[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

The "standard" rate of resource conversion is 1f::2h::3c. This is useful as a *rough* tool for unit trades, city micro decisions, measuring uses of a GP and whatnot. There's a huge caveat though: nothing is ever standard.

Thanks for that. I would also add in some additional valuation to our bows being UU + Protective. Maybe for that just multiply out the strength of the unit as a ratio of the hammer cost? I don't want to get too mired in details. If it sounds good, go with it.

Using this rough guideline, we have 75 hammers invested in the chariot, spear, and two bowmen. 75*1.5 = 112.5. How much would you value the UU + protective? Also, how much estimated cost to get the units to Catwalk? He needs to pay unit support to get them there.

All those calculations aside, is selling the units the best move for us? Our economy is terrible and we certainly need the money. I'm just worried about a Slaze-styled backstab. What are you thinking of in terms of NAP to go along with this?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We have trade routes now, but we need more, as not all of our cities have international routes. Either that, or all available routes are 1g each anyway. We should see if we can get Dazed to road the forest at the SE end of his new city. That would give a road connection.

I changed tiles in Rick for one turn to finish the unit build. All happy at EoT after it completed, will work full food this turn on a worker or whatever. I'd like a WB for the new city out of there, then maybe the worker.

As for the new city, despite our maintenance costs killing us, I want to settle the marble location before the stone. The marble appears to be in a fairly centralized location on the map, and my guess is there are maybe 2 and not 4 marbles on the entire map. Let's secure one. Also, this will get a seafood resource first ring, so this will help with slaving. Finally, this location has 4 resources in the BFC. Not bad. I did not unload the worker/archer from the boat, and kept them in our borders this turn to save the 1g. This did not delay getting the boat to the marble location.

Furs are hooked up, this helps. I put 1T cottage into the tundra E of silver. It was either that or just move onto the silver with no movement points left to do anything, but I doubt we'll ever finish that cottage or work that tile as that city is a bit short on food.

Did you decide whether to sell the troops or not? I put them back in our borders to save on unit costs. We should make a decision on this. While it would get us to Currency quicker if Team Kitty has the cash on hand right now to pay for them, if we have to wait for them to get the money, I'd say just keep these units. Our economy is stagnant, but getting better.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. Between a squeeze at work and a sick kid, I am putting the minimum time required into my two RB games at the moment. Reporting is a time investment and unfortunately has taken a hit.

About our trade routes with Dazed, I got an email from Ceil a few days ago that I meant to post already, but this should explain why we don't see routes from Dazed. At least he isn't getting any benefit from us, either:

I'm not the expert, but here's my understanding:

-It doesn't matter where your warrior is, the ONLY this is whether you have a trade route TO the other player. That means a navigable coast route or an overland road. Rivers/Coast require sailing (which you have)

I see you have OB and a trade route with Dazed only. You can have intl trade with Dazed right now.

So why don't you see routes with Dazed? My guess is that you were at war with them recently. War resets the "peaceful neighbor" value of trade routes. This modifier goes from 0 to 150%, and increases for each turn you're at peace. This is actually the whole reason foreign routes are worth more than domestics: 1gpt * 1.5 = 2.5 (round down to 2)

The event log shows you were recently at war with Dazed, and that reset your foreign modifier. You'll have to wait for it to build up again before you see foreign trade routes with them.

Note, Catwalk has the trade symbol next to his score, but you have no trade routes with them. The symbol means at least one side of the relationship has a trade route. He must have explored a navigable coast route to your cities, and may indeed be collecting int'l trade from your cities. You need to explore the last 2 coast tiles near Dirty Dishes to get routes going the other way.

Finally, note that Sian has a trade route symbol. That likely means that he has a navigable route with Catwalk, and OB with catwalk. His "trade goods" travel through Catwalk's territory and follow Catwalk's known coastal trade route to your land. You have no such route to return your "goods" so you collect nothiing.

