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T76 (the tracker is down, not sure you didn't play it, could only hope  )
Whipped Lib in Rock
Plantation at Maximum done, switched Maximum to banana, gave pigs to Echo of Moscow for now
Wasn't sure what to do with Workers in Best, moved them towards Rock in anticipation of the border pop
Got a Confu spread in Dinamit
Renamed Kilo to Monte Carlo, seems appropriate for a city on the southern coast And yes, there is such station in Moscow
Maximum should finish LH now, and build a Market to increase the shrine income
I would consider giving cows from Best back to Ultra soon
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I do think we should market/grocer/bank maximum for the shrine income... eventually. Right now we're getting 4 gpt, so a market is worth 1 extra shrine gold per turn, which isn't super compelling to me. We should also dejungle the grass gems near Moai location quickly. Grass gems are awesome!
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We're getting 6 gpt currently. Plus, Maximum is out of production locations, the next citizens will be working cottages and coast. Although I agree we can delay a Market and build a couple of Workers and another Settler first
The Worker who built the banana plantation is definitely going to gems next
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Turn 78: - Founded Radio 7, bringing us to 11 cities total. GES and MNG have 11, RL7 have 10, and poor Commodore has 7.
- Founding added 13 gpt in maintenance. Courthouses will get useful pretty quick.
- This probably happened a few turns ago, but our massive cultural output from maximum has pushed our border with MNG back a tile, which is quite nice.
- Queued up Polytheism, which took exactly 1 turn even at 0% science.
 Must have had a lot of overflow!
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T79
We had A LOT of overflow We can also discover Monotheism in 2 turns, still at 0%. So I did choose Monotheism, we should be able to collect enough money to go for Civil Service immediately after that. GES already adopted Bureau btw
Also, a sad day for our empire, we lost our brave Warrior Till Lindemann. I moved him onto a forested hill, but nevertheless, a barb Warrior won a 3.7% battle
Chose a Monastery in Ultra, mostly for science bonus; a Settler in Maximum
Echo of Moscow and Europa Plus have grown to size 4 and are ready to be whipped
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Also, had a chat with Commodore about the planned action against MNG. His power graph is skyrocketing, and his said the plan is to load the military on galleys next turn, and attack T85. We could create a diversion by moving a couple of empty galleys covered by a Trireme onto his border, and potentially into his land; he has no way to tell these galleys are empty, and if we can pillage his seafood, his whipping potential will suffer
As we discussed, if we go for it, we need some sort of compensation from Commodore. One idea is that he gifts us his cats after his attack, so that we can try our hand at capturing MNG's cities closest to us. In any case, we very much need to get together in chat to discuss things, decide whether we go for it and what we get in return, and work out a plan. It can be difficult with the time difference, so you can do it by yourself if you want. I don't feel strongly either way
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T82
Monotheism in, Civil Service next. At 100%, it will take 3 turns. Unfortunately, we don't have enough money for 3 turns of 100% research, but we should be able to still get it by dropping research to 70-80% on the last turn. Earlier switch to Bureau will recover any lost commerce
Whipped a Granary in Echo of Moscow, Moai Statues next, due in 16 (but should drop after the mine on the gems is done, and we can also whip Workers, putting overflow into Moai)
Whipped a Lighthouse in Europa Plus, didn't choose the next build, should probably go for a Lib
Gave wheat back to Ultra, it has grown to 9, should take over a village from Nashe, which has a non-improved grassland cottage, time to start growing it
Ultra finished a Monastery, we can start spreading religion if we want, or build a Worker or something
Maximum finished a Settler, probably should settle on the northern coast 1S2W of the fish (whatever colour that dot is). If we go for the bluff plan against MNG, it should build a galley next
Consider inserting a Settler before Courthouse in Best for another city on the central landbridge
Saw your sign about a canal city on the landbridge with MNG, not sure we should go for it, it's not a great spot, and a fort would be sufficient for a canal (and will not destroy the jungle, so we will get jungle defensive bonuses in addition to fort bonuses)
Be careful not to leave triremes in MNG's view, it's not the time to show them yet
MNG came asking if we would consider reopening borders with him; sent him a polite refusal. I wouldn't be opposed to it we didn't have an agreement with RL7. He said that GES now also closed borders with him. This makes 3 of us, and the 4th (Commodore) is planning a war against him. Looks like his "I don't want NAPs, I want to keep my options open" approach backfired badly
RL7 adopted Vassalage and OR at the end of the GA, and converted to Confu. Vassalage is an interesting choice, are they planning to attack GES? Are they planning to break a NAP with us? Are they just going to build a lot of promoted units and attack when the NAP expires? Or do they simply want to get out of Barbarism? In any case, the fact that they have Feudalism is of note
Taoism was founded in a distant land
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We should think about Courthouse vs. lib at Europa. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Lib benefits are only used about 50% of the time (when we're at full science). Courthouses are active always. With that in mind, 4 commerce = 1gpt in maintenance. I'm not sure if maintenance will rise faster or commerce. Since commerce needs to rise 4x faster to keep up, I think courthouses might be better. In some cases, the culture from lib can get a border pop, so that has a certain value, but from a pure economic standpoint I think that Courthouses are better.
