Yeah, that's true, we were talking earlier of maybe even moving the capital there, seeing how our current one isn't really that much of a Bureaucracy monster...
I suppose the ToA could wait until after Compass. Once currency comes in, our tech rate should be actually pretty good. IW+Compass won't take even half the time of Alpha+Currency.
The Colossus fell... not to Gavagai, though! Looks like 2MN/Drelin/OT4E, based on score increases. We hooked the whale this turn and whipped a settler in the capital, for the crabs spot. Our library finishes next turn, so T84 we turn on the jets for Currency; we'll have 24 commerce per turn in the capital at that point, gaining us 6 extra beakers per turn. Nothing to sneeze at.
T84. We met Gawdzak (Imp/Org) this turn via his scouting workboat; I logged into find an open borders offer from him. He's got 9 cities, which is pretty good although I was kinda expecting more. (we have 9 next turn) He's only met Gavagai and has open borders with him. I talked about it with Borsche a bit:
German Jojo: hey
Borsche: hey
German Jojo: so, we just made contact with gawdzak, the great lighthouse guy
German Jojo: and i have a trade window here
German Jojo: for open borders sent by him
Borsche: we should NOt have open borders with him right?
German Jojo: he's already got them with gavagai
German Jojo: ideally no
German Jojo: but
German Jojo: he's already got some
Borsche: if gavagai already has them
Borsche: hmm
Borsche: how many cities do they each have
German Jojo: and we'll want once we have currency
Borsche: do we only have one trading partner atm?
Borsche: we have OB with mackoti and
Borsche: whoevers vikings right
German Jojo: yeah
German Jojo: so we'd only get like
German Jojo: +2 commerce
German Jojo: im thinking we decline this
German Jojo: and reoffer at currency maybe
Borsche: yeah
German Jojo: or
German Jojo: we could do
German Jojo: he has a gems
German Jojo: we could ask him for the gems as payment
Borsche: yeah i guess that could work
German Jojo: he has 9 cities
German Jojo: he's imp though
Borsche: what does imp do? that gets cheap custom houses right
Borsche: but the tech that unlocks custom houses also obsoletes GLH right
German Jojo: +60% settlers and custom houses
German Jojo: no
German Jojo: custom houses is economics i think
German Jojo: corp obsoletes glh
Borsche: corporation
Borsche: yeah. since that offers +1 routes
German Jojo: yeah
German Jojo: and he has to build 80h harbors first
Borsche: we might want to reconsider OB when that time comes i guess
German Jojo: yeah
tldr: we asked for Gems for payment for open borders, seeing how we gain nothing while he'd gain 18 commerce per turn, although we'll re-offer once Currency is in regardless.
Domestically, we double-whipped another settler in ZP and shuffled some tiles around.
Demos (post-whip):
Not bad; before the whip we were #2 MFG too. Its possible Gawdzak is the one with the higher CY than us, but I still have a feeling its dtay, with quick granaries and multiple luxuries. Our low total population indicates that other civs have much better luxury access than we have had. That top GNP is a bit alarming too, the last I remember it's been hovering between 75 and 80. Land area makes me want to cry; it doesn't matter much right now, but in 50-75T it will matter a lot.
We finally have Furungy's graphs; we'll keep him on 1 EP and REMAI on 3, as I'm much more concerned about REMAI having city vision on us compared to Furungy.
CY looks great still. REMAI doing better than expected here.
MFG looks really good; the two civs ahead of us are still unknown. Mackoti's MFG is likely tanking as he switched into Rep and is growing his cities.
Part of the reason they're catching up is that they still have NO military, possibly having only that single archer that they whipped earlier.
German Jojo: i apparently cant count
German Jojo: i saw gawdzak log in after we did, so i just logged in
German Jojo: and he only has 8 cities
German Jojo: http://i.imgur.com/ttpfHFw.jpg
German Jojo: he's imp and yet tied with us
German Jojo: so we're doing really good lol
Borsche: durr last in score = really good
Borsche: dude
German Jojo: meaningless dude, meaningless
Borsche: gawkdak has a
Borsche: bittersweet
Borsche: candy bowl city
German Jojo: wha
German Jojo: where
German Jojo: oh he does
Borsche: lmao
German Jojo: what are these other names about
German Jojo: they sound like maybe webcomics...
