[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

Turn 281

I'm gonna do this in two parts. I'll do a normal report, and then I'll do a post of each city screen during the golden age.





Before.



After. The food drop is due to running a bunch of scientists at Cotton Gin, which we'll get to later.



Scouting out this south island. I guess I should have moved in a way to defog that east food tile first.



Our poor explorer better get comfortable. He's going to be camping here for a bit.



Donovan settled two cities on this most recent turn. One of them is here. Don't know where the other one is yet, but it's not near us.



Our core 3 cities are making important things while our two newest cities are growing like weeds. FWIW, our gold saving is a full 30 gpt higher than that if we aren't working all those scientists.

City tour next!

[scooter]

The crown jewel. That's a 4T settler with very little overflow. In fact, that's a 4T settler even with 0 overflow with plenty to spare. The overflow is what's going to allow us to build a Gren AND another settler in the following 4 turns.



Telegraph isn't too shabby itself for not having a levee/bureau bonus to help it out. Telegraph will probably alternate between settlers and military for the forseeable future.



Scientist here for Scientific Method. The bulb should happen on T285.



This city rules. It'll probably be roughly our second best city by the time this golden age completes. It'll unquestionably be our second-best city in the next 15T. Levee will complete in 3 turns.



This will be one of the fastest growing cities I've ever had in a game of Civ4. The artist is serving a dual purpose here. 1) Keep the GPP pool clean so we can bulb Communism and 2) keep the cultural level up so that we have a secure border with Donovan.


Any questions?

[Jabah]

Impressive !!

You could do even better if you accept to starve Steam Power for a little while during 4t needed for CG to get the GA, you could drop the crabs for the watermill SSW and gain 7hpt (after multipliers) while losing 3 food per turn.

(edit the first part because swapping just a random workshop or the incense for the watermill doesn't work well with multipliers)

[scooter]

Yeah, the thought crossed my mind, but we're 37h short of finishing this settler in 3T instead of 4, so that only gets us about halfway. Maybe it would speed the second settler, but that's a lot of food to give up for a much later return. We do still want to grow this city, so the food loss isn't trivial.


Sullla - yeah, totally understand the hesitance on the loan idea. It's probably too much risk for too little gain.

[scooter]

Popped into the game just to take a look around for a few, and I noticed something.



I spy a circumnavigation boat. That's pretty much the perfect person to get it. 1) Not our neighbor and 2) Not REM.

[Sullla]

Agreed, BGN is about the best person possible to have picked up the circumnavigation bonus from our perspective. Not a neighbor and not likely to be one of the stronger teams going forward.

I noticed something else important in the event logger this turn:



BGN finished Communism research this turn and adopted State Property civic. That was expected, since he picked up the second Great Artist specialist a few turns ago and there's no reason to go Scientific Method first unless you're planning to head to Communism second. It was a big turn for our trailing teams, with BGN discovering Communism and founding his fourth city, along with Donovan planting two additional cities. This should improve our own ETA for Communism research slightly via the known civ bonus; we will now likely be able to finish the tech with our own Great Artist lightbulb on Turn 291, although I'll have to do more simming to know for sure.

Another small item of interest: Dreylin and BGN have Open Borders with one another to take advantage of foreign trade routes. Hopefully we'll be able to sign a similar deal with one of them (or some other team; REM is also going for Communism tech right now) when our own research is done and we give up Mercantilism.

For anyone who's curious, pindicator remains the only team that hasn't discovered any techs. That's the Aggressive/Charismatic combo at work, I'd imagine.



A few notes on logistics. I moved the grenadier out of Telegraph this turn, heading down to Cotton Gin. No one should have a Commando unit yet, and if we can't protect a location in the dead center of our territory from attack, the game is over. We should be fine to leave Telegraph empty for the moment. The logic is to have the Cotton Gin rifle shuffle over to Steam Power, and the Steam Power rifle cover our workers when they leave our borders and start roading to the southeast towards pindicator. (Try to keep those actions hidden from pindicator if you can, he has an explorer in the area poking around. Might be impossible though.)

The galleon needs to be on the yellow dot tile at the end of Turn 284 / beginning of Turn 285. We can poke around to the east next turn with our galleon and see if pindicator has planted a city in the contested zone, then still make it back to that tile. The rifle for our island city will be coming over from Radio; it sits in the city this turn, then moves along the dotted path to hop onboard the ship on Turn 285, unloading the next turn on the island along with a worker and settler. We'll probably do a return trip for two more workers and another military unit; have to sandbox that out a bit more.

