Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Sullla]

Cyneheard brought up a good point about turn advantage and the risk of other teams playing after us, thereby having a lesser chance of taking the free Great Artist at Music. If we were playing fourth in the turn order, then we might have made a different decision on starting tech ourselves. (Or maybe not; Speaker is a huge fan of Music first on Medieval starts.) Hard to say. Thanks for bringing up the point though - on to Turn 96.



Not too much going on for my civ this turn, so I'm posting a picture of Speaker's territory instead. Like me, Speaker started by having both cities build a worker, although he sped along the worker in his capital by chopping a forest at the start. After that, Prenerf Shen has been growing like a weed, already up to size 7! We'll look more at that in a minute.

Junglewick is a very strong location for a city (on a plains hill, copper, irrigated corn, 7 river grassland tiles) but it lacked initially for food, because the corn was in the second ring. So Speaker had the city working the copper mine while it produced two straight workers; this was the move that made the most sense given the local geography. As soon as we discovered Music, Speaker could have Junglewick "build Culture" for an instant border pop. Now the city will have the farm on the corn complete right around the time that it's done building workers and ready to start growing. I thought that this was pretty well managed overall; there are alternate ways to play this, but it made a lot of sense to have the capital grow vertically while the second city (waiting on a border pop) spammed extra workers.



Prenerf Shen has of course outgrown its supply of improved tiles. While that's not ideal, the fact remains that this city will have the horses connected next turn, and working more tiles is almost universally better in this game. There's already one grassland riverside cottage being worked, and more on the way. I'm not sure exactly what size Speaker plans to hit before swapping over to settler production, but with Imperialistic trait, a large capital that can work a whole bunch of mines is very strong indeed.

After ending my turn for T96, Tibbers grew to size 3. When I hit "End Turn" after the following turn, Tibbers will be size 4, and my capital will be size 5. I guess I can talk more about this later, but I'm extremely happy with how things are looking for my civ so far, and I'll actually be working 4 floodplains cottages (3 at capital, 1 at Tibbers) after next turn.

I think we've done a good job of growing our population so far. Speaker and I are growing our civs more vertically before building settlers, while sunrise is going to build his first settler a bit earlier (because he has fewer improved tiles and the possibility of early pressure from Rome). Here's where every team stand in terms of total population so far, at the start of T96:

Team 1
Speaker: 7 pop
Sullla: 6 pop
sunrise: 6 pop

Team 2
Lewwyn: 5 pop
antisocialmunky: 4 pop
Luddite: 4 pop

Team 3
oledavy: 5 pop
WarriorKnight: 5 pop
scooter: 4 pop

Team 4
JKaen: 6 pop
TMIT: 6 pop
Kuro: 5 pop

That's counting before we ended this current turn of course, so that the comparison is fair. More pop doesn't necessarily mean that a team is doing better though - there are factors to consider like whipping, building more workers/settlers, and so on. I honestly don't know what the other teams are doing in terms of their city mangement. Still, generally speaking its better to have more population than to have less of it, so I am cautiously taking this as a good initial sign. With settlers as expensive as they are on Medieval, trying to build one at say, 3 pop, feels counterproductive compared to growing to size 6-8 very rapidly and building a settler then. We shall see.

Minor notes: even though Team 3 lightbulbed Civil Service, only their Gandhi player (scooter/dazedroyalty) actually swapped to Bureaucracy civic so far. Perhaps just forgotten by the other players? Obviously Civil Service tech is not particularly valuable if you don't revolt to Bur civic! Also, Team 2 and Team 4 have yet to meet one another. Everyone else has met, although two of them only just made contact this turn.

[sunrise089]

Also one very move on my part that Sullla is being nice enough not to point out - I had a MP unit in a city with 5 happy faces and 4 unhappy faces. I wanted to move the unit out and maybe kill a scout. I checked, saw I had 1 excess happy face, and thought I was good to go. Oops sunrise - this isn't ancient era, so you start with Hereditary Rule. That means +1 unhappy due to no MP and -1 happy due to the unit not providing HR unhappiness.

Now, I might have made the call anyways to give up 3-4 turns of unimproved tile in exchange for a unit kill and denied scouting, but I'd be lying if I said I thought through those tradeoffs in advance

[Speaker]

Er, just turn your culture slider to 10 or 20% for a turn?

[Sullla]

Guys, I went ahead and played my part of the turn. I'll be around for most of today, so let me know if you want me to jump onto voice chat when you have a chance to play.

[Sullla]

Here's an update for Turn 97:



My archer found another TMIT scout up here to my northwest. Speaker has an archer over in his northwest as well; looks like TMIT is probably located somewhere to the north, possible between our starts (?) Something like that, I would guess.

The event log also shows that everyone on Team 3 has now revolted into Bureaucracy civic, although each of them revolted on different turns. Interesting. I expect Teams 2 and 4 to lightbulb Civil Service with their own Great Merchants any turn now.



These are my two cities, after I ended Turn 97. They both grew a size and now sit at sizes 5 and 4. (Requiem is growing again, to size 6 next turn, which is actually faster than I can lay down the floodplains cottages for it!) The one road is to bring the wheat resource to Requieum, without which it would be unhealthy at size 5. Right now, the capital is working 3 floodplains cottages, and Tibbers is working another. I'm genuinely curious on how that compares to other teams, but of course you readers are the only ones who know for sure...

Tibbers grew to size 4 after ending turn, and I had it start on settler. It's using the wheat, horses, and floodplains cottage right now; next turn, one worker will finish that grassland hill mine (for a fourth improved tile) while the other worker down there can move onto the forested hill and get ready to chop that. Should take 5 turns to get the settler with forest chop included, which feels pretty decent for these settings. Meanwhile, the capital just keeps on growing and growing...



Demographics appear pretty solid. This starting position is completely amazing - I have to assume that everyone has the same starting terrain - so it's going to come down to who can get the most out of this stuff. As has been said a couple of times, my early game goal is to get a cottage on every one of those floodplains and work them all ASAP. I'm happy with how it's going so far.

[novice]

Your start does indeed look amazing, Sullla.

Where is the settler going?

[Profane]

I'm guessing somewhere NW near the metal? Or NE towards Speaker?
Is it critical to get out another Fast Worker ASAP to handle the fast growth/new city, or are there other more pressing priorities?

[Sullla]

I think I'm done posting at RB for a while. A lot of people are rubbing me the wrong way, and I'd rather not create more controversy. Hopefully this game will continue, although at the moment it sounds like people would rather reload endlessly than make actual progress.

See you in a few weeks.

[Zalson]

And I was just about to ask for a Cloak & Dagger assessment...

In general, Sullla, thank you for reporting with such care!

[Nakor]

I understand your position in this and I do agree with you completely, Sullla.
Just play the turns the way you all agreed upon and don't reload.

For what it's worth, I do hope you'll reconsider posting in here since for me it's the most interesting thread in the whole PB6 scene...