Borsche: they're actually all bittersweet candy bowl refs
Borsche: if you actually red the achives
German Jojo: whoa really?
Borsche: you'd know this
German Jojo: ...
German Jojo: his city name scheme in pb21 is anime girls
German Jojo: so idk if you're trolling me here or not
Borsche: get this man an account
German Jojo: it literally could be all bcb refs for all i know
Borsche: man you aint read bcb get the hell outta here with your 'webcomics thread' and 'webcomics refs'
T85. We settled our 9th city, Claretin, at, poetically, the crabs/swampland. A work boat was ready to net the crabs, and I sent a pair of workers up there to farm a floodplain that can eventually be shared with our prospective central floodplain city. The rest of those floodplains can become cottages.
Our capital and ZP will go back on Settler duty once they grow a bit more; in the meantime, I've put them on building research to preserve their overflow. GoatXCD will definitely want a Market ASAP once Currency is done, so we should try to get some good whip overflow going there for when Currency finishes. Speaking of Currency, HAK just finished it on the interturn, apparently. It's not a suprirse his average GNP is better than ours, what with working early cottages and.... still being at 4 cities. I don't get what rushing Currency gets you at 4 cities! I think we might be #1 (or at the numbers of this turn) in CY, MFG, and GNP next turn.
Speaking of cities, what do you think about getting 4 settlers going in parallel? With Currency and ICTR, we could easily support the maintenance, and we're pretty set on infrastructure at the moment. The 4 cities would be GoatKCD (starting next turn once it grows to size 6), Zen Pencils (starting in 3 turns once it grows back to size 5), 3CD (starting next turn, once it finishes its axeman), and MoJ (starting in 2 turns, once it finishes yet another workboat). As for sites... what do you think of these four? (shamelessly cannibalizing old screenshots)
I'm not sure about the order of 1 and 2... I marked 1 before 2 because it'll take a lot longer to get the settler to the site, but I'll have to see how it works out. We might not even have the galley ready in time.
Anyways, Purple #1 would gives Corn and Marble and possibly Grassland Cows; I'm leaning towards the western site, as it has first-ring food and +1 forest, although its weaker in the long term. We'd probably want to split off the cows to a new city anyways, now that I think about it. Blue #2 gets a billion floodplains and will have plenty of pre-improved tiles to use by the time its settled, due to the expanded borders at Paulo's House and Claretin. Yellow #3 gets an oasis, incense, and another gold. I think we want the northern spot here, if only to get the first-ring forest. Finally, pink #4 gets a first-ring plains cow, second ring fish, and second-ring dry rice. It's also got some forests to get its Rax and Granary up quick. Not bad. I'll have to micro this out starting next turn (my current micro plan goes to T85 anyways), but I think we can get these all settled by T96 or so.
I slammed the barb warrior at the GrOOOoming spot, so we're good to settle next turn. I'll put the axe back on the boat next turn, and drop him off in front of that goody hut. Hopefully we get something good from it! (Masonry is the best thing we can get right now, but I'd definitely be happy with some gold or Archery/Mysticism). The workboat for the fish is already in place, but the one for the whales won't arrive until T92, unfortunately. I think I'll propose the Whales for Ivory trade to Gavagai a bit sooner than that. (Gavagai has an unclaimed ivory just outside of his borders to the west, so hopefully he'll realize that this trade will be win-win for both of us if he claims it soon.)
I took some pictures of the micro for our 4-settler plan, but unfortunately I forgot to email them to myself and I'm writing this at work, heh. Anyways, it was pretty dull; it turns out if we just work the best tiles for 4 turns, we can 1-pop whip out of every city but MoJ at almost exactly 70 hammers banked, and in MoJ we can 2-pop whip at almost exactly 50 hammers banked. Well, how about that. The boat will be back on T92 to pick up one settler, while the rest of them can walk. The capital should delay its whip I think, as we want to overflow maximum hammers into a market on the turn Currency finishes. Our slider is at, like, 30% breakeven, with 4 settlers about to plant, so 75h markets will be really amazing for us.
