Turn 110
Larger update now that the war with OH has been put to bed and I can consolidate my current thinking. So you get a new world map and pictures of every relevant tech screen (F3 is irrelevant, you heard it here first).
The world map is above. It's worth looking at because it looks like we have a broken donut with islands, or even a single good island, surrounded by myself, superjm, OT4E, Gav and Cairo (clockwise in order from myself). This is the area that us five players are going to interact, and looking the scoreboard shows we are the 5 leaders: Gav with Elkads land, OT4E with his AGG/PRO musketeers and efficient empire, superjm with Mids, Cairo with his soon to come online ORG Sacrificial alters on a low food and low happy map, and me with...antagonism and bile. It makes me question where everyone else is, because the map looks highly populated in this region. If Elkad were alive this would be 6 players in what looks like a third of the map width. More likely players started further away and grew into this region, so I am underestimating the amount of land that we cover.
Still, the map looks fairly cool. On to the report, with the scouting first.
The workboat that found Gav is going to see if these cities are on the same continent as OT4E. If not, you can see that as I know have OB with OT4E, I am going to try and get through that gap. Given that OT4E looks to be on the same continent as superjm and that probably goes all the way to the north pole, I think there is a gap. It is a high sea level, Big and Small map: to have a continent cover that much land would be unusual. More on the recently signed OB with OT4E later.
The scout was unloaded in the Roman city, moved to the hill (there is nothing visible) and reloaded. Next turn I will move the galley forward and unload both scouts: one of the scouts will head towards OT4E, the other will cover superjm and also check the northern coast. The galley will retreat to then pick up that other scout and check out the central islands area. Note there is not even a defender in the city.
FWIW, I have 4 scouts exploring now. That is 60 hammers saved over chariots. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because the chariots have a measure of survability unless they walk up against an axe, in which case they die a bit less than the scouts would. I couldn't afford the extra 60 hammers though to make them all chariots, and I couldn't get any sentry chariots, so...it's a choice I made and right now I'm standing by it.
I had the workboat sitting by the culture until I signed OB with OH again. He passed it with a galley, and didn't take the opportunity for vengeance for the lost chariot. I think our relationship in this game is as good as it is going to get. Cairo has a damned nice bay to get some naval production out of though, without the cities being exposed. I wonder how valuable that will be, but I am expecting it to be really important that OH has the city that sits on an island at the mouth of the bay: he will have one hell of a forking opportunity if he pushes to galleons quickly. I reckon OH might even make a play for the barb city an back fill, but I don't know if OH knows it exists, or it claims iron
Lewwyn has some really weird land if he is half my size and settling tundra cities. I don't think he has Whales, or silver, so why settle this city? Deer? For Tundra deer?
Right now this island has limited strategic significance, but it does have marble. The only viable city locations are on the marble and 1N2E of the crab, both cities with outer ring food but double inner ring forests to chop for culture buildings. I'm toying with the method of settling the marble city first to claim the island, given that I expect to be in Caste in 20-30 turns and could just use the caste artist to pop borders even in a GA. Still hoping for silver or whales.
Before I do the cities though, I'll go through some of the F screens:
Overview for later. Every city that has nothing better to do is on wealth, making 23gpt. As Rome has no defender in their city towards me, I'm stopping building units in BCR and going for wealth.
I make about 40gpt at max tax every turn, so the wealth is important. At max tech it is 240-ish base bpt and costs of 150gpt. Given Lewwyn and OH at a minimum have MC, and I expect at least superjm, DZ and OT4E do as well, I should get between 1.24 and 1.3 modifier on MC. In short, I should be able to get it by eot113 IMO.
Everyone is being stingy with OB, but I've got a full set of routes in my cities. I wonder if other players have ignored Alphabet? OT4E may have gone through Maths to get both Currency and Calendar (I don't know of any way to tell if players have Currency now I have it though). Cairo has Alphabet, OH does as well, but the rest?
superjm is not in caste (smart move IMO) and DZ is only player in HR, so it looks like Fued is not going to be beelined by anyone. Given players are likely taking MC, it could be that Machinery is high on everyone's list. Xbows (and OH's chucklenauts) may play an interesting role. Trebs too.
