[SPOILER] The Steak, Beer, and Cigar Saloon

[Catwalk]

Yeah, I don't think Jowy has any intentions of bothering me but I also have a feeling that he doesn't react well to temptation based on his other games The city has been delayed and will be settled safely next turn.

[MaxPower]

Turn 79
Making another lazy report, big one coming up tomorrow after I settle elephant city and discover Mathematics.

Jowy sent his chariot chasing my axeman a bit. That's not a big problem, except it's going to delay my elephant city for a turn while waiting for the spear to arrive. Which also means I'm going to suffer 2 unhappy faces, as I was counting on Ivory being hooked up by now. I'm still one city ahead of everyone I know (Nakor, Jowy, Yuri, BaII) and about to settle another one next turn. I'm wondering if I have my happiness priorities messed up. Ivory + a handful of buddhist cities actually seems to be plenty for the foreseeable future. Getting 2-3 more from Calendar seems a bit like overkill for the time being. I've already taken Sailing in order to research Calendar afterwards, but sunk costs shouldn't influence my decisions (and I did get 5 cpt from Sailing). I have a trade connection with Yuri, although I'm not sure if that means I can also get trade routes with him. If not, I might be unable to capitalize fully on +1 trade routes.

So I have 2 paths to choose from:
1) Get Currency first, spam out cities a bit faster and maybe plant an island city soonish
2) Get Calendar first, spam out extra workers and put cottages all over the place

I vote currency first. It has great synergy with sailing, and you will probably meet more fellows along the road. If you get happiness starved you can always whip a market (although expensive, your capital still has several forests to chop) to get full benefit of your ivory. With all your whipping plans from the previous posts you won't have enough time to grow your cities to fully benefit 2-3 calendar resources, or enough work force to build the plantations.

In MP island cities are very exposed, and you already have a military drain of hammers in your border with Jowy. I would delay them until you have spare galleys to put a sentry network around them. Of course, it all depends on further scouting of these islands.

Max, I agree that Punching Bag could be a decent choice for that. I do think the grass mine it's about to grow into is also worth working, but you're right that it has little after that. The grass mine will also help a lot with producing the library.

It all depends how badly you want your academy. I see two different paths:

1) In order to work the mine plus two scientists the city must grow to size 6 (4f from cow + 2f form horses + 2f city tile + 1f form mine + 3f form a farm = 12f). The fastest way to get there would be putting two farms to speed growth until it reaches size 6 and then switch to scientists.

2) You can work a farm while building/chopping library (skip the granary for the moment) until city reaches size 4. Then stagnate growth and switch to two scientists for 9 turns for the academy (it switches back to the granary until completion). When you get your GS then work two farms to reach size 6, and then endless scientists. This way you get the academy faster, and enjoy the beaker boost from your specialist sooner when it matters most. Remember you want both currency and calendar with no delay.

path 1) comes ahead in hammers, as you will work the mine sooner, but it delays the academy and requires more immediate worker turns as it requires extra chops for granary+library.

As for Jowy, he won't have HBR for at least another 14 turns. His economic disadvantage will be hurting him severely by that point, and I will only need to defend two border cities against him. Whatever he got himself into it's put him out of the game, and I'm guessing that he'd rather exact revenge on Yuri than me as long as I don't provoke him too much.

I agree with you that jowy is likely to tied up in a senseless war for the near future and may become a non threat in the long run. But remember when he gets HAs and spawns them in decent numbers your elephant city (I think "Ivory Coast" is a cool name for it) is awfully exposed until it reaches 3rd ring culture (he can 1 turn attack from the diagonal), Always wrong is pretty safe thanks to its lake.

[Catwalk]

I just realized that I misread your post, I was talking about Foot Rubs up north and you're talking about Punching Bag to the west. I think I prefer Foot Rubs for the scientist, for the same reasons you stated. It has little development potential, whereas I want Punching Bag to be working a bunch of cottages for future payoff. Foot Rubs can work 2 scientists at size 3 along with the grass hill pigs, letting it grow slowly at +1 food to size 4 where it picks up +1 food from the oasis.

As for Calendar, it will be very easy to hook up the resources. One will come instantly from settling on top of sugar, and the silk is in the middle of my territory with a road on it. So I do think I can reap the reward soon enough, the big question is how much the reward is worth to me. The value of Currency is easy to measure, it'll be about 16 cpt by the time I get it. In the meantime, I can get ready for Calendar happiness by filling in a few more cities and putting out additional workers. So I agree with you, Currency first looks like the winner here.