My advice: explore those last 2 coast tiles ASAP.

In the meantime we've explored the missing tiles and established trade with Korea. We have viable routes with Dazed but given our war incident it will take a number of turns for the war penalty to subside so that those routes are more profitable than domestic routes. In this case it hurts us that the one team on the map with fewer cities than us is the only one we can trade with (given that we will not open borders with Sian). Slowwalk -- build more cities!

I agree about the marble site, I had considered it and was going to rush a second settler down that way after Currency. Instead, I think our next two cities after marble should come ASAP (with Currency) and settle stone and gold. Also, we need to get a unit exploring the new landmass ASAP so we can dotmap and settle it as well. I know our economy sucks right now but we're spamming cottages everywhere. Between the additional trade route, new foreign trade routes, and about 10 turns of cottage growth upcoming, we should be able to go Horatio Alger and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get back into this game.

As for selling the units, I thought I had asked you to handle that? If we're spamming cities we can use the garrison. And if we wait until after we tech Currency to get a sale then that's not as useful for us. The sale only matters if it can happen NOW. How much cash do we need to save to tech Currency? That's the amount I want this sale to cover, or at least work toward.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T 64 played.

Chopping forest SW of Newt. Found that city T67-68 with Settler from Newt. I wanted to delay that site a turn or two to harvest those hammers. Really they're inconsequential, but I'd rather have them than not. Delaying that city a turn or two will save a couple gold. Once that chop is complete, have a galley in position to move a worker to the marble city and get that quarry done. This will be a cottage incubator city for Newt down the road, and will have immediate access to seafood.

Newt production changed 1T to aqueduct to grow. This can grow again in 2T and probably should. Next turn silver is hooked up so cap raises again, and Newt has cottages to grow on. We can finish settlers from there then.

Next turn triple whip Mitt. Overflow into a second workboat.

I'm thinking of using our two workers at Huntsman to build a fort/canal 2E of Mitt when they finish with silver. This will be useful for our navy, as well as letting us move a galley to the northern sea for transport to the gold island.

Rick will change back to cottages after the WB completes. I wanted that at Marble site ASAP. Perhaps getting a second WB to the cottage incubator SW of Newt is better than the stone settler so it can grow immediately + granary chop for fast growth. So, Rick = WB, WB, Settler.

I've moved Ron Paul's garrison to cover workers cottaging FP. Dazed has 2 workers lurking. I'd hate to have to kick his ass for doing something dumb down there. We're 6/6 on happy there with growth next turn, but silver will fix that.

We're #2 in power to Sian now. The window to smack him for his REX/wonder-whoring is tightening. We can throw a cheap wrench at him now or a heavier one later, but we should have our allies helping. He is in a very nice position at the moment.

I think at this point just forget the exercise in selling military to catwalk.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Also, I'm not sure if you noticed, but someone founded Christianity. My guess is Sian founded Judiasm and bulbed Theology. He's in Slavery/OR now, and also switched to Buddhism. Gotta love Spiritual. That would give him three religions + early access to AP. He's going monk on us. We need to get the others to help us punish him while we still can.

[Commodore]

Also, I'm not sure if you noticed, but someone founded Christianity. My guess is Sian founded Judiasm and bulbed Theology. He's in Slavery/OR now, and also switched to Buddhism. Gotta love Spiritual. That would give him three religions + early access to AP. He's going monk on us. We need to get the others to help us punish him while we still can.

Wait, Sian is Spi?

[spacetyrantxenu]

No, he's IND/ORG Roosevelt. Number One, get back to work!

I haven't looked lately but I'm sure Sian's demographics will show where he spent a few turns in anarchy while switching civics and establishing a state religion.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Also, I'm not sure if you noticed, but someone founded Christianity. My guess is Sian founded Judiasm and bulbed Theology. He's in Slavery/OR now, and also switched to Buddhism. Gotta love Spiritual. That would give him three religions + early access to AP. He's going monk on us. We need to get the others to help us punish him while we still can.