I hate this screen. Gav has spare ivory, I'm trading for OT4Es spare gold, Cairo has furs, no one has much spare of anything. I traded my only gems I had hooked for gold and OB with OT4E. Now that is potentially an unwise thing to do: he is the main competitors for MoM. However, I do not feel that it will matter: if OT4E is heading for MoM, he will beat me to it, I don't know when he got Calendar but I suspect he beat me by a good 5 turns and I was not prepped for MoM at Kalamazoo. And I need the routes.
Gav has burnt his gold, don't know what he got. I hope he has only just reached Alphabet. because he is in a good position. Given that OH and DZ are the only players making over 50gpt at the moment, I reckon everyone is playing PBEM5B and balancing expansion with going broke. Kinda makes me want to grab CS and Paper to look at the tech position.
This is the 6th strongest military in the game. Behold my mighty scout.
Has anyone ever tech Machinery before Mysticism? One option I am considering is saving gold on Myst and then overflowing out a turns worth of research to try and make Machinery a little safer to persue. If I can push 300 base bpt at that point then I would be able to get Machinery to 720/1127, but I don't know if I see the point. Save gold on Myst so OH doesn't see what I am doing, but I just don't need Myst except for an easier border pop at City S. Machinery needs roughly 315 base bpt to be a 3 turn tech, and 235 base bpt to be a 4 turn tech. I will need a good 400 gold saved before I can research it.
OH has the best shrine, but I don't see the point in trying to capture it. It is too exposed to hold. Focusing on the shrine is what led me down the path of attacking Gav in PB27, and I need to remain open minded. Given I will not be able to get a Prophet out for my own shrine, I may as well just run Judaism, or see if I can take over the Confucian shrine from superjm depending on the location.
Larger update now that the war with OH has been put to bed and I can consolidate my current thinking. So you get a new world map and pictures of every relevant tech screen (F3 is irrelevant, you heard it here first).
The world map is above. It's worth looking at because it looks like we have a broken donut with islands, or even a single good island, surrounded by myself, superjm, OT4E, Gav and Cairo (clockwise in order from myself). This is the area that us five players are going to interact, and looking the scoreboard shows we are the 5 leaders: Gav with Elkads land, OT4E with his AGG/PRO musketeers and efficient empire, superjm with Mids, Cairo with his soon to come online ORG Sacrificial alters on a low food and low happy map, and me with...antagonism and bile. It makes me question where everyone else is, because the map looks highly populated in this region. If Elkad were alive this would be 6 players in what looks like a third of the map width. More likely players started further away and grew into this region, so I am underestimating the amount of land that we cover.
Still, the map looks fairly cool. On to the report, with the scouting first.
The workboat that found Gav is going to see if these cities are on the same continent as OT4E. If not, you can see that as I know have OB with OT4E, I am going to try and get through that gap. Given that OT4E looks to be on the same continent as superjm and that probably goes all the way to the north pole, I think there is a gap. It is a high sea level, Big and Small map: to have a continent cover that much land would be unusual. More on the recently signed OB with OT4E later.
The scout was unloaded in the Roman city, moved to the hill (there is nothing visible) and reloaded. Next turn I will move the galley forward and unload both scouts: one of the scouts will head towards OT4E, the other will cover superjm and also check the northern coast. The galley will retreat to then pick up that other scout and check out the central islands area. Note there is not even a defender in the city.
FWIW, I have 4 scouts exploring now. That is 60 hammers saved over chariots. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because the chariots have a measure of survability unless they walk up against an axe, in which case they die a bit less than the scouts would. I couldn't afford the extra 60 hammers though to make them all chariots, and I couldn't get any sentry chariots, so...it's a choice I made and right now I'm standing by it.
