[PB37 SPOILER] Coeurva, Bacchus -- Cyrus of Carthage

[Coeurva]

Music still takes us 4-5t at 100% sci, so probably not -- unless we fail the wonder. Then the plan is to go for Music at once, burning through the gold. Otherwise, I'd prefer to get a colosseum for Vermin first.

I'm not sure we can hold TGLH or any pocket on a different continent, but I agree on prioritizing Astro.

German Joey's offer makes me think he considers me quite inept. OB with the GLH guy for no compensation, why not? Perhaps he thought from the trade screen that we'd just open borders with everybody disregarding economic effects?

Will play the turn now. Edit: Report tomorrow.

[Bacchus]

Messed up some of your production queues again. Our breakeven rate is already down quite a bit, I can't imagine how people with a larger number cities of faring. Still, our GNP is huge, so we can probably sustain this. We have a very large chunk of overflow to dunk from Polytheism, and it would be nice to put as much as possible into masonry for the further +40% + KTB multiplication. I played around with a slider, and we can get 80% rate if we switch Sicil to Wealth for one turn, but that's before founding this turn's city. Do post the before-after expenses at 100% science, I'm curious. We must also be getting annoyingly close to the conqueror's plateau.

Krill got a nice spike to GNP, I assume from the shrine. His crop yield is pretty low, so probably low costs are a large part of the story behind his current financial success. Overall the empire looks good, but itching to do something, as Mongolia, Ottoman and Greece all look like strong contenders for peaceful development. Maybe getting a scientist to bulb Astro would be just that something though, a critical leg up.

[Coeurva]

Part of why breakeven dropped to 30% is because we were working about ~15c less than usual (swapped off gold/furs/hamlet to grow cities instead); incense and X15 silver have yet to come in. After that, it will get tricky -- we'll need to juggle wealth builds through various cities.

dtay makes about 110 gpt, but he could be running half his empire on wealth builds for all we know. The key is to get value from the island cities so that the mainland can provide the economy; there's not much room for cottages on the islands. We need more ways to convert food into commerce; wealth builds can't do that and Caste merchants would probably do a worse job than working 202 coast, discounting GPP (if we want Astro early, we don't want GMers to pop up much).

We should actually found two cities on this turn, unless I forgot to offload one of the settlers, which is entirely possible.

I think the maximal #cities maintenance on Monarch is 8gpt. Nowhere near conqueror's plateau yet if so, unfortunately.

I still think there would be more value in the Parthenon than GLib: if we can get Sherry to size10, which is entirely possible with a +13 (!) food surplus after the lighthouse, we can hire six scientists for a Parthenon effect of 9 GPP/t (already more than GLib, but doesn't stop at one city) and get two GScis within 20-30t, depending on how many GP we've generated before then. Even better in a Golden Age, or with Pacifism. The problem with the Parthenon is really that the Khatunate probably builds it first, if they push for it.

Agree with the top contenders you've listed, but dtay is one too -- he has a lot of pop and will probably repair his economy soon, and can also pounce on a weak neighbour, unlike all of the others.

Also agree that we need some kind of edge, but the EXP crew has a lock on Hanging Gardens due to the discounted aqueduct, if Gavagai didn't already build it this turn, and I'm not sure what else we could pursue to give us said edge right now. Absorbing Yuri might help, but sharing a land border with dtay's huge empire rather than Yuri's would also make our position more fragile again.

[Coeurva]

Before / after founding X15 + 16:

City Maintenance 84 -> 104gpt (41 distance, 63 num of cities)
Civic Upkeep 42 -> 49gpt (13 for Slavery. 9 for everything else)
(Unit Upkeep 19 gpt)

Current sci is 80%, 95 (-95gpt) at 226 bpt. Building wealth at Sicil, Vermin, Ignis and Lifeblood. We'll add incense next turn, furs in 2t (or also next turn, let's see), silver in 3t, gold in 4t.

Maybe Compass would actually be nice to research -- gives 7cpt at every city that can build a cothon and gets foreign island trade routes, 5cpt for domestic island trade routes. Ignis and Whitehall can afford to whip some pop again anyway, and it's food->commerce conversion. We'll need Compass for Optics for Astro anyway. Yuri still makes ~15gpt on six cities, there's probably no rush even if he does get to catapults -- we can add a NumCav per turn after HBR + Heroic Epic, so we could use a small slow-mover stack to bait him into using the pults, then come in with healthy 2-movers.

We'll also need a plan to supply Yuri's cities -- if we can conquer them -- economically, with worker labour, and with military units against dtay.

EDIT: Resources: everyone has food resources etc. We're the only ones with any Calendar resources connected, so that's what makes our empire special, I guess: bananas.
dtay -- gold, ivory
Savant -- gold, stone
Gavagai -- stone
Krill -- gold
Joey -- stone (lacks gems)
JR4/RefSteel -- marble, stone, gold, ivory

One of Joey's galleys showed up 144-ish of X16 after founding, but could not see the settler before and looks pointed north-west rather than towards the city. Besides, he didn't have IW until recently, so I'm optimistic about the galley's contents, i.e. no pair of swords on board. (More likely, he used it to contact Yuri.) We currently only have a Shock chariot inside X16; we need more units there too. (Someone actually usurped #1 soldiers at 242,000; us 230,000). With the incense and furs being worked from T111, we can probably use Lifeblood to produce two archers next (and whip the lighthouse when we grow onto coast at size10).