Speaking of Currency, it looks like I undershot by a couple turns. Our expenses, mainly unit expenses because of all these fucking boats, ended up being a lot more than I expected. We're currently paying 7/4 in unit expenses, up from 2/0 when we first turned on the jets! That is absolutely atrocious for this stage of the game. They'll be alleviated a bit next turn, when 2 units disappear and 2 more go back into our borders, but then we'll have additional city maintenance too. I tried asking for some help from our neighbors; I asked for a loan from HAK (40 gold for 5gpt; he's still at 4 cities, btw ) and will try Furungy (at 6 cities) next turn, once he has more gold banked, as he just finished Currency this turn. Furungy is making 68 gpt, yowza! We'll be at about that once Currency finishes, I guess. I also tried selling OB to Gawdzak at what I thought was a reasonable price of 40 gold; he just got currency this turn as well as settled his 10th city, so he'd make either an additional +20gpt or +10gpt (if he has 2 islands or at least 2 same-continent trade routes). However, he turned me down without even a counter-offer! He's also repeatedly turned down map trades the last few turns; I guess he got a map trade from Gavagai (still at 6 cities, although he whipped twice this turn), without realizing that we haven't traded maps with anyone since we sent our first exploring workboat out. We have all of Furungy's maps as well as a huge island we've discovered between Furungy and where I think Gawdzak is (northeastish of Gavagai, across the water). I remember Gawdzak being a nickle-and-dimer from PB20, where he haggled over a difference of 1gpt for stone when I was one of the last place civs bordering two of his biggest rivals, but come on man, at least counter-offer something, even if its not a trade you expect me to take, to let me know what you're thinking.
In other news, Mackoti got a GE from the Mids already (he's Phi), so there goes the MoM probably. He doesn't have marble so there's like a 99% chance he'll get that wonder, which is amazing for Phi civs in RtR mod. There's an off-chance he saves it for TGL, the last big wonder until the Taj, but it seems unlikely that he'd want to bank it for so long. I suppose being able to GE the TGL is extra valuable because you can put it in an hammerless, food-heavy city for maximal benefit but... come on, there's no way he's not getting the MoM. He could spent half of the next 100 turns in a GA, easy.
Finally, some random thoughts about traits, comparing Exp to Imp, Org, and Pro. I'm just going to compare raw hammers here, because its really hard to compare how much better a granary 3 turns earlier compares to a worker 3 turns earlier compares to a settler 3 turns earlier - without going crazy, at least.
At this point, we've made 9 settlers, 9 workers, and 9 workboats. We save 8 hammers per work boat due to Exp, and 15.5 per worker; settlers with Imp would save 37.5h. However, I'd wager we only get about 80%-85% of the full worker bonus (due to some hammers being from un-multiplied food, and some overflow rounding-loss), and would only get about 70%-75% of the full settler bonus. (for the same reasons, except that its harder to get the full bonus for the more expensive item, especially pre-slavery). So, I'd estimate that Exp has saved us ~183-190 hammers so far, while Imp woulda saved us 236-253 hammers. It definitely goes to show how powerful Imp can be early! But then again, this hammer bonus is 90% of what Imp gets you. We'll save tons more once Currency comes out and we can start spamming Markets, and even more once Compass comes in and we get a near instant Harbor in every single city. The same goes for Pro; we'd have 8 Granaries with Pro, a savings of 240 hammers in total. Org is more like Exp, where you get a bunch of other things too. I kinda wish we had it instead of Agg, but there's no way we coulda known that we'd basically be playing an archipeligo map. So far, we've built 4 lighthouses, with 2 more that would be complete by now had we had Org. That'd be 180 hammers saved just from that! Gawdzak has a lot of seafood hooked, just like us, so I bet this trait is really paying off for him. OTOH, Mackoti, who is Org, only has 1 spot where he'd want a lighthouse so far.
I suppose it'll take a bit longer to find out whether Agg will be worth it or not...
Good question; I'll check when I get home. It is probably at most 3-4 gpt though. I have not at all impressed with Agg's maintenance savings in PB18, where my empire is much larger than here and inflation has a big effect. The fact that we didn't need Mysticism here has probably had a bigger economic effect than our maintenance cost reduction so far.
