And yeah, I had been planning to triple whip that city anyways (for a settler, had double-unhappy already), so I'm really only losing 24 hammers because of RBmod whip nerfing and it let me switcheroo some tiles - a fish given to the new horse city (Dog and Pony Show) and Sheep given back to Zoo. Still, I would rather not have had to do that. Did not expect a galley to pop out without the city getting whipped first, but I guess that horse gave him enough production to get it with a chop or something. Oh well.
If he settles in my face on that little sheep island I'm gonna be PISSED. I cannot let him get these islands, it leaves me way too vulnerable to a surprise attack. Might need to go construction next to secure them.
Calendar in, I'm back in 3rd place, and shit... I just realized BaII didn't play last turn, we might end up reloading. Caledorn was in the game too, I just saw mostly red in the tracker and logged on... figured he was the last to play (because he often is) and was thus playing his new turn in one swoop.
Um, updates before I forget. Failgolding Pyramids in Carnival to produce gold to hopefully get Construction for free - poetic, right? Delicate balancing act, because I'm hoping for like 4-5 turns of it at least, but any more than that and I commit seppuku IRL. (because it means I coulda got the Mids instead of the HG) Speaking of wonders, between Bacchus's galley threatening a plant at the marble and the fact that Dazedroyalty (!) not only has Calendar, but has had it for long enough to have both silks AND spices hooked up already (meaning he was the one I noticed some turns ago), I think I have to give up on any plans for the MoM. Makes Calendar kind of a waste... not a huge waste, but at least a little bit of one. 3 happy ain't nothin', but I coulda got there via Monarchy instead. I might try building TGW in Zoo for the great person points; its only a 6 turn build at this point. Maybe better to get a Market up there instead...
Right now my tech plan is something like this: Construction -> MC, which gives me defensive muscle on both land and sea and more infrastructure options, and then beelining Bureau (not sure yet whether to go through CoL or Feudalism) then Engineering. I'd love to have knights, but I don't think I'll be going to offensively war any time soon; the moment to hit TBS has passed, he'd have totem-pole amped longbows by then, and if anything he'll be itching to take me down a notch or two. Cats should deter him for awhile, and then hopefully I'll have Maces and Pikes on pace with his timing for Knights. How he manages to leverage his new Great Merchant (popped last turn) will play into that, though; an overseas trade mission would give him enough gold to MASSIVELY speed up Knights, except that he doesn't have any coastal cities, at least to the south. I don't really what's around his northwest, maybe he can squeeze out a ship there. He could also try bulbing CS once he has Sailing, Currency, and Metal Casting.
Anyways, the real prize of Engineering for me will be its 3-move roads. My empire, right now, is effectively divided in two hemispheres right along the Carnival-meridian; troops from one side can't really effectively reinforce the other due to the distance and longitudinal rivers. Construction's bridges will help a ton (another motivation for it as next tech), but Engineering is what I truly need for effective logistics to ward against both a western land invasion and boating attempts in the medieval era by all these fucking cities planted 2-3 tiles from my own across the channels. The southern channel is completely fucked, by the way; I recently realized that Oxy/BaII are playing Creative Greece, which has half-priced, +3 culture, +2 happy Odeons. They are most certainly the civ that got Construction and are likely planting those in every single city along the coasts. That, and building cats - their power is extremely high, one of the highest in the world if I'm translating eyeballed graphs into numbers reasonably accurately. I still haven't seen any galleys from them yet, though.
Update: it looks like Bacchus settled the marble island, except far enough away from the marble such that I can still grab it. I think he has that CG3 Archer garrisoned there, which would explain where it disappeared to. So, I'm gonna plunk a city right on the marble very soon, and then a city on the sheep island shortly afterwards.
MC due in 2 turns; I'm currently only 5th GNP, as opposed to #1 GNP last turn. That's mostly because MC has no known-tech modifier bonus yet; if I switch my tech to Alphabet, my GNP increases by about 25 (!) and I'm back to #1.
Zoo hits size 12 next turn, size 13 two turns after. Very, very slowly completing that Palace... at the rate I'm teching, I'm not sure whether it'll be before I hit Bureau or not. I think it's gotta be the biggest city in the world... there's a size 10 in the top five cities, but that's somebody's capital.
I'll post a bunch of screenshots on Turn 100! Big update!
