[SPOILER] Asoka of the Vikings (Nakor & Gaspar)

[Gaspar]

Not much going on. Decided to put our EPs on luddite for the turn to catch up. After that I suppose we can max out at 43 on rego and mackoti, and then we have to point them somewhere. plako probably, though LP is an option as well. No tile micro was needed. Hit enter.

By the by, we were down to #3 by the time I played.

[Nakor]

Currency is in! Poly - Mono next, both 1t techs.

Helluland finished a Barracks and starts a Market.
Did some tiny changes, but not that much.
Up to you to finish things up.

[Gaspar]

We're in the money, we're in the mon... hmm, not so much, eh?

Really nothing to do other than adjust EPs. In 2T we'll be at 43 with rego and mackoti, and then we have to decide who we want to spend them on. Just spreading them out to 1 per team or whatever just annoys everyone, I'd rather just pick a target and get some info on them. I'd say plako, Locke or LP is the most logical target. Gut instinct is LP. I kind of like the idea of staying cozy with our two nearest neighbors and getting feisty with the fellow who'd have to really work hard to get to us. Also, reading LPs condescending diplomacy in reaction to it would be worth a chuckle. Up to you, of course, since you're the one who has to write the diplo.

Anyway - the currency discovery really has made a nice bump to our GNP. I'd suspect we're probably actually researching around 5th place at the moment. Gut feeling is plako, LP, Locke and Rego are teching faster, though Rego had quite a hole to dig out from himself, maybe as much as ours. I decided to swap back to Caste for 5T. Crossing will grow next turn and this way we can hire another scientist, and I see no need for us to whip in the short term, we need to let some anger wear off. I'll leave it to you if you want to hire an artist in Silverland, though I don't think that's necessary, the tiles it doesn't have are pretty much garbage. We can go back to slavery when we're ready to whip that Granary in Crossing II, which will probably be exactly 5T, if my math is right, and pair OR with it. I know that means 3T without using OR, but at the moment, its weak, as its only present in 2 cities. Once the Market's done in the captial, we'll want to get a few missionaries going there. No reason not pick up another few turns of extra GPP in the meantime. Spiritual is kinda fun. Would be moreso if we had any other civics to pair with it.

Anyway, there's my turn report for today.

[Nakor]

Poly done, Masonry next. Spear finished in Riverland, Market next.
Hired a third scientist in Crossing.

Not that much else to do. Wars aren't doing the others a lot of good since not a lot of cities change from owner. So it shows again, early warfare is no good at all!

[Gaspar]

On early warfare, I think a very early rush can be good, like plako's on Greece. Also, luddite's on 9 cities and mackoti's on 5, so I don't think that war has necessarily gone badly for him. We'll have to wait for the post-game to really find out, though. I think this recent war with Greece and China is mostly just self-preservation from WK. He's probably not going to have a lot of luck, but what can he do, sit around and wait for plako to take his cities?

Truthfully, I think that the pendulum has swung too far around here towards complete passivity. Early war is usually a bad idea, unless you have great opportunity, but sometimes, you have great opportunity. All this is just theory, we're obviously not in any position to fight anyone right now. Fortunately, we're recovering a bit from a slow start. Hopefully we have enough land to make an impact later. Time will tell.

Onto the turn itself - I didn't do much but I did poke around. Now that we've largely recovered the economy, we should probably prioritize getting the rest of our backfill cities out. In particular, the fish city south of Riverland is going to need to get up and running soon to fight off plako's culture. I'd like to get the Corn city up soon as well, just to seal off the border.

We should probably specialize a couple cities for unit production as well. Fishfood is pretty weak, but it can work the copper mine and 3 grassland hill mines and get a respectable 16 unmodified hammers/turn. After the TP lets get a barracks in there and start pumping out units, maybe alternate between ships and land units, it can serve as the military pump on Locke's border. It'll be mediocre once we get a Forge in there. In the east, its a toss-up. Dorestadt and Helluland are probably the best bets, though neither is perfect, as Dorestadt has only cows for food and Helluland only the flood plains. Riverland might be a decent option, but its awfully vulnerable to plako. Riverland could work 3 grassland and one plains hill mine.