Concerning an HA strike by Jowy, I don't see any way for him to strike without giving me at least one turn's advance notice. With second ring culture I'll have vision on all potential staging tiles for a strike. This gives me the time to whip one more spearman for defense if I see a force big enough to take the city, and it lets me move units down from Always Wrong. If I station 3 spears and 2 axes here he'll need a sizable force to dislodge me, one that is going to cost far more than the cost of those defenders. And again, he won't have the economy to field a large force of HAs out of nowhere due to his food shortage. But I appreciate the caution, I definitely have a tendency to overlook defensive needs.

[Catwalk]

The wonder situation is that GLH and Oracle still haven't fallen, still only Stonehenge and Pyramids. If someone grabs Currency with Oracle that could propel him to a really strong position. I'm not going for either one, I feel I have enough on my plate. The plan is still to make a play for Metal Casting, but I think I'll want both Currency + Calendar + Iron Working done before going for Metal Casting. I have 5 forests waiting for Colossus in Vacuuming, I should be able to build it rapidly. And if I put it there I'll also get my first forge in the city where I need it the most.

[MaxPower]

This is the IT and Tech Issues Thread for RBP17, the newest 'greens' pitboss game here at Realms Beyond, played with the RB 'AI diplo' ruleset. The organizing thread for the game can be found here.

The game is now live. If this is your first time connecting please read this entire post carefully. Text in Red will be of interest to veterans.

Access the game via DirectIP connection to sunrise089.dyndns.org:2064. No password is needed (nor will one permit a successful connection) when connecting to the game. Make 100% sure there are no spaces in the field or you'll get an error. Spaces love to crop up unexpectedly, so please double-check this before posting that you can't connect.

The first time a player logs into the game they will be asked to set and confirm a password. This is non-trivial to change, so please make sure you know what it is, can remember it, etc.

In-game you can play as normal. This game is played via simultaneous turns, so you can queue unit actions and builds like normal, even after you end turn. I get asked sometimes, so I'll note you press TAB to chat in-game. When you're done playing please log out via Exit to Main Menu, not Exit to Desktop (which can create connectivity/lag issues).

I have set a 40 hour timer per team for the first turn. Starting next turn the timer will switch to 22 in-game hours. Of course in the future the timer can be tweaked according to the wishes of the players.

This game uses Civstats to track the turns and other info. This game is here. If you want to register via Civstats and claim your civ the password for each civ is "sirian."

From now on, please let me know if you have any technical concerns in this thread. I can be reached infrequently via forum PM, and easily via email at sunrise089 at gmail dot com and IM at sunrise089 on either AIM or GChat.

Players:

1) Zanth - Darius I of Babylon
2) flugauto - Mansa Musa of Ottomans
3) Jowy - Huayna Capac of Zulu
4) yuris125 - Suryavarman II of France
5) Catwalk - Elizabeth of England
6) BaII - Victoria of Sumeria
7) Sian - Mehmed II of Egypt
8) Slowcheetah - Isabella of Netherlands
9) Furungy - Ragnar of Rome
10) Azza - Louis of China
11) Nakor - Bismarck of Persia
12) 2metraninja - Rameses II of Mali

Game Rules:

Base BTS
AI diplo
No Tech Trading

Barbarians: On
Starting units: Everyone starts with a scout
Huts: Off
Random Events: Off
Espionage: Passive only (no spies)
Corporations: Off
Vassals: Off
Difficulty: Monarch Prince

Banned units, building, and actions:
War Elephants
Nukes
Blockades
AP resolutions
Statue of Zeus
Cristo Redentor
The Great Lighthouse

Banned civs and leaders:
India
Inca
Pacal
Willem

Pick method: Snake pick

The GLH is banned from this game. I don't understand the monarch prince difficulty setting though.

[MaxPower]

I think Foot Rubs is close to the perfect moai city (if only the inner sea was a lake). Working 3 mines, it can build the wonder fast enough and then has a lot of water tiles to grow into. Now, It has several good tiles to work: pigs, oasis and eventually rice, for quick growth and mines to add production on top of that. I wouldn't stall its growth to run specialists.
That city could be one of your better ones in the not so long term. It could whip infrastructure (lighthouse, library, barracks and units) overflowing into the moai statues to speed up the wonder.

On the other hand, Pushing Bag doesn't have much useful tiles to work. Before working cottages you will need at least 2 additional farms, since a +4 food is not enough to maintain a reasonable growth rate. That said, you would start working 2/0/1 cottages at size 5. It will take too long to get some benefit from the city. Pre-calendar, it won't have enough happy cap to work more than 2 cottages.
If you use it for the academy you will collect some profits earlier. Later you can grow into cottages if you want.