Mids built! I think Krill/Novice got it, based on: a.) large score increase, b.) Krill logging in immediately after the turn started (I did too, but only to play my turn before heading to bed), and c.) Parkin posting in their thread after commenting that the mids were built in-game. (he was playing AT's turn as global lurker when the turn flipped)
Big update coming tomorrow, which I'll finish writing at work.
Hope y'all are ready for one hell of a long rambling ass post, written sporadically over the course of the last few days - and by "y'all" I mean myself and Dr. Ceiliazul, the one other person who *might* be reading this.
So, Dear Diary:
T100 Overview
Demos (@ 100% research so the numbers look their very best ofc ):
I'd show graphs but I only have graphs on Oxy and TBS right now. Dumped huge amounts of EP on TBS to try to get city visibility and failed.
Eastern Empire:
(Dog and Pony show didn't fit, named it "Pegasus" in honor of Team Liquid's 3-position player's amazing performance against China at Ti4, who renamed himself "Pegasus" instead of "Demon" as a symbol of his team's positive new outlook for the tourny... and amazed the world with some unbelievable upset victories against top ranked during the round robin phase. They still blew it in the first round for a 9th place finish; still the Cleveland Browns of e-sports after all. )
Western Empire:
Northern Empire:
I feel like I'm looking all-around solid. Near the top in just about every category except soldiers and land, and both are still steadily growing. (e.g. I have borders popping in two fully landlocked cities very shortly). I think the land numbers are also more closely packed than they appear; I was 6th in this category just a few turns ago.
At the very least, I'm feeling pretty good about my performance here, being one of the top civs despite not having very food-rich lands (going by Oxy's insane CY) and being the last civ I have contact with to have any happiness resources at all. (which also means no commerce tiles either!) I know I made some misplays (a few off the top of my head: not finding the river corn near the copper until way late, delaying the finish of the Barracks build in the now-mediocre Corn/Crab/Wheat/Deer spot at Hastee Tastee to end up losing out on the contested tiles by a SINGLE FUCKING TURN, greedily building more settlers before I had workers to support them despite being Expansive (have 14 workers now though, with one final one on the way), screwing up the stone fort) but also some good plays too (getting copper online just in time for the barb rush and then spawnbusting to stem it further, fairly solid and adaptive micro overall, nailing the HG with 11 cities to catch back up on pop, claiming a large amount of contested land, failgolding the mids + lots of wealth builds put me at one of the tech leaders among my known civs, who are likely amoungst the world's tech leaders, and a beautiful Bureau cap setup with solid infrastructure despite a capital move) and fair bit of luck (scooter's tribal village tech pops let me tech Math insanely early, getting full foreign ICTR without Alpha, Furungy's settler snipe at the perfect moment). All in all, I think this performance shows that I'm at least semi-competent at playing this game, despite what my panicked disaster in PB20 would say otherwise.
Going forward, I want to continue peacefully, yet aggressively, expanding as much as I can, grow my pop BIG instead of whipping it away constantly (down to 53 total pop after the latest round of whips this turn), and work towards big economic techs like Bureaucracy, Compass, and Optics.
T100 Badass City Showcase
Zoo - Palace is still chugging along... and size 13 next turn, size 14 two turns later. After that, I'll slow down its growth a bit, maybe give up the pigs or the sheep in favour of another cottage + the PH tile, which will have a mine on it by then, in order to finish the Palace sooner and accelerate a forge. Unfortunately, I only have enough happiness to reach size 15 because of my silver+2c/ivory trade with Bacchus, which could disappear at any time especially with our tensions heating up over the islands. I don't want to grow again only to find that I'm just wasting 2 food per turn on nothing.
Carnival - Looking nice and fat right now, and will do even better once I can spread irrigation to that dry wheat @ CS. Could have more infrastructure - I want to get a forge and market up and running here as soon as I can - but just recently failgolded the Mids for 166 gold, and I need to spend a turn on this axe in the queue first though to stop the hammer decay.
