[Spoilers] - dtay in pb27

[GermanJoey]

Ohio State absolutely crushed the stupid blue idiots yesterday so I couldn't care less what happened in the NFL!

By the way, I just noticed your economic recovery is pretty good, going from +32 beakergold-per-turn on T91 to +81 beakergold-per-turn by T104... how much of that was from Zigs? It looks like you have 5 of them done already?

[dtay]

Ziggs not ton of it, probably only saving me 10-15 gpt at the moment. A lot was just growing onto a ton of cottages and I think getting an extra gem or two online in that timeframe (forget exactly when, def at least 1).

Infra wise I'm pretty good right now. Forges are up in pretty much every non-very-new city, ziggs up or about to be up in slightly fewer, libraries in every city that plausibly wants them. I've thought of if I should have put all that into military instead, but I don't think that was a plausible path. It would've nuked my bad tech rate even more, and given me the options of a) hitting the at-best equally powerful AT (who is up HBR) or b) hitting the weaker but has cats and 'phants ichabod. Neither of those sounds super likely to pay off well.

[dtay]

Mmm, need that long term plan. I met Krill, and i'd been vaguely paying attention to civstats but god he's taken a lot of cities.

I doubt I'm going to win this game, neighbor strength is a huge factor and I'm at this point playing at a handicap against someone I consider meaningfully better than myself (not to mention w/e Mack has been up to that put him on top of the scoreboard). Gotta give it a fighting shot though.

There are the 3 obvious options to larger size

1) Attack Ichabod
2) Attack AT
3) Go optics/astro, hope those islands are large

I can't wait too long on the attacks, so i think I'm basically limited to either going "now" (probably getting feud, HBR, and construction in some order first) or at knights. So really that's 5 options. Where picking the target if I choose one of the attack-timings can be done quasi-last minute.

The dream would be Molach attacks AT again, or Ichabod for the first(?) time and I can pile on. This pushes towrads at least having standing attack-oriented forces to take advantage.

I have no decisions made yet, just laying out the options. I strongly suspect Mono -> Monarchy -> Feud is next, since it's both great economically cause civics and militarily cause longbows + civics + on the way to knights. After that, decisions need to be made.

But still, doubt it's going to work.

[GermanJoey]

What are your thoughts about the islands right now?

[dtay]

Possibilities

A) This is my own continent that wraps around I am seeing
B) This is another continent filled with players
C) This is your standard "off coast" islands pushed out
D) You went all Terra-map on us and made a New World

C-D comes in gradations, so like, slightly larger islands, so even more slightly larger, etc, but w/e

Considerations affecting probability

a) You removed all normal islands, (or uniquely fucked me over, lol), which makes C more probable
b) New world's are inherently somewhat hard to balance for MP, so D has lower prior probability
c) Would mildly expect to see someone's borders if this were A or B, I do not
d) A would mean a weird continent wrap

So I think small-mid sized islands (think, 6-8 cities) are most likely, not sure which of New World or Another Continent is more probable, doubt it's my own continent.

Actually getting to the things is expensive, (Astro), but just checking them out isn't too difficult (Optics). So strongly considering the investigate option at least, especially given tough neighbor set. And Quay's + hopefully ITR to other continent somewhere are a decent commerce return.

I'll admit to trying to glean meta information from you calling them "the islands", but then I realized you just used the same term I did. Bleh.

[dtay]

Worth noting - to have a chance I still need to conquer neighbors eventually, but larger uncontested size = more strength to do it later.

But would still rather accomplish it now.

[GermanJoey]

I'll admit to trying to glean meta information from you calling them "the islands", but then I realized you just used the same term I did. Bleh.

[dtay]

Random question - how often do people here still play SP?

Over the last few years I've occasionally tried to start up a SP game (usually when impatient for a turn to roll or something), but I inevitably get bored with it by the classical era. I think partly because all the micromanagement of workers and cities is a ton more interesting when you're doing it at a pace of 1 turn a day compared to turn after turn after turn, but mostly because playing the AI feels inherently unsatisfying.

Other's opinions?

[Bobchillingworth]

I play Civ III and FFH (EitB and MNAI) SP periodically. BTS almost never. I find the pace of warfare is far too slow against the AI.

[TheHumanHydra]

I also try to start games a lot, but get bored of them. I agree that the micro is the problem, though for me it's more that when I don't play it one turn at a time, but in a quick streak without simming, I make a lot of minor mistakes that nevertheless make me feel my civ is imperfect and needs to be scrapped. The high standards of RB micro have caused my perfectionism to go berserk and destroyed my ability to enjoy single-player. The AI is less of a problem for me as I view it more as a prop for my civ's story than as a serious challenge to be overcome. Also I find playing against humans to be supremely stressful, so I'd rather play single-player most of the time.