thank you krill!
62 hours of labor
- but a healthy baby theodore!
62 hours of labor
- but a healthy baby theodore!
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[PB29 Spoiler] In which Joey, then mackoti, swing happy go lucky
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November 22nd, 2015, 00:35
(This post was last modified: November 22nd, 2015, 00:36 by GermanJoey.)
just fell asleep playng my damn turn lol... don't even know what is happening in this damn game anymore. i'm up 16 food over #CY; i took some pictures, but i better get to bed, wanna be back at the hosital around 4am-ish, lol...
i'll probably end up bringing my laptop to the hospital tomororw, maybe i can write a report while baby is asleep...
November 22nd, 2015, 10:26
(This post was last modified: November 22nd, 2015, 10:27 by GermanJoey.)
(November 22nd, 2015, 07:22)Krill Wrote: Congrats yes! i was finally able to go home from the hospital to sleep for about 6 hours; wife is essentially sleeping as much she can, other than waking up every 2-3 hours for 15 minutes to feed the baby.  so, lots of time where i'm just sitting there twiddling my thumbs. obviously im not sitting on the computer while she or the baby is awake!p.s. ty as well auroarcher!
November 23rd, 2015, 02:57
(This post was last modified: November 23rd, 2015, 03:01 by GermanJoey.)
T74-T76.
Well, its been one hell of a crazy week for me! But, I've still had a few minutes here and there to play my turns and write up slivers of a report. The biggest news lately is that TBS just finished a crazy-early Pyramids at T74; I think this is just at turn or two after he finished math, because he had a big score jump around then. I have to wonder whether it was really worth it to complete it so early... I can't imagine anyone else had even had the thought to finish it by now, given the way the map is laid out and the fact that TBS has just been looming there, waiting to finish it. Haram can't be all that close to Math, given he went for the Oracle, and the wonder is simply too big to race against an Ind civ by T74 unless you're willing to horribly fall behind in expansion. Well, whatever. I wonder if he'll try for the HG next? Well, if you want like an 8 or 9 city HG, go for it dude. I'm not going to bother with it unless I can pick it up casually - if I try racing for it then I'd end up with less pop overall with it than without it, due to under-development.  We just planted our 9th city, Brownie McGhee, fittingly across the channel from his partner Sonny Terry, on T75. It worked the sugar for 1T, then the fish hooked the next, so it still grows to size 2 within 5 turns of planting. (see overview screenshot later) We also found a barb city on the island to the southeast. This is actually the same island as the one that should be below Haram, and according to what we see on "our" island, the city is on a hill. That's annoying because we can't take it with just skirms without expecting to drop a battle. I whipped out a chariot and double-whipped an axe to go take it ASAP, to be reinforced with skirms right afterwards; I dont want Haram to control this area, especially in such a defensive spot, as it'll give him boat access to our core at Astro. We will settle our corresponding island to our north in like 5 turns or something; I can remember the micro I worked out for it, but not the turn the city actually goes up.   Overview: (33 pop, 6 granaries)  The capital was just whipped to get the chariot on the boat in time, which is unfortunately, but the plan is still to grow it to size 10 on cottages while slow-building a library. Once the library completes, we'll get Math and Currency in rapid succession. Saving gold for so long helps us get a better KTB and a better multiplier for our saved gold... should essentially knock 2-3 turns off of currency, which will in turn help us snowball further. Charts/Graphs/Counts:
November 24th, 2015, 20:06
(This post was last modified: November 24th, 2015, 20:34 by GermanJoey.)
T78.