What I meant by "it'll take a bit longer to find out whether Agg will be worth it," I meant that, heh, we'll see how much benefit Agg gives in a classical era war against REMAI. I mean, its gotta happen sooner or later; their deliberate scout move on our pigs AFTER we moved through without touching their resources was basically a big, honkin' middle finger shoved right in our eye, then their warrior rush (and might have been the vanguard for a 3rd city pink dot with borders 6 tiles from our capital) was, well.... lets just say it was not the sign of a neighbor who is looking forward to building a peaceful working relationship with us. They can't be happy with us either, after we boaked them with our single axeman, forcing them to sideline to archery andwhip an archer. However, even beyond the diplomatic aspect, there's the geographical situation to consider: some of our next batch of cities will already be closer to Gavagai's capital than ours, and the southeastern continent is a dead end after a few more settlements too. It'd be hard to live the whole game with even a relatively nice neighbor with territory sitting 8 tiles from our capital when we're sprawled out every other direction at 20+. Their situation is about the same as ours, with less land on their mainland but far better overseas prospects, with a massive area, bigger than both of our current lands put together, sitting unclaimed between them and HAK, who so far seems to be allergic to settling new land.
Anyways, the core of what I'm thinking is that, for a war timed towards the mid classical era, a non-Agg civ will have very few, if any, barracks/stables built in their cities, while an Agg civ will have them in almost every city. That gives the Agg civ essentially two extra upgrades per unit in a offensive war in this era. Therefore, for a land-war against a non-Agg neighbor, the mid classical era is the perfect time to strike, as the later we wait, the more the has-barracks+C1 vs non advantages dissipates. The next question is: how much will the fact that we'll already have a "free" barracks in every single unit-pump be worth as we begin our war preparations here, assuming a worst-case scenario of them trying to match us 1 barracks-built-unit for 1 barracks-built-unit?
The answer to that, I think, relies on our tech timings for the key classical war techs (IW/Construction; we absolutely have to have Construction to take down the, by-then, 4th ring culture holy city, but we only need HBR if they have construction too, as we'll need Numidians to counter Hwatchas). Like, lets say we want a stack of 20 units for the invasion, with an ideal composition being something like, just spitballing here, 2 axemen, 3 spears, 8 swords, 5 cats, 2 chariot, timed to hit a turn or two after construction finishes. We'd want the ancient-era units (2 axes/3 spears/2 chariot) to be done before IW is in, the swords to be done before construction is in, and the cats built with overflow on the turn construction finishes. That would lead the best possible strike time with the stack composition as described, right? So now lets suppose we have 4 primary unit pumps building units for this war - in reality, we'll have 3 primary production cities close enough to the front to matter, with two secondary ones (one of which is the capital) that can help at the end; further away cities can help provide reinforcements but are logistically too far away for the initial strike. Let's now suppose that we'll have all the necessary techs (IW+Compass+Math+Construction) in about 24 turns. Thus, these 4 cities need to produce a barracks + 1 axe + 1 spear + 2 swords + 1 cat + 1 cothon in the next 25 turns, a total of ~300 hammers a piece, or ~12 hammers per turn. This is still not entirely unreasonable if this army + cothon was all we wanted, but we'll also want more settlers, workers, and work boats - and these "unit pumps" also happen to be our best production cities for those, too. Thus we have to choose between stunting our growth or building the army. On the other hand, with with Agg, our secondary cities can deal with the ancient junk (as these have barracks where they otherwise wouldn't) and our big hammer cities can just deal with the swords + cats. That means that the production load is incredibly lightened, and we can continue using these cities to build our empire.
Basically, if it wasn't for Agg, I think our only option here would be to NOT go to war, as sinking ~1000 hammers into an army out of our main production cities is just way too expensive. With Agg, we really only need these cities to contribute ~500 hammers worth of military, total, for an army that's actually stronger. Thus, I don't think they'll ever be able to match us 1:1, assuming tech parity, and our option to go to war is way more reasonable.
I'm afraid that was extremely rambling, but I hope my idea here came through at least a little bit.
The other big places where I think that Agg gives a solid advantage are a.) drafting (two promo musket/rifle drafts out of cities that would otherwise have none, plus +2 happiness in Nationhood w/ barracks everywhere), b.) avoiding a religion in mid-game (Theocracy is a lot less important for war with cheap barracks and stables), and c.) saving helluva gpt on a massive, map-sprawling empire in state property, like Scooter+Pindicator did in PB13. But, all these considerations are even further away, so we've got no schemes planned regarding them right now.
