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

[Mardoc]

Ah, thanks TT. So it really shouldn't matter to me, as long as I don't plan to invade Ruff with maces. Which...there's no way I could afford to, even if I thought I could win. That would have been a lovely event for me to get, though, since ChoKoNu's stay relevant a lot longer than regular crossbows! Oh well.

This turn I do actually have things to talk about on the macro level, in addition to the city micro thoughts.

First up...oh my, this is some lovely land to the east - not particularly close to Ruff, either. Can't afford it yet, but give me a few more turns to get the economy in order and some more workers out, and I'll need to dotmap this. Ruff just burned down the barb city, presumably for the cash and XP - I think that explains the abundance of ruins over here.

I'm learning a lot about the north, too, but I'll keep that under my hat for a later report. It's mostly academic for the moment, after all.




I should have a Great Person in ~12 turns if I want it. Or even sooner if I push Roy harder for a Great Person. Is it worth doing that to get a Golden Age for my revolt to Bureau? And/or revolting to Bureau without a GA?

I guess I lean toward hiring a bunch of specs starting next turn (really should have started this turn, but spilled milk, crying) so that I can have a free revolt soon. Bureaucracy will be worth a fair bit, but perhaps not quite as much as a turn's worth of production.



Then, in city news, I've got something that's either total or brilliance. Can't decide which it is . I'm working the desert copper mine instead of the fish, just long enough to get the granary finished up. I *think* that'll actually put me ahead, as long as I switch to the fish the instant I have the granary, but it could be false optimization.



And my city of the turn, Miko. Miko's an absolutely brilliant city, tons of food, tons of cottages partly grown and potential, and a fair bit of hammers too. About to pop borders, whereupon Miko will go from merely good to awesome, as it grabs the Corn and Fish for some super-charged growth. I'll be donating the clams to Nale, enabling it to also grow like a weed.

Miko needs cottages everywhere, and a decision made on the hills - I can see either windmills or mines making sense here. I think the right answer is actually a mixture - corn + fish is a lot of food, but not quite enough to work five plains hill mines. But I do want Miko to have decent hammers, it's in an excellent position to produce either a navy or land units, on top of a truly nice sum of gold.

[Krill]

You're IMP, you have Mids and Collosus, and you are by far #1 in power.

Spam those settlers. You claim every scrap of land that you can and focus on stopping Ruff from settling any new cities with the units you already have, and on growing new pop. Caste system and farms are all you need to win the game after that, but Slavery for some basic infrastructure is good too.

[Mardoc]

Spam those settlers. You claim every scrap of land that you can and focus on stopping Ruff from settling any new cities with the units you already have, and on growing new pop. Caste system and farms are all you need to win the game after that, but Slavery for some basic infrastructure is good too.

I will be, pretty soon. I just need 5-10 more turns for my GNP recovery to let me afford it. It's not long before my current army is worthless except for the cats.

For example, Nale here just got its hands on its second food source, and finally got Hinduism to spread. Just a few more turns and it'll be a lovely, fast growing city, destined to host a half-dozen specialists in addition to a bunch of coast tiles. But it's not there yet, I've still got infra to put up.




Edit: In fact, Nale's pretty close to the point of being a good candidate for building its infra with whip overflow from workers and settlers. But it does need a couple more pop points, first.

[Krill]

Screw GNP. Whip the settlers now. GNP will recover, but if you don't rush the cities out you might not get them. Cultural control of land is key.

Also, unless Ruff is fielding rifles HA aren't useless.

[Mardoc]

Screw GNP. Whip the settlers now. GNP will recover, but if you don't rush the cities out you might not get them. Cultural control of land is key.

Um. It's a tad hard to argue with a straight face that I'm still crashed when the numbers look like this. Especially when I can't settle the new cities instantly even if I wanted to. So, ok, I'll stop whipping infra, and instead whip settlers and workers. Infra can get built with overflow and while regrowing.

I'll also send my military over to take that barb city as soon as I can. It's got to grow first, but that shouldn't be too many more turns.

Also, unless Ruff is fielding rifles HA aren't useless.

Well, um, I've only got five of them left. That's the sort of thing that happens when you stick three of them alone next to a Twinkletoes stack...on the other hand, Ruff has considerably less than me, it's true.

