[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I convinced YOU?

Also, the mapmaker did provide plenty of grassland for us to cottage spam. He then just conveniently buried it under all that wonderful jungle, so we'd appreciate it when we finally got to it. See? It's all about being able to appreciate the things you have to work hard to achieve. Never be satisfied by what comes easy, Xenu-san.

[spacetyrantxenu]

You're so full of shit.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T142 - Since only part of our fail gold came in last turn when we completed Moai we only had enough cash to run 60%, once I scraped up the last few coins we needed to break even. Next three turns will be at 100% research and will complete Civil Service.




I half way planned out whips on the items under construction in a lot of cities. Boldly if you get a chance this weekend log in and tell me if you agree with the timings. Generally I'm trying to hit forge whips at 60/120 for one pop and no overflow and several cities are on target for that, though a few have overshot. I have two markets that look like upcoming 3 pop whips (Tyler and Swamp People), and The Boathouse is in the same place, it could 3 pop whip it or we could spend the population more frugally there since we have a lower food surplus. Also, The Boathouse has a high hammer potential when it works its mines (up to 4 grass hill mines), so I don't want to burn off population there unless we have to. It should be able to build things reasonably fast and keep working its other excellent commerce tiles.

Workers are sort of congregating around Tyler for when chain irrigation becomes possible in a few turns. I should have another three patches of jungle cleared by then. Tyler should easily be able to support five specialists (or six with a courthouse) once we grow it out. Given that specialist projection it may make more sense to build our National Epic in Tyler rather than the previously discussed I Burn, which is so isolated out in the west.




Unless I've miscounted we can only pull in five specialists in I Burn, once it hits size 12. That's a really long way off, so maybe better to farm that city up and whip military there after a courthouse and library (library for a pair of specialists). Back to the current turn, Stars Above had enough overflow last turn to finish its crossbow but given the religion spread in Suck Magic a few turns ago we popped borders faster than I had planned for. So last turn I went ahead and whipped the crossbow so I could dump all the overflow into a one turn work boat, which will set sail T144 headed to net the Suck Magic fish. I don't have a good idea what to do with that awful little city either, but yay it will have furs. Grow onto coast or whip units I suppose.

Mister Love finished its market, finally, just in time for us to run max science.... I'm thinking about running a bit of a food deficit in the capital for a few turns and pushing out the great person faster. Running 5 specialists (forge, library, and market), plus GPPs from wonders should get the job done soon. If I remember correctly it would take 12 turns running three specialists, down from 17 turns running 2 specialists. Someone can probably work out the math for what adding two additional specialists will do to the spawning schedule but I can't be bothered to do it at midnight. I'm sure it will slice a few turns off the schedule and would be well worth it, allowing us to revolt to bureaucracy and a state religion without anarchy sooner.

Demographics.




Don't sweat GNP ( ), WilliamLP just started a golden age (MoM powered...), nothing we can do about it. Speaking of that...where is he getting so much economy, excluding the golden age? I checked over his map, I don't see cottages everywhere. I looked over all the tiles we have visibility on, no one has any towns that we can see. Our first town comes up in three turns, surely we weren't early in starting the cottage game. Even if we were early we're definitely far behind, since we have worked so many farms for so long (and not run the specialists needed to make up for it ). Anyway, I'll be curious to see where he pulled so much economy from. It's probable that he does have cottages everywhere and we haven't uncovered the tiles to see it.

Press enter, roll turn, and here's the event log from the start of the next turn.




Straight cash, homey.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

60/120 is the sweet spot. That's a 1pop +100% for IND, right? I don't mind whipping them in sooner for 2pop. The -25% loss from rounding down would be made up by having the forge ~4-5 turns sooner in a lower production/higher food city like Tyler. Just whip them in when it makes sense. I'm aghast at all the signs. I clear them out every time I log in. The one at Hell Below that says to avoid growth? Bah. Just whip the damned thing. I'd be more likely to forget the exact plan and end up just messing up the whip timing.

