[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Dreylin]

Some mini-rant about RNG luck?

[Krill]

I suck at statistics, but I'm surprised so many warriors have been killed. Given those numbers, sure we should lose a couple of units.

I still feel sore over the 99.4% loss though. That cost 30 hammers for the chariot and 20 gold more from Mids fail gold. The second chariot is just a general "Fuck you" from the RNG that happens every game.

No, it's the chariot suiciding on flatland like this:

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

You can't do much with the dry/flat tundra. Maybe hope for a forest spread?

[Krill]

All the forests will be chopped, although I can see a point in not chopping the last forest and saving it for a lumber mill.

[Krill]

Two quick turn reports.

Turn 98

Met Cairo. He offered OB, I initially rejected then reoffered: I don't want to annoy him if I reach his borders and then reoffer when it suits me, and he says fuck off. Best case I find him in a few turns with the southern workboat with a straight path to his coastal city and I get another 12 commerce per turn.

superjm has run straight to CoL as I previously discussed, but did not pop the GP. Donovan did that, for all it's worth.

[Krill]

Turn 99.

Bigger turn. superjm got the drop on me:




He must have dropped the chariot on the grass forest 1SW of my warrior, and moved the galley around the FoW to get there. So he has tried to be sneaky. He could raze AM next turn, but he loses the opportunity to scout. If he had made his mind up to be aggressive immediately there would be a second unit. Nothing to do but wait and see: I could have tried to bribe him with a furs offer but it's meaningless.





Lewwyn will be met next turn. A much better dining opportunity.





Barb city to the east, OH to the west, Cairo has to be down here somewhere. OH got Circumnavigation this turn. More of a problem for everyone else really.





Out of revolt. Not that expensive, really.





I really need more military, I can't even hold the line as I have no spare units. Going to have to change priorities again, I need a good city on military, and it will have to be BCR.

[Dreylin]

How long has superjm been around; you think he's new enough to poke the bear? I'd guess he's more likely to scout you out ahead of a Praet attack.

Esp. given trade routes.

[Krill]

That's what I'm thinking. He has played in a few EitB games and did he play PB40? He turned up to scout, not to war. He has do at 30/0 in his favour as I should just reach 300/300 on turn role with OH. Trade routes he only hadith me, so I am giving him 12 commerce per turn minimum, up to 24.

We'll see though.

[Krill]

Turn 100 State of the Empire (or not)

I played T100 last night, and it was a little weird. I said I wasn't going to do a full reports as I did one on T97, and I'll stick with that.





Barb city spawned between turns, and I immediately checked the contents. We now have an opportunity to get the 8XP chariot to 10XP and unlock the HE. I can attack without healing the chariot, and will have 96.5% odds of winning, or I can heal and attack at 98.7% odds.

I will heal the chariot and attack with it on T103. The C1 chariot can attack T101 at 95.8% odds, and the axe can attack on T102 at over 99.5% odds. I will resettle the city on T105, and the barb city will have no effect on improving the gems or chopping the sugar.

I could tempt fate and say that this is a massive amount of good fortune, as there is no other way that barbs could spawn on this landmass...but we've lost battles with 99.4% odds once this game.





One iron.





Two iron. Both in cities that needed hammers. More good fortune, which makes me think that something horrible is about to happen.





Met Lewwyn, offered OB, I doubt he accepts but we'll see. 7 cities and Colossus.






With the barb city popping, I think I may struggle to get a chariot into the galley. I know I can get a scout, but a chariot is difficult unless I build one in LBJ. I will look at this next turn. Going to whip a galley from JJ for scouting the islands to the south, and that galley should be able to send a chariot/scout pair to superjms island (as BCR should be able to build those units in time to load at City R around T108.

Note the Espionage slider. I've considered running 10% slider to get OH to look at his slider and equalize where we both have tech vision, and catch up on superjm, but I decided against it this turn. Going to see if OH realizes he has tech visibility and reallocates his EP. If he doesn't then I will run the slider at 10% in a few turns.





T100, 8 cottages worked, 2 built and unworked. This is shit.





So long as OH has OB, he will have an opportunity to run a stack of fastmovers through 3S, declare war, and have them on the wrong side of the front city. I need to keep this in mind, it looks more and more that I am going to have to fill out the entire continent ASAP to stop those shenanigans from occurring. Excluding the settlers already in production, I require a further 9 settlers.





Redux.





Little bit of micro. Avoid growth this turn, stagnate next turn and give up the pig, and T102 turn off avoid growth, grow into the happy from the gems, eot102 growth@7, food box 18/34, Market 70/150. T103 work what tiles are available, expected growth@8 eot106.





T100 lose 3 food, but finish the worker eot100. T101 steal the pig, deer, work farm and copper, avoid growth, food box 28/28. eot102, avoid growth off, work same tiles, growth@5 food box 23/30, eot103, give back deer, work pig, farm copper, 2 cottages growth@6 food box 15/32. T104 give pig back to ITM.