That said, I don't want to force him to war, so I'm going to leave him at least part of this jungle area to claim. It'll be great cities in the long run, but they'll take forever to hack out of the jungle. I need to make sure I get at least one of the dyes, though. Not quite sure what makes sense to try to grab here, but I'll start thinking on it.




These cities, on the other hand, ought really to be all mine. Still have a few turns to debate with myself if this is the right dotmap or not, but I definitely want all this land.

[Krill]

Two points: the area of contention is the area adjacent to Ruff. You want an easily defensible front city (or 2), so dot map that first. For example, I like cities 4 of the rice and 23 of the sugar, but there are other options. Get those two cities down, get culture into them, and Ruff can't settle south without either razing those cities, or having a 6 city front. The second point, is that the rest of the dot map can then be settled over the next dozen turns, so long as you have those two good front cities. You could box him in completely though, that's up to you. I'd do it with no hesitation, but it's necessarily the one right choice in this situation.

[Mardoc]

Well, the fundamental meta point is that Sian has got to have his island full and be looking for opportunities. I don't want to get into a war with Ruff that Sian could jump in on, I don't have anything resembling a naval and I mostly have coastal cities.

I don't want to force him to be on the other side of the 2 vs 1, at least not soon.

And...sigh...it looks like that may be shaping up whether I want it or not:


Definitely means that Sian's got Optics, not just a scout somewhere with Sentry.

Oh well. At least this turn I finally found a route to Ruff that enables trade. Only got one route from each of his cities - either they're already booked to Sian, or he doesn't have Currency. But that's another nice boost to my GNP

Also, last whip at Lien. Now we just sit back and let the 6 food surplus add up the worked tiles for a while.

[Mardoc]

Ok, I could have wrecked Ruff even worse this turn if I'd been willing to start a war...but I'm still chicken. Don't want to start a war I can't win decisively, even if it would hurt him more than it would hurt me.

He offered a map trade, I decided to accept it. My HA would have finished exploring him pretty soon anyway, but it doesn't hurt anything to be able to reconcentrate them to defend jungle cities. And I'd rather see Ruff get circumnavigation than Sian.

I got my Great Person at the end of the turn: a Great Prophet. So next turn I plan to fire a Golden Age and slip into Bureaucracy. We'll have enough in the bank at that point to go ahead and research Machinery, as well - looks like a 2-turn tech unless the GA helps even more dramatically than I expect. Then, Roy will stop working specialists at all, instead focusing on growth. If I'm going to pay for Bureaucracy, I'd best run as much production as possibly through the capital, right?

This turn's demonstration city is Hinjo. Just now getting really launched, Hinjo's got silk and sugar and clams and a whole bunch of grassland and coast tiles. Pretty soon I'll have it start knocking out workers and settlers, with the overflow going into its buildings; hopefully I can grow it a size or two between each whip. Eventually it's going to be a real cash cow of a city.



For the moment my whips have all been going into workers, as nine workers isn't really enough for 15 cities, not even with many of those cities inheriting a bunch of improvements from Twinkletoes and many more only needing a couple non-oceanic improvements. As soon as I feel comfortable with my worker count, I'll go ahead and start settler production.

[Mardoc]

Before GA fire/Bureau revolt:




After:



Nice 100 gpt boost there

We've got Ruff's maps now, Japan looks decent but I don't understand why he's settling filler coastal villages instead of settling forward. Not that I'll complain, of course! Still, it does emphasize that if I want the rest of the continent, I will have to move smartly to claim it.






This turn's 'better know a city' is O-Chul. O-Chul is just now getting to the point where it might be worth having settled. With a Fish and Granary, it should be able to grow pretty fast; still needs the Lighthouse to grow big, though. O-Chul's going to see an awful lot of the . Especially because it'll just be building that lighthouse with overflow from workers and soon settlers.

[Mardoc]

Haha...no. Although I wonder just how pleased Ruff would really be, maintenance on Thog would be even worse for him than for me.



Tarquin is definitely a hammer city, with plains cow and horses and all these hills. I might maybe be able to get more hammers with windmills than mines, given how food-poor it is, but it's irrelevant for a while yet.



And, circumnavigation is gone before I could even start. Ah well.