I stared at this awhile, noticed you were still afk at your Flippin Football game, and just... accepted. I guess he was too nervous about us war-deccing to cancel the OB agreement? Come on man, if anyone's gonna want to actually WANT to build a trade relationship with the GLH guy its the Cothon people. Well, its not really what we needed, but I'll accept for the same reason I just gave. I hope he remembers that he's getting a real good deal here, when we have Cothons and the trade difference swings back in our favor.
Here's Gawdzak's lands; he is directly east, rather than Northeast, of Gavagai.
His core is very compact, which is very good for Imp, and working lots of mines, like we are. (I think he's the one we go back and forth with, every other turn or so, for the top MFG spot.) Outside of that, he's got a shitload of jungle to his south, which is really too bad for him. He's got another city or two at most before he has to fight BFC's full of 100% coast and jungle. He's also isolated by himself on his own island! That's very nice for him early, but will cause him some problems later. We've got some big islands between the two of us (and Furungy) that he'll definitely want to grab. So far, though he hasn't yet built any overseas settlements of his own, which is surprising since he built the GLH like almost 30 turns ago. The last thing I notice is that he's recently settled stone (the fish and stone remain unimproved), which could either be for a Moai (he's got several nice spots for it open) or the HG. Maybe we can buy it off him later, if Mackoti doesn't want to cough it up?
HAK declined our loan request, which is mildly annoying. I feel inclined to cancel our open borders with him,... he's getting 23 commerce per turn for free from us now, while we get nothing from him, and yet he snubs our little 40g for 5gpt loan? Yeesh. Still, I don't want him to get any more behind than he already us. Someone is gonna roll him eventually, and I'd rather he put up a good fight. What do you think about this, Borsche? I put the same loan offer to Furungy; hopefully he accepts and isn't last in the turn. We need the loan to come in this turn to hit currency in 2T (with some research builds), otherwise we get it in 3T. I guess its not that big of a deal.
In domestic news, our 10th city, Grooooming, named after everyone's favorite romantic vgcats arc, just planted this turn at the Fish/Whales.
The fish was hooked instantly, while the whales will be hooked in 5 turns. I've actually started a granary there, not a lighthouse. The city increased our total city expenses by 6gpt but raises 6cpt in income, so new cities are still essentially free. In fact, our expenses actually decreased by 5gpt due to reduced unit maintenance! Pretty cool. The axeman here will offload from the boat next turn, and take the hut T90 I guess.
Demographics are looking good; top CY is down from 117 to 110, so we're actually #1 again there! dtay whipped three times last turn, so there's a good chance he was the #1 guy before.
The last thing I noticed this turn was that Furungy has a big spike on his power graph, here:
I am not exactly sure what the heck this is. My first thought was that it was either IW or HBR, but he just got Currency a couple turns ago... so then what is this? Archery + a few units popping all at once? Does he have another neighbor at his east that he has beef with? Very odd...
btw, here's the micro for the 4 settlers, the screenshots I was going to post T86:
![[Image: Re7xm1L.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/Re7xm1L.jpg)
) and will try Furungy (at 6 cities) next turn, once he has more gold banked, as he just finished Currency this turn. Furungy is making 68 gpt, yowza! 
We'll be at about that once Currency finishes, I guess. I also tried selling OB to Gawdzak at what I thought was a reasonable price of 40 gold; he just got currency this turn as well as settled his 10th city, so he'd make either an additional +20gpt or +10gpt (if he has 2 islands or at least 2 same-continent trade routes). However, he turned me down without even a counter-offer! He's also repeatedly turned down map trades the last few turns; I guess he got a map trade from Gavagai (still at 6 cities, although he whipped twice this turn), without realizing that we haven't traded maps with anyone since we sent our first exploring workboat out. We have all of Furungy's maps as well as a huge island we've discovered between Furungy and where I think Gawdzak is (northeastish of Gavagai, across the water). I remember Gawdzak being a nickle-and-dimer from PB20, where he haggled over a difference of 1gpt for stone when I was one of the last place civs bordering two of his biggest rivals, but come on man, at least counter-offer something, even if its not a trade you expect me to take, to let me know what you're thinking. 
