[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Miro]

I was thinking a city on either end of the island. Its a different land mass so settling rules aren't applicable and you can settle 1E of the deer, which is where I would put the first city as it can uber share tiles and alternate whip cycles. 

With the Roman border pretty firmed up how is the southern Coldrain border looking? Especially as you don't want to settle for the Rome marble might be worth making sure you have the one near Coldrain.

I didn't know you could settle like that, that spot 1E of Deer looks really interesting now. I'm not against taking the Roman Marble spot, he could contest Blood on Clock's Crab if he Settled it first. I do have a Warrior scouting SE area right now, and a Settler popping next turn (may need to wait ~2 turns for Galley to return, or I'll settle a mainland spot first).

We found the Netherlands!



I like his hatred for Alaska with that capital name. Trade routes are online.

[Mjmd]

Problem with settling a spot for the marble by Rome is that it wouldn't be on a hill and it would take the gold he pretty clearly cares about. If he settles in a such a way that it takes the crab, then you have to go to war, but I wouldn't worry about it as that spot seems unlikely. Mind you his settling decisions have been odd, but if I was him and I wanted that marble I would settle 3S of his other spot which is over a river. The marble and cow are second ring, but its safer. And I wouldn't settle it for a while as he almost surely has better spots.

Which next mainland spot you thinking? Can we get an updated overview shot and settling order thoughts?

[Gavagai]

I checked the game. Some observations.
1) You are overbuilding libraries. Cities where they are currently queued up generate 8 and 9 beakers per turn respectively at 100 percent science. At this stage of the game a library should only be built if you really want culture or for GPP generation. Boss Monster in particular has an unconnected crab, you probably want to at least build a workboat before a library.
On the other hand, you have only one axe as your real military while sitting next to aggressive Rome who, I think, already connected Iron. And there is a city which has no granary but is building a worker.
TLDR: deprioritize libraries, you have much better things to build. I typically do not even consider a library unless the city generates 20-30 commerce per turn. In Boss Monster it is possible I would build a library never ever as it does not strike me like a city with any sort of commerce specialization.
2) Slavery is underused. Only half of the cities have any whip anger and it has almost receded everywhere. You need to whip out settlers, workers and basic infra more aggressively. Chopping also looks to be underused.
3) If your micro plan for Smash Up included building a cottage before improving wet Wheat, it must be wrong.
4) I suggested a dense dotmap in the area immediately to the east of the capital. The idea behind it is that this area is just asking to be carpeted with cottages and dense city placement would allow to start working all of them faster.
5) Rome is already significantly behind judging by the food graph. Ricky played in PB75 and from what I saw his basic empire management skills are significantly below yours and Superdeath is not the kind of guy who would do micro for him. So I think the trend will continue. Unfortunately, for classical units Rome is pretty much invincible even if it is weak. I suggest you maintain a strong defensive posture against Rome until Machinery then kill him with Chinese UU. Not sure whether Machinery is worth beelining though. You have quite a lot of land, so there is no need to hurry with warfare. Probably could be even delayed until knights. One thing to keep in mind, that once you decide to attack Ricky Superdeath might become very active so I do expect their team to defend very competently.

[Gavagai]

Another thing - the best way to dissuade someone from attacking you is to maintain a healthy power rating. Right now your power is 0.8 of Rome and this is not encouraging.

[Mjmd]

If Small World was the city with no granary building a worker that was my idea. It can 4 turn workers for a while, which to me is what his empire needs atm. That way pretty much every other city can worry about getting granaries then doing settlers.

But agree on everything else.

I would appreciate a larger view map with settling plan. Another thing that might be helpful is to label cities. Commerce (IE cottage cities you build multiplier buildings in although be careful of overbuilding early) or production (this doesn't have to be high hammer, can just be a city that is whipped a ton and by a ton I mean every time its at 4 pop; in either case they generally don't get modifier buildings). There should be VERY few mixed cities. Those are the 2 main types although early on having cites grow larger to help grow cottages that later transition into nothing more than whip cities as they give the cottages to the main commerce cities happens quite a bit (as I think Gav is suggesting with eastern dot map). Your aim on a map this size is to have only about 6-7 commerce cities and everything else should be production cities.

[Mjmd]

Math is scheduled to finish ~T79.

I forgot to mention I am a big fan of Hanging Gardens. I know you don't have access to stone, but something to consider if you can get access soon.

[Miro]

T93 Update:

We finished Currency on T92 and now our economy isn't a joke! (We were first to Currency btw)

Gira (Dutch) finished Pyramids on T91 and we're the only nations with open borders so our alliance is as strong as it gets!

We met xist10 (Carthage) around T90 and can finally confirm the general positions on the map.