By my count, we can run 6 specialists at size 12 in I Burn. We'll need a lighthouse to get there. At size 7 we'll be +12 food working lighthoused lake and clams, 4 farmed grass, and the plains sheep. If you would rather build the NE elsewhere for safety reasons, which is reasonable until you remember who you're likely to be fighting (sorry, but it's true), you can just make this a hybrid specialist/production city and lay down a PH mine and two plains workshops. Tyler would be the brute force method NE city by farming all that grass. That seems a terrible waste to me when we could cottage all of that. We're only getting 1 specialist for every two farms. If we run merchants, that's 3g/3b +GPP for two farms. After ~25-30t (can't remember how long it takes to grow from hamlet to village) we're behind. Also, do we have enough happy/health resources to grow as big as we'll need to in order to have the food surplus required to run the maximum number of specialists? I am not convinced we will. Revival may be a better target. It has fish, grass cow, and can take the grass rice for +11 at size 3 once we have the irrigation chained to the rice. Then there are at least 6 grass tiles that we could farm (some would have to flood over cottages) and perhaps one other east of the city, depending on if Revival itself is on a hill tile. This would have to wait until we could eliminate Sisubstan. This probably comes down to getting a less good NE up sooner vs. getting our best option down much later.

Also, what about Stars Above? It has 3 food resources (Pig, tundra deer, and clams? Or is it Crabs?) and has terrible land tiles to work.

Do we have a garrison in What We Have? It's big enough to be a tempting razing target now. That would set us back tremendously. A couple of triremes to watch the coast there would be a good investment. I see that WilliamLP has maintained some kind of naval presence over there. Don't give him an easy target.

WillLP: possible wealth builds. Those show up in mfg and gnp.

How many cities do we have Judaism in? I'm all for free AP hammers.

What is our current happy cap in ML? If we still have room to grow up, keep working food tiles. What resources do we still need to connect? Furs is all I can think of, with silver in the offering once we kill Steve Jobs. I do enjoy my phone and tablet though...

Also, what do you think about making a more or less permanent swap to Caste during the GA? We can run workshops here and there. Our cities are getting pretty tall, except for the new ones. Caste also goes very well with the SE because you can force whichever of merchant/scientist/artist without needing to invest in the buildings. I can see us wanting to run a lot of merchants until our costs come down, particularly as this will help us bulb into Guilds for some rampaging fun with 'Phracts. But I agree that finally picking a religion and getting into a religious civic (OR/Theocracy) would be good for us.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah, 60/120 is a one pop forge whip. That was the idea, to avoid dividing our overflow wherever possible. And all the signs are on the map so that I don't forget the plans. Seems a good reason to use them.

I agree that using Tyler would be wasteful, it's just the best candidate on the board right now to get the NE producing GPs for us. Revival is an option further down the line, I like it better than Stars Above. Stars is the only high food city in the north and, honestly, the only good city we'll have up there. Its whip represents the majority of production in the region, so it's hard to constrain the city with NE duty. Honestly, though, this discussion is early since we haven't nailed down the tech path for after Civil Service. We'll have time to sort it out.

What We Have started a crossbow last turn. I think I changed it after I took the screen shot that showed it on a courthouse. I agree, though, we need to start guarding our border cities now. It may be time to retire the honorary warrior guard in ML and HF, too. And yeah, naval builds. We need everything, as always.

I think we have four Jewish cities, but conveniently enough our first three cities (ML, HF, and Tyler) are all Jewish, so it will be in the core that we'd get the state religion bonus if we go that route. Two of those are high hammer cities (ML and HF) and could get the missionaries we'd need built pretty quickly if we committed to spreading the religion around. Getting bonus AP hammers in a lot of our low production cities will be helpful.

We're OK on happiness in ML, the market just completed and we'll add furs soon for another +2 happiness there. I wasn't suggesting we permanently stall growth, I just want to surge our GP production so we can pop a golden age and revolt into bureaucracy and a religion soon. I'll check when I play the turn here in a few minutes but I think it's going to definitely be worth stalling growth in the capital for a few turns to get a golden age sooner.

As for swapping into caste system, there's value in doing it during the golden age for sure. Our empire is heavily configured toward farms/food rather than cottages right now (sadly), and we're lacking specialist infrastructure in quite a few cities, so if we can squeeze our cities for GPP generation during the golden age I'm OK with doing that. I don't know about workshops, though, they aren't very good right now. We're not running RB mod, we don't have Guilds yet, etc., so workshops are just OK tiles. I don't think it's worth choosing our civics around that. For the specialist slots, yeah, that's helpful, though. But I'm loathe to give up slavery yet for the long term, with as whip dependent as we are. I think we can swap into CS during the upcoming golden age if we feel militarily secure enough, especially since we don't want to whip during a golden age anyway. But I think we'd swap back to slavery at the end.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T143 - Looks like by running five specialists in Mister Love we'll be able to generate a great person in 8 turns, so T151.




