[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 226–227: ENGLAND TAKES TWO

The golden age will be launched in only two more turns, but the Aztecs can wait while reinforcing their economy, still jealous of the Khmer's much earlier time of plenty. To ease this grudge, a deal of mutual advantage has been made between their empires: a trade of luxury goods in a sign of current goodwill. Over the pond England has settled two more cities, Coventry and Warwick. Warwick lies opposite Underwater Barb, and Coventry is implanted in England's southwest valleys, the twin sister of Masterclass, bringing the English grand total to seven. Three nations dot the Aztecs' roster of research visibility, who are now keen on retrieving detailed data of Byzantium's cities, being the staging sites of their most frightening opponent. The Ottomans are probably reaching for communism, but this will only be speculation for the immediate future as the Aztecs worry more about enemy designs on their soil. They still have no port on their southeastern shoreline to claim their own island of gold vis-à-vis Byzantium. The two countries being at a continual state of war, there is no doubt that neither side would hesitate to vex the other with an aggressive plant.

[scooter]

Turn 228

The plan is complicated, but we are definitely going to get 4 great people out of this golden age barring a math error. Knock on wood. 

Also, there are going to be some Big Huge Dice Rolls coming up for these great people. Here's the breakdown of what looks likely:

Pocketbeetle: 72% engineer, 28% scientist
Masterclass: 12% engineer, 88% scientist
Pilot: 100% merchant
Lurker Killer: 19% engineer, 81% scientist

Odds of Total Catastrophe (3 engineers): 1.6%
Odds of Bad Result (2 engineers): 13.6%
Odds of Triple Scientists: 20%
Odds of Expected Result (2 sci, 1 eng): 64.8%

I'll happy take either of the latter two options - so 85% chance of happy faces around here. I think I prefer the triple scientists, but an engineer is perfectly fine. 2 engineers would be pretty bad and would jeopardize our race to Democracy, but we could probably salvage it by rushing Oxford with the other one or something like that. The 1.6% dice roll though would probably be a game ender realistically. I have no contingency plan for that. At that point I'd probably tilt pretty badly. I'm sure you'd all understand.


In foreign news, RMoG offered me a double swap of OB and maps. I said sure because I don't really care about OB, but I always want updated maps. Plus if we end up friendly-ish, that's not the worst thing.



Plako is cranking out the settlers now. I'm a little disappointed to see this fall so early. I really thought he would go elsewhere considering this is the gimped land-bridge, and he's got a few great spots he's passed up on thus far. Can't blame him for being afraid we'd steal the banana, though.



I'm going to whip 3-4 of the non-GPP-producing cities next turn before firing the golden age and swapping into Caste/Pacifism/Christianity. The main reason is simply that those cities all grow like weeds, and they're likely to grow onto a few meh tiles during the golden age due to it, so I might as well. It's not like I have any mines built (other than iron) to exploit for hammers during the golden age. In fact, I don't know if I've ever gone this long without building one. Merchant Gank will take a little longer to produce the settler, but this turn I'm dumping in a bunch of overflow hammers. 

I temporarily lost Mackoti's tech by 1EP, so... I dumped our full EP weight onto him. We can have city visibility on him before this golden age is over, and I'd very much like that. This reminds me that it's probably worth building a spy for the purpose of safely uncovering his other unmapped cities. At the very least it's an oversight that I have yet to put one on the landbridge for the purpose of setting up an unkillable sentry.



Organized is really starting to heat up as a trait for me. Assuming this works the way I understand, it's saving me 12gpt in civic upkeep right now. Is that right? And if so, does it also by proxy lower inflation costs slightly due to the lower base expenses? My knowledge of how exactly this trait works beyond "make things cheaper" is pretty embarassing. 

Anyway, I checked and the Altars are saving me around 14-15gpt right now. So... I think the trait is netting me like 26gpt? Again, please correct me if I'm wrong in how this works. Obviously there's a real hammer cost to building all those Altars so it's difficult to make a direct comparison to Financial, but overall I'm pretty confident that the Org/Fin pregame decision was correct. (Imp/Spi is more complicated.)