Direct Neighbor Thoughts
OxyBaII
Man, this guy is scary as HELL. Big GNP (inflated by his Creative culture ofc, yet still), outstanding Crop Yield (about 25% higher than mine even with less cities - he's been stuck at 10 cities since I had 8, and I'm about to have 14 in a few turns), enormous Power rating. I'd guess he's probably number one in each of those latter two categories, considering where I rank and eyeballing the relative difference between our graphs. Christ, what a neighbor to share a huge border with; at least its over the sea I guess. I plan to eventually put cities on my southern border just to help hold the coast but... they'll all be extremely boatable. Not a big deal considering they're just fillers, and hopefully he recognizes that it's just a waste of time to mess with them. I assume, from his lack of further settlements in the last 20ishturns, that he's boxed in on his current continent and will want to look at expanding by force, either on land or by sea. That means I'm a potential target, although a big mitigating factor there is that I'm looking pretty strong myself. It's unlikely he'll want to tussle with me overseas while he has Cre Xenu right next door. There's also his neighbor eastern neighbor, possibly across some kind of straight from what I can see so far. Its likely HAK, considering I spotted a workboat coming from that direction 40-50 turns ago, then I'd guess him to be OxyBaII's most likely since HAK is looking hella weak score-wise. Anyways, my policy on this guy is to prevent provoking him as much as I can while making sure that what's already mine stays mine.
TBS
As big as my research capability is right now, I think TBS's has got to be bigger; perhaps not in absolute beakers/turn, but in better break-even rate and total beakers researched. He got a SUPER early Academy, being Phi and all, and has already hit several classic techs if his score increases are any indication. I still have research visibility on him of course, but have no clue what he's up to because of the fucking scoreboard bullshit. He founded Confucianism, but doesn't have a shrine yet; I'd expect that to come soon. Speaking of, I'm not sure if the Merchant was on purpose or a 50/50 shot compared to a priest, but he cashed it in somewhere for a huge chunk of change that will fuel his research for many turns to come. The shrine will likely be next. Might be worth getting OB with him then just for some religion spreads. I had expected him to take a shot at the mids with that stone city, but it seems he either didn't try for it or just missed.
I expect him to make a rush for Knights and then clobberate his weak southwestern neighbor Furungy. Furungy recently got Calender, so he's not too far behind tech-wise, but he's sitting on like 7 cities and is likely completely boxed in on all sides; he borders Creative Plako across the channel, is currently at war with 9-city dazedroyalty (AFAIK the 4th civ on this continent), and is boxed in by (and has been at war with) TBS on his east. Anyways, my power is now sitting comfortably higher than TBS just from filling out my border garrisons a bit, so I don't think he'll try to screw with me again anytime soon. Even with Knights, my production and CY are so much higher than him that I really doubt he can make significant inroads.
There's one yet-unclaimed filler spot between us; I have a settler out there next turn, but don't think I'm gonna mess with it. I'd like to keep things peaceable between us while I'm still setting up infrastructure. On the other hand, I will make an attempt to settle my Northwest; a library in HT should win the culture war, and let me safely settle up in that tundra for at least one, maybe two spots. He's probably already wary that I have so much EP invested on him in a failed attempt to get city visibility, but he noticed and stopped that easily. Ho hum.
Bacchus
My neighbor to the east's city of Tarsus, settled two tiles away from my originally planned Moai at Peewee's Playhaus, continues to irritate me like a grain of sand stuck under my eyelid. On top of that, he recently decided to drop a settler on the NMZ islands between us, which admittedly I was planning too, and there's little I can do to stop that - yet. I cannot give up these islands, I have enough coastal troubles to the south to worry about being enveloped. Getting these islands would open up little island-hop ports to my north for him. I wish I coulda been more proactive in this theatre, but I had my western border and the stone for the HG to worry about first. Ah well, I have my first of two cities going down there next turn. Anyways, I banked some overflow hammers in my coastal towns for additional galleys and some brand new triemes during the last few turns, so those are just a couple turns away from being 1-pop whips now that MC is in. I don't yet have graphs on him (just a couple more turns away), but I do know he's been at war with his far-eastern neighbor at some point due to tech-thread shenanigans, and its likely that he is my best chance for conquest IF - and this is a big big IF - if he becomes dragged into some kind of prolonged fight over there that weakens him enough for me to get a foothold on his continent. I'm not exactly sure what his game plan is or should be. If he was in a stronger position, he should probably should conquer the islands and then expand elsewhere on his continent? Don't have a clue what's going on over there or how developed he is. Will have graphs on him on T102 if his EP on me remains stable, otherwise T103.