Hmmm, we are apparently, and unexpectedly, in a turnsplit with Haram, with us in the first-half of the timer... he was the one to roll the turn, and yet logged off without playing the next. The situation is here:  I did not expect him to have any "real' units over this way yet; I thought I could secure the city without interference as long as I hustled. Well, even if he's got a galley 3S of the warrior stuffed with two more Vultures, I can't see him being able to take and hold the city. If he steps the vulture off the hill, I can use my chariot to kill it at very high odds, and otherwise, if he stays there this turn, I can take the city with my Axeman while getting him up to 5xp and then reinforce with a skirmisher. If another galley does show up, I can block it for a turn with my own galley via a wardec, forcing him to unload on flatland. If a trireme shows up, then I am in a bit of a pickle I suppose, as I don't have an additional galley nearby to bring reinforcements. I really hope he'll back off without a wardec, as I don't want to ruin our routes nor delay bringing a worker over. Haram also just planted his 9th city last turn, catching up to us. It might be here, or that could be a border-popped JHL:  We'll be planting our 10th next turn, 3S of Willie Dixon at the Corn/Sheep spot, and the barb city might be #11 next turn as well. That might freak people out a bit, heh. In the north, it appears we have Borsche as our northern neighbor, which is great as long as badgame pitboss 4 remains a firestorm of drama and he gives 99.9% of his effort to that game. We'll hopefully discover his eastern neighbor soon. I'm finishing a workboat in SBW this turn to go meet Borsche's western neighbor.  Our library in MW finishes either T83 or T84, depending on how I decide to balance the micro, at which point we'll turn on the jets straight for Currency. Our economy is very good right now, perhaps even too good... I could have whipped MW and HW an extra time or something, maybe gotten an extra worker+settler out. We have 10 workers right now btw, with 2 more soon to finish. Demos:   Mmmm... that CY lead is starting to get ridiculous, getting close to +50% above average, heh. MFG is also looking decent despite no focus on tile-hammers at all. City counts: 9: Us (T75), Haram (T77) 8: TBS (T71), Dreylin (T73) 7: Borsche (T71), Fennbandit (T72) 6: Tsargon (T73) 5: Jowy (T75) 4: Scipio (T63) Whip Counts: TBS: 35 pop total; 5 triplepop whips, 7 doublepop whips, 6 singlepop whips The Blues Brothers: 31 pop total; 9 doublepop whips, 13 singlepop whips Fennbandit: 16 pop total; 2 triplepop whips, 3 doublepop whip, 4 singlepop whip Haram: 15 pop total; 2 triplepop whip, 3 doublepop whips, 1 singlepop whip Dreylin: 10 pop total; 2 doublepop whip, 6 singlepop whip Jowy: 9 pop total; 2 triplepop whip, 3 singlepop whips Borsche: 7 pop total; 7 singlepop whips Tsargon: 3 pop total; 1 doublepop whip, 1 singlepop whip Scipio: 0 pop total For a very brief moment, we actually passed TBS on total hammers... but then he whipped some more, alas. He's won the race to 1000 total hammers whipped! We'll pass that ourselves next turn, I believe.
November 26th, 2015, 01:13
(This post was last modified: November 26th, 2015, 01:13 by GermanJoey.)
Here's my last two player "previews"; I had these 75% written up about a month ago, and just found them again now. Well, here you go.
Scipio - Cyrus the Virus (Cha/Imp) of Khmer (Hunting/Mining/Balista Elephant/Barray) HA! WHERE HAVE I SEEN THAT COMBO BEFORE?  This was my failed PB20 pick. Well, I still like it in general, although Cha is quite poor on this map and the timing of Math/Currency will be slower than this combo would like. The basic synergy is that you want to use Cha to whip stuff like crazy, getting up to your happy cap as fast as you can. At math, you spam Barays and hopefully land the HG, and at Currency, you rescue your tanked economy with the extra routes + markets.The Balista elephant is a very unusual, and IMHO a very underrated, UU, and we do indeed have ivory in our capital BFCs. The weird thing about the Balista is that on the offense, it is really no better than an ordinary elephant. So, unlikely most UUs, it gives no extra attacking power during the era it first becomes available. (see my PB20 game, heh) However, the Balista is probably the best defensive unit in the game for stopping knights and cuirs invasions cold. Balistas get odds on knights, when attacking, despite being 2/3 of the cost, and, unlike Pikes, Balistas will pick out Knights in a stack even if they're covered by other units (pikes/maces/xbow/longbow) due to their special ability. In PB20, I was able to destroy a non-trivial number of Seven's Cossacks with my stupid elephants right before he killed me off, and, just recently in our Badgame PB4, Boak was able to shred an enormous stack of Tsargon's