Hmm, a puzzler. I think what this is saying is that he'll give ivory for whales+2g in 4 turns, perhaps when he'll have his second ivory hooked. Sure, that's fine. You can even have an advance on it, as long as its a long-term deal - ivory is worth 2 happiness in market cities. At this point, I noticed we had a whale missing, leading me to believe that HAK accepted the trade. However, he sent a message much less subtle:
Hmmm. Pretty bizarre cross-triangle of resources here... this will be a tough one to decode. I haven't seen such a bizarre exchange since suttree started sending me random shit every turn in PB21.
Something about... a sugar, huh? And who, pray tell, is this lucky sugar daddy?
PB13's sugar sultan, mackoti. The very same mackoti that is HAK's neighbor here in PB22. His closest neighbor, in fact - just a friendly snowballing neighboroonie with the Mids and the MoM.
Ok, I think I got it now. please allow me to translate this message from AIDiploenese into what you normal people speak:
If he truly "accidentally accepted" then he could have requested a reload. Methinks he just wanted to accept both offers but didn't want to wait or risk my whale going elsewhere. My response? I demanded a fur. That'll be fine instead, thanks HAK. He's got a second one nearby , about 5 or 6 spaces from his capital towards the northeast, he just has to, I dunno, *shouting into a microphone* BUILD SOME CITIES AND HOOK IT. *glares*
Well, we hooked our 3rd whale this turn, anyways.
Our axe won the fight, 9 XP but 0.9/5 hp remaining, yowza. Our axe needs to heal asap or else he's gonna have trouble with even that spear. We'll found the new city there next turn, and also another site at the corn/marble. Ideas for names?
Gawdzak swapped civics into HR and Caste. A great scientist was born somewhere unknown.
HAK came through on the fur. Cool. We have 12 happycap in our capital now, wow! It might be worth starving MoJ for a bit, taking both pastures and just growing the goatman huge.
We've got two new cities this turn. The first is in the north, where we're getting menaced by a barbed spear on that banana. It thus seemed fitting to name the city after Ma3. Maybe we'll get a whole Giziverse district up here, if Gavagai remains uninterested in the area? We have our super axe up here, but due to a misclick of mine last turn (I moved the axe to the settler instead of to where the city was to be founded), our axe loses a turn of healing. If the spear beelines to the city, the axe will only have 2.9/5 hp! He'll still have C2 and +90% defensive modifiers, but that's still not a slam-dunk.
Hopefully it works out. If the spear moves closer next turn, we can try using our scout to lead him another direction. We can have a chariot (whipped from Odd Patriot, ugh) on the scene in 2 turns, although I'm not sure how much it will help other than a hail-mary, as the axe will still have defensive odds (2.8*1.2 vs 4/1.9) ...
The plan at Ma3 is to chop a rax ASAP to culture the fish and rice, then the Granary, then LH, Cothon, etc. Maybe Cothon comes before LH? Hmm...
Next, we have the city of Oglaf, because today is Sunday and this week's new Oglaf was particularly stupid and terrible. We'll get a quick rax here too, whipped from this dry corn.
13 cities! Our next plants T98. Gawdzak has 11, REMAI 10, Gavagai 9, Mackoti 8, Furungy 7, HAK 6. Next in the queue in a lotta these places are Swords, which will be whipped into Cothons.
In other international news, Mackoti got a Great Scientist (most likely will be used for an Academy in his size 10 (!) capital), and Gawdzak switched into his newly founded Confucianism as state religion. This was pretty baffling to me, as he's got to have a Great Person coming soonish from the GLH for a golden age. Surely it would be worth waiting until then to save 2 turns of Anarchy? At the very least, why switch into a state religion now? How much could you really have it spread around in just a few turns? The only thing I can think of is that he wants to use the OR bonus to build something big, maybe the Hanging Gardens using his stone and maybe his Moai too? who knows.
Demos are still looking great:
Expenses:
We're apparently saving 14 gpt off Agg now. That's pretty good, I think. Our loan from Furungy is paid back in 2 turns, and I think our unit expenses will be more under control soon too. We start on our first GP next turn in PH, a merchant. We'll use him to switch into HR, OR, Caste, and Hinduism; maybe there's a chance we can get Vassalage too. We'll have to see how we're doing then.
