[SPOILERS] Louis of Aztecs - One of those industrious

[plako]

Krill commented at the time that your Nat Epic city should've been placed 2W.

Yeah That would be good spot in case I would have thought about National Epic while settling it. As you might have seen I'm not that big on long term planning. Current spot is definately ok Epic spot. I just should have farmed the area. Now it is not very functional assuming I want to e.g work those riverside plains towns.

Plus the city on the rice was unnecessary IIRC. Though obviously turning the Arabian capital into the NE city would have been another option...

Rice city felt short term ok building up cottages. Now it has degenerated to Draft center that mainly works coast and needs the fish from the National Epic city to grow to 7 (and later to 8). It has been useful and not totally useless even now so it wasn't a big mistake I think.

When considering my options for National Epic I didn't yet have conquered Arab capital and didn't know I would be getting it so easily. In retrospect it would have been very strong in this respect.

[Krill]

Yeah, I don't think it's fair to call the city location choices a mistake, they are both different and viable strategies. I usually suck at choosing an NE city which is one of the reasons I don't build it until later on in a game (and why I use most of my GP for GAs, cos I don't get them until late game). Different preferences I suppose.

[plako]

If you've taken a closer look to the rare screenshots I've posted you can see that I'm running a Hybrid economy trying to take benefits from numerous sources. On normal BtS I would have just cottaged pretty much everything having just few production oriented cities and running slavery. Here I initially started normally i.e. planting cottages, but lately my focus has been on workshops. If we look at other players, I think Commodore is running the closest the classic cottage economy and Serdoa has gone for full hammer economy. Based on this Krill has made quite good job at making the hammer economy more viable while keeping the cottage spamming still a reasonable option. Serdoa has Represenstation to drive his research so I'm not totally sure pure hammer economy would have worked without it.

One important thing of my economy is the usage of Espionage to steal techs. I'm not gonna go all in for Espionage since they should soon start making the mission costs more expensive via closing borders and running counter espionage missions i.e. I'll still focus on keeping competitive when self researching things. However I'm surprised that no other team has yet activated in this respect. They haven't given it enough thought I presume, since stealing is way more efficient usage of my commerce than direct researech. Here are some rough calculations about it. At 100% research slider I'm generating ~1500 beakers (without specialist beakers) and 100% espionage about ~1350 EPs. e.g. Astro costs ~4800 beakers and it cost ~2500 EPs. Astronomy is special case of not having a arrow bonus, but I think it had ~5% known civ bonus at the time. So compare these:
* Direct research = 4800/(1500*1.05) = 3.04 turns of commerce needed
* Steal = 2500 / 1350 = 1.85

So essentially I did win 1.25*1500 = 1875 beakers when stealing it. (Well I lost spy so make it ~1800 beakers in case 1 hammer ~ 2 beakers)

Now lets consider next Gunpowder that I'm currently reasearching. Arrow bonuses are one of the best i.e. 40% and there are few nations knowing it so let's say 50% science bonus and lets do the similar calculation:
* Direct research = 2800/(1500*1.5) = 1.24
* Steal costs = 1450 / 1350 = 1.07

So even with pretty much optimal case of direct research I would still be better of stealing. Especially when EP points have a nice side benefits making further missions cheaper and giving important visibility benefits. Well I'm running Representation specialists and those beakers somewhere so Gunpowder is ideal target. I won't be stealing it.

This clearly means that I've a great window opportunity here until others wake up. However me being 1st here gives me also biggest benefits. One of the mission discounts is based on total accumulated amount of Espionage points and I'm currently leading there with healthy margin. Also I'll start running counter espionage missions as soon as I see someone investing heavily Espionage points towards me.

I'm not sure I like this too much. I'm pretty certain that in future Espionage games players will adapt earlier/better making the situation more balanced.

In general tech steal costs feel too low. I would multiply them with a value of 1.2-1.4. This is not new idea, but tech stealing is also quite exploitative in diplo games, when you've allies you want to help out. Arranging ideal discounts is pretty easy making it more efficient than direct research.

[plako]

Closer inspection to North eastern parts of my territory.

There is just 1 really important city in the area i.e. the Moai city and I've alredy shown it earlier. Rest are mainly in the category of fishing villages. However these islands provide 2 unique resources to the rest of the empire i.e. Whales and Incense so are pretty important for my happiness. There are still room for 1 Fishing village where c is locateed. It has 1 unique fish resource and can also work workshop from the close by other island. There are still some unfogged tiles NE from the islands and Bigger/Lewwyn in the east. Most of these cities will be grown to draftable size and then working Specialists with their spare food.





Newest addition 2 sea food is reason enough to plant it



This was planted only to get Whales



City that gave me circumnavigation



Incense city



Iron city that I captured from Arabia long time ago

[plako]

I couldn't yet log in. For some reason Serdoa blocks my access. Nevertheless civstats tells me that Cheetah probably just gave Pindicooter a city back in exchange of the island city he captured earlier. This was close to optimal end result. Cheetah was slowed down a bit and Pindicooter is still live and kicking and hopefully not too vulnerable for attacking Commodore. If the war would have escalated any further, there would have been clear danger of Pindicooter getting dogpiled and Commodore taking most of the benefits from it. It is also quite strange that it seems like SlowCheetah lost a lot more than Pindicooter despite of having considerably higher power level all the time.

[plako]

Areas north from ArabCap. There are still room for 2 Tundra Fish sites (marked with c). Not very urgent to be settled. ArabCap is very nice city that I've already shown to you. Others are weakish, but mostly at least paying for themselves.

Little production city. After Lighthouse I'll grow it to 7.


Some kind of hybrid city.


Decent production center


Fishing villages. Also trying to grow them to 7 to be draftable upon need.

[plako]

Serdoa just finished Liberalism. He seems to trust others are leaving him alone since he lacks Astronomy. Cheetach and Commodore will get Chemistry next turn and Lewwyn is heading towards Astro. Everyone seems to have used their funds (i.e. there aren' much more than 1T or less worth of Gold) although I spotted a Great Merchant in cheetach's land so presumably he'll soon have a big stack of money again.

You might wonder what I do with the Gunpowder research. Idea is that I'll finish it within next 2T while running 100% EP slider and then steal Chemistry from Cheetach.

[plako]

North-Western lands. Captured from Arabia and Vikings. Most cities are connected to my main land having only 1 mountain between them. It has been liability up to now since I won't get overseas trade routes, but in case I land SoL this land connection becomes a good thing. Serdoa is to the west from here. I don't have that strong defences. These cities are not very important. They're good for giving early warning in case Serdoa decides to attack. Also my signle gold and wines resource come from this area.

Gold city is the most valuable one at the moment.


Wines are main feature of this city


City planted on top of Iron. After Lighthouse this city will grow nicely


Only city I've planted myself. Mainly to gain more visibilty in the seas South from the city. It also has unique fish resource.


Brick had planted Academy here. In principle nice, but this city will never be a commerce monster.


Border city towards Serdoa.

[Gavagai]

Most of these cities have +2 culture with no apparent sources. What's this?

[Krill]

He's playing a Creative leader, Louis.