Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[sunrise089]

@Speaker - I tried to IM you a few times today, but I guess you're away. With 3 hours to go, and very late at night, I went ahead and partially played for you -I accepted my gold, toggled on a tech (Philo since Sullla had selected that for his civ), and settled your new city ("AP Trist!" until you change it) on the sign.

[Speaker]

Thanks Sunrise. Sorry about that. We were in a rush yesterday morning to leave and I forgot to check it, and was busy with Thanksgiving family crap all day.

[sunrise089]

Thanks Sunrise. Sorry about that. We were in a rush yesterday morning to leave and I forgot to check it, and was busy with Thanksgiving family crap all day.

No problem. I think team 3 or 4 played faster than they normally do since the turn roll caught me by surprise as well. You lost a few worker turns as there were some guys I didn't want to move away from where you may have wanted them, especially since I wasn't sure you wouldn't be playing after all, just really late. But overall I think it's fine, assuming Philo is the direction we want to go instead of Feud.

One note on another topic: my scout in that desert area died to a Praet 2t ago. I thought I moved him that turn and that he didn't land by anything, which suggests road+kill. So we need to be really careful if that's right.

[Speaker]

You could have just roaded with the two workers, instead of doing nothing.

[Sullla]

OK, so a short update:



The biggest task at hand for our civs right now is finishing the road between Speaker and myself. I added the city of Wish (Soraka ultimate!) a couple of turns ago, and there's a gang of three Fast Workers moving to finish the connection. Should be done in 2 more turns. My new city also grabbed corn + crabs, which means that my total civ is sitting at +9 health and +0 happiness. Definitely need to trade for some happiness resources from Speaker and sunrise!

In response to Thoth's question, Hereditary Rule does not make happiness issues irrelevant. You still have to build a unit for each population point, and while that might work in one or two cities, you can't exactly spare the production to stuff a bunch of warriors into every last city. Right now, I have 8 military police units keeping my capital happy, and that's just not sustainable. To keep all of the cities happy, I'd have to be building warriors nonstop in every city, which cost way too much production and maintenance in gold. Trust me, trying to run an entire civilization without any happiness resources is not something you want to do.

Elsewhere, the capital will be hitting size 15 next turn as soon as the work boat improves the crabs. I want Requiem to reach size 16, so it can work its wheat, iron, 11 cottages, and 3 hill tiles - all of its best stuff. Almost there now. Tibbers is going to continue growing into unhappiness and then double or triple whip a forge (already have Organized Religion bonus there, so stacking it with forge for +50% production will be really strong). Missionary is going to Crescendo for the same reason. Monsoon has tons of food and no production, so it's a "whip every 6 turns" factory right now. And Wish is just starting out. Speaker's city of Lanewick (in extreme top right corner of picture) is sending me that settler, which I'll plant on the western lake by pigs and iron. In return, I'm sending Speaker two Fast Workers to start clearing out his jungle. I would like to expand quickly out to 7-8 cities once my capital reaches its desired size, and that shouldn't be that difficult.

We finally, finally were able to see the Demographics with Team 3 this turn:



This is the Food graph. Team 3 is clearly winning in this regard; WarriorKnight is sitting in first place by a fair margin, followed by Shoot the Moon, and then Speaker and myself. Oledavy is also above sunrise. This is a measure of their superior expansion: they have more cities than we do, and they also landed Hanging Gardens for a very large infusion of population throughout their civ. They also have a similar advantage in Production as well, which makes sense for having the population lead.

So we're screwed, right? Well, there's another side to the story - let's look at the GNP graph:



Here the graphs are completely reversed. Speaker and I share the top of the chart with Shoot the Moon, with the other three players all far below. Even sunrise's 0% science has a slight edge in GNP over WarriorKnight's Rome. Meanwhile... I dunno what's going on with oledavy, who has fallen off the chart and currently sits at a GNP of 7. (I have 213 and Speaker has 195.) That reflects a civ that's sitting on 0% science, while also making only a tiny amount of gold per turn. What happened there? Looks like a classic case of overexpansion, a team that rushed to plant as many cities as possible to get the Hanging Gardens benefit and ended up with huge maintenance costs in the process.

In other words, as I've been saying in this thread, we have a classic battle between Food/Production emphasis and Research emphasis taking place in this game. Now in Civ4, the team with the best research usually ends up winning the game (see: Krill in the Always War PBEM game) so we feel like we're in pretty good shape. We appear to be researching somewhere between 50% faster and 100% faster than Team 3 at present, and that will hopefully prove to be decisive in the long run. Note that sunrise also just produced our second Great Scientist this turn, which will be moving into my capital for an Academy in just 5 more turns - good timing building that connecting road and researching Engineering. Academy is worth 45 beakers/turn in my capital, so once we have that going... well...

Why Philosophy tech? Basically:

1) it's on the road to Liberalism
2) we can manipulate the research to have the religion pop up in Speaker's territory for another faith to spread around/benefit from Organized Religion
3) sunrise can probably use Pacifism for more Great Person generation
4) we believe that most other teams are probably researching Feudalism, so we'll wait for them to discover it and lower the research cost before grabbing it ourselves

We are not in any real danger either, so there's no pressing need for more military tech. We have Engineering for road movement, we have sentries out in every direction, we have maces and pikes, and no one is particularly scary in Power. Should be plenty safe to grab more non-military stuff.

As far as Teams 2 and 4, they are too far behind right now to pose a serious threat. That may change with time, but not at the moment.

[Speaker]

Here is a (huge) overview shot of my land:

I've put a little headshot of the League of Legends character that each of my cities is named after, as well as a preview of how my next two cities will be named.

Blue Dot will be founded next turn, and Pink Dot sometime in the near future, when I have a couple fast workers to clear the jungle/forest, and a few maces and pikes to defend it, since it is a very forward plant. I put a red box around the Great Artist that will accompany the settler.

I also designated how each city will be specialized. My capital and second city will each be settler pumps for the near future. I will provide several settlers to Sullla, and a couple to Sunrise, in addition to filling in my own land. I will need a couple more Fast Workers from Sullla (he will give me two in a few turns) before I venture into the jungle to my northwest. Since we are trying hard to maintain 100% science for both Sullla and myself, it is important that we not plant cities until we are ready to develop them, otherwise they will be too big a drain on our economy.

Ravage will be a worker pump, now that I have enough worker labor to grow it. I have slaved it a couple times from 4 to 2, since I didn't have enough developed tiles in the area to keep it growing.

AP Galio and Parrrrrrrrrrley will produce most of my units (with my capital also chipping in from time to time). I will likely build them via 2-pop slave for the foreseeable future. I will have copper hooked up next turn, and iron in the near future.

Sullla is so jelly of my high score at the moment.

[ssmagus]

Speaker, You Fail. That's Orianna, not Evelynn!

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Speaker, You Fail. That's Orianna, not Evelynn!

After review, the robot on the field stands. ssmagus is charged with a timeout, and has two remaining.

[Speaker]

It was always Orianna. Eve can die in a pixelated fire, for all I care.

[Tyrmith]

Eve can die in a pixelated fire, for all I care.

Awesome quote.

Thought I'm fairly sure that Riot likes her even less.