BIG news this turn. Last turn, that damn spearman stepped forward as feared, putting our HE-candidate axeman at risk in a battle at 2.8 health on T99. We'd still have odds, but that's too close to call, y'know? I had some terrible barb luck in PB20, with chariots regularly losing vs axes, including once with a city on the line, so I didn't want a repeat of that here. I emergency whipped a chariot in OP, costing us 8 income from the goldmine not being worked, and saved gold for Archery in case that failed too. (we have a chop incoming T99 that coulda been redirected to an archer) However, my best hope lie with my scout; I moved him 1NE of the spear, hoping to bait him in the opposite direction, and the idiot noob fell for it!!!! Owned, you dumb fucker!!!
We got some wicked overflow in 3CD, which I was tempted to use immediately on a swordsman. However, our power has been shooting up pretty high (we're 3rd atm) and will crawl even higher with a bunch of garrison units coming in, making me worried that we're tipping our hand too soon. So, I checked how we'd do on our Compass timing producing wealth here instead, banking the OF for an instant cothon. It turns out that shaves off a turn! We'll have Compass T100 and our first cothon T101. Awesome! We might be able to pull out a few more then too, but I bet we won't have more than 5 or 6 by T103.
We settled our 14th city this turn, at the oasis/gold/clam spot. Its named "Twokinds" after the awful furry comic. I forgot to take a screenshot. ;[ (City expenses went from 42->48, meaning that Agg now saves us 16gpt. Civic costs went from 30->34, Unit from 4/3 -> 4/0.)
I did take a screenshot of our demos though, cause they look sweet:
Finally, a map-trade came through with HAK, originally intended as a "thanks for being fair," regarding the fur, but ending up being a pretty even deal that we both benefited from. We gave info on Gawdzak and Furungy (neither of which we had contact with when we last traded maps), and got info on dtay, Commodore, and Dreylin/OT4E/2metraninja.
Incan dtay probably is, as suspected, the mysterious land leader, lol:
dtay is an extremely good player, playing a power combo, and his land is awesome. I guess all these rivers means he isn't getting a lot extra out of Fin? owned much? no?
Commodore, RB's resident Niall Ferguson, has a LOT of jungle and some oddly unhooked seafood:
I say oddly because I think the last time we traded maps with HAK was around t75-t80ish, so this map of Commodore's land is from at least after that. why wouldn't you have capital food hooked up by then??? I wonder if he had some troubles of some kind with dtay, they are settled right in each other's faces. Maybe a barb galley? I have no idea what the mechanic is for when those show up. They were a huge pain in the ass in PB21 but I guess I don't have to worry about that anymore. But seriously, I should look that up, they could ruin my day here because I have sooooo much seafood.
One of my exploring work boats was heading into the darkness, maybe a dozen turns to Commodore. I can't believe Gawdzak has that much free island territory, so I'm thinking I'll meet plako along the way.
Dreylin and friends are hugging their coastline, which confused me at first until I realized there's a huge foodless no-mans-land between their western border and dtay. That makes their Colossus play make a lot more sense. They're pretty near REMAI, it looks like, to their west. I wonder if they've made contact.
The T100 Big Update. A spoiler: It's too long and you won't read it!
Our overall position is very good, I think. Great, in fact! While the first 50 turns of this game might not have been ideal, the second 50 turns really could not have gone much better. We have a big huge city lead, 14 with a settler ready, vs our next nearest rival with 10. (although I strongly suspect dtay might be pretty close to us there) We're #1 in BOTH CY and MFG despite being near the bottom in land area for much of the game, and we're near top in power despite going far out of our way to surpress that stat. Finally, our economy will be transitioning from "pretty good" to "a rival for the #1 in the game" over the next few turns. The only things I wish we had are stone and more land, and at least we have a path for the latter by conquering REMAI and expanding to the northern penninsula, across the water.