Trying to maximise growth between the two cities, if I am chasing MoM.





The current demographics are with no wealth builds except LBJ, which is hiding overflow behind it.

Calendar is a 3 turn tech at maximum research, but we need over 300 gold to afford that. Calendar eot108 is very much attainable, and given that workers roading to site G can road the incense, and there are 3 workers around WB that could be seconded to improve the incense, that could be hooked 3 turns after researching Calendar with little difficulty. Improving the sugar is more difficult if I am using 2 workers to get Smashing Thirds up to speed, but as cities need to grow into one happy and then the second, a single worker can improve the sugar in 5 turns anyway, it's not a huge deal. It just would have been nicer to improve sugar a bit quicker and grow into the happy from incense afterwards. Needs must though.

[Krill]

Turn 101

This post is not for you. It's for me, because I've spent the last 2 hours trying to figure out how to manage the 12 workers I have when I need 20. It's mostly worker micro and how to get more workers.

And barb killing. Yes, I killed a barb this turn:







Clean kill. I retreated into culture with the chariot to save on costs, axe is up next. Axe is a safer backup, it has the promo in reserve for healing in case the HE candidate fluffs it.

Also, I misremembered 3S food bar, it did have one more food than I thought, so work boat eot102 and fish can be hooked T105.

Scouting:










Lewwyn accepted OB but I only have trade routes to his discovered city. I don't know why, but I shouldn't need any further OB now, just waiting to get Lewwyns full complement of routes, same for Cairo, and that should be something like 25 foreign intercontinental trade routes. OT4E won't give OB, Gav I don't have a trade route to.

If that barb city was around in 30 turns it would be an interesting option to try and reach for it, but I don't think it will be around that long, OH or someone nearby (Cairo? Superdeath?) will have it.




Sorry guys, worker micro time.

Worker on grass hill roads T103. Worker on flood plains T104, incense road complete T105. Worker 13 whipped in MtK T102, roads grass land 2S of city T104. W13 road/cancels grass land north of forest T105, then moves 3-4 to check the plains forest is clear T106. Road completed T108. The two worker stack cottages the grassland 2S of MtK T106-T107, then splits and finishes the grassland road T108, and dumps a turn into a chop on the plains forest west of the cow with the other worker. The settler from AM is whipped T105, and is on the horse T107. T108 move to the plains forest, and then T109 the three workers road the plains tile and starts to road the corn, and settler moves to the hill.

T110, before settling finish the corn, finish the road, settle, double farm the corn. T111 finish the corn farm, T112 move one worker to the only inner ring forest and then retreat the other two workers to MtK.

City will grow eot114, forest is chopped T115, whip T116 for the granary, and then regrow eot119 with a full food box. Grass hill is mined T120 with a total of 10 hammers in the box. Given lack of inner ring tiles to work, plan to whip at size 3 after growth eot122 with 22 hammers accumulated. Barracks could be whipped T125, for border pop eot135 or a library could be whipped after growth to size 4 (roughly eot130 for border pop at the same time). Barracks is better, starts the whip timer sooner, and can then grow to size 4 and double whip something else (which is a worker unless military is more pressing because I'm never going to have enough workers).

The reality is this area is relatively crap and I don't see OH caring that much for me having it, except for the fact he just needs land, and this is land. But I'm going to overflow into a spear from the MtK worker whip and complete that eot104 to back up the settler plant. It's not worth the effort to build more to hold this area IMO, and it's not worth for OH to spend more resources on fighting me when he does have land to colonize, and he needs to push to Currency. He isn't close, I should be able to settle City G around the time he reaches Currency IMO, and if he is focussing on Currency he is not going to be focused on increasing his costs. All the same, the chariot scouting OH will be in his western front city around T107 so I'll know what is happening, and unless his scouting chariot runs to MtK, he won't know as I'm running that road down in his FoW.

I need a further settler for City F, but I'm having difficulty with settlers and workers atm. This game is low, and we all need more workers, settlers, military and tech.





OK, this is where I start to really fuck up the game. I'm not even sure where to start.

I need workers to cottage ITM. There are no cities that can build them quickly enough except Kalamazoo, which can't build them quickly enough without keeping the pig. On T104, Kalamazoo is size 6 with a minimum 15 food in the box. I'll come back to this in a moment.

I need scouts and chariots to dump onto galleys. I have one galley currently heading west, which is currently 2N of WB, so will be 1N of the City X location on T103. I cannot get a chariot into the galley, but I can get another scout onto the galley from LBJ. I'll complete that scout eot102, which would be too slow, but it can load onto the galley T105, so on T104 the galley can only move one tile, an acceptable compromise. Withdrawing the scout that is barb busting gives the second scout, which means I need another scout to replace the barb buster. Kalamazoo can build that scout eot103 and overflow 6 hammers, this scout will be on the grass hill T105 so there is no break in the coverage.