Kind of the curse of the game - because the production is ok across the board, we've been somewhat forced to go for commerce everywhere. Because we've gone for commerce everywhere, we have pretty mediocre production. Anyway, I'd say we should long-term plan on using Fishfood, Riverland and Crossing II as our military pumps, Crossing II obviously only after Moai. Not that we really have any units I actually want to build yet. Nor do we have a target. But never hurts to look a head. There's no doubt we're going to have get jiggy with someone down the line. Hey - we could have Knights in 53 turns at our current tech rate.

[Nakor]

Thanks for your thoughts again, Gaspar. We are going to speciallize cities soon. A few cities can get a lot more hammers if we swap tiles.
Don't know about Riverland being a military pump, but we can try.

Another easy turn. Masonry done, Mono next (1T) then onto MC to get a lot more happy faces. If think we can/should do a round of forge whipping througout the empire and then stop slaving for a long time. With our cities getting bigger and working more tiles both our commerce and production will increase a lot.

Decide to hit "end turn" since we're almost last to play.

[Nakor]

LP did the same, so we discover Monotheism. Onto MC as discussed. Will take just 6 turns, so our research is getting somewhere.

I'll leave it to you to take a look at the game and hit end turn.

[Gaspar]

Thanks for the reports, Nakor. I wonder where we should head next. How long are our NAPs again anyway? I suppose HR and Civil Service are the next logical economy techs after MC, particularly since as Spiritual, more civic options = better, especially as Organized, since civic costs are less relevant. If we have time on NAPs after that, we can think about making a push towards Education afterwards for early Oxford. If not... probably have to grab HBR and Construction.

Onto the turn, swapped off the Deer in Greenland to a mine, want to slow growth a bit until the Market and then Forges come in, since I doubt we'll do anything other than emergency slaving in the capital from here on out. That times growth in the capital with the completion of the Market. That's really about it. Vinland really needs a happiness boost - the sooner we can get a Missionary in there the better.

The big news of the turn - how the hell have you not mentioned this yet? I'm going to put this out there and see if the lurkers can tell me what I'm excited about in this screenshot, and what I think we should be doing as of next turn:

[Nakor]

Looks like another great indefensible spot indeed! Let's grab a settler and Axe (done in Vinland next turn) and send it over to get a great city up and running. If we move fast, we can settle that entire island... and then defend it somehow... guess Monarchy - Feudalism next sounds like a good option for defense...

Regarding NAP's:

Locke T140
Plako T130
LP T160

Time to get a longer deal with Plako and Locke, or can we wait a bit longer?

[Gaspar]

Well... you're not a lurker, Nakor! I was scamming for lurker posts! You did neglect to mention the primary reason that area excites me, though its quite obvious - so I'll still leave that up to lurkers.

Regardless - I think we can probably get 5 cities on that parcel of land if we act reasonably quickly.

River and Pigs, Ocean fish, Clam/Gems, Banana/Dyes and there's bound to be a seafood resources off the coast in the fog near all that jungle. If we put 5 cities there, hopefully we have long enough NAPs that the area can defend itself before our NAPs run out. We are most definitely going to have to have a city eventually producing nothing but navy.

Ultimately, the area might be a complete place to settle, as its miles from our core, but the only way we're going to have enough land to compete long term is by being super-aggressive in the areas that are still virgin. This is probably the last conceivable place we can settle outside our core. We do still have another 4-5 cities to settle at our core as well.

I recall a certain partner throwing down the gauntlet to get 18 cities by T100 in another game, and that worked out pretty well. Our economy's largely stabilized - we're breaking even at ~55% slider and we don't have a single market up. Someone once said to me if you're economy isn't crashing you're not expanding hard enough, so... we've got 10 cities to settle... think we can do it in 25T?

Re: NAPs, this might be a good time to extend with plako. We've already lost all the settling battles with him, so better to extend while he's at war with WK and maybe he'll be feeling like he'd like a secure flank should the fighting go on. Might want to think about extending with Locke as well - BEFORE we get a city on that parcel there. Hopefully that will steer him towards Adlain while we build up the empire. Make sure we don't mention at any point that we'll be planting 5 cities in what could arguably be called his sphere of influence.