[SPOILERS] Four Score & Seven Dynasties Ago: Pindicator plays Lincoln of China

[Gaspar]

I'm sure whatever I am nominated for it is well deserved. Do I get to see what my award title is or is that a spoiler? Or more apt, do I want to see what my award title is?

The Awards Naming [strike]Committee[/strike] Dictator has not yet ruled on the award bearing your name. But I'll let you know when a decision has been rendered.

[pindicator]

Turn 033

Ever have one of those friends that just doesn't know when it's time to leave the party? This one is going to stand by my scout if it kills him, and hopefully it will.




I've forgotten to check events lately. Moogle is getting all of those, good and bad. Still waiting for my first one (please don't burn down my forests!)




And preparations are underway for city #2. The settler is due out in 2 turns, so we're going to start roading and pre-chopping trees in anticipation of Mysticism finishing. We'll 1-turn the monument, the goal being to get the wheat and sheep online as quickly as possible (while still having an awesome 4-resource site). I'm sure lurkers will tell me I should have gone to the dry rice and plains cow, but yuck. Anyway, that will be city #3 and we'll get it settled right as animal husbandry finishes.



Also, it looks like Moogle isn't allocating his EP points. I lost graphs on him when I switched away, so I went back to 2/2 for the time being.

[pindicator]

I've got this nagging voice that keeps telling me I've blown this opening... Maybe AH after wheel and settle east? Maybe settle north? But Mysticism early on for border pops? I think I fell in love with that southern 4-food city. Hopefully it can redeem me.

Edit: Actually, I did think about Stonehenge since I'm charismatic. But I think Great Prophets would just get in the way of my great person plans (which I need to update here!)

[SIZE="1"]Or maybe it's because I just saw that timski posted in the lurker thread and I still have the pbem26 lurker thread fresh in my mind...[/SIZE]

[pindicator]

Turn 034

And unto us a settler shall be born:



The animal planet miniseries, When Animals Attack, made a stop by to film our scout getting mauled by a lion, and our warrior doing his best Liam Neeson impression. For once our units came out unharmed.

Also been thinking about the bigger bulb picture. Last night I got the opportunity to test it out in an MP setting with a 6 player FFA that was put together. There were some issues in that FFA, like needing to tech Alphabet & Aesthetics, but those should be smaller issues in a pitboss setting where people are usually a little more reserved, where spies will be necessary scouts, and Aesthetics may come in useful if I go for a quick Great Library. Still, I think I had some good success using scientists to bulb Machinery and then Engineering.

In this game I'll use a GE to bulb machinery, which should let me have it quicker than the MP game. I'm thinking about spending my first Great Scientist on Philosophy instead: if I can have Code of Laws in time, this could help me land a religion and then switch to Caste & Pacifism a quick series of bulbs:

• Engineering (scientist)
  
• Civil Service (merchant)
  
• Education (scientist)
  
• Liberalism (scientist)

and then grab Nationalism off of Lib. Maybe it's better to go straight Scientists and save them up as we manually research Civil Service & Paper.

The drawback, of course, is that we cannot research Fishing until after we bulb Liberalism. So as long as we don't need to fish we'll be fine.


Edit: Printing Press comes ahead of Liberalism, so we would need an extra scientist to bulb that before Liberalism. So I certainly want to manually research Civil Service & Paper. The other issue, of course, is running Caste for an extended period in an AW game when I am not Spiritual. That could be very [strike]dumb[/strike] interesting.

Allowing myself to dream... If we were to get it, we would then have options of going for Constitution (Great Merchant) or Replaceable Parts (Great Engineer) as our next bulb choices. Constitution for Representation because I do not see landing the Pyramids. And Replaceable Parts would be on the path to Rifles, of course.

[pindicator]

Forgot to mention that we had graphs on Lewwyn this turn:

[regoarrarr]

Why do you want to bulb Engineering?

[pindicator]

Why do you want to bulb Engineering?

Shits and giggles?

But honestly, Engineering needs to be gotten out of the way for Liberalism to be bulbed. It's either that or skip Construction. And I figure in a game with WEs allowed it makes sense to get early pikes. (Oh, and my neighbor has said ivory in his 3rd ring, so I definitely want a quick Engineering.)

Depending on how many great people I can count on I may try to slow research Engineering. With 4 Great Scientists I could do almost all of Education, Printing Press, and Liberalism. And I know I have a site that support at least 7 scientists in Caste, probably more if I farm the thing, so getting those scientists shouldn't be too difficult to do. If I can get a 5th then that's where Engineering comes in.

Actually, what's funny is that the more I've gone over any bulbing plan, the more conventional it's gotten. At first I was going to try to be as non-conventional as possible because this is supposed to be a fun game, so why not play it like that? Try to bulb techs with all GEs or something off the wall like that: so I was originally going to try to pull out a 2nd Great Engineer and bulb Civil Service with that. Then I figured a Great Merchant via Caste or a market would be easier. Now I'm down to Great Scientist and all they can bulb

[regoarrarr]

You just need to not tech Machinery (to avoid Engineering), not Construction. Now while it's certainly questionable whether even THAT is worth it, there you go.

I did that in PBEM26 (used a scientist to bulb almost all of Liberalism because I lacked Machinery at the time)

[pindicator]

Turn 035

Settler is on the move. We've brought both our warriors down to cover against any potential animals. And since we still have yet to spot anybody else, and because we know Moogle only has 2 warriors to his name, we're going to risk a 3rd worker now.



Now that the settler is out it's time for a civic swap.



Our exploring scout in the north. I wanted to duck southwest a little to see how the land moves, and it appears that we may just be on the tip of a southern peninsula. So now I have to ask myself: is it better to go north or west? Also: Lewwyn builds a pile of rocks. Which is funny, because when I spotted his graphs last turn I said to myself: high production, low food, growing city; is he building a wonder? Should have posted that here and gotten some credit with the lurkers

You just need to not tech Machinery (to avoid Engineering), not Construction. Now while it's certainly questionable whether even THAT is worth it, there you go.

I did that in PBEM26 (used a scientist to bulb almost all of Liberalism because I lacked Machinery at the time)

If I wasn't playing China I would definitely agree, but the whole idea of bulbing vital techs actually began with a desire to get a quick Machinery. Everything else just grew from there.

And I still need to read your thread! I will start on it today.

[pindicator]

Just had another thought, but this involves skipping the quick Machinery. Instead we build The Great Library and use that to get a number of great scientists. This would let us get 28gpp/t while staying in slavery. And if i felt like living dangerously i could through in a few merc specialists and up the rate to 40gpp/t.

Then again, we also have marble nearby, so maybe it would be more prudent to just aim for a quick Literature and try to hand-build it? I guess that would depend on how reasonably quick i felt i was to Literature and what I am willing to delay to get it.