Our tech plans are Math first (due in 3T) for enhanced chops, saving gold by 1Ting Myst and Poly, 1Ting masonry at break-even, and then quickly getting Construction in 4 more turns. So, we should be ready to hit REMAI by T112 or so. If we see them bridges in their land, we'll delay another 4-5 turns in order to get some Numidians in our stack too.
Overview shots:
Our south; the spot marked "c" will be the site of our 15th city, to be settled in like 5 turns or so (the whip in ZP was delayed 2T to next turn in order to overflow maxmimum hammers (enough to complete it) into the Cothon), securing our border with Furungy if he settles, as expected, 1SE of the sheep. Borders at RT expand next turn, and we have a wb ready.
Our core switched fully into Cothon production, and then goes back full steam on military. We've got a pair of swords mostly finished, hiding in the queue. MoJ will try to supply a settler to the north. GoatKCD will finish another a galley after its Cothon and then start producing the ToA, even before our marble hookup.
Our north; the spear advanced so we nailed him at 99% odds with an Axeman, and then the chariot followed suit at the same odds on the barb warrior. Sites 16 and 17 will be up here, as explained in the later in the section on Gavagai.
In the next 6 turns, we'll have another 3 Granaries, 3 more Barracks, one more Market, and 8 Cothons.
Graphs and Demos:
@ breakeven slider; we actually save gold this turn, and then 2T math.
Opponent analysis / predictions, in no particular order:
Gawdzak
Gawdzak's position is definitely the best in the game, as far as I can see. He's got some big problems to overcome, some of which he should have probably gotten on earlier, but he's also built up some incredible advantages too. Here he is again:
He settled a new city a couple turns ago, so I put him at 51 pop total, same as us. I passed a galley of his with my workboat last turn, so I assume he's finally put something on an island - about time. I'm super surprised he didn't do that ages ago, what with landing the GLH on like T60 or whatever it was. He's only got 11 cities despite being Imp; his southern tip of his continent is all jungle, so sure, you don't want that (unless you're Commodore), but his surrounding islands are very lush and more like small continents than islands. He'll want complete control of these if he ever wants to project power as far out as another civ, come Astro.
That's not to say he actually needs to conquer another civ. He can probably get 30+ cities peacefully, and already has one of the game's best economies (either Gawdzak or Mackoti are #1 average GNP), with the GLH, his own religion, and Org Courthousen already up. He popped a Great Scientist this turn, presumably for an Academy, which is highly synergistic with Org. (Org has a high slider due to low expenses) He's got stone for Moai (hooked), and I am 90% he will make a run at the HG, which will be a fantastic wonder for him, especially if he can time it with a bunch of island plants. Looking at his land, his early production is fantastic, with tons of mines all over his core. He's the one we've been going back and forth with for #1 MFG lately, I think.
Gawdzak's one problem will be what the hell he does after Astro; he might want to conquer someone, but he won't have any easy targets, I think. Maybe Furungy?
HAK
Hmmm, what can I say here... ah, I got it. I think Jimmy says it best. Watch my man here for about 20 seconds, replacing "TC" with "HAK" and "Tyler Cook" with "Hit Any Key," and I think that about sums up how I feel about this.
I dunno. Maybe HAK had some barb trouble, got one of his first settlers eaten by a wolf? I don't know how else to explain this.
dtay
I thought I had another screenshot of his land, but I forgot to save it, I guess? Its basically the same as the one before it; he's got 10 cities visible, with 50 pop, and I think he's got another at least 3 cities on top of that. Maybe 54 pop total? He's above Gawdzak and I for sure, and very likely the one we've been swapping places with every other turn at the top of the CY chart. Long story short, he's got an insane amount of land and is probably the #1 threat after Gawdzak to win the game right now because of it. Land is a big deal in RtR mod because the midgame here is dominated by workshops and watermills rather than the whip, like it was in base BTS. Basically, the "base" land tile yield is 4 foodhammers by the end of the classical era here, 5 in the medieval era - compared to only 3 for both in BTS. In addition, food converts into hammers at a poor rate, especially for more expensive Medieval and Renaissance units. So, you have to use lots of tiles rather than relying on only leveraging your few best ones.