[Edit] It's Punching Bag not Pushing Bag.

[MaxPower]

Catwalk, can you post a picture of Jowy's borders? It could be useful to plan in advance for defensive garrisons.

On a side note: Never underestimate the might of C1-shock HAs. They are almost as strong as spears (actually 8,1 total strength against melee) and they own any other unit of their era. Their only real counter are war elephants and those are banned.
It's easy to run a simulation to find out how many troops are needed to take 3 spears and 2 axes inside a city with 20% defense. I may try it later. But I don't think it requires too many.

[Edit] I did run the simulation:
total attack force: 2 chariots, 2 impis, 5 HAs. All units umpromoted except the HAs with C1-shock.
attack sequence: chariots -> HAs -> Impis.
results: 2 chariots and 2 HAs dead. City razed.
Hammer count: Jowy loses 160H (2 x 50H + 2 x 30H) and you lose 205H (5 x 35H + 100H for the city).
Of course I have no idea about Jowy's hypothetical army composition, but I think for a guy who is fighting a war it should not be that hard to gather that attack force, especially once he get peace with his current opponent.


PS: Yes, I know I have paranoia issues.

[Catwalk]

Turn 80
My cities have grown, so it's time for demos

And they look good! I'm about to butcher these soon with the whip, sigh. Graphs show that Nakor and BaII are keeping pace with me, only a hair behind.

City overview:

After this missionary I want to triple whip another settler once I approach size 7. I'm tight on improved tiles, but with carefully managed whips I think I'll cope.


Awesome hammers here. Producing a much needed worker and cooling down whip anger, still 3 turns left. I thought about whipping the worker, but I don't think I need it that badly and I have 3 more turns of whip anger still. I'll likely produce more axes and spears in order to defend the jungle location from Jowy in case he gets any cute ideas about what's a fair division of land


Getting tight on improved tiles here as well. I'll whip the worker next turn then regrow on the scout and send the scout through Nakor's lands.


Going for the library here after the axe, sorry Max I do agree this city is a good candidate for Moai, but I've decided that my newly settled elephant city is an even better candidate. Also, I can get the library here much faster.


Which means it's time to spam cottages here. Won't get me anywhere fast, but it's a solid investment in my future economy. I think I'll be okay with +4 food here for now, given my low happy cap. I'll be stuck at ivory + buddhism for a while longer as I decided to go Currency next.


This city was a timing mistake, it's basically doing nothing until it gets buddhism and my worker was a few turns delayed in improving the cow. I wanted to settle the ivory location first, but my troops were out of position and the next settler was coming up so I decided to go ahead and get started here.


And here's the newest addition, also working a lake tile while waiting for the border pop and crabs. I want Moai here, that's quite doable with 3 chops and a whip. +4 culture will make a huge difference for border culture, and the extra hammers are highly useful in a front city.

Lastly, Jowy's border:

His chariot went elsewhere, I take that as a sign that he trusts me to be peaceful and that he needs it badly elsewhere. Notice slowcheetah's scout down there, and the puzzling fact that I have trade routes with Sian without having met him. I'm guessing he's up north-west somewhere, I defogged some coast there recently with an axe.

[Catwalk]

Thanks for catching my GLH mistake, would have been embarrassing if I decided to build it around t120 figuring noone else wanted it Not to mention painful to see all those hammers go down the drain. As posted above, I'm planning on going with Foot Rubs for the library and Mother In Law for Moai. But thanks for bringing up the issue, I was actually thinking too much about my capital for generating the first scientist.

I can whip walls without too much hassle at size 4 if I have a single hammer in it, at size 2 if I hook up stone. With walls, fortified spears and hammers make invasion by mounted units all but impossible. Sorry for not sharing your paranoia I'll try to remember not to take defenses here lightly, but keep in mind that I can also station units inside Jowy's territory to keep an eye on any buildup against me. Garrisoning my borders lightly also shows trust, and Jowy will be very keen on keeping me as his friend while he's busy fighting Yuri.

[MaxPower]

Now that I saw your border with Jowy I feel better about defensive situation. There's no way he can threaten Mother In Law and another of your future cities from a single tile, thanks to that long lake. As a matter of fact, every city you plant in your side of the lake will be pretty safe. You only have to defend 2 cities (Mother In Law and banana/gems city) which is awesome considering how long the border will be.