I've named X15 after Savant's incidental work boat that sailed along and ended up in the newly-appeared BFC: its name is "Gem", so the city shall go by "Gem-in-the-Box" (while having no gem resource in its BFC). It's better than "qqqwqw". Maybe I'll find a few names soon.

Finally, we've actually claimed the #3 CY spot for the first time in ages. Probably won't last. There are two sites I'd consider as X17 once we grow a bit to repair our economy. Or fail a marble wonder.

[Bacchus]

Here's to hoping bananas help our CY out a little.

20 extra maintenance is not too bad, offset as it is by 10+ income.

I like Compass. If we go compass, though, we are kinda saying that Yuri can live on for quite a while. But then cothons will be largely built in cities that are not major unit producers. Yeah, let's get it. How much longer can we go without triremes is another question though.

[Coeurva]

Most of the bananas are already connected, but at least we're at 226 CY to Rival Best 237 iirc. The real problem is that we're kind of low on pop (12% of the world's total -- Gavagai is at 15%, dtay at 14%) with our vast array of size3-or-lower cities (everything past X7) because I love whipping too often and too much with CHM. There's a lot of seafood coming in once we pop borders at our new cities, though -- you've probably seen the little work boat fleet.

Which only underlines that we do need triremes. Although this also depends on Joey/Savant/JR4, who might not want to go for Metal Casting yet. Good thing we crippled the only IND opponent next door and he's forming a buffer between us and the guy who actually has Metal Casting for sure.

Yeah, I'm also hopeful that the incoming high-commerce tiles will pay back for our current empire size, and that this burst now allows us to push a bit more vertically again while not falling behind on horizontal expansion (X9 to X12 are still quite low in pop). We do need to find a better economic solution than high-commerce tiles and wealth builds if we want to expand more beyond that, though.

Compass before Construction just means we skew our swords-to-cats ratio in favour of the former. Or we could just get Compass after Construction. As you've said, there's likely no overlap between cities that heavily produce units or wealth (Vermin, Sicil, Ignis, Rhapsody, Z-Spire) and cothons (everything else) -- only Styx and Whitehall have reasons to do both, apart from the occasional gold injection or garrison. By contrast, settlements like Sherry or the gold city have nothing to work but food tiles and I'd like to whip them off into profit, for which cothons seem strongest at this point (courthouses might start making sense soon as well, though; mostly because many cities can't reasonably build wealth, because they have too few land tiles, but have lots of convertible food). The point is, we can work towards building an army and cothoning up at the same time, and probably should.

[Coeurva]

T111

The Khatunate has built the Hanging Gardens in their capital. Got three offers from GermanJoey to OB for him paying 1 gpt; declined.


X17a will be the more powerful city long-term especially if we don't build the Parthenon, and can bring in ivory for happiness. X17b comes crashing out of the gate, but doesn't have much to do besides whipping and perhaps running specialists and a riverside plains cottage. Which to settle?

(yeah, Westward is empty; this will be the last turn requiring the archer to deflect the barb warrior, though)


Several cities grow eoT112, some eoT113. Sugar due to provide +1 happiness T113. Anything you'd like to change, or build next? Not much I can say here when the pictures say it better.


235 fpt is just enough for 4th place.

Definitive wonder micro:

Code:

[Barracks was at 55/60h, market at 80/150h eoT110.]
T111 @23hpt: market 103/150
T112 @23hpt: market 126/150
T113 @23hpt: size13 barracks whip 85/60 -> swap market 149/150
T114 @17 hpt: swap axe 17/35
T115 @17 hpt: axe 34/35
T116 @20 hpt: axe 54/35 -> 19 OF (don't whip!)
T117 @17 hpt: barracks 121/60 -> 60 OF
T118 @23 hpt: size13, market whip 262/150 -> ~165h into GLib (6t) or Parthenon (7t)

I admit I'm still not quite convinced that the GLib is better than the Parthenon, except we can expect dangerous competition for the latter (JR4). Also, we're faster to the Parthenon if we just start slowbuilding it now instead of doing the above although it gets us more stuff nonetheless. Not so for GLib, since we're timeshifting the hammers and would get it half-done on the turn we research Literature. If we can bite it and work two extra scientists at the capital (instead of the grass mines), we can generate a timely second GSci around T140.

[chumchu]

X17b looks like a better settle to me. If you want any presence on that sea you need a few more cities and it is a good city for whips and specialists requiring little worker labour and no border pop to get going. It might well be contested while X17a can surely wait for later. Also, I'm not sure about the placement of x17a. Would it not be better later on the bananas so that it can get the southern fish and other potential resources in the fog? Then you would have a city on the deer on the island that get clams and horse. The happiness from ivory could be gotten through a border pop in westward ho (when is that?)

[Bacchus]

I think we can still build the Parthenon later. No real reason for it until national epic is ready to go. If we can lerhaps finish it in line with firing the GA, switch heavily into specialists, that would be quite powerful. I don't think there will be competition for this wonder.

Hanging Gardens are awesome for Mongolia, good catch. We have a pretty even spread of wonders so far, with us the notable laggards, but expected with Imp.

[Bacchus]

On X17, I don't see why they are mutually exclusive. I'd start with the mainland city.