knights with just a couple catapults and a hastily-drywhipped stack of Balistas when both players had thought Boak was already dead. So, the Balista kinda works like an era-specific (but way better for that era, because you can attack-out) version of the BTS Protective trait. Like Protective, the main value of this is the deterrance against an invasion by a neighbor that's ahead by an era in tech. Meaning, Imp+Khmer go together super well because you can truly expand as hard as you want without caring too much that you're behind, as long as you think you can catch up later with a bigger empire. However, I don't like Khmer with Cha that much. The Baray with Cha is quite good, but I think you really want to get granaries ASAP to make any use of this trait at all and that just doesn't seem possible with Hunting/Mining, as good as Hunting is in ToW. There's not much to say about Scipio as a player; I thought he was a smurf, but he's apparently just a green player with no idea what he's doing. Dreylin - Charlemenge (Pro/Imp) of Rome (Fish/Agr/Praetorian/Forum) ![[Image: avatar_276.jpg?dateline=1409859854]](http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/uploads/avatars/avatar_276.jpg?dateline=1409859854){kind=avatar} The Burger King finally returns to ToW after Mack's thundering victory in PB20. It's clear Charley's one of the most powerful leaders in this mod, and perhaps is the only one who can stand in the same tier with the top Agr leaders by himself. (its still hilarious to me that we didn't see a single Agr pick in this game) Why is he so good? First of all, Pro and Imp combine with each other for The Fastest early game. Here's a fun fact: Charley can 6-turn workers and 10-turn settlers with a size 1 city working only the plainsforest ivory tile. Now, you don't generally want to be running size-1 cities, but the fact that its possible to get such high output instantly, with essentially zero dedicated worker investment, lets you snowball in a way no other leader can dream of. However, the truly scary thing about Charley is that he never really has a weak phase. He can REX hard and then recover with half-priced markets at Currency, get the productive bonus with plains workshops with caste and guilds (and also half-priced grocers) and start gearing up a hammer economy, which goes nuts at Chemistry and then completely bonkers at Assembly Line. On top of all this, he has Imp, one of the last two "war" traits remaining in ToW with the removal of Aggressive and Protective. Imp is perhaps the stronger of the two, able to leverage an early hammer lead into a successful war to start racking up GG points. So, Charley is great. Rome on the other hand... well, its not RtR Rome, although there's a small bit of synergy here. Imp forums aren't terrible, as those extra specialist slots and +% GPP can help get a second GA up a bit quicker. Praets are a bit of a bummer now. The Swordsman is now a 6-str unit that comes with C1, meaning they're essentially only for classical-era Amphibious strikes. Praet's have +1 str over a base swordsman, which, in combination with their free C1, mean that they truly do tower over Axeman, like the Agg Rome of old BTS. Well, at least until Construction. Oh, and by the way its a lot easier to get to Machinery in ToW compared to BTS. Hmmmm, what to say about Dreylin as a player in general. I dunno, he doesn't seem to have a lot of focus, by which I mean he'll either pay too much attention to one thing and ignore others, or else has no long term plans at all. I've only played with him in PB22, where he was turnplayer for my late-game nemesis Portugal during the early eras of the game. They had a decent start and managed to land the Colossus, but horribly underexpanded and then adopted a diplomatic policy of encouraging every other player to hate, or at the very least severely distrust, him and his team. (his teammates were partly to blame for that too) Here, he's also got a decent start with an extremely early Great Lighthouse. I didn't like his early expansion pace (there's no reason I should have been outpacing him with his combo and this land), but then he did land the GLH, which I think was both a well-considered and necessary move. I'm not sure if one has to do with the other, but the extra +11 commerce per turn that he's getting (including the OB from Haram, perhaps even +17 commerce per turn if his other neighbor gave him OB too) should help him expand as fast as he is able without ever needing to slow down. However, he isn't whipping anywhere close to what he should be and I suspect he will eventually fall behind.
November 26th, 2015, 01:15
(This post was last modified: November 26th, 2015, 01:15 by GermanJoey.)
By the way, I logged in earlier, to pause for Dreylin/Grimace, and Haram backed his Vulture away. Cool.
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