I may have forgotten to mention this to you, but Sian bulbed Theology with his Great Prophet a a few turns ago. Between being IND and having an advantage in building the AP, UoS, and SM, and having already built the GLH and the economic benefits that conveys, Sian is in good position to ramp up for a huge tech lead. Dazed mentioned to me earlier:

Dazedroyalty: i will say your opinion of sian is growing on me
just watching his expansion rate
i'd be worried about catwalk too
but they have low city count

That pretty much sums up the world economy. Wonders powering Sian's city spam (I think he's at 7 cities now), Pyramid representation powering Slowwalk's huge cities, all four of them. If Catwalk had more cities he'd be competing with Sian in a real sense, not just a temporary GNP sense. Sian has much higher expenses with all those cities, but I think that each new city should be a net economic gain almost as soon as it is built, with so many trade routes. He hasn't even built any zigs yet to reduce his maintenance costs. It must mean they aren't high enough to justify it yet. In all, Dazed and our team are getting left behind in GNP number and probably in real research output in the short term while we keep up in city count. I hope that our recent spate of builds doesn't sink us before Currency finishes. I haven't seen the game, though, so I don't know. Maybe the marble city's ICTRs will make the city an immediate benefit in spite of the maintenance cost.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I may have forgotten to mention this to you, but Sian bulbed Theology with his Great Prophet a a few turns ago. Between being IND and having an advantage in building the AP, UoS, and SM, and having already built the GLH and the economic benefits that conveys, Sian is in good position to ramp up for a huge tech lead. Dazed mentioned to me earlier:



That pretty much sums up the world economy. Wonders powering Sian's city spam (I think he's at 7 cities now), Pyramid representation powering Slowwalk's huge cities, all four of them. If Catwalk had more cities he'd be competing with Sian in a real sense, not just a temporary GNP sense. Sian has much higher expenses with all those cities, but I think that each new city should be a net economic gain almost as soon as it is built, with so many trade routes. He hasn't even built any zigs yet to reduce his maintenance costs. It must mean they aren't high enough to justify it yet. In all, Dazed and our team are getting left behind in GNP number and probably in real research output in the short term while we keep up in city count. I hope that our recent spate of builds doesn't sink us before Currency finishes. I haven't seen the game, though, so I don't know. Maybe the marble city's ICTRs will make the city an immediate benefit in spite of the maintenance cost.

All we can hope to do is grab more land and stay afloat until our cottages mature. The wonder-whoring, if left unpunished, is a killer strategy. We don't border Sian at all, though, so this is most difficult for us.

Re: Team Kitty -- Their lower number of cities is, I think, temporary. I expect them to explode soon, after they get past some bottleneck, possibly Currency. With their specialist economy, they'll have plenty of food to kick out the settlers. Once they can build wealth/merchants they'll probably start throwing out cities left and right. They're going to bulb like crazy. As much as I like these guys, we're going to have to get rough with them too at some point. Too bad our UU sucks by the time the board is full of cities.

Sian remains the problem and I think we'll need to work closely with Dazed to take them down a peg. Let's see what we can work out with them.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T67 - Photo Time, with annotations.

Sian says he's exploring this island, which should be Dazed's gold island. We'll also need to settle ours soon, settler building in Mitt for that purpose.



Rick is back!



The rest of these show a bit of a comeback. Since GNP is improving, we're looking at throwing down 4 more cities soon. South of our stone island, on the stone island, on our gold island, and what has been labeled as C8 for a while (sorry, not photo available, forgot to take one). C8 will require a garrison since things are busy in the middle of the map.













We'll have research visibility on Sian soon. Evidently he and Slowwalk are in an EP race, so as long as they spend on each other I'll be able to keep Catwalk apprised of Sian's tech path, when appropriate.

Edit: Not shown, our first town matured this turn, a FP in Newt's BFC.