RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Lord Parkin]

Just checked when the Oracle was built... Luddite finished it on turn 54. Factoring in the Forge build time and 34 turns of hiring an Engineer specialist (assuming he doesn't speed it up by contaminating the pool), there's no way he'll have a Great Engineer before turn 89, and most likely not until well into the 90's. That's good news for us, since it means that even if he wanted to, he wouldn't be able to rush-build the Pyramids before we could build it manually.

[Ellimist]

You say high-risk, but if you go for 50-50 twice you'll get at least one scientist 75% of the time. And as you've said... Even the other 25% option isn't so bad.
Of course, if you get the prophet first you can always revise the plan as well.

[Lord Parkin]

Message from Nakor:

Hi LP,
I think we talked about most things in our chat earlier today. We've met Moogle as well and are moving towards Luddite.

Plako is a problem, but we have good relations with him, so let's hope things stay that way untill we can do something about him.

Let's keep exchanging usefull information!

Kind regards,
Nakor

[Lord Parkin]

You say high-risk, but if you go for 50-50 twice you'll get at least one scientist 75% of the time. And as you've said... Even the other 25% option isn't so bad.
Of course, if you get the prophet first you can always revise the plan as well.

Well, I mean it's high-risk relative to the 100% chance you get from only hiring Scientists. The point is, there's a small but reasonable chance you won't get a Scientist from two 50% gambles, which would leave you a bit in the poo in that case.

And that's true, the plan can always be revised after the first Great Person arrives. Actually, I just had another thought - if we tried for the 50% Scientist in two cities simultaneously (say Evermore and Felidae), this would give us the first great person (assuming 200 GPP) in 17 turns, and the second (300 GPP) only ~10 turns after that in the other city. Of course, the downside here is that this would leave 8 tiles unworked around those two cities, and stunt future growth in both of them for a while. This would put us a bit behind on cottage development at those cities. We could plan for it though, and use worker turns elsewhere over this time.

The benefit of getting the early great people isn't small, especially if we have the Pyramids when we're working all the specialists. Not sure if it's worth it if we don't have the Pyramids and the first Great Person happens to be a Scientist though, because then all the GPP from the second city aren't worth as much (compared to the relative benefit if we'd been working cottages all that time). Hmm. But if we don't get the Scientist first, then we'll want to try again anyway, which would take even more time compared to having a second city with almost all the GPP already generated.

Need to think about this a bit. Any further lurker thoughts would be appreciated.

[Lord Parkin]

So, the big news this turn is that Sunrise/Rego got the Great Lighthouse. Not completely unexpected, but still interesting. Could work out well for us if we end up warring with him at some point (considering he's our eastern neighbour across the sea). Then again, with the amount of land on this map, I'm not sure if we can realistically expect to finish a war before the point where the Great Lighthouse obsoletes. Ah well.

Settler finished in the capital, and will arrive at the Copper spot in 2 turns, founding our fifth city in 3 turns. We might actually be at par with plako in terms of city count for a brief period, if he doesn't found yet another one before then.



Work Boat finished in Magadan, heading to hook up the Fish at Evermore in 2 turns. Workers are mining the second Gold, and will finish hooking it up next turn.

Switched to working 2 Priests at Magadan. Our first Great Prophet is now on schedule for turn 76.

Evermore and Magadan can both produce a Warrior in 1 turn, but I decided to shift forward the Granary and Barracks in those cities. Saves us upkeep costs on the Warriors when we don't actually need them. I'll switch back to the Warriors before the 10-turn period of no hammer decay is up.



Max has finished revealing all the other tiles immediately west of our capital. We didn't find any other resources... bit of a shame, but oh well.



Joe keeps exploring down south.



Bob will explore SE for a couple of turns, heading back to SleepingMoogle in time for turn 66 when we should be able to sign Open Borders if we don't find a passage down there.

[Lord Parkin]

One minor decision that's coming up soon: we have the option to chop out the forest under the Fur city before the capital's borders expand for +8 hammers, or delay the founding of the Fur city for 1 turn to get the forest into the capital's borders and increase the yield to +13 hammers from the chopped forest (instead of +8 ).

So basically, is a turn's delay on founding city #6 worth an extra 5 hammers in the capital? I think I'm leaning towards "no", but I'd be interested to hear what the lurkers think.

[Lord Parkin]

Oh, and sticking with the cat city naming theme, I'm kind of tempted to call city #6 "Furball".

However, I think I won't because I don't like names that hint to other civs about what resources I have.

[Irgy]

On the whole, how competitive a date do you expect T82 (on quick) to be for the Pyramids? Keeping in mind there's no stone.

Are you intending the Pyramids and the Hanging Gardens, or just the Pyramids? If the two are built in different cities then they don't particularly clash with each other, although the cost to expansion of building two expensive wonders without doubler resources, while also running an excessive number of specialists, sure sounds like it would be quite high.

It's hard to judge though. The amount of space freely available on the map might encourage economy-ruining overexpansion anyway.

On the whole, you seem to be at the front of the pack for expansion, despite having taken a detour to build Stonehenge. My personal guess is that you've just played more efficiently than some of your rivals. The happiness benefits of Charismatic are not to be sneezed at either. Stonehenge will continue to pay off well into the future in terms of keeping up your expansion rate.

