[spoilers] - Pindicator's Industrial March Madness!

[pindicator]

Yeah, my idea about exploring with an early boat is probably too cute to be good.

One last thing we need to discuss: technology! Scientific Method seems like a popular target for people, whether they take it to Communism or Physics to get the first-of bonuses. I'm considering a different approach: what do you think about heading straight for Assembly Line and trying to build Pentagon?

[pindicator]

Turn 250

Well, we have enough information to play the first turn at least.

Revolted to new civics:



And moved the units as we discussed:




I want to chop the forest SE of the capital first, since that will speed up movement to the Corn/Iron city. Was debating between using the worker turn between a turn into a cottage on the FP or a road on the grass forest. Decided to go with the cottage, though I didn't really map out unit micro that far in advance so who knows if that was right.

Research set for Steam Power.

Naming theme: Russian Composers. Was going to do Russian Military Marches, but that seemed a bit too obscure.

Rimsky-Korsakov I'll always know from the John Thompson piano lesson books that I used as a child. They had a piano transcription of Hymn to the Sun, but I think I like hearing it better as a duet:

[pindicator]

Turn 251

I moved the scouts, but not anything else yet:




The Sheep/Wheat/Iron city doesn't look like it needs any changes, but do the new resources in the southeast change where we put the Corn/iron city? I don't think it does actually. But since we sitll have 24 hours to play I wanted to post it here in case you saw something.

[mackoti]

Turn 251

I moved the scouts, but not anything else yet:




The Sheep/Wheat/Iron city doesn't look like it needs any changes, but do the new resources in the southeast change where we put the Corn/iron city? I don't think it does actually. But since we sitll have 24 hours to play I wanted to post it here in case you saw something.

I think cities can remain the same.

[pindicator]

We were last so I finished the turn, and then played the next. Composite image of everything after cities were planted and explorers moved:




EDIT: The stitching program cut off the bubble, but there's also a corn 2N of the horse in the east.

Cui I had not heard of before, but apparently he put a lot of Pushkin's poems to music.



And I can only put one video per post, so you'll have to wait until next post to listen to Mussorgsky. (I'm pretty sure you've all heard him before though, even if you don't know it now.)

[pindicator]

So I'm finally really digging into the micro a bit, and what I'm thinking is that we should revolt to our religion right away and just eat the turn of anarchy early. I know that doesn't sound ideal, but workers will still be improving bonus resource tiles during that time -- so the turn we lose to anarchy will be a turn that we're still improving the pigs at the capital and the wheat at Cui. (The sheep at Cui and the corn at Mussorgsky will have been finished, however.) Because those two improvements will finish the next turn, after the anarchy, both Cui and the capital will grow back to size 3 on the same turn had we not revolted.

Benefits would be having 2xp on every unit that is built - and also the happiness, if we think that is going to be a problem. Considering how fast the capital is going to be growing, I'm pretty sure we're going to hit that happy cap soon enough. Drawback would be losing that initial food, and while we may not lose any turns growing to size 3, we might in future growth.


And also, I promised Mussorgsky (this one's a bit longer!):

[pindicator]

Here's a sandbox that I made based off what Brick gave us. Unfortunately the world size is all wrong, and so are the maintenance costs, but the first tech is going to take some time regardless.

[pindicator]

No, the more I think about it revolting to a religion is not the way to go about it. We'll get +2 happy from the gold and sugar each, which will put us up to 8 pop, and we can even build a theater and run the culture slider at 10% for two more if we like.

What I did realize was i've chopped the wrong forest. There's no need to send a worker down to Mussorgsky and so it would have been much better to chop the plains forest and then move the worker up to help Cui out. I was pure-occupied with connecting the cities for trade routes - which is good, but not as important as getting the tiles together.

I also should have built a road with the worker that did go to Cui. But I haven't been all that excited to do the micro for this game - which means I'm only now starting to dig into it and find these issues. Hopefully I'm on track now and will find them before I play the turns.

Speaking of which, the turn has rolled and the scouts have moved. I'm looking ahead at builds after we whip out the worker force, and it seems libraries are the most important building to make first -- except the capital needs a work boat first, and it might make sense to build a theater in Mussorgsky so we get the sheep in our culture faster (it's like 4 turns I think), and Cui isn't going to be much of a college city so perhaps we build an explorer there first to get more scouting in.

Also Cui is where religion pops every time in the sandbox, which makes sense because Mussorgsky is whipped to size 1, so that would let us build a monastery right after the Explorer.

I'll play later, want to do some more micro work first.

[pindicator]

Turn 256

We met BGN, out in the east. You can just make his borders out in the fog:




He's about 20 tiles away, and his explorer hasn't found us yet.

We are up to 8 workers, and all the initial whipping is over:



Right now workers are improving the wheat by Cui, the pigs at the capital, and the gold at the capital. At size 3 the capital will be working the netted Crabs, the Pigs, and the Gold, and still able to grow at a good clip.

Religions came in this turn, and Cui landed Confucianism. With my sandbox landing religion in Cui as well, and Cui being more of a production city, I decided to build a cheap explorer there, to better understand the lay of the land, and so we can switch to a monastery. Perhaps this is a knee-jerk reaction from being burned with a lack of exploration in other games I've played. Also, I'm not quite sure what to build in Cui while it grows... Monastery seems nice now.

Mussorgsky is building a theatre because I want to pop it's borders and get to the sheep ASAP. That means a pair of artists as soon as the theater is done, but it will end up being 6 turns faster than building a library and waiting for borders to pop. And finally, the capital is doing a work boat to hook up the crabs, then we'll build as many commerce multiplier buildings as we can.



The question I'm having a hard time with is: when do we build the first settler? At 320 hammers it's a huge investment.

[mackoti]

Grow to size 7-8 and chop forests into them and whip them whenis posible.A 3 population cty with near all infra is realy worth.