Divine Right gets you the double pre-req bonus on Nationalism, right? pretty baller, probably the first time that's ever happened in a pitboss game.
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Genghis Machinates
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Yeah, saves a nice 400b.
I did some GP scrying and I can get the GS during this golden age, then the GM doesn't come out until like T168, but by then my NE will have almost caught up and I can get the 500GP about T173. That's about when Rifling could come in as well ... a long time away. Bulbing Education with that first GS and getting Unis +Oxford built with OR seems a decent idea. I'm hesitant because I only really have the 1 good research city in my capital. But I'm afraid I will run out of things to build if Rifling is that far away. If that's the case then the Unis seem a better option than wealth building and will make further wealth building more efficient. It seems like it shouldn't slow down Rifling at least and would increase my beaker power to get Merc and Rep inside of that golden age. Speaking of which, merchants will be able to bulb constitution if I can generate one during the GA. I'm still unsure of Economics if I go that route. Even with a free GM offsetting the cost, it doesn't do anything for me without a revolt turn. I'm not sure about spending the golden age there, I don't want to be in a hurry to throw the 3p one just to get into Representation.
Our capital begins to look impressive:
 and we stumbled on mack's monster:  Certainly explains his Willem of the Vikings pick.  A plan worked!  Looks like this is what OH was fighting for:  That's definitely some prized land. I think I have 7 food resources with >5 food, 3 of which were closer to pindicator. Here we have 4 in one city! The ToA is still a mystery to me, but OH's moves make a lot more sense. In other news mack does not appear to be beelining Liberalism. I'm entertaining notions of trying to deny it from him. I need to get Feud and Paper next anyway and at that stage I'll evaluate things. I'll have a GS to bulb Edu and surely it would be in OH's interest to give a loan to cover my expenses. Then turn on research building to get Philo, finish Paper -> Lib? Of course I'd have to take something like PP or Nationalism, so the value is almost all in denial to mack. I'm considering closing borders with OH soon now that I've explored his land, which might make co-operation more difficult.
May 15th, 2016, 16:54
(This post was last modified: May 15th, 2016, 16:55 by The Black Sword.)
Still no Taj Mahal for Mack. I definitely could have built it by now but he's probably slowed down because he knows he has no competition. I wonder if he wants to fit better with some revolt timings. Still no Liberalism move from him and it sure looks like he's planning on invading 2metra soon. He does have a lot of gold saved up though.
Also, pindicator looks a lot more open than I was expecting, he's still at war with 2metra and his main forces are down there, his garrison by my border are just axe/archer pairs. Stick the course with Divine Right, divert to Lib or put together an earlier strike against Pin?
I'm not going to try for Lib. My GNP dropped lower than I expected after the GA (only 200bpt) so I don't think it's realistic. It slows me down from my actual good goals and the potential pay-off is really far in the future(someday Enviro will probably be the best civic in that column). I don't expect to tech Communism given the lack of workshoppable land and the relative strength of Merc/Rep, so it's a dead end tech.
Mack has researched up to Optics, so it may be he tries to Lib Astro instead of Constitution. I'm not sure that would be the best call, but it's probably the most fun; Berserkers and Galleons an era ahead of opposition. I doubt they'd be aimed at me so I don't need to worry about them much. At the moment I'm still on Divine Right but I'm still considering the idea of an earlier attack on Pindicator. Rifles are a long time away right now and he's still about 1500b from longbows. On the topic of Divine Right, I decided to save my forests for the Spiral Minaret and slow-build the University of Sankore. I'll have more religious buildings complete when I start Minaret, so that seems the better one to speed up. The risk is that someone decides to compete for UoS. I'll need to keep an eye if Christianity spreads to anyone else and they suddenly switch to Paper research. You may have seen me write in previous threads that I don't think the AP is that great value if you're not Spiritual. Is that inconsistent with my play here? I don't even have a previously spread religion or Ind either. If you have the AP+Sankore then a Temple+Monastery is 140h and gets you about 4h, 5b. That's a good pay rate but you need to build a lot of them really quickly to pay back the wonders too. I don't count OR because I need a missionary too, I don't count SM because Divine Right is such a big extra cost there and I don't count Forge/Lib because the majority of my cities don't have them yet. So I still don't think the religious route is great, but I think it was the best economic option left for this map. The map gives a lot more hammers than beakers, so we have more hammers to invest with and we have a long time until Scientific Method obsoletes monasteries. Additionally, when I looked at the other things to do with my hammers they were't great without a fair bit more growth; Forges that would make 2hpt or similar Libraries. After the religious buildings these options will be a lot better thanks to OR, the extra output and being closer to Merc(need to open scientist slots). The option that might have been better was to put those hammers into military and go kill Pindicator, I'm still not sure I made the right choice. My reasoning was that Pindicator has gone for a really mine-heavy, commerce light set-up(even more than the others), so it seems the long game should be favoured against that. Plus he still has a very deep empire with relatively poor front cities, I can't really strike a killer blow. Ideally any attack would make it to his capital before running out of momentum.
Testing out the first iceball:
 It broke even. I was expecting around that ball park but I wasn't sure. Seems I can start building these whenever I can fit them in.  Nice collection of mills. 
Think Comm's Knights might be heading down here:
 If so, maybe I should prepare something myself. This might help: 
Got graphs on both Mack and Harry:
    Mack surely seems to have the upper hand here. OH does have a bit more potential I think but then that's what Mack's Zerkers are for. Speaking of which:  Interesting ... I considered closing border with both of them but decided it wasn't worth it. Once Mack declares war on someone though he'll be struggling for trade routes and I can re-evaluate. Everyone is trading with OH so it won't have much of an effect there. Mack finished the Taj and is presumably picking up Lib now. OH built the Parthenon. I think that will actually be very good here, would have liked to build it myself but there's only so many wonders you can do at a time:    Yeah, SM finished before UoS. Thinking right now to grab Guilds for Knights and then just overwhelm Pindi with production. I'm making twice his hammers right now, and we'll still have the minor tech advantage. Then head up to Nationalism and Constitution. I'll probably just skip Philosophy and maybe never reach it in the same way people never research DR. I don't think I can switch away from Serfdom anymore for a Caste/Pac golden age period, so Pacifism doesn't seem a great loss. We'll see. Golden age is about 15t away IIRC and my new thinking is that we're flush with hammers but beaker poor and to leave Replaceable Parts until afterwards. I'm up to over 50 windmills btw. Pretty surprised no-one else has gone for this strategy. OH is also in Serfdom but he seems to have an even split of mines. Mack of course prioritised Nationalism first and you can't say it hasn't worked for him. I might need to get some caravel's too when I look at Pin's army:  |