We founded 4 cities in spots that would draw criticism, so let me to distract you with their names again!

Betrayal HotH: Betrayal at House on the Hill is a fantastic co-op game that turns into 1 vs all or FFA halfway through. All of the players search a randomly generated haunted house (adding tiles as you go) for boons and curses until a "haunt" causes one of you to betray the rest of the party in spectacular ways. Maybe one of you turns into a mad bomber, trying to blow up the house while the heroes (restrained) try to get loose and take you down, or maybe a giant bird picks up the house and you all have to kill each other over the last parachute. There are many dozen "haunts", so it has a lot of replay value!

Hues and Cues: This party game has a board with many different shades on it. You draw a card and, without saying any primary colors, use one word to get your friends to guess as close to your shade as possible. E.g. "Highlighter" or "Ocean" are valid. Then when everyone fails, you get to use TWO words! We like this game because there's no player limit, has fast setup/cleanup, and is so simple that even board game haters can play along.

Code Names: Another party game great for board game haters and my family loves this one. 25 word cards are spread out in a 5x5 area and a key card is used to ID which words are "good" or "bad". Using minimal clues, you try to get your teammates to guess the good words while avoiding bad words. Like in Hues and Cues, a lot of clues are wildly misinterpreted.

Star Realms: A 1-vs-1 deck building game with a free app on app stores and Steam. You buy space ships and space stations to attack your opponent, build up defenses, or improve your deck. The fast pace can hook you into "just 1 more game" until midnight hits and one day you check your match history to see you've played 2,000 games.

Now let's talk about the map:






Clearly, this ain't just 2 or 3 nice islands to fight over.

I'm assuming the mapmaker didn't intend for 4 of us to fight over several nice islands while coldrain (NA) plays on 1 continent all game. There's one southern island he and I could fight over, but I'm guessing there are islands between NA and Carthage. This fits the "no land bridge between NA + Rome" idea we talked about earlier with Rome's espionage points.

I highlighted where I think Rome and the Dutch will control islands, but I might contest Rome's island if they're left alone long enough.

We have charts on 3 players now!




"Dude, build more army" On it. I built 2 Barracks but don't tell any good players, they'll say I should have built units instead. IIRC, Barracks count also impacts the Power graph, so that's a tiny victory. I just really hate unit maintenance costs and post-Granary, pre-Currency production options.

I'm relieved to see we made a moderate comeback on the score chart!



"Score charts aren't a perfect evaluation..." Yes, but me small brain and me see line go up, so me happy!

And take another look at that chart.

Listen. Do you hear the screams?



coldrain. How cold is that heart? ~11 million souls perished that day. I don't know how many Full Metal Alchemist fans may be here, but I think coldrain is building Philosopher's Stones over there. And dude doesn't even have Philosophy yet.

They can't be trusted. The Dutch are our only friends. Carthage is that weird distant cousin bragging about how great his lighthouse is and how he knows a Buddhist oracle that can predict the future. Like, yeah bro, I have a lighthouse too and every Buddhist knows that even the oracle can't see past the next reincarnation.

Questions:

(Q1): Now we got money. Construction next, or Machinery? Con takes 4T. MC + Machinery takes ~13T. Archery and IW adds +5T.

(Q2): Should my next city spot be to block NA city advancements in southeast?

(Q3): Does everyone usually just build up medium-large armies and clench their butts while they stare at each other and rack up high military maintenance costs? I can hear Leonard Nimoy replying, "It is from their enemies, not their allies, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls." but you know those costs suck early on.

[Tarkeel]

For Q3: Mainly yes. You also have to think about how the borders fit and what can be defended and what is crumple-zone. Usually you'll have a few stacks of zone-defenders; in multiplayer most of the battles take place in the open and it turns into a game of who can strike first with their catapults. Catapults are probably the most overpowered unit in Civ4, and a stack of 15-20 or so can shred an invasion that's eras ahead: Superdeath wiped my stack of rifles, infantry and cavalry with catapults back in PB59. Quantity has a quality all of it's own.

[El Grillo]

Hues and Cues and Codenames are both great, two other games in that vein that we enjoy are Just One and Decrypto. I also appreciate the use of Excel in reporting, I assume you have two or more monitors so you can input the map and demographics data each turn without having to alt-tab back and forth?

[Gavagai]

Rome has 49 food, whaaaat? How did they even do that. If it was any other civ, I would be advocating attacking them ASAP but Praets are just absurdly good defenders.
Q3 - in MP you typically build larger standing armies than in SP because you cannot manipulate other players diplomatically the same way you can do with AIs. Sometimes you can cut corners in one way or another but this is high art and for the first game I suggest to just build units.
I'll take a look into the game in the evening and give my opinion re Q1 and Q2.