Since there's been so much discussion of my capital:
![[Image: RBPB6-104s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB6/Sullla/RBPB6-104s.jpg)
Here you go. This city has been a stinking, unhealthy swamp of a city from the very moment of its creation, and that still hasn't changed now. Right now there's 24 points of unheathiness, and that's only going to get worse. Factory adds 1, coal plant adds 2, and iron works adds another 2 points. Fortunately, there's more health out there to grab as well. My workers are connecting deer (+1 health) and bananas (+2 with grocer) next turn. There's a settler en route to the clams and wines location as well, which is another +2 health combined. Don't forget that adding another happiness resource will also get rid of the unhappy face in this city, and add another point of food from working the young plains cottage tile. (I'm connecting silks in about 2-3 turns to fix that. Wasn't expecting war weariness to pop up unexpectedly.)
In total, this should just barely cover the unhealthiness from industrial pollution, and only because my civ is Expansive (thank god), this city is on fresh water (on the lake, not the river), and through possession of pretty much every health resource in the game. Everything other than sheep. It truly is a shame that this city isn't on a river, which would add 13 production (!!!!!!) if that river to the east extended one tile further south. Ah well. I know that there were even some suggestions in early game to plant this city around levee concerns, but early game strength trumps making the city better in the Industrial era.
We did get Steam Power on ending my turn, and Speaker has a lot of cities benefitting from levees. My civ somewhat less so, and sunrise not really at all. The extra worker movement speed will be really nice as a side benefit. And everyone has coal in plentiful supply, so no worries there.
In research power, I'm making 1400 beakers/turn, and Speaker is a little shy of 400/turn in his current Golden Age. With the 1.2x beaker multiplier for most techs, this means that our actual research rate is slightly over 2000 beakers/turn. I have tried to estimate the true research rate (post multipliers) for Team 3, and I think they are slightly over 1500/turn. I could be wrong on that but I do believe we are a bit faster than them. They are definitely within shouting distance. Keep in mind that they get the 7.5% bonus beakers for always researching a tech that we already have, which is indeed significant. Lurkers who can read their forum will be able to evalue how accurate that guess may be.
Team 3 discovered Liberalism tech on their turn, a bit of a curious choice. Although it's fairly cheap at this stage of the game, it's also almost a dead end tech with few practical uses. Did they want Free Speech civic? Maybe, but I feel like other choices would have been stronger. The only other reason to research Liberalism is the fact that it's a requirement for Communism/State Property. That could be a possible choice as well, but is State Property really that good on this map? It forces you to give up Mercantilism's free specialists, making it somewhat less appealing. Don't get me wrong, State Property would be a useful civic to have, but other paths on the tree feel stronger to me. Researching Liberalism keeps Team 3 two techs away from cavalry, and four techs away from factories.
As I see it, there are three critical techs in the Industrial Age:
1) Assembly Line: factories, power plants, infantry (the Bronze Working of the era, overpowered)
2) Railroads: incredible mobility, added tile production
3) Combustion: dominate the seas (swap #2 and #3 on water maps)
Nothing really compares to the power of factories, taking cities from their modest +25% bonus from forges and quadrupling that to +100% production. The fact that the next generation of military tech also arrives here is just silly. On Quick speed, you can build just about any unit in a large city in 1t with factories/power plants. And you can build infantry to their rifles. It's a game-winning tech. I thought it was beyond foolish in the Pitboss #4 game when Parkin totally ignored this tech when he had his crazy research advantage. We will not make the same mistake here.
Railroads then let every unit in your territory move faster than cavs, which makes defending extremely easy. Oh, you're going to attack me? Here, wait while I move in defenders from TEN TILES AWAY. Only gargantuan stacks can take cities at that point. Even better, Railroads grants the production bonus on mines and so synergizes perfectly with the factories/power plants going up at the same time. We will get the two techs back to back, and that should break open the game entirely. After 5-10 turns of building, we'll go on the offensive and never look back. Combustion simply allows you to do the same thing at sea, with destroyers/transports completely invincible against early wooden ships. This is one of the balance holes in Civ4 (destroyers should be strength 20, not strength 30) but you might as well take advantage of it.
As a result, we're going to ignore the Scientific Method line of techs completely, because everything else is just too darn good. We need Scientific Method for oil before Combustion, and that's about it. There's no corporations for this game, so no appeal in a lot of those techs. I have no idea if Team 3 is going for Communism tech or not, but I would regard that as a major mistake if true. Doing anything other than pushing for Assembly Line and Railroads right now would be a bit silly. They are just that good. We will have Assembly Line in 4t (it costs an insane 9000 beakers!) and then Railroads 3t after that.
First ironclads are hitting the water next turn! Woot! Fear those ironclads!