On top of his future production advantage, dtay is also Financial, meaning that he should be in a good enough tech position to use capital-Q Quality units. The one mitigating factor here is that it appears he has run out of land to settle; we can already see that he has borders touching Commodore, and its likely he's touching Dreylin too. That's leaves his south, where we can see he already has resources hooked near the tundra, and whatever islands are around to his southwest. His core is very spacious as well, using taking advantage of Terrace culture to allow early city placements farther apart than one might ordinarily - a downside of which is that he doesn't have room for fillers and it will take him a long time to fully utilize all his tiles once his relative food surplus starts to dwindle. Thus, if his neighbors can keep him in check (which will be tough, dtay is one of the best players on this site), he might plateau in the next 50 turns.
Mackoti
Big Mac, the Big Burger lover, is starting to get scary:
Mackoti got the Mids and the MoM despite their being two Ind civs in the game, cementing his reputation as the wonder king, and sneakily expanded from 8 to 10 cities during the T99-T100 interturn. His capital is size 11 now, the biggest city in the game, and 99% likely has an Academy. (he got a GS a few turns ago but didn't pop a GA; he's also Org, which loves Academies due to their high slider). His GNP chart looks HUGE. His very obvious path forward is to grow big while popping several consecutive GAs, pop another GE GP and rush the Taj, then obliterate his ridiculously weak western neighbor, HAK. Looking at his city sizings, its clear he's using most of them as workhorses while he primps and preens his capital as big and beautiful as he can.
I wonder where he put the MoM?
Gavagai
Gavagai is still doing very well, although he's probably still stinging from (presumably) losing the Colossus to Dreylin, despite Oracling MC and having the double-Ind discount on the damn thing. He's sat 9 cities, although many of them are very strong, in contrast to Mackoti, with forges very likely already in them and OR of his own religion on top of that:
His big problems going forward will be us and Mackoti, and I'd like for him to focus on Mackoti so that we can concentrate on our southwest plan. Because of that, I've been thinking about our northern dotmap, and think we should revise it to this:
We'd settle in the order of red -> yellow -> blue here. Basically, we settle so that he is "forced" to take the chokepoint, and thus his border with us will be very safe and natural, with no culture-fights over resources, without him feeling like he's gotten shafted too badly on land. I mean, we'll have gotten way more than 50% of the land between us, but he hasn't settled even a single city yet in our direction at all, so I think this is fair. Gavagai respects strength, so as long as we look respectible on our side and let him feel strong on his side, I think he'll leave us alone. I really don't want to mess with him; he's very strong tactically and very fierce. I invaded him in PBEM59 with a gargantuan army and he whipped himself into such a frenzy that he was able to re-control some key terrain, to the point where I'm not sure anymore whether my attack will work. I guess we'll never find out...
Anyways, with this border, he should be able to focus exclusively on Mackoti and contest HAK, which he needs to do to win.
REMAI
The biggest thing to note about REMAI's land is that we still can't see any more of it than we could 40 turns ago:
What does this mean? It means these guys haven't traded their damn maps around at all! We've traded maps very recently with Gawdzak, Mackoti, HAK, AND Gavagai; if REMAI had traded maps at all with either of them (who might be their only contacts besides Dreylin, their western neighbor), then we'd be able to see more of their land. Great! The less friends they have, the better for us.
These guys are doing... OK. Their CY and city count is respectable, although it is actually only 10, not 11 as I mentioned in my last update. This had me stumped for a bit, as their score increased last turn, so I think what happened is that they lost a city to barbs 4-5 turns ago - they had a score decrease in the tracker right after turn rolled. Based on this, I estimate their total pop is only ~30ish, as 3 of their other plants (the 3 before this replanted one) were relatively recent.
They got a classical tech score increase last turn, but no bridges around their silver yet. Gotta keep a close eye on that. They've put over 250 EP on us over the course of the game (we're forced to keep 3 EP on them to prevent their getting city visibility, with the other 1 going towards Furungy in order to slow him down from the same), and their power has started to spike too.
What these guys need to do is a.) REX the hell out of their north and b.) somehow hold off the pair of predatory motherfuckers to their east without crashing their empire. Their situation is not great at the moment, but they have sooooooo much empty land left to expand to. I'd feel rather bullish about their next 50 turn prospects if I wasn't also planning to murder them in their crib, Muwahhaha...
