[SPOILERS] Back to Basic - Mardoc plays Augustus of China

[Mardoc]

What is your great person plan?

Um...drift along until the wonders give me one, then use it for a Golden Age.

Seriously, I know I need to make Great People at some point, but I don't really think I've got the excess food to run specialists quite yet. I need to grow all my cities first.

The city that's best suited to being a GPP farm is probably Miko - Twinkle's old capital. It's got corn and two seafood, and could even take Nale's pigs - that's a lot of food that can be spent on specialists. Of course, the city also has four coasts and a gold and a bunch of potential cottage sites, so I want to do everything with it. It could easily be a size 30 city with every citizen doing something useful - if I had the happy. But realistically my happy cap looks like about 16-18, with Forge and Market and Hindu, so maybe I shouldn't try to have it do everything.

The other option is to have Nale take all the food it can; pigs and 2 seafood is still a good amount of surplus. Nale's got mostly unimproved plains tiles, so I won't be tempted to have it work non-specialists. That probably makes more sense, really.

But in both cases, step one is to get Granary/Lighthouse/Forge/Courthouse/Library/Market in place, and the city grown up into the teens.

[Mardoc]

I think I'm going to have to start talking about city management, if I'm going to have anything to say. So...I'll just do one or two cities a turn, that way something new will be happening by the time I cycle back around.

First up, Belkar! Belkar started as a violent little city, but lately he's been more of a team player. Just sitting back, growing and working the coasts. I'll need to whip in the Courthouse here, but I think I'll wait until I run out of workable coastline. Every turn, I debate if working the cottage or the coast is a better choice; the cottage will pay in the long run but the coast would pay right now. So far I'm sticking to investing in the future.




Second, Lien. I'm always pleased when I manage to get something to work out fairly well. Granary done, border pop, workboat in place, Lien is about to start some turbocharged growth. And it's even got a couple cottages in place to hold the population while I work on the lighthouse.

Ideally the granary would have completed closer to the halfway mark, but the important thing is that it's there, and with a decent food source to fill it. Worker's going to finish that cottage, then chop the forest into the lighthouse.




In other news, the Hanging Gardens is still possible, and I've sent out my Horse Archers to map the no-man's land between me and Ruff. Won't have anything to show there for a few turns yet, though.

[Mardoc]

Damn it, so close!

Silver lining, at least Roy got to build Wealth at +100% for a while...should get me to Civil Service a good bit earlier.

Well, in city news, Durkon is finally becoming a useful city, working a bunch of hamlets and a couple cottages. He started out as a hammer city, and probably will move that way again when we run out of cottaged grass to work, but for now it's the cash we need.



Durkon's got most of the infrastructure we require, just missing out on a Market and Library. After that, I'm really not sure what it needs to build. Probably default to workers in lieu of a better idea. I feel I should turn those forests into something, as well, but again nothing feels particularly urgent here.

-----

Had my first 'failed to spread Hinduism' this turn . Nale, why you gotta be so difficult?

Despite those two pieces of bad news, my GNP is finally on the upward swing I've been predicting. Up to 25 total gold/beakers this turn, and I confidently expect to keep improving. Still nowhere near where we need to be, but at least we're moving forward.

[Mardoc]

Xykon is...I'm not really sure what to make of Xykon. Moderate commerce potential, moderate hammer potential, and a bunch of tiles that aren't worth a whole lot. I guess I could either cottage and windmill everything, and end up as a mixed city, or stop early on mines and have a lot of hammers. I think I lean toward cottage/windmill, though. 6 surplus food is just enough to work 4 plains cottages and 2 plains windmills, on top of all the food neutral tiles.

For the moment, it's got no problem, grass cottages and coastline to keep clawing my way out of bankruptcy.

Edit: Of course, the real problem is that Xykon is in direct conflict with Durkon for good tiles. Durkon's probably going to steal at least one more grass cottage, on top. I think that makes sense, Durkon can be a decent city if it takes all the green, and Xykon can still be decent without it due to the Fish and coastline.