All this courthouse talk also made me think of EPs. We should probably try to balance out our accumulated points and then distribute evenly. Unless there's somebody you'd prefer to focus on.
RL7 Vassalage adoption could be fiscal, since it gives free units. Nevertheless, they're NAPd with us for a while. If they want to build up and attack GES, awesome!
My apologies about the Trireme placement; I thought we were supposed to flash them to to make him nervous, so I intentionally put it in his view. I thought we'd withdraw and act like he wasn't supposed to see it. Apparently I jumped the gun on that. 
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Hmm, either I'm missing something, or you're missing something. Lib bonus is applied to commerce produced by the city, while Courthouse bonus is applied to city's maintenance. These values come from different sources, so they can't be compared directly
Saying that Lib bonus only works half the time is also wrong, Lib bonus allows us to achieve more with the money we collect when research is at 0%, so it indirectly affects earned gold as well
Anyway. We're 3 turns from Civil Service, time to talk about future plans. Guess we should at least pick up Monarchy and improve our wine. What next? Options:
* Military techs - Feudalism, Machinery, Guilds, Gunpowder
* Lib path - Paper, Philo, Education (we can also reach Gunpowder this way)
* Religious wonders path - Theology, Paper, Divine Right (could be an interesting idea, AP/Uni of Sankore/Spiral Minaret is a good combo, could significantly help our MFG and GNP. Bad news - all these are stone wonders)
Of course, we could go for any mix of these paths
Thoughts?
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Correct, Libraries affect commerce while courthouses reduce maintenance, so they are affecting different mechanics. Still, I think we can compare them. I'll use a couple of examples from our Turn 82 save. Each example covers a 2-turn span. One turn with 100% science and one with 0%. Our breakeven science rate is just under 50% (maybe 48%), so this is nearly exact.
Retro FM: 13 commerce - 6.8 maintenance
Library
-100% turn: 13 * .25 = 3.25 extra beakers.
-0% turn: No science, so no extra beakers.
Courthouse
-6.8 *.5 = 3.4 gold saved per turn.
Over a 2-turn span, the library generates 3.25 extra beakers, where the courthouse generates 6.8 extra gold. Since 1 gold essentially enables 1 more beaker, courthouse seems to win.
Nashe Radio: 37 commerce - 7.20 maintenance
Over 2 turns, Library generates 9.25 extra beakers, while courthouse saves 7.2 gold in maintenance. In this case, library wins.
You can probably see where I got the 4x figure from. If a city has 4 times more commerce than maintenance, then the library becomes more profitable. These numbers get more tricky as our breakeven rate changes. A higher tech rate benefits libs. If we could run 100% all the time, then they'd get their full benefit every turn, and you'd only need 2x commerce to reach equivalency. Also, 1 gold nearly equals 1 beaker right now because we have so few commerce modifiers in our empire. If we had libs and universities in every city, that would paradoxically improve the value of courthouses. 1 gold saved would turn into 1.5 beakers. You've probably already read it, but T-Hawk's article about banks is quite interesting and relevant to this discussion. Courthouses are better than banks in the sense that they do not self-defeat.
Let me know if that made any sense whatsoever. 
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