Commodore
Commmodore, I'm having trouble figuring out what the heck he's doing. He's right in dtay's face to his south, understandable as his other side, his east, is drowning in jungle. He's got 6 cities showing, 31 pop, but that's gotta be pretty out of date because I can see this (rice and gems are both hooked):
Looking at the geography, this must have been all jungle that he just went ham on. Commodore, as far as I can tell from past games (e.g. PBEM62) fucking LOVES his grassland rivers ("fertile valleys" ) to the point of tunnel-vision, so I would not be surprised if he teched IW first just to chop all this garbage down to get one. Soooo not worth it. Anyways, I'm thinking that, based on the amount of worker turns invested in this area, this map is from at least ~25 turns ago, meaning he might have 3-4 more cities - maybe close to 36 pop total? - including this gems/rice one.
What I don't get is that he has another land mass to his northwest that shares food with his capital, like we had with Ray's Toilet. He hadn't even unfogged this yet, much less put some cities down!! It seems he's also got some big ass islands between him and Gawdzak to expand to, that our workboat has been passing en-route to him... he needs to get his ass on the water and in that direction before Gawdzak peacefully settles like 40 cities and wins the game de-facto.
Furungy
Furungy has a great economy but is not doing very well other than that. Here's his situation:
After I took this screenshot, he logged in and planted another city, putting him at 7.
He's got a lot of land available to him in his north and east that he hasn't really bothered to expand to at all. IMHO, if you're gonna pick Darius you need to wreck yourself early, focusing 100% on foodhammers, or else you'll fall way behind on expansion. Not much to say other than that; he needs to pick up the pace or else Gawdzak or us will eventually just eat him. At any rate, I'm planning to settle our 15th city in such a way that, like w/ Gavagai, it highly discourages him to settle close towards us. It's better to cede a bit of land to have a safer border down here so that we can focus more military elsewhere. From what I understand of Furungy, he can get bitter at a rival who has wrong him and hold a grudge a long time, so we'll step lightly until he has someone else besides us to worry about - he's put full EP on us since we've met him, and is rapidly closing in on city visibility, ugh.
Dreylin+Pals and plako
I don't really know much about what these guys are doing, and so I can't speculate much.
Dreylin and Pals are Fin and snatched the Colossus from under Gavagai's nose, so they're doing very well. We only have partial maps on them, from someone's workboat scout, and their cities look small. *shrugs*
Regarding the players, I don't know much about them. Dreylin is an old-timer who hasn't played in awhile, I guess. He felt confident enough to join a PBEM against Seven+TBS and Mackoti. 2MN is a veteran from CFC who seems to do respectibly, but never win, pitboss games here at RB; reading his past games, he is very strong in military tactics and game-wide strategy, but doesn't have good micro; he's not the turn player here, so that makes him more dangerous. OT4E I don't know at all, although I've seen his name come up in some of the ISDG2012 threads I've been reading lately, I think maybe for some Russian team? Maybe he was another ladder player? Who knows.
plako, OTOH, everyone knows. The main thing I can understand about him is that he's competent, no-nonsense, and bare-knuckled. In this game, he's Ind/Org, which seems like a perfect fit for that kind of attitude. We often play at the same time in PB18, and yet, as much as I try to chat with him, he only ever even returns my "howdy" with a "hello" about 50% of the time, and nothing beyond that. Here, he's got a bunch of early techs, Stonehenge, and the Buddhist Shrine. I wonder if he tried going for some wonders and missed? I'd have expected more out of that fast start. Anyways, he's the only one I don't even have partial maps for so I have no idea what he's up to. Maybe he just rexed all over the place instead of chasing wonders.
(December 3rd, 2014, 15:52)GermanJojo Wrote: He felt confident enough to join a PBEM against Seven+TBS and Mackoti.
You totally missed the best player in that game...
Nice report and analysis (I read everything). I like your planned strategy going forward. Can't comment much more due to being spoiled.
What's your take on Numidian Cavalry in the mod?
