[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[Coeurva]

After some thought, swapped build to granary in both Rungholt and Venusberg: this allows us to chop + whip the granary at V by t56, then chop out the barracks 4t later: this saves unnecessary investment into mines and frontloads the unhappiness, which will pay off by T70. For R, it's more efficient to invest into the archer next turn. The capital granary won't come into play for a while (size6 and beyond), but it's good to invest in it now.

I also verified that worker labour at Mun has to kick off with the forest chop (will provide 5h into archer, 15h into granary). Improving the cows first makes it inconvenient to chop this forest later, which we'll need for the granary, and temporarily wastes an improved 4-yield tile (not enough citizens for 2t).

X5 / Ravenna will be settled on T59 and probably cost 4 gpt -- quite hefty, but it's the strongest site available and must be developed early (with two workers). Can easily finish barracks, granary (at half-full bar of size2), wb and work fish at size3 by T73.

[OT4E]

About religion I think it is only worth if our path lies through it. Imho the time has not come and most likely religion and wonder hunters will fall victims of those who picked the optimal expansion path.

Stonehenge if unclaimed till late is worth chopping in one of the new cities and work as cultural bomb. I doubt that we will have a chance for it this game neither we need culture to defend ourseves.

[Coeurva]

The Oracle would be an extremely powerful wonder to land on this high-maintenance and food-scarce map, though. Not least for denial value. I'm sure I can come up with a plan to oracle Maths for us by T75 at the latest (which is when we'd get to it "naturally" anyway), picking up Buddhism alongside. If someone else gets the Oracle, well, then we get no less useful failure gold which allows us just about the same speedup to Maths (for Currency). I cannot overstate how costly this map is and that maintenance is our main enemy, X6 / gold city is tremendously important as it just about doubles our breakeven bpt (and that's ignoring the happiness).

If Stonehenge is any indicator, the thing will surely not fall before T70, by which time we should just about have reached Myst -> Med -> Priest -> Writing (the last one with a 60% discount). Of course, not chasing religions would have the advantage that it'll alert us to anyone else's pursuit of the Oracle... but with no way to react.

We wouldn't even have to change a lot of micro around -- it's as simple as building two plains mines at Canoel for 6t of 16hpt, 2t of 17hpt and chopping its last forest (total building time 8t, and that's not including any prepared overflow), which is going to happen anyway. (e: Slightly different: it's one plains, one grass; that's good enough.) At worst this slightly delays the Ravenna barracks. Nor does Canoel really build anything of importance during this period, mostly military if we don't go Oracle (Venusberg can do the X7 settler). In fact, the Oracle is also the best way to push its culture so that we get super-early ICTR.

Change my mind.

EDIT: Our Oracle eta is eot72 (which is faster than Maths without Oracle). The only way we don't get enough failgold to make up for lost beakers is if the Oracle falls before T67, which I think we should see coming (if we beat the field to Meditation, there's no way they catch up; if we see Buddhism founded 8t before we get there, our delay is only the 4t of Myst, which might pay off if we chase Masonry later or build Stonehenge; if it's less than 6t before our own Med, we can chase the Oracle anyway and lose nothing except for some hammers into archers at Canoel, because failgold means the Maths eta doesn't shift dramatically).

I think we should go for it.

T52 report: Moved one of the two warriors (the 1xp one) in M on the hill 1SW of the city, which gives us an 80% chance to obtain a Shock warrior. I'd rather try and remove this barb now, because he can step onto a tile adjacent to two tiles we require workers on otherwise, and we can't cover them both due to garrison happiness constraints. Swapped most builds to archers, R and V will swap back to granary/barracks respectively next turn. Canoel finishes worker #5 eot and goes to produce the Ravenna settler (plant T59).

superdeath built an ikhanda in city #3. Updated city counts -- us / s_t 4, superdeath / MSci / Charriu 3 (the latter two settled last turn), RFS-81 2 (?!). Rival Best soldiers is 50,000, which is astonishing -- we're ranked 3rd at 39,000. This figure seems to belong to neither of our neighbours.

[OT4E]

T52 and no religion claimed?
Well, 20 turns is not bad shot for Oracle.
I would give it try.

[Coeurva]

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO PLAY A TURN IN PITBOSS 39 AND NOT IN THIS GAME, SUPERDEATH.

If something came up in-game between him and Magic Science (who played T51 last and logged out immediately afterwards), they're both excused for the imminent 48h turn, but I wish either had left a short note in the tech thread. If not, this Oracle attempt will go to Iron Working.

[OT4E]

:D
When does their peace treaty expire?

