[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Commodore]

If the game is paused while you are moving around in city screens, you can whip multiple cities and the score will reflect the whips all at once. Ruff publicized the behavior about a year ago, consensus was it seemed fair dinkum.

[Dp101]

I was wondering, do you guys have a plan to deal with emancipation unhappiness? As I understand it, your economy will revolve around caste system, right? Is there some method you plan on using to pull massive amount of happy out of nowhere, or will you just grit your teeth and bear it?

[scooter]

Got the post-REM demos.

I was wondering, do you guys have a plan to deal with emancipation unhappiness? As I understand it, your economy will revolve around caste system, right? Is there some method you plan on using to pull massive amount of happy out of nowhere, or will you just grit your teeth and bear it?

So first off, I don't think many people will use Emancipation. I think going that route is just too weak, so at most 1-2 teams will try it. That's just my guess - I could well be wrong. That said, here are the luxuries we have uncovered so far:

*dye (1) (+1 theater)
*incense (3) (+1 cathedral)
*whale (1) (+1 market)
*ivory (1) (+1 market)
*gold (1) (+1 forge)

Market/Forge are already built in each city, and Theater is an easy build. Let's assume we don't bother with Cathedrals. Those luxuries alone account for +9 happiness. However, the 3 incense tiles are all hand-placed on unnatural tiles, which probably means each player got 3 of a unique luxury for trading purposes. Let's be conservative and assume we are able to trade our extra 2 for 1 happiness apiece (some other luxury without an easy doubler). So now we're at +11 happiness from resources alone.

We're also going to be in Representation possibly the whole rest of the game starting next turn, so that's +3 happiness to the cities that need it most. So now we're at +14 happiness. Next there's religion. We'll definitely spread it to each city since it's relatively cheap for us to do so, so that's +15 happiness. Finally, we are Spiritual, so we get cheap temples, which are another easy +1 to get us to a +16 happiness. If for some crazy reason we get desperate, we can always spread in a neighbor's religion to a couple specific cities in order to get more cheap temples, but I doubt we'd end up doing that.

So yeah, we've got very easy access to +16 happiness just based on what we've scouted in the first 5 turns. That means even if a couple opponents decide to go into Emancipation, we can easily weather that penalty. So all that to say: I'd be really surprised if we have happiness issues in this game for any reason other than heavy drafting or war weariness. Maybe everyone will go Emancipation, and I'll be wrong, but I'd be really surprised if that happens. I think the vast majority here will go for the workshop economy.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the screenshot, scooter. The Rival Worst population is showing what I thought would be there, 13k population for REM = two cities with 2 pop and one city with 1 pop. Rival Best in Production and GNP also fell rather sharply from the beginning of the turn, so it looks as though the worker(?) whips the other teams are doing hit their numbers a bit. I'm quite happy with how the Demos look at present, with our team tops in Food and only slightly behind in Production. GNP should be average as soon as we get into Representation civic in 2 turns. And as scooter said, we'll have 5 workers done at end of turn without having to whip our capital at all. Will anyone else grow a population size next turn along with us? The first growth is quite important, since it fills up the foodbox for the granary.

I also agree with scooter that Emancipation is unlikely to play a major factor in this game. The other civics are simply too useful, and this isn't a Single Player game where all the AIs will take it and force the player into the same civic. (Interestingly, Diplomatic victory is banned but not the UN, so perhaps the Spiritual teams could do some civics shenanigans to mess up the non-Spiritual teams later. OK, probably not. ) If I remember the mechanic correctly, Emancipation unhappiness works on a sliding scale, with a maximum penalty of -5 happiness depending on how many other teams in the game have adopted the civic. Even if one or two teams would choose the civic, that should only be -1 or -2 unhappiness, and I think we could handle that OK.

Here's one other argument against Emancipation: we're not seeing any unhappiness right now. Anyone is free to take it from the start of the game, and getting those cottages going immediately would have to be a good idea, right? But no one is doing that, which makes it less likely we'll see more Emancipation use later.