And yes, I've never played a game with a massive EP advantage, and boy is it convenient. 



Pre-golden age demos. My demographic screen is about to get really weird during the golden age as I elect to not work a bunch of tiles in the name of converting GPP -> beakers.

[Cheater Hater]

What is the timing on those--are they in order of when they should show up during the GA?  How much of a margin is there to pivot to avoid the "game-ending" triple Engineer result?  (though it's annoying that the Engineer-favored result comes up first).  BTW, for those who haven't been keeping that close to the micro, what's the plan with these great people?  I'm assuming Merchant+Engineer for the second GA, and bulbs afterward?  I'm still not sure an Academy isn't better, though--yes, it was bad in the Industrial game, but presumably this will be longer (though you still might value the immediacy of the bulbs when you can get ~full value from them.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 228: THE LINE IS DRAWN

England has followed up their previous expansion with another city, Newcastle, at the throat of their end of the western isthmus, denying the Aztecs' hope of claiming a majority of that slice of land. The English site is more prudent than provocative, and its location mirrors the ideal fortress the Aztecs should have at the Byzantine border. Fears of Byzantium, who due to a mistake of espionage allocation are temporarily off the radar, grow as the Aztecs prepare to send spies to the contested eastern isthmus. Vital intelligence of Byzantium's cities should arrive before the end of the coming golden age (T236). This espionage benefit is the result of the Aztec Empire's predilection for sacrificial altars, the corollary of their organised trait, rapid expansion from being imperialistic, and unique building, which has also rewarded the government with significant cost savings. More foreign office is pending since the Netherlands have just made their own arrangement for open borders and map sharing with the Aztecs.

The final round of whips crack before the coming golden age. The Aztecs will use this time to change their civics towards a pacifist government and a stratified, officially Christian society. The C&D foresee that the expectant crop of great people—the main project of this golden age—will likely be a mix of scientists and engineers. But consecutive unlucky great person rolls are not without precedent, as REM can attest of PB33.

[GermanJoey]

Organized is really starting to heat up as a trait for me. Assuming this works the way I understand, it's saving me 12gpt in civic upkeep right now. Is that right? And if so, does it also by proxy lower inflation costs slightly due to the lower base expenses? My knowledge of how exactly this trait works beyond "make things cheaper" is pretty embarassing. 

The Org civic discount is saving you 12gpt (as the listed civics costs in that screenshot are already halved) times the inflation %, which looks to be about ceil(6/53) = 12% in that screenshot? So 12g * 1.12 = 13.44gpt. Plus, like you say, whatever you save from courthouses.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Looking at that screenshot of food....yea. I have to agree, the call to go to Masterclass for GPP instead of settler whips is definatly the right choice. Hell, with a food surpluss that insane, I think you have a canidate for National Epic.

[scooter]

Thanks Joey. Thought so.

Nekira - yeah, National Epic has been my thought for awhile. Guess I should get that marble hooked up sometime soon.

Turn 229



Let's do it. First, I whipped 4 cities that would



Mackoti settled this spot over by Plako. He also added an Explorer to that longbow tile this turn right after I discussed killing the longbow.



Pair of great people pop out for our rivals. I'm guessing REM will use that Engineer on another religious wonder, and Mackoti will use his scientist on one of his many bulb targets.



I'm officially in golden age civics. I briefly panicked after getting into these and noticing my GPP generation was lower than expected before I reminded myself to also convert into my religion. Here's screenshots of our great people cities:



This one comes first. Unfortunate that I wasn't able to get the Library done in time, but missionaries had to take priority.



This is the main bottleneck of the operation, but overall it should be fine. One side note: you can see up in the top-left what many of my cities would look like if not for the Altar spam. This is one of just two cities that doesn't have one yet, and it definitely stings.