[Lord Parkin]

On the whole, how competitive a date do you expect T82 (on quick) to be for the Pyramids? Keeping in mind there's no stone.

We've actually got normal speed in this game, not quick. On normal speed, turn 82 is 825 BC, which is a pretty reasonable date for getting to the Pyramids in my experience. I doubt any non-Industrious leader could get to them that early on this map (given that we're fairly certain there's no Stone whatsoever), so it's just down to the Industrious leaders. Luddite's only expressed vague interest, and I think I could talk him out of it. (I don't think he could afford to build it manually anyway, when according to him he's planning on building the Temple of Artemis and Colossus as well.) SleepingMoogle wasn't interested when we mentioned it. That only leaves Mackoti... guess I'll have to have a chat with him soon and feel him out there. If Mackoti's not planning on going for the Pyramids, then I really don't see how anyone else could beat us to it.

Are you intending the Pyramids and the Hanging Gardens, or just the Pyramids?

I was considering both, not yet fully settled on either though.

If the two are built in different cities then they don't particularly clash with each other, although the cost to expansion of building two expensive wonders without doubler resources, while also running an excessive number of specialists, sure sounds like it would be quite high.

Actually it'd be quite nice to build them in the same city if we could, given that they both produce Great Engineer points, which would be quite sweet if we could manage it. However, the problem comes in terms of available forests to chop... I don't think any city has enough forests to chop out both wonders, and only the capital could produce wonders manually in a decent amount of time. So I'm not sure if we can realistically expect to build both in the same city.

It's also a very valid argument that building two expensive wonders (well, HG isn't that expensive in itself, but requires an Aqueduct), plus running eight specialists might be overkill. It would certainly slow expansion down to almost a halt. I think realistically we'll need to strike at least one of those options off our plate so we don't drag our expansion down too much - the question is what to get rid of.

It's hard to judge though. The amount of space freely available on the map might encourage economy-ruining overexpansion anyway.

Yeah. One advantage to not expanding too much early on (at least beyond our initial 6 cities) is that we won't drag our economy down too much. If we keep expanding at our current rate, it's going to take much longer to get to techs like Maths, which is going to in turn reduce our chances at the Hanging Gardens. So maybe taking the time for a bit of a "breather" wouldn't be such a bad thing. I'm just worried that Plako or Nakor might take that Gold site down south before we can. Guess it wouldn't be the end of the world if they did, but it'd be a shame to lose such a great potential front city.

On the whole, you seem to be at the front of the pack for expansion, despite having taken a detour to build Stonehenge. My personal guess is that you've just played more efficiently than some of your rivals.

That's my guess too. Some were busy with other things, sure - Luddite building the Oracle and Rego building the Great Lighthouse meant those two were naturally stuck with fewer cities for longer. WarriorKnight of course lost one to Plako. As for most of the others though, I'm not sure what's going on.

SleepingMoogle is probably the biggest mystery to me - the guy is Creative (free border pops for all new cities), and has expressed an interest in building the Hanging Gardens (he's Industrious too). So you'd think he has every reason to be expanding as fast as he can right now. Yet he's still stuck at three cities when we're about to found our fifth! Hardly seems like optimal play, at least from where I'm standing. I've noticed a Chariot in one of his front cities, which surely he doesn't need this early on... guess that's what he's wasting some of his production on. Maybe reading his thread after the game's done will reveal some master plan, but I'm beginning to doubt it. Like a lot of the other players, he just doesn't seem to be expanding aggressively enough. Oh well, good for us I guess.

The happiness benefits of Charismatic are not to be sneezed at either. Stonehenge will continue to pay off well into the future in terms of keeping up your expansion rate.

Indeed, I'm looking forward to taking full advantage of those two extra happy citizens in every city in the future.

[Lord Parkin]

For some amusement while I wait for the next turn to roll around, I decided to figure out which threads had the greatest "interest ranking" for the number of posts. The way I did this was to simply tally up the number of thread views and thread replies at the present moment in time, divide the former by the latter, and compare the numbers to find out who had the greatest number of views per post. Of course, it's not an entirely accurate method of indicating interest (it biases a bit against the thread spammers and biases in favour of the lazy bastards who hardly update ), but I thought I'd share the results anyway. Theoretically it does accurately give the number of times each post in a thread has been read by someone. Hopefully the numbers amuse some of you.

#1: Mackoti (55.8 views per post)
#2: Locke (50.8 views per post)
#3: Adlain (42.9 views per post)
#4: Luddite (40.3 views per post)
#5: SleepingMoogle (40.3 views per post)
#6: Plako (37.3 views per post)
#7: WarriorKnight (36.4 views per post)
#8: Nakor (33.0 views per post)
#9: Sunrise (31.6 views per post)
#10: Lord Parkin (24.0 views per post)

I'm definitely losing the "interest race" by a long shot, at least by this method of calculation. I'm even behind the Tech Issues thread, which comes after Sunrise if you put it in the rankings (30.8 views per post). For anyone curious, the Lurker thread would come in between SleepingMoogle and Plako if it were on the list (38.1 views per post).

Righto, I'm off to do something useful now.