweaks and going CoL next.

Awesome, I should have time to check this in the evening. Getting an idea of various paths is extremely valuable

I also sorted out the surrounding lands, so we'd better not diverge from the sandbox before then

I'm already chopping a different forest near Hazelnut and you have yourself suggested changes that will take effect before t86!

It seems like we're very tight on beakers to complete Currency eot89. In a couple of coastal cities we have some non-river cottages. I think we should be working lakes over those cottages... Lakes give 3 commerce forever, while over the first 10 turns the cottage gives 20 commerce less and only catches up after 50 turns. I think this is a diminishing-returns situation where our workers can do more important stuff and the cities can expand onto the cottages after the water.

Our sandbox is behind the actual game in terms of beakers so I think we should be alright without too many adjustments.

On general level I agree with you here, cottages aren't thaaaat much better than financial coast so it's not a crime to dedicate our workers to other duties. Obviously we still try to get a solid cottage core growing, but we can be a bit flexible here.

We can get Masonry in one turn with wealth builds but I'm not sure it was worth it, CoL first may be better.

I heard that the unfogged island has a hut with Masonry in it..

Sacrificial Altars are GREAT! I didn't realise they cut the whip counter for previous whippings! This means we can afford to stack unhappy as we overflow into Altars since it'll disappear so quick.

Totally!

SAs are also a good way to recover from whipping heavily to attack Azza (and whipping units that are inexpensive enough not to be bothered by the slavery nerf) so I'm not convinced which path is the better one yet.

Yeah, exactly my problem.. Luckily we need to choose between two good options here..

Markets are going to be valuable to us as we have Ivory and Whale, and can get Silk easily. They are just so expensive with the slavery nerf though . SAs are a bit gimped in RBmod, I never want to do more than a 2-pop whip, which is problematic with the more expensive stuff, so we might not end up getting the full value out of whipping.

Yep, we definitely want a market in Alfie, but luckily our capital has some production power. E.g. in Cornelius and Butterscotch we might need to be a bit more creative and do some overflow tricks.

And agreed. 3-pop whips are terrible, 2-pop whips are ok in cities with granaries and 1-pop whips are great if our happiness situation allows them (SAs.. )

I didn't try Calendar first yet, but that might be another useful experiment.

Yeah, calendar can also be powerful, but only if worker and city micro is designed accordingly. Immediate spices+sugar connected -> extra 10-12 cottages/coast tiles worked.

Gotta run!