Here's the one sure thing. It along with Lurker Killer will get right up to the 270 threshold without going past it (pausing to work normal tiles) so that Masterclass can hit that one, and then they'll both turn on the jets (working the full 9 merchants one turn) to complete the last two. Lurker Killer borrowed the deer for this turn because it'll be much, much tighter on food than Pilot will be since it'll be getting the final great person. (I missed a screenshot of Lurker Killer this turn.)



I'm sensing this area will be a source of tension indefinitely. I pulled the galley back so that it doesn't appear threatening. I whipped the work boat because it lined up with the clams coming online nicely. Basically, I'll get to size 4 quicker this way since I was about to lose the ability to whip. Newly built Never Happened also got whipped at size 2, although that had more to do with the fact that the double banana means its growth would have outpaced workers badly during 8 turns of no-whipping.



We're sitting around 200bpt here, and we can just about maintain it since I swapped a couple free engineers to merchants. I'll be in bulbing range in a couple turns.

The main news of the turn is that REM has dropped like 3 settlers in the past 2 turns. FWIW, I don't have the list in front of me right now, so I'm re-creating this from my possibly-wrong memory.

REM: 11
scooter: 10
Mackoti: 8
Plako: 8
Alhazard: 7
RMoG: 7

We'll get a settler out during the golden age, but he'll probably remain in front for a little bit. When the golden age ends, I'll probably do what he just did and whip a bunch of settlers out from overgrown cities.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Yea, that looks good overall to me. just don't forget those new settlers--a Non-Imperial Civ should not be out ahead of an Imperial civ at this stage of the game, REM is really whipping hard. you might be best off just whipping a round of settlers out of each city large enough to do so and then use your insane food surpluss to regrow. that should net you 5-6 after your golden age ends and take a comfortable lead.

Also: We do need to settle our own gold islands off to the other side: don't want someone else making a Pink Dot plant on us, now do we?

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 229: FOR WHOM THE BELL CHIMES

Great engineer Bi Sheng has just signalled the first Aztec golden age, not with ticker tape but with an issue of royal decrees and debentures. Now there are but eight turns of prosperity for the Aztec Empire to consolidate extra capital, whether it be infrastructure stimulus, technological breakthroughs, or wonder constructions. Great prodigy are being taught in careful synchrony with an expanded class of teachers, whose inspirations will be the main project of this golden age. Thus the Aztecs are reminded they ought to build the National Epic in Masterclass, to further expand their educated classes. The golden age has not come a moment too late, as the Khmer Empire has just surpassed the Aztecs with a renewed spurt of three settlers in two turns to achieve eleven cities total, the highest of any nation currently. The Aztecs will probably wait until the end of the golden age, when whips become available again, to try play catch up. But the gap—which looks to be more than a temporary lead—stings, especially since the Khmer are more spiritual than imperialistic. Less peaceful competition than outright confrontation, Byzantium has just elbowed England out of their bilateral isthmus, claiming dominion over its centre, showing that the Aztecs are not the only object of their aggression. South of the equator, the Netherlands have just closed the city count margin with their seventh plant, drawing level with the Ottoman Empire.

[Epoxy]

Yea, that looks good overall to me. just don't forget those new settlers--a Non-Imperial Civ should not be out ahead of an Imperial civ at this stage of the game, REM is really whipping hard. you might be best off just whipping a round of settlers out of each city large enough to do so and then use your insane food surpluss to regrow. that should net you 5-6 after your golden age ends and take a comfortable lead.

That's impossible since Scooter has just changed from slavery to caste system. Caste system's merchants and scientists are what's needed to net all of those great people and haul in some beakers, alongside the pacifism and golden age combined +200% bonus to GPP.

Totally second the eastern gold island threat. Currently two or three more settlers are needed to lock down that border area. Mackoti has been very proactive, the inconvenience and uncertainty they've caused with a longbow and explorer more than pays for their expense.