Oh, who do mean, Yuris? You stopped updating after the first couple turns, so I forgot you were in that game, sorry!! And thanks for reading here.
I think Numidians are really good in RtR (and in ToW, where they're similar). Free C1 means I have a choice of, with a stables, C2+C3, C2+Shock, C2+Formation, or, drumroll, C2+Amphibious. The first three mean that pure Numid stacks are super hard to deal with (they'll get odds on basically everything from the classical era except Agg spears and War Elephants), while the last means that Carthage can terrorize coast in a far earlier era than even the Vikings. We won't be able to make much use of their special traits this game, as our planned attack on REMAI will basically a huge sledgehammer focused on breaking their holy city. We basically just need them to be flanking threats against any Hwatchas that we catch in the open.
That said, I wonder if we can squeeze out a galley from Odd Patriot... seiging the holy city might take awhile (expecting 4th ring borders, ugh), so I wonder if we can freak them out with a galley slipping past and forking their back lines... and cut off their reinforcement lines somehow? Hmmm...
+6 commerce, awesome.... but our cothon is only giving +50% trade route yield... wtf, that is not in the RtR mod changelog!!!! It's still supposed to be +100%!
I guess it's not a HUGE deal... -10 hammers in cost means we get them up faster, but -1 commerce per route later means its less dominant in the long-term. Oh well. =/
More cothons whipped in, something something six commerce, yadda yadda yadda.
REMAI have open borders with Gawdzak now (to be expected, unfortunately) and are also selling him marble for 6 gpt.
now THAT was unexpected... that price is so ridiculously cheap considering many big marble wonders are still in play. Between the two deals, REMAI's gold-saving income is roughly equal to ours at the moment, 105gpt.
I am very worried about the ToA now, as Gawdzak would probably want it, with his own shrine to build and lots of GLH TR income to amplify... its possible that he will go for TGL/Parthenon instead, since he got a classical tech increase last turn that may be Aesthetics, but we can't count on it. =/
I've tried a few micro plans out, and the best I can do for getting the wonder in my capital is ~T121ish. The problem is that I won't have marble hooked until T113 at the earliest, if we fort it (on tundra, ugh) so that its hooked the moment cultural borders expand, and then overflow-chain a full settler AND a full worker on T113 and T115, then slow-building it for 6 more turns. This involves triple-whipping our capital and gimping the development of our southern lands, as the fort plan needs 21 worker turns in the next 10 turns and we only have 2 workers available. I do not like this! An alternative is to quickly settle the planned red dot near Gavagai (see above) and chop the wonder out there using its 7 forests. The plan would be to settle the site, immediately chop out a barracks, and then mine the PH to the SW. The next build would be a Cothon at 5hpt; once borders pop, we hook the pig, let the city grow to size 2 in 2 more turns, and then whip for 34 overflow hammers - roughly at the same time as marble is hooked the slow way, with a quarry (T118ish). Six more chops come in next, the PH is worked for a few more turns, and, bada bing, bada boom, we get the wonder on the same turn as the capital plan, T121. The disadvantages here are that we won't get the ToA bonus commerce or hammer in Bureau, with all the capital's nice multipliers, but, OTOH, we don't break our capital in the near term or gimp our southern sphere. The ToA culture would also be AWESOME for sealing the border with Gavagai.
This is the worst wonder micro plan of all time, I think. I'm going to go for it anyways.
![[Image: qjcXKk0.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/qjcXKk0.jpg)
![[Image: jEI0PR3.png]](http://i.imgur.com/jEI0PR3.png)
But seriously, I should look that up, they could ruin my day here because I have sooooo much seafood. 
You stopped updating after the first couple turns, so I forgot you were in that game, sorry!! And thanks for reading here.
![[Image: Ew4GzJY.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/Ew4GzJY.gif)
) to the point of tunnel-vision, so I would not be surprised if he teched IW first just to chop all this garbage down to get one. Soooo not worth it. Anyways, I'm thinking that, based on the amount of worker turns invested in this area, this map is from at least ~25 turns ago, meaning he might have 3-4 more cities - maybe close to 36 pop total? - including this gems/rice one. 
