[Spoiler]Capria Crusadin' Crew - Bannor

[Mist]

OO and Bone Palace happened in a Distant Land. So either Mack or Amelia. Probably Mack. Fuuun.

Mr. Yellow is teching Stirrups now and is trying to assemble anti-bloodsucker coalition, I'm all for it, don't think they'll get anywhere though. There are ahem, logistical problems.

I'll get around map updating next turn.

[NobleHelium]

We're swapping to Aristocracy/Consumption when the GP finishes, yes?

And I advise sending the worker that finished the marble quarry back west to build another farm for DoF and more cottages in the west or whatever.

Please stop sending the majority of the empire's workforce running around the empire in large groups, you are wasting a lot of worker turns this way. You should have workers slowly move around in a localized area and gradually shift over as needed. New cities should have 1-2 workers nearby (shifted over from older cities) when they're founded, rather than being founded with no workers and then being flooded by several workers many turns later, completely vacating the old cities which will then need workers sent back or new ones built.

Basically the crux of the matter is that we have all workers improving a couple cities at once, rather than small sets of workers improving all the cities at once. The capital has four completed cottages that we've never worked, for example, and they were all built back to back with 3 workers, while we could have sent 2 of those workers to the more outlying areas where they would have been immediately available to set up the two new cities immediately as they were founded. Instead, the cottages were built consecutively when we could not work them, and the new cities did not have any improvements to work because no workers were nearby.

I know you really don't like this part of the game, but these game fundamentals severely impact how well you do. You are very strong in the macro-level strategic thinking, but often your plans can't be implemented because the civilization falls behind due to poor micro-level management. I don't mean to offend, but I feel the worker and tile management in the last fifty turns or so has been quite poor.

[Mist]

We're swapping to Aristocracy/Consumption when the GP finishes, yes?

Yes, Aristocracy will drop costs and bump GNP, Consumption will keep the gold generation high.

And I advise sending the worker that finished the marble quarry back west to build another farm for DoF and more cottages in the west or whatever.

That was the plan all along, I only sent them to the marble to have them do something while kill team wandered around.

<...> on workers <...>

The thing is, we couldn't. We did not have enough and what was there was doing whatever possible while dodging kill teams and random goblins. There were very few occasions when a worker was moving from point A to B without improving ( or at least roading ) stuff along the way.

<...>on my micro skills<...>

Won't really argue here, I never really spent any significant amounts of time on micro plans. And yes, they do bore the crap out of me and I often go with what looks like it might work instead of what's optimal.

Ultimately we're behind because we went high instead of wide in the initial 50 turns and no amount of excellent micro would change that. Looks like we really should have built more early workers / settlers instead pushing for early academy and plantations. Sometimes this game can be terribly frustrating when there's only one right path to play early on regardless of map and options.

And I forgot, Form of the Titan also fallen in a distant land.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, those barbs were definitely really annoying. On the plus side, we've got a 20 experience warrior who almost qualifies for Form of--oh wait.

I wonder if it was Amelia who got it?

And is Yellow going to attack somebody or what? Right now we've paid 200g for a NAP. He doesn't even have sight on mackoti's borders for crying out loud, attacking vampires my arse. And that flood plains city is far more west than I expected.

[Mist]

Uhm, I don't think so, I'm afraid the Form has fangs

Anyway, we gave this Bambur guy a chisel and a stone block and guess what, it earns us money 18gpt at the moment, it's almost worth all these turns of Pacifism slog. Almost

Also did the Aristocracy/Consumption switch.

Before



After



That's nearly 30% boost right there and we're back to being just below the scary mister vampire. And we're turning a profit!

Priesthood in 4. I think I'll squeeze Writing before Fanaticism, library in capital alone should make it pay off pretty soon.

DR is 4 turns away from completing a settler, I'll grab three warriors and 2 workers from DoF and send that settling party west.

• DoF finished RoK temple at EoT, will build warriors again.
  
• Capital is still on Smokehouse -> Brewery plan.
  