[Coeurva]

The raze occurred on T42 iirc (think a treaty was signed only on T45, though), and I'm not sure how superdeath plans to attack into the PRO archers they must have if that's the reason for this delay; maybe Magic Science is in a split with someone else, which would at least explain why he never plays the second turn when he rolls it.

I can understand if MSci doesn't feel enthusiastic about this game after getting a city razed by the most unfair unit in the game (although if they didn't have Mobility, I'd find them balanced with the archer malus) mostly just due to being Zulu's first contact. Playing a turn in one game and not the other, without explanation or apology, is much less tolerable because it makes it look like you just don't consider this one worth your time as much. But still tolerable because superdeath came home late after helping someone move.

E: Or it seems like they're just in a turn split (?!) and confused about who goes first. Meh. Shouldn't have gotten annoyed in the first place.

[Coeurva]

Both superdeath and Magic Science went out of their way to play early to make up for the delay. Full marks to them.

T53. Our warrior won against the barb (5 23hp hits vs. 6 17hp hits, we got ours first) and reached 2xp -- he's back to garrisoning Munsalvaesche. Warrior #3 still occupies the "zonal" tile 2 of Rungholt to reinforce any city as needed. (If not, we'll reshuffle the whole bunch just as M gains its archer eot, i.e. T55, send W3 back to Venusberg and those in M towards Rome, then one towards Canoel, to free up the current Canoel warrior to fogbust X5 / meet MSci around T66. Obvious to think about, clumsy to write about.)


Looks like superdeath finished Sailing, presumably for lighthouses (that fish will become 6f, but of course the lighthouse has to be repaid by that +1fpt first). The resources are nothing unexpected; fish might indicate a more aggressive coastal settlement than ours, but he could just as well have fish closer to home. Of course, if the former, he might also have found a galley path towards the apparent polar overseas territory already...



It's notable that graphs show both our contacts as having less soldiers. Low GNP should be a good sign because it primarily reflects the tech path at this stage (but also trade routes, early precious metals and city centres), and Myst has no prereqs. Next turn goes to 100% sci for 2t, burning the gold reserve, and then it's off to take our Meds.

Scoreboard agrees pretty much with how I'd rank the field currently btw (except I'd put shallow_thought 20-30 points higher), not that it means much yet. Whoever occupies that last place in CY/MFG (hopefully it's not the same team, at least) is already seriously behind and I don't think it's any of our known neighbours, so whoever consumes them (RFS?) might well take the lead.

Also note barracks before granary at Venusberg, in fact we'll whip off the cottage for a turn -- the earlier access to floodplains makes up for this in the long run. Maximal food doesn't help as much if all we can work with it is more grass mines; this is a healthier mixture of everything.

[Coeurva]

So what's up with this, superdeath... (Rival Best soldiers is 56,000 now, average 42,000, us 39,000, worst 30,000)


I regret not contacting Magic Science, who is the most obvious explanation for such an army score in one way or another (meanwhile OT4E possibly regrets not dedlurking the Zulu ), but F4 wouldn't inform us of much without an actual observer unit anyway. Or if superdeath wants to attack into our archers, let him weaken himself by all means; in this light, I'm considering to overflow + chop (34h total) into another archer (3xp) rather than granary at Venusberg. Obviously that hinders city growth slightly, but (1) it would be going to build foodhammer units anyway, (2) military buildup makes everyone lose some if responded to, but possibly makes us lose a lot if not. Rungholt can always whip the partial-built archer in line, too.

Charriu's timing of asking about resource deals in the tech thread is more than suspicious; we know he has contact with superdeath, who just established a trade route with us via Sailing -- so possibly with Charriu as well. So he's possibly interested, for whatever reason, in cooperating with him against "someone" who, if so, is quite possibly us. They're not spending EP on each other, either, but superdeath splits evenly between MSci (presumably) and us. Charriu doesn't invest against us, so I might just increase our spending on superdeath to 3 EP/t, to show him he's certainly not flying under our radar. I don't want him to lose our power graph as we add archers, though.

Not that Charriu can do anything with that power graph (eyeballed it as 36,000), which incidentally suggests that two more people have high military scores: (56,000 + 30,000) / 2 = 43,000, so let's say 48,000 and 45,000 for the missing ones.

[OT4E]

I do not regret lurking your thread. I only regret that I cant share enough time and improve your micro or honestly make any input. But I dont think it is gonna be dull, just spectacular times has not begun yet for us.

I fully support that we can build some archers for the safety. Our demographics will not suffer from it. And superdeath saw archers from MSci, but probably hasnt seen ours, so everything can happen in his head.

I am sure you know that power graph curverepresents situation with 2 turn delay.