Tentative tech order for the next 20-25 turns:
Construction - defensive cats, roads work over rivers (big one for me, my eastern empire might as well not have any roads at all right now), maaaaaybe a Coliseum in Zoo if I can't make any more happiness trades happen. Speaking of, Xenu offered me Gold for spices last turn, both (1/1) for both of us... either this is some kind of diplo message that means "lets both be happy" or he's getting a second gold sometime soon. In either case, that's fine with me, and accepted. I have MC now and this gold might mean a second happy for me.
Code of Laws - step towards CS, unlikely to care about any of the other big junk that comes with it. You'd think courthouses would start becoming important with a dozen cities, but right now my maintenance on even the farthest sites is barely over 3gpt a turn. My Aggressive trait maintenance bonus feels almost completely useless on this huge, packed map.
Civil Service - for a Monstrous Zoo capital. Bureaucracy should increase Zoo's commerce by about 40 by the time I get here (dozenish-fifteenish turns?), worth +50gpt and +70bpt. Unfortunately not as huge of a percentage of my total commerce as I'm used to because of these monstrous trade routes. The irrigation spreading will be very nice too, as large expanses of my western territory are dry as all hell.
Iron Working - Step towards Compass and, uh, reveals Iron. Hopefully I have more than one.
Compass - Cheap expansive harbours should pay off very nicely here. I'll get +2 commerce per city with a harbour, which will be around 8 cities by this point hopefully. I was thinking of pushing this before
Machinery - Macemen and a step to Optics. I think watermills and workshops are buffed in this mod? I'll have to look into that, but that might be helpful too.
Optics - Caravels to fully explore the world and reap in the huge Known Tech Modifier from RB Mod.
I also considered going through Feudalism to get to CS... slower overall, but would also gets me Monarchy in time for a 2-civic revolt, and an extra raw happiness with Wines. Even with the extra prereq bonuses though, it ends up being something like an extra 1000ish beakers overall. Probably not worth it. If I had a GP lined up to pop a golden age for the civic switches, I would do it I think. Unfortunately, the only city capable of producing GP right now is Zoo, and I want it growing and working cottages. I'm whipping a library in HT in a few turns, and then a market after that, but I'd estimate the earliest possible GA to be at LEAST 25-30 turns away.
Other Plans
Moai in Stony Point is coming along... about halfway there once this overflow comes in. Gonna be another 15 turns (at least) until I finish it, though. Will next try to 1-pop-whip max-OF a settler, and that should be close-enough to ride it out to a finish.
MoM attempt in Moonshine - yes, if I am successful, unlikely that it is, I will rename the city to Moomshine, you have my word on it. Basic plan is this - Whip-overflowing a Chariot T101 for 30*1.5 hammers, then juggling a 4T worker build in between 1.5*6 forest chops and then max-whip-overflowing for another ~40*1.5 more hammers. That's 375 of the hammers right there, plus expect about another 60 hammers just from working tiles. That should get me close enough to double-whip by T111 if the wonder hasn't already been built in a foreign land by then. I wish I had started building up a worker for an extra 40 overflow hammers a few turns ago, instead of immediately whipping it for 1 pop when I could, but I had already resigned away the Marble until last turn where I realized that Bacchus settled the half of the island much closer to himself instead of on the Marble itself. As it stands, I can settle right on the Marble T101. I'm still probably just going to get a lot of failgold out of this, but at least that gets me to Bureaucracy so much sooner. We shall see...
Fillers. Four to five more space fillers within the next 10 turns, and then a couple more after that. One is planting on the marble next turn, one is planting to the North to claim a sheep T103ish, another was whipped this turn to plant in the far northwest for some deer and crabs, and another is queued in Stony Point to grab the PH sheep island. (want to send a worker up there first to chop out the trees first - need'nt be wasteful). After that, I have 2 settlers planned to settle below Carnival, another in the far central north to work a lonely deer, and finally one last filler 3 spaces above Stony Point. All in all, that will be 18 cities settled peacefully by around 1AD, plus whatever more I can get on polar ice strip.
Scooter's return... maybe, now that his PB13 woes are over, Scooter will find his way back here? Or maybe... just maybe.... he's never really left..? Say, who's that over in the shadows...
Caledorn was in the game too, I just saw mostly red in the tracker and logged on... figured he was the last to play (because he often is) and was thus playing his new turn in one swoop. 
I think it's gotta be the biggest city in the world... there's a size 10 in the top five cities, but that's somebody's capital.
![[Image: CQRwAbt.gif]](http://i.imgur.com/CQRwAbt.gif)
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