[Spoiler] Team slowwalk of the Reservoir Cats (Suleiman/Korea, slowcheetah + Catwalk)

[Ceiliazul]

We need to put some pictures in this thread, or lurkers will get bored. Our demos look absolutely horrible

QFT! :neenernee

What's the naming theme again? Reasons your wife says "no"?

[Catwalk]

10 points for Ceil!

[Catwalk]

t41 EOT update

Graphs

Not much cause for optimism here. Should we be concerned? We have bagged Oracle and will get Pyramids for sure, so long-term we should be fine. But I thought our start was pretty strong, I didn't expect to be this far behind on key numbers.

Cities

Lots of food here, with the potential for lots more if we farm the grassland. What should our long-term plan be?

This location still makes me sad I'm getting nasty mental images of Fur Fighters in PBEM25g, this one is placed even worse (as I already sulked about earlier). Still, it should be able to manage fine. It can borrow the corn quite often from Headache (as it has lots of food with the two FP), and it has several grassland hills for nice production. Also many forests that can be chopped down.

This is a bit of a runt, settled only for the copper. I think we might end up regretting this, the other copper settlement might be better for short-term growth.

Surroundings

[Catwalk]

slowcheetah, do you have time to put beaker costs on your tech paths? Allows for easier comparison. Also, just remembered that settled GPs get the Representation bonus. Makes them quite a bit better.

[slowcheetah]

slowcheetah, do you have time to put beaker costs on your tech paths? Allows for easier comparison. Also, just remembered that settled GPs get the Representation bonus. Makes them quite a bit better.

Sorry Catwalk, I'll have to see if I can get to that tommorow; rather busy today.

From reading through the games here, a successful specialist economy seems to entail a very fast techpace through the midgame, providing a tech advantage around from around knights to rifles. If the game goes on longer, a mature cottage economy is stronger unless we grab more lands using our midgame technology advantage. Bulbs pay off quicker then specialists and thus 'accelerate' the midgame technology more, allowing you a greater window of opportunity to attack. Consequently, even representation powered super specialists probably aren't as good.

[Ceiliazul]

even representation powered super specialists probably aren't as good {as bulbs}.

I agree with this in general, bulbs get you there faster. However, super early GPs are a conundrum. An early G.Sci when you're just teching Math would normally bulb Alphabet... thats a cheap tech that wastes a bulb but also don't want to spend time on yet. You could save him for 15 turns until he can bulb something better, or settle/academy in a city now.

In 25g, I settled my 1st G.Sci and was roundly rebuked. I would do it again though! no other choice would have allowed my tech path to get Calendar early enough for MoM. (with sympathy to Catwalk) The power of bulbs not only fades as the game goes on, and they are also less valuable very early in the game.

Caveat, I also settled my first G.Eng, and this was a big mistake. I could have rushed G.Lib in in my National Epic city for an additional GP or 2. It's all situational.

[Catwalk]

I agree with both of you a bit. Or rather, I agree with Ceil that it's situational. We only have so many good bulbs to pursue. Most likely fewer than the number of GPs we're able to produce. Assuming enough food (I think we can make that assumption) and enough specialist slots (library + forge will be plenty, we can't easily afford more than 3 specialists) is reasonable to do on this map, I think. The specialists are almost good enough from their output alone, either 2 hammers + 3 beakers or 6 beakers. If we cautiously estimate GPP to be worth half a commerce each (difficult to make a proper calculation), specialists are worth around 9 commerce each. So we will likely want to run a whole bunch, giving us more GPs than we'll be able to bulb efficiently.

Our alternatives (for the surplus GPs) are:
1) Settling
2) Golden age
3) Shrine
4) Academy
5) Merchant mission
6) Rushing

- Settling is pretty good. 9 beakers and 1 hammer with representation looks appealing to me, especially if we combine it with an academy.
- Rushing is greatly appealing, to the point that I'll want to use every engineer for that unless we need one for a golden age. Delaying it as needed if necessary. It's not that cost efficient and we'll want to slow build whenever we feel certain of grabbing a wonder, but I don't think we'll be able to feel certain very often.
- Academy can be good, depending on output. We'll be wanting 20 base beakers or so in order for it to be exceed the value of a settled GS. The culture value might also be good, seeing as we have nothing going for us culture-wise.
- Merchant missions are great, the payoff easily exceeds bulbing and it is more flexible. Call me crazy, but I like the idea of running 5 specialists (engineer + merchants + scientists) in a city with more than 10 food surplus. For comparison, our capital has 2 (centre) + 4 (corn) + 4 (FP) = 10 from our good food tiles alone. We'd have a production level of 7 with a forge at size 4, all extra pop being able to work grassland farms for continued growth. Of course, we'll want to grow our cities first with the generous representation happiness.
- Shrines seem unimpressive to me, not that we have a holy city yet anyway. If we value the extra spread and we have a great prophet we don't like, I guess it's an option.
- Golden ages are better later on. How soon will we want to start launching them? Wait for MoM around tt70 or thereabouts? I'm concerned that others will try to snag MoM, so I will still want to make it a fairly early priority even if we won't be needing it that soon.

[slowcheetah]

I agree that with your points that superspecs are probably better in the super early game. However, I thought the plan was to get a GE next which can be used to rush the MoM. By the time we produce our third and future great people we should be in the period where bulbing pays off.

I also have some suggestions for builds, firstly leave the granary in Jaw Hurting, we don't need it yet. What we do need is a workboat for city 4 and some more workers. I'd suggest going workboat-worker.

2nd city and capital should grow while producing some military (or maybe forge in cap), we then need a couple more workers and a settler for city 5 from them.

Worker Tasks

• Hook Copper-Not too urgent allows us to keep building cheap MP
  
• Mine and Farms in Jaw Hurting- Probably our least valuable city
  
• Chop Plains hill mine in 4th City
  
• Hook cows, place some cottages in capital for representation
  
• Mine grass hill in 2nd city- Probably do that next, put chop into settler
  

We should also probably stop one pop whipping things. If we want to whip frequently then two pop. whipping effectively gets double the production for the same happy cost.

[Catwalk]

One pop whipping has been working out okay as we have a comfortable distance to our happy cap (fur just got hooked up). All cities are down to size 2 right now though, they will regrow fast. Are you okay with a forge being started in the capital after the settler that just finished? We don't have to complete it yet, can switch to settler once pop has regrown.

[slowcheetah]

We are building another settler in the capital? Surely we have too small of a workforce for that?