• DR needs health, so granary after settler, then priests for temples in cities that don't have them yet.
  
• CoJ will start on a settler once the market is done.
  
• CoB will alternate a worker / building for forseeable future.
  

[NobleHelium]

Priests should only be used for temples in low-production cities or new cities. CoJ can build its own temple since we need to grow it more anyway, and building the temple is fewer actual hammers because we have a -10% military production penalty and 100% bonus on temples. Not sure about CoB, I know you're going to build a settler at it at size 4-5 when it won't have any production, but if it grows onto mines it'll have a lot of production too. We'd need workers to build the mines of course.

We'll want to sac a priest for the new city, because it doesn't have any farmable land until Construction so it's going to be pretty bad relatively speaking. Plus it would spread RoK as well, which we obviously want. The sugar is the nice part about the city, plus we can see what's further west...

One standing priest is definitely good either way, to go around buffing all our warriors. 10% strength can't hurt.

Writing is definitely good if we have time to build libraries. Only reason why I haven't said we should get it yet, because we haven't have time to build the things.

I wouldn't say ~190 GNP vs ~290 is "just below" the vampires however. And apparently the vampires founded OO? Okay... 18 gpt from the shrine is before multipliers, if lurkers are interested.

[Mist]

Sent this

[COLOR="Cyan"]Hi,

Now that I have certain ( Philosopher's ) Stone Tablets and
geopolitics in your part of the world is somewhat crystallized ( as in
Mack vs. all of you ) I have a business proposal for you.

I want to buy settlers.
I'm offering 150g per city ( actually, make it 160 to cover for unit
maintenance during travel ).
I'm willing to pay up front.
I'll get Hippus on board to provide escort to desired spots ( I
understand you do have a working relationship ).

That's more than 2:1 gold-hammer conversion ratio for you in hard cash
right now. You get funds to keep you from becoming vampire feed, I get
more cities. It's a win-win deal for both of us.

As a separate point - would you like some RoK temples free of charge? :]

Mist[/COLOR]

to Sareln. Let's see if he bites

[NobleHelium]

Oh yeah, I forgot Thessa is EXP. That's a pretty good deal for both of us then, I like it.

Not so sure we want to pay for temples...80h (base) for 1 gpt (base) is a pretty long payoff even if we consider it 1:1 (which based upon the settler deal we definitely value hammers more), considering you wanted to win Culture by ~T200. And they get 2 gpt per temple, so it's a ridiculously good deal for him. I would have asked if he wants to subsidize some temples.

Oh and we have two earth mana now. Moar mines for moar resource pops pweeze...

[Mist]

Not so sure we want to pay for temples...80h (base) for 1 gpt (base) is a pretty long payoff even if we consider it 1:1 (which based upon the settler deal we definitely value hammers more), considering you wanted to win Culture by ~T200. And they get 2 gpt per temple, so it's a ridiculously good deal for him. I would have asked if he wants to subsidize some temples.

Note that I'm not really committing to any numbers or time-scale. If he says yes I can send one at some point in the future which will get me open borders and trade routes. In all I'm thinking more long term here, as in after Bazaar ( +100% gold ), Money Changer ( +25% ) and Tax Office ( +25% ) which makes each new RoK city earn 2,7gpt from shrine with Consumption, 2,9 with Mercantilism and 3,4 if we switch back to God King for few turns. In addition to trade routes.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, I certainly wouldn't object to giving him one temple, he might very well decide to spread it a bit himself afterwards for the gold. I would expect him to agree if you just straight up asked for OB though, I don't think this subterfuge is necessary.

It's mostly that I think the minimum definition of "some" is two.

If we give him a temple I would probably ask him after a while if he wants to subsidize more - say he spreads RoK to another city and we'll give him another temple in a third. That's still more beneficial to him than us most likely (40h for 2g plus option to build a temple vs 80h for 2g - unless we actually get those multipliers up which will be a while), but a much better deal for us than just free temples.