We'll burn through almost all of our cash finishing Civil Service in the next three turns, then we can spend the rest and finish off Polytheism and Monotheism in a combined 3 or 4 turns, putting us in position to revolt to organized religion by the time the great person spawns. At that point we'll be ready to revolt into bureaucracy/OR, and also into caste if we choose to. We can generate the great person food neutrally in ML by taking the deer back from HF, the only downside is that we'll lose 8 turns working a cottage that ML has no way to hand off to another city. Seems worth it to me. Happy Face will grow to an unsustainable population this turn since it doesn't have the deer tile anymore. It doesn't matter, though, we'll run a pair of specialists for now and then whip off the starving population when we have to. They can go hungry before we kill them, for the good of the empire.

I triple whipped the market in Tyler. It feels wrong to do it but there is no production in this city right now and limited hammer potential in the future, so it's all whips and would have to be done eventually. All that's left to whip into Tyler now is a courthouse, and that will take a while. So now, grow back up to size, whip in the courthouse, then grow onto cottages as fast as we can hack them out of the jungle. The more I think about it the less I like Tyler for the National Epic. I just wish the other good options weren't front line (I Burn and Revival). But that's a problem to handle later for now, I'm thinking Tyler is out as the NE site. It can run specialists without an epic and work cottages.

I don't think I put up a sign for it but I need to check the tiles between The Boathouse and Beside You next turn. BY borrowed the plantation for lack of another improved tile to work, but it will have a grassland farm tile next turn so the plantation can go back to The Boathouse, which has modifier buildings to wash the commerce through. Workers are busy clearing the border with Suttree, harvesting forest chops and making way to chain irrigate through the area. I see no reason to build cottages around that isolated front city. I think it should get farms and specialists.

One bit of international news, Oxy swapped into vassalage this turn, so he has Feudalism and can build longbows. I wonder if that will halt Suttree's aggression against him for a little while? And if that happens, I wonder if Suttree will look to clear out Sisubistan soon. It bears watching. I have a chariot exploring through Oxy's land right now to see what's going on down there. That makes us a bit more blind to what is happening in WilliamLP's land, though, since I moved the chariot south from there. When the workers are done mining the border tile at Hell Below we can move an axe or spear into WilliamLP's land for weapon inspections. Good enough until we can get a more mobile unit over there.




In the north we have something to decide for this turn. The settler that was originally going to grab marble/silver has just been sitting idle in Suck Magic the last few turns. But I've sent him south into Stars Above for the current turn. Here's what I'm thinking. We can go ahead and settle the clam filler city and grab a few more ICTRs, that city should be profitable immediately. If it pushes us over a revolt anarchy threshold we don't care anyway since we'll be swapping in a golden age. And I just built a work boat that can net the clams the turn we settle the city. Suck Magic is a horrible city and can wait longer to net its fish, what's it going to hurt up there? The tiles are all terrible and it's a front city. Other than providing fur that city is terrible right now so I don't see any harm in delaying its fish hook up. So...settle clam city and use the work boat there, and build another work boat for Suck Magic next in Stars Above? (Next being either right now or starting 4 turns from now when the worker is done...we need another worker up there or it will take absolutely forever to bring the fur online).

That's mostly all I have, other than our axe in the north killing a barb axe on defense as the turn rolled. So he'll have enough promo to be C1/Shock now. Suck it Kuro, your melee are going to die one day anyway, even if you did kill my chariot.

Demographics.




We're straight ballers in life expectancy. Tied for the best ever. I guess if we want to lead a category I could connect the sheep at I Burn. We'd be first alone in life expectancy. Morale boost from an irrelevant stat? Nope. We're still oh so average in this game.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'd love to comment on how the game is going. If my head wasn't pounding already. Getting the hangover before going to sleep... total suck. I'm pretty sure the keg is going bad.

Civ talk: we won already, right?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I guess I could clear that up some... I ask if we won already not out of some sense of superiority over all the players (some, perhaps, but not all), but rather out of a sense of doom and gloom that I still have to pay attention to this game. And pbem 49, but that matters a bit less unless someone wants to take that game too. Basically, I've decided that this game is pulling joy from me each day that I pay attention to it (kind of like pbem 49), so I pay attention only when you call my attention to it. I really hope novice is enjoying his vacation, as I've enjoyed a break from 49, but I look and have a save waiting on me and.... I don't want to play it. I'm just glad I don't have to log into this one each day.

So, here's my advice: Whatever gets us a military advantage over our neighbors in the next 15-20 turns that will survive a defensive