Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Ranamar]

I'm 99.9% sure that once the whale is obsolete you lose access to the resource and cannot trade it away, since you don't have it anymore. However, you can still trade FOR it from someone who hasn't researched Combustion (and get the corresponding happy back)...

You could easily be right, but that seems like a vastly sillier way of implementing it than the method I described.

In any event, we should check our trades next turn, as, by the time we get Plastics, we will have obsoleted both whale and furs.

[Ranamar]

So... here's how it worked, actually:

At the end of our turn, we lost access to Whales, and we lost the happy from that.

When each subsequent player's turn came around, they observed that they can no longer get the resource they traded for and cancel the trade.

When it gets back around to our turn (this turn), we discover that we've lost another +2 happy resource (probably furs) and at least one health resource.

Unfortunately, this also pushed Barad-Dur over its happy cap, so it's a very small number of hammers short of being able to actually finish the Pentagon this turn. I have a feeling that's not really a problem, though, given that we don't expect competition after all.

A few places can have the happiness problems mitigated by building a coliseum because they don't already have one. Next tech should be drama, which is cheap enough we might not even slow Plastics down any more than we will be anyway because of the happiness crisis. After that, we can run 10% culture until we've fully recovered, I guess.

I'd play the turn right now, but I kind of want to start going to work earlier, and we might want to negotiate some deals if there's a non-whale, non-furs happy resource someone has that we don't. Alternately, trading something new for whatever health resource we lost would be good.

Edit:
I'm glad I put this up for consideration, because I had more thoughts while driving to work...

First, the new health problems are almost certainly because factories not only give +1 sick from themselves, but they also give +2 sick from Coal (which we have) and Oil (which we will have soon).

We only really have happiness problems in our biggest cities, and at least one of them we're going to need to whip the factory out of anyway. We're also not going to finish the Pentagon this turn anyway, and Barad-Dur has too much production not to lose overflow hammers if it builds a coliseum. Therefore, it seems like it could be a good stop-gap to switch from Universal Suffrage to Representation for a turn, which will give us more happy in the only cities that actually need it right now. Meanwhile, we also switch to Slavery to whip Numenor and maybe a few other cities' factories, and build a Coliseum in Barad-Dur. The next turn, we can switch back to our usual civics and finish the Pentagon, now that we'll have another happy face in Barad-Dur. Those that still need more happy faces next turn get to build a theater next. (... or temple, depending on which we choose, but I favor Drama so we can adjust the culture slider if we need to)

Actually, if we can re-negotiate our (presumably) furs-for-whale trade with GES as furs-for-musicals... well, it'll get canceled in a couple turns because he'll be obsoleting his furs, but we really only need the happy boost for a couple turns, and then we'll, hopefully, have our feet back under us, at least for the most part. Incidentally, it looks like we're taking 1 happiness hit per 5 population for not having Emancipation, right now. That's annoying, but it seems manageable, even if "We demand Emancipation! 5" in Lorien (pop 21; it rounds up) is pretty scary-looking. Lorien can also use a coliseum.

So, what do you people think?

[SevenSpirits]

I'm pretty busy today and I think you'll have to deal with the combustion problem yourself. But naturally I'd recommend offering a musical to commodore for a fur and a silk to yuris for the banana. (We have an extra silk if we convert the watermill back to a plantation.)

I wouldn't build any coliseums. Certainly not until we've exhausted the far superior temple/theater options.

Suffering a bit of unhappiness this turn is probably OK.

It's possible BD should build a factory if it can 1t finish it, otherwise just continue on pentagon.

[Ranamar]

I'm pretty busy today and I think you'll have to deal with the combustion problem yourself. But naturally I'd recommend offering a musical to commodore for a fur and a silk to yuris for the banana. (We have an extra silk if we convert the watermill back to a plantation.)

I wouldn't build any coliseums. Certainly not until we've exhausted the far superior temple/theater options.

Suffering a bit of unhappiness this turn is probably OK.

It's possible BD should build a factory if it can 1t finish it, otherwise just continue on pentagon.

Unfortunately, unless I read it wrong, Commodore already has a musical from us, so we can't offer a musical to Commodore. Hence why I was suggesting GES.

Actually, I think BD might be able to 1-turn a factory. It'll be spectacularly into unhealth from that, but Silk for Banana would certainly help.

IMO, it really doesn't matter if we're building coliseums or temples, if the end result either way is maxing out overflow from a 0-overflow base. A coliseum is something like 53 hammers for 1 happy. A theater is similar, so that's not really a problem. I think temples are less, though. Of course, it's all moot if we can't feed the specialist we'd have otherwise anyway, come to think of it.

[SevenSpirits]

We're trading a musical to yuris not commodore.

[SevenSpirits]

Unfortunately, unless I read it wrong, Commodore already has a musical from us, so we can't offer a musical to Commodore. Hence why I was suggesting GES.

Actually, I think BD might be able to 1-turn a factory. It'll be spectacularly into unhealth from that, but Silk for Banana would certainly help.

IMO, it really doesn't matter if we're building coliseums or temples, if the end result either way is maxing out overflow from a 0-overflow base. A coliseum is something like 53 hammers for 1 happy. A theater is similar, so that's not really a problem. I think temples are less, though. Of course, it's all moot if we can't feed the specialist we'd have otherwise anyway, come to think of it.

Well we don't WA t any of those in be anyway. Too much prod isn't an issue elsewhere.

[Ranamar]

Played turn a couple hours ago...

Barad-Dur can't actually build a factory, so it's just muddling along with the Pentagon. I switched the town back to Barad-Dur, so it's not starving anymore, for the moment. (Also, BD has better commerce multipliers than Osgiliath...)

Research was set to Drama. If next turn won't straight up get us Plastics, I'll set it to Priesthood. In the meantime, I proposed the trades you suggested.

Lorien needs happy badly. I set a Marine, because you don't want to build Coliseums yet, but I think it may well want one. It all depends on how quickly we get another media resource wonder built. Numenor needs happy, too, but we want to switch to slavery and whip the factory sometime.

GES is 1 turn from Industrialism. Perhaps I should change the espionage target. Anyway, if we clash with him, it will be against a modern enemy. He's probably expecting us, actually.

[SevenSpirits]

Played t140.

Both trades were accepted so things look good. We finished the Pentagon! Because it's in our first city, units we built this turn immediately got the 2xp.

I decided to do the slavery swap this turn. So next turn we whip all the remaining factories (and the theater on Numenor) and then swap back to caste/theo.

Barad-dur starts on Three Gorges Dam. With help from the Engineer it's a three-turn build. After that's done we'll make a factory/aqueduct. Possibly the aqueduct first, lol, because factories will be -5 health. Because plastics is in! And I built a workboat for our (safer) oil. We should hook it up right away. Next tech is priesthood, then presumably flight.

Oh, and I burned our scientist putting beakers into fission before finishing plastics made his target computers. It's a judgement call but we may well need the uranium for some safe, land-based ship power, while computers is only valuable as a prerequisite for later things.

[SevenSpirits]

With most of the map visible except some water and a city each of Commodore and Yuris, here's all the units we can see:

[Ranamar]

GES likely just got Industrialism, though, so he'll be able to start building Marines, which will be even worse for our MGs than Tanks would be. On the other hand, if we're doing it right, he'll be defending.

We should espionage someone else (yuris?) because we can see GES's tech. I think they're a bit behind, though, IIRC.

Huh... looks like Yuris and Commodore have built a few MGs, though. Definitely better defense than rifles or Janissaries.