Regarding our cities, I think we're agreed on building a third explorer for the moment, and re-evaluating in a few turns to see how things develop. We're going to revisit the whole micro plan as soon as we get the Holy City pop, depending on where it appears. I'm kind of amused that the timer is picking up just as our micro plan is about to run out. Well, we should manage just fine. There will be time to take another look at this when we get the religion pop on Turn 256 in a day or two.

The other interesting thing right now is the opening of our neighbor, Donovan. He's playing as Peter (Exp/Phi) of India, which means workers are a little cheaper plus Fast Workers but no Spiritual trait for the civic swaps. We'll see his civics next turn, but let's play a guessing game in the meantime. Here are the possibilities that I see:

* Donovan is running Slavery but not whipping. (His civ has done zero whips thus far, and Donovan's already ended his turn for the current turn.) This seems really unlikely, although we'd be pretty happy if this turned out to be the case. This would be a weak opening for sure.

* Donovan is running Serfdom, and relying on cheaper Expansive workers + Fast Workers to get more total workers on the board. This is an attractive option, since forest chops only take 2 turns in Serfdom civic, and of course Fast Workers can move into a forest and chop it the same turn. With Expansive trait, 1 chop = 60 shields in the capital (more than a worker costs at 48 shields) and 1 chop = 45 shields in non-capital cities, basically equaling a worker's cost. This is probably the smartest way to play the opening, leveraging Fast Workers into a bunch of forest chops, and I expect that's what we'll see next turn.

* Donovan is running Caste System and doing something crazy with specialists. He's Philosophical, don't forget, and it's possible to get a Great Scientist very quickly with this setup. And we know that someone is doing something along these lines, based on that very high GNP number we saw earlier this turn. However, this would be so suicidal from a developmental standpoint that I find this to be another highly unlikely option. Dreylin (Spi/Phi of Khmer) is the more likely option, if anyone is doing this at all.

With luck, we'll get another turn roll before the day ends. Should be fun seeing if Donovan decides to accept out map trade. Maybe if we send him a banana along with it?

[scooter]

Turn 255

I obeyed the signs.



I literally did it 4 minutes and 21 seconds into the turn, and I wasn't the one who rolled it.

In more exciting news, we met Donovan!



(That's Rep-Bureau-Serfdom-Merc-Paganism)

I confirmed that he is indeed in Serfdom, and I offered a map swap. Personally, I agree with Sullla's feelings about the choice and think he's probably making the right choice there. I played around with Peter of India a little pregame, and the ability to have Serfdom Fast Workers out of the gate was pretty powerful. I didn't sim it exhaustively or anything, but it felt like it was pretty competitive with a Spiritual opening. He'll lag behind a tad in raw worker count, but I think it can definitely be made to work with very careful worker management. A Serfdom Fast Worker is worth probably 1.8 non-Serfdom regular workers to put a wild guess on its value. Time will tell if this team can pull that off.

They elected not to choose a religious civic. IIRC, 5 civics force you to spend 2T of revolt rather than 1, so I wouldn't be surprised if the other non-SPI civs chose to do the same thing.



However, I've got two absolutely burning questions here.

1) Why are they working a non-lighthoused coast tile? They did not grow end of turn (nobody else did - we are the first to grow a city), so it's not like this was just the governor being dense with new population. I'm wondering if there was a misclick?

2) Why isn't this tile lighthoused? It looks like he settled 1NW of that tile, which means the city is coastal and should automatically have a Lighthouse. Is it possible that the tile yields are lying to me, and it'll update to 2/0/2 once I have city visibility and the game can "see" the lighthouse?

Anyway, that's the mystery of the turn. I'll have that Explorer head south next unless I hear otherwise.



Nothing terribly exciting up here yet. I'm thinking NW-NW next turn to uncover a bunch of tiles. Plus we'll hopefully have an accepted map swap from Donovan by then to help us decide where to scout next.



At end of this turn, religion will pop in one of these two western cities. Ideally it's Telegraph, but we'll be fine either way. The coin flip winner will get instantly expanded borders and will start a missionary, while the other will do another turn of culture to pop its borders. Also no, I don't have anything queued behind the culture, so no bug exploitation going on here. The incense chop completed a 1T worker, so our force will be up to 6 EoT. The two forests between Steam Engine and Cotton Gin will also go to 1T workers in Steam Engine, and other than those two turns, it's grow grow grow for our 3 cities for now.