So T104 I can have 6 overflow hammers and a size 6 city. Given ITM needs the pig to finish the market and still grow to size 8, I can't use the pig immediately, but Kalamazoo may be able to take it around T107, at a push might be able to squeeze T106. Working no food resource, only the grass farm, I can get Kalamazoo to 20 base hpt and -4 fpt, or 12 base hpt and 0fpt; swapping the pig for grass farm saves 3 food  for the max hammers setup. Add in the 6 overflow hammers, that would give a worker eot106 and eot108, running max hammers for 3 turns and food neutral for 2 turns, at a cost of between 3 and 12 food to the Kalamazoo food box, food that will need to be repaid by ITM once ITM hits the happy cap.

ITM only has 7 cottages, however TX has to use one to avoid starvation whilst finishing the second GS, LBJ only has 4 improved tiles including a plains cottage to work unless it continues to grow the capital cottage, and Kalamazoo needs to work the remaining two capital cottages to the north when ITM isn't, just so that has tiles to work as well. So I need cottages everywhere, but it makes more sense to get more capital cottages, continue to grow the ones that are overlap[ping, and get ITM to grow onto new ones.

Back to the scouts: I need another scout and chariot for the eastern galley that I'm about to whip from JJ. Am can't build a chariot in time, and I'd rather build that from BCR so I may get lucky and be able to promote that to sentry if I come across a barb somewhere, so AM will dump overflow to finish a scout eot106. BCR finishes a settler eot102, but then it needs to find 16 food to grow to size 6 and also needs to finish a chariot by eot106 to be able to reach the galley. Given BCR picks up the deer on T103 it makes 12hpt and grows eot106, and there are 4 hammers overflow from the settler, the chariot will finish eot105, and then BCR can build an archer and axe for City R. I need to prepare BCR for HE: if that is unlocked T103, if that chariot doesn't lose a 98% battle, then Lit becomes much more important. But even with HE potentially available, I have no cities that are capable of building military, and I'm still expecting Kalamazoo to build MoM even after I cripple it for 5 turns.

And I've not even started to think about where to build Wealth to get Calendar within the expected timeframe. All of the core cities are on other jobs, on settlers, workers and some military. Sure I should get a city capture, but that's barely going to pay for the costs of having the attacking military units outside my borders for the turns taken to capture it!

I'm going to have to look at this every turn, to work out the amount of gold needed to finish Calendar, but the only city not allocated a job is LBJ after the scout: it grows eot102 into the gems happiness, and it needs to be whipped to keep the pop down, and even then, it can make at best 7hpt into wealth whilst growing into unhappiness. More likely I have to grow it to size 5 and then prepare a triple whip into a settler, another city to sink worker turns I don't have into. I can probably squeeze a few turns of wealth building in, and a triple whip would land roughly T109.

Depending on the delays to Currency, the workers form Kalamazoo could cottage both river plains riles, and then be available to plantation the incense on T112, without moving the workers from anywhere else: with the workers retreating from City G, that would mean 2 worker turns T112, and 4 on T113, so it can be hooked by T114 at the latest. I think that I can get Calendar at breakeven by T110 though, but that's before I drop another 3 cities down. The three workers about to hook the corn at WB. I think I am going to have to split the workers: I can use the worker on the grassland to farm/cancel the corn on T102, then move the forest south of LBJ T103, chop finishes T106 to enable triple whip T107, to keep the whip timer on countdown. Then I can burn a solitary worker turn and get onto the incense to start improving it from T108, or I can wait and chop the grassland forest T109 for MtK and improve the incense on T111.

The worker on the sugar should have that chopped on T107, to start improving T108, improved T112. The reality is I can't get any workers down here fast enough: the worker built eot106 in Kalamazoo would not reach the sugar until T111: I have to sacrifice getting the second gems hooked if I want it any faster.

I need to see how fast ITM needs to reach size 9. If it does not have the pig, it should not reach there before eot111, and Kalamazoo really needs the pig to refill the foodbox, and reach size 8 for MoM. And in that case, I don't need to rush Calendar ASAP, I just need it by T110.

My reckoning: I'm going to get another settler out of ITM to stagnate growth and still work the cottages.

This isn't even half the micro I've got running around my mind: I need to remember I can settle the City C location on T117 onwards, because that is when TX pops borders and brings to forests into range to chop the library, to pop borders to get the fish. But I have to wait a turn, because settling City C surrounds the third forest with culture on all sides, and that's the final forest to finish the library chop, but I need workers for that, and a settler, and a workboat from TX 3 turns after the City C library finishes.





OH, change your damned EP allocation.