[SPOILERS] Commodore, Mist and the Weed. A Farce in three acts.

[Commodore]

Heya Verne. Poor city is now finally able to grow once more, and onto an incredibly late granary. Kids, please don't try this at home, see thread title for why we did it here.



You want to see an absurdly good city location? Try where the warrior is standing right now. This is the priority one juicy target for conquest, in all five locations. This is an incredibly lush map, neh?



I'm pretty sure we're the last to do so, but we have ourselves a nice sexy gold online. Schweet. Aresome. Kipling is working on a lighthouse as a worker-labor saving device. 3/0/3 lake tiles will be fine to grow on every time we roll up towards big whips.



Overall, we've been stagnating for far too long here. We'll settle Trollope in two turns, then Thackeray in two more, then Dostoyevsky the turn after. That ought to get us back in line with the others.



Let's hear it for crashing the economy, gang!

[Ilios]

Demo's?

[Commodore]

Demo's?

Decent, but nothing to write home about. Whipping makes it hard to determine true GNP, CY, and MFG, but Serdoa is generally killing in all three major categories. Hilariously, Brian is the other big soldier count. GNP got better at EoT with Kipling growing back to pick up the gold.



I really hope the bulb plan goes off. Might have to add a little more pollution to the pool to get the GE in good time, but we've still got Monarchy, Feudalism, and HBR to go anyway...25 turns is actually reasonable, as fast as we're pushing these settlers out.



The plan is for the Great Prophet to show a profit too should he decide to mess us up. Bronte is working on religion-spreading. Next turn it'll swap back to the missionary and 2-pop whip for big time overflow, which will in turn get dumped into a settler for Thackeray.



As predicted, Trollope is getting settled next turn, with sheep online the turn after and the wet corn farmed before the first growth. I'm going to screw easy irrigation of the wheat and cottage the floodplain, as Civil Service is not on the tech path this side of Engineering.



With a little bit of belt-tightening, MacDonald will have the trailing worker down to a 2-turn build (shot taken after EoT). Just need to steal back the clams and we're back to a good ratio of workers again.



I've apparently elected to make this the city review report, so here's Kipling. The lighthouse and a border pop will make this city plenty awesome just by its lonesome without having to bother more workers, although it is getting a mine in next turn too.



Going well. The Colossus is the next project once Verne makes the Dostoyevsky settler, now that will require some major worker labor.

[Commodore]

So embarrassingly, it took me a while to realize the warrior NE and Serdoa is exploring the area that goes south of Thackeray and Dickens. So I think it's well worth fighting Scooter(?) for it down there, as well as Serdoa/Lewwyn NE of us. Still keeping the Thackeray dot steady, for now though.



I feel reasonably confident that we can manage to hold whatever we want down there, because iron is hooked up as of now. How do crossbows at t47 sound? Their 40 hammer cost is steep, but they'll slaughter countless axes behind our walls.



Not like 40 hammers is all that difficult, anyway. Trollope settled, and is doing what the earlier settles ought to have done, growing to size two with a chop timed perfectly to enable a 1-pop whip for the granary. Then the city can commence growing like an aggressive weed onto riverside Fin cottages. Hmmmmm...



Proud of its accomplishments thus far MacDonald churns out a worker this turn to join the ever-swelling horde. Then its growth on a barracks for more Imp settler goodness. I love the micro setup here.



All that makes for dull reporting, most likely. So...questions? The metagame is currently "everyone running REX-mode", so not that interesting right now.

[Mist]

Someone's that's not us is running around with awfully large amount of soldiers (91k power). Any idea why would scooter/brian want to militarize this much?

[Commodore]

Someone's that's not us is running around with awfully large amount of soldiers (91k power). Any idea why would scooter/brian want to militarize this much?

That's Brian, I think, playing Fierce games. I put the axe eastwards as an extra ward.

[Commodore]

Okay, much as the awesome plan of awesomeness this game is all about cataphracts and more cataphracts, I don't want to undersell our excellent leader here. Let's make a new series, shall we? How about a play of "I feel Fin" for our woman Vicky:



Now we've been playing a fairly unusual Financial game here, what with the single-minded beeline towards Guilds. Nonetheless, Financial is still hands-down the best trait in the game and we've been able to leverage is somewhat even with the dearth of cottages and fishing villages. We have a couple plans afoot to leverage the trait better upcoming, too.


The first plan, and certainly not one we're relying on, is the Colossus. With the Colossus, the excellent Fin 2/0/3 water tiles, already worth working, become impressive 2/0/4 tiles...which is what non-Fin people call a grassland town! There are two objections I normally have towards a Colossus plan; it encourages the player to work coast over investing in cottages, and it discourages the player from researching Astronomy, which is tantamount to suicide on a water-heavy map.