[Commodore]

Looks like perfect amount of food for working all four hills as mines to me.

[Mardoc]

Looks like perfect amount of food for working all four hills as mines to me.

Dang it, you're going to make me actually analyze this.

Mines: Don't get to work the plains tiles at all. Cap city at size 11, working fish, 3 coasts, horse, two grass cottages, 2 grass mines, 2 plains mines. Can get there pretty fast, the food surplus doesn't really slow until the end.

14 + 2 cottages commerce/turn, 18 hpt

Windmills: Cap city at size 15, working fish, 3 coasts, horse, 2 grass cottages, 2 grass windmills, 2 plains windmills, 4 plains cottages. More growth, and the last few sizes will be agonizingly slow, so it doesn't reach potential nearly as soon. Also the minor issue that I don't have Machinery yet and won't for a bunch of turns.

18+ 6 cottages commerce/turn, 14 hpt

I definitely lean toward the windmills approach, I think 4 hammers/turn is a fair price to pay for 8 ->20 commerce/turn. I do notice that there's no reason I can't start it as one type and switch to the other, though. Only costs worker turns to swap it from one config to the other. Size 15 happy cap is easy, current resources plus Forge should pretty much allow that. Especially since I have a silk and an incense to be hooked as soon as I find the worker turns.

[Krill]

The biggest problem with the windmills approach is that you need the higher happy cap. Sometimes that requires investment, sometimes it doesn't The other problem is that you have to spend longer growing the city, and that has an opportunity cost. You do have to find a relative value for commerce and hammers though.

[Mardoc]

The biggest problem with the windmills approach is that you need the higher happy cap. Sometimes that requires investment, sometimes it doesn't

Yeah, this is definitely a case where I'll get the happy cap from doing things I want to do anyway, even if Xykon does not become one of the Representation + cities. Advantage of a spawling empire, I guess.

The other problem is that you have to spend longer growing the city, and that has an opportunity cost. You do have to find a relative value for commerce and hammers though.

Looks like I get a minimum of 2 commerce/hammer, up to quite a bit more by the time the cottages grow up.

Well, no. I start with a net loss compared to an all-mine city, and when the city grows I start getting that back.

I think, for now, I'm going to go with a focus on simply growing onto the green, and build some mines. The relevant exchange rate between hammers and commerce depends on how well the rest of my empire is able to take up that slack. Today I'd definitely prefer the commerce, since I'm well #1 in hammers but barely above 0 GNP. But by the time Xykon could swap over to commerce, maybe that'll have changed. I've got several cities who are destined to work a dozen ocean tiles and not much else, after all. Also depends on how long the game looks to go.

So, yeah, wait and see, don't get locked in to any one mindset just yet. And it's irrelevant until I've got Machinery, the city's infrastructure in place, and the green tiles worked.

[Mardoc]

Any idea what this event means? Other than Ruff is also ahead of me in tech?



Next city: Redcloak. This here is an awesome city at low sizes, falling off in utility rather quickly. All that tundra - unavoidable - but useless. And there isn't really enough food surplus to do much with the plains tiles either.

But the Iron and Sheep and coast and grasslands are all nice; this city is recovering from war faster than any other I captured. Looks like Redcloak is going to be able to grow to size 10 or so, mostly on the coast and grasslands, and then lean on the whip to prevent growing any more. Definitely needs culture if its to grow much beyond where it is now. I'm considering putting up a library before the courthouse just for the border pop, since a missionary for here is still a long way away. Nale and Tarquin both need Hindu even more.




In other news, you can see that I'm actually able to research a tech now. My net commerce is something like ~40. Still have a ways to go, of course, but we're getting there.

[Twinkletoes89]

The event:

Stronger Fittings
Prereq: MACHINERY
Obsolete: NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER or ASTRONOMY
Active/Weight: 25/200
Result:
1.All Crossbowman units gain the Combat 1 promotion