We're actually #1 in GNP at 0% science right now. Yes, Golden Age with a ton of Scientist specialists on a tech with double prerequisites, but still pretty cool.

[Dp101]

Oh, I have another question. Do you feel that your economy gets a bigger or smaller boost from a golden age when compared to a golden age's effect on any other type of economy?

[scooter]

Turn 282

I didn't take as many pictures as I thought, but there wasn't a whole lot happening.



When I first moved the Galleon I was nervous seeing his culture this far over, and then I realized it's from this spot down by the deer. That's still a very far away plant. I scrolled through his Civstats, and it looks like he actually captured a barb city several turns ago (point increase in line with sz2 and not sz3), so my guess is this was it.



Donovan spent a couple EPs on us last turn for whatever reason. I don't really get that, so I dropped 1EP onto him this turn to get our graphs back if it was a 1T thing. If he keeps spending on us, well that'll be pretty obnoxious.



The selected rifle (between copper and horse) is headed east now according to plan.

Pindicator is watching us on both sides with his two explorers. I can't help but wonder if he's going to race us to that mainland spot. If so, that's life, we'll just have to snag something else. I don't think we necessarily want to swap things up and try to race him, because if he decides to call us on it and attack, we wouldn't be able to really stop him from just taking it. So to me it seems best to just proceed according to plan (settling the island spot next), and we'll get whatever we get to the southeast. Agree with this?

[scooter]

Oh, I have another question. Do you feel that your economy gets a bigger or smaller boost from a golden age when compared to a golden age's effect on any other type of economy?

I've always felt the extra hammer boost during a golden age is more valuable than the extra commerce boost. 1 hammer is generally more valuable than 1 commerce in most phases of the game. In this setup, hammers are even more valuable than normal. So I'd say it's a very slightly bigger boost than normal.

[Sullla]

That does look like a barb city capture by pindincator, and it would explain why that one city keeps popping up on the city list with the "Liberate" tag. I'll hold off on reiterating all of the same complaints from earlier when Donovan captured the barbarian city, it's just a real shame that this luck factor has gotten thrown into an otherwise outstanding game setup.

Scooter, does that pindicator city change our own plans for settling that #3 location? I don't think that it does. We should be able to win the cultural war for the sheep tile pretty easily if we control the fish tile (lots of Artist specialists via Caste System) and the lake/channel combination would form a pretty fair border between our two civs. Obviously this assumes that the area remains available 7 turns from now when we'll be planning to settle, but I think we claim the same spot if it's there. Do you see anywhere else you'd rather go instead?

I agree with the island spot to the north taking precedence over the eastern spot with pindicator. We'll get the best spot available over there, and it's not crucial exactly where that may be.

The larger issue for this turn: I continue to be worried about an attack from Dreylin/OT4E. They're piling up more and more units, and they have way more than they need to defend themselves. They've built barracks in their three core cities, and they swapped into Theocracy civic this turn. I don't think them attacking us right now would make a lot of strategic sense, but this is OT4E we're talking about here. He has a reputation of doing that sort of thing. Reasons why we might be at risk:

* Dreylin/OT4E have our bar graphs, and we're a lot lower in Power right now
* Dreylin's team has Open Borders with BGN, making BGN less of a target
* Dreylin's team has an active resource trade with Donovan, making Donovan less of a target

The only other team near them is Gaspar/Noble, and that's where Dreylin's team is spending their EP right now, so maybe they are the target (?) Or perhaps it's still Donovan, and that resource trade was part of the forced peace from earlier. I don't know. I think we've both discussed this before, and we agree that it's better to run some risk and keep settling instead of going max protection and cranking out units. Our borders at the capital will expand next turn for a bit more vision over the water, and our explorer will be able to watch the water southwest of Cotton Gin for incoming ships starting next turn. If we would get attacked, we can crank out units really fast through swaps into some combination of Slavery/Nationhood/UniSuff. And we are an Aggressive leader in a Golden Age too...

So I don't think we do anything differently for the moment, but these turns are a bit stressful for the moment. I'm praying that we see "Dreylin has declared war on Donovan! Zoi!" in the event logger each turn.