On this map, though, no matter what happens we're not looking at an incredibly long-term gameplan. Much as everyone (sans Brian) is happily running their farmer's gambits now, with four Imp and Lewwyn this map will fill up before you'd believe, and once it does, military now will carry the day over better military later. Astronomy is also a good deal less attractive to most, with the complete lack of ocean tiles. Serdoa's Vikings, most biased towards galleons, are also fortunately biased right now towards GMs, GEs, and GPs, meaning the early Astronomy bulb isn't very likely.

So, the current plan is to settle Dostoyevsky fairly soon and build the Colossus, chopping out a forge and then the wonder in fairly short order. All the Imp players are threats to get MC soon with bulbs, but we do have a fairly substantial lead on the tech, which might disaude them from wasting hammers on the wonder. In the case where someone does manage to snag it...well, that just makes them that much more attractive as targets later, eh?

The other way to leverage Fin in the short term is abusing the lovely 2-commerce spots to be found all over this map, not just with the coasts but also, thanks to our early Machinery, in the many riverside hills to be found. Let's just look at the Thackeray spot we're seeing from below this turn.



The thing is, as heavily hilled as this map is, there isn't a ton of flat riverside grassland for cottages. Cottage economies also prefer to grow on those flat grassland tiles and whip for their production, rather than work the hills while staying high-pop and stable like a specialist economy. 1/3/0 or even riverside 1/3/1 tiles just aren't very good for that, but with windmills, these hills can become 2/1/3 tiles that are very good to grow on. Couple that with the lake tiles in easy lighthouse range for 3/0/3 tiles (more with the Colossus!), plus the fish, and you have a city able to very comfortably support a 5->3 or even 6->3 (pigs/grass cottage) whip cycle, while making an average of ~13 commerce per turn or more. Thackeray is just one example of the little ways we're using Fin to maximize our little empire.

[Commodore]

It's great to be in a high-worker zone. Note Trollope's sheep pasture already online. Growth in three turns, and granary whipped in four. At least one of the workers is probably going to be shifted west for Project: Colossus after the chop, but cest la vive.



Demos are wildly fluctuating each turn as we all whip outselves silly. Top in all categories is generally Serdoa, who is whipping the least, and bottom is generally Brian, who is whipping the most (army, mostly). I hope those soldiers don't come our way, that would be annoying.



We're humming along still, although a touch bit behind in cities. Still, Bronte gets Thackeray's settler next turn, then Kipling makes Dostoyevsky's the turn after and Melville follows soon again. Can we crash this? Jah.



Need to go pillage those towns...

[Commodore]

Define farmer's gambit in five words or less? "We're scouting with missionaries". He'll be popping Thackeray's borders, no worries, he's not uselessly out of position. Yes, we are going to make a couple crossbows soon to seal this Scooterian border.



Apparently, one man's attractive southern expansion zone is another's useless wasteland. Okay, so Scooter is expanding in some very different directions. Fair enough, and one could make the fair point that at least he's settled for horses pre-t50.


We're actually delaying the horses another little bit as Kipling's settler is getting moved to Dostoyevsky. I figured its more important to start the Colossus earlier than not-build more chariots.


It's going to be off to a rocket start no doubt, with two forests chopped the turn of its founding and the cows pastured another turn after. The worker force is already getting ready, and Bronte is going to make a missionary to follow up a couple turns after.


Meanwhile Verne is about to make a lovely 3-turn settler itself for Melville, so the whale-chaser won't exactly be delayed by much. Ceil, I'm sorry to bore you here, but the Guilds alarm isn't sounding for another 20 turns at least. Engineer + Oracle do not a GP pool fill.


We're doing okay overall, still drafting leader Serdoa somewhat. This has got to stop...Phi + 'mids is darned scary, and were it not for the 'phract beeline we'd probably need to just call this game now. Lewwyn and I are Fin and we're still only in hailing distance.



Counting tiles, it looks like the ivory oceans can't have ships built in them, but after the next three cities are founded we'll work on getting Carroll here placed, which ought to solve things very nicely. Colossus is looking better and better for these spots I must say.


Interesting times are coming, guys, just hold on for a month or so and we'll be on a deathride of "fun" and BLOOD.

[Ceiliazul]

Ceil, I'm sorry to bore you here, but the Guilds alarm isn't sounding for another 20 turns at least. Engineer + Oracle do not a GP pool fill.

I suppose I can settle for a t70 phract-ageddon, but that's my final offer!

What will be the engineer chance in this plan?