Pretty hard to divine anything of consequence, but obviously those are strong numbers with 1) us being lighter on the whip than a few other teams and 2) being the first team to grow a city up a size.

[Sullla]

I'm glad the signs did their job.

So mostly we're waiting for Donovan to log in and see whether he accepts our offered map trade. I wouldn't be surprised either if he cancels and then re-offers after seeing where our explorer came from. The tile we're approaching from is a good one; from India's perspective, it looks like we might be across a body of water. That might help in getting the agreement to go through. In other news, looks like a good call on the civics from Donovan there. I didn't realize that changing the Religious civic would eat up another turn of Anarchy, that's an interesting wrinkle. It could potentially be a big deal if it stops other teams from popping into Pacifism civic (or conversely, one of the other civics in another row) in the early stages of this game.

I also noticed something else: Defensive Pacts are an available diplomatic option. That could be very interesting... The coastal tile is probably a visual bug as you said scooter. I don't see how Donovan could be working that tile without having a city on the coast. South with the first explorer (to see if that area is a dead end peninsula or continues) and NW-NW with the second explorer sounds good to me.

Crossing fingers as well that Telegraph lands the 50/50 religion coin flip. While we can work around it either way, it does work out better to have the heavy production city with iron present wind up with the faith present. Also, those are some nice Demographics for this turn, even if we are helped by having two cities on Build Culture.

[scooter]

I also noticed something else: Defensive Pacts are an available diplomatic option. That could be very interesting...

Yeah I hadn't thought about that either until I saw the diplo screen. I sat there for a few minutes and tried to figure out what implications that could have for this game, and I'm still not quite sure.

---

I tallied up whips from different players just to get a better sense of how people are taking on this start. I put an asterisk next to players that have already played T255 so we understand that a couple more could come this turn.

*ReallyEvilMuffin: 4 (non-SPI)
*Pindicator: 4 (non-SPI)
Gaspar: 3 (non-SPI)
*Us: 2 (SPI)
*Dreylin: 2 (SPI)
Donovan: 0 (non-SPI)
Boldly Going Nowhere: 0 (SPI)

Seems pretty clear that the Spiritual civs have been lighter on whipping. I wonder if they plan to follow us to Serfdom next and would rather have the extra population and/or if they've taken advantage of UniSuffrage to buy one rather than whip. The only non-Spiritual civ to not whip fairly heavily is Donovan of Expansive Fast Workers, which makes sense. The only oddball is BGN who hasn't bothered whipping at all. He was also settled his last city a turn after everyone else finished settling, so he's definitely played the most divergent start thus far. I guess it's safe to assume he chose to start in Serfdom.

Anyway, I don't know if this information is very useful. It mainly just satisfies my curiosity on what everyone else is doing.

[Kurumi]

Have you considered the merits of early combat? You could get early Military Academies, which can prove to be an useful production edge.

[scooter]

Have you considered the merits of early combat? You could get early Military Academies, which can prove to be an useful production edge.

It's certainly worth considering, but I guess it depends on your definition of "early." This map seems reasonably spread out, so right now I definitely don't anticipate any fighting before we've settled a few cities, and borders start to converge.

Also... I'm not certain we'll want to spend our GG on that. If we snag Pentagon, 2 settled GGs and other buildings/civics give us a Commando factory (3 if we don't get Pentagon). So the question in that case is whether we want extra production or a stream of Commandos (even if they're 1-move Commandos). I generally lean towards the latter. Of course, it's always possible to do both. I definitely anticipate seeing a lot of GGs in this game.

[scooter]

I noticed Donovan's been in since I played, so I logged in hoping to see some new maps. Disappointingly, not only did he not accept, but he didn't re-offer the trade either. I offered it a second time just in case the diplo window ate the offer. It's possible he feels some sort of need to consult with a teammate or something, or it's also possible he just has no interest in swapping maps. I guess we'll just have to wait a little longer and see.