I had the workboat sitting by the culture until I signed OB with OH again. He passed it with a galley, and didn't take the opportunity for vengeance for the lost chariot. I think our relationship in this game is as good as it is going to get. Cairo has a damned nice bay to get some naval production out of though, without the cities being exposed. I wonder how valuable that will be, but I am expecting it to be really important that OH has the city that sits on an island at the mouth of the bay: he will have one hell of a forking opportunity if he pushes to galleons quickly. I reckon OH might even make a play for the barb city an back fill, but I don't know if OH knows it exists, or it claims iron
Lewwyn has some really weird land if he is half my size and settling tundra cities. I don't think he has Whales, or silver, so why settle this city? Deer? For Tundra deer?
Right now this island has limited strategic significance, but it does have marble. The only viable city locations are on the marble and 1N2E of the crab, both cities with outer ring food but double inner ring forests to chop for culture buildings. I'm toying with the method of settling the marble city first to claim the island, given that I expect to be in Caste in 20-30 turns and could just use the caste artist to pop borders even in a GA. Still hoping for silver or whales.
Before I do the cities though, I'll go through some of the F screens:
Overview for later. Every city that has nothing better to do is on wealth, making 23gpt. As Rome has no defender in their city towards me, I'm stopping building units in BCR and going for wealth.
I make about 40gpt at max tax every turn, so the wealth is important. At max tech it is 240-ish base bpt and costs of 150gpt. Given Lewwyn and OH at a minimum have MC, and I expect at least superjm, DZ and OT4E do as well, I should get between 1.24 and 1.3 modifier on MC. In short, I should be able to get it by eot113 IMO.
Everyone is being stingy with OB, but I've got a full set of routes in my cities. I wonder if other players have ignored Alphabet? OT4E may have gone through Maths to get both Currency and Calendar (I don't know of any way to tell if players have Currency now I have it though). Cairo has Alphabet, OH does as well, but the rest?
superjm is not in caste (smart move IMO) and DZ is only player in HR, so it looks like Fued is not going to be beelined by anyone. Given players are likely taking MC, it could be that Machinery is high on everyone's list. Xbows (and OH's chucklenauts) may play an interesting role. Trebs too.
I hate this screen. Gav has spare ivory, I'm trading for OT4Es spare gold, Cairo has furs, no one has much spare of anything. I traded my only gems I had hooked for gold and OB with OT4E. Now that is potentially an unwise thing to do: he is the main competitors for MoM. However, I do not feel that it will matter: if OT4E is heading for MoM, he will beat me to it, I don't know when he got Calendar but I suspect he beat me by a good 5 turns and I was not prepped for MoM at Kalamazoo. And I need the routes.
Gav has burnt his gold, don't know what he got. I hope he has only just reached Alphabet. because he is in a good position. Given that OH and DZ are the only players making over 50gpt at the moment, I reckon everyone is playing PBEM5B and balancing expansion with going broke. Kinda makes me want to grab CS and Paper to look at the tech position.
This is the 6th strongest military in the game. Behold my mighty scout.
Has anyone ever tech Machinery before Mysticism? One option I am considering is saving gold on Myst and then overflowing out a turns worth of research to try and make Machinery a little safer to persue. If I can push 300 base bpt at that point then I would be able to get Machinery to 720/1127, but I don't know if I see the point. Save gold on Myst so OH doesn't see what I am doing, but I just don't need Myst except for an easier border pop at City S. Machinery needs roughly 315 base bpt to be a 3 turn tech, and 235 base bpt to be a 4 turn tech. I will need a good 400 gold saved before I can research it.
OH has the best shrine, but I don't see the point in trying to capture it. It is too exposed to hold. Focusing on the shrine is what led me down the path of attacking Gav in PB27, and I need to remain open minded. Given I will not be able to get a Prophet out for my own shrine, I may as well just run Judaism, or see if I can take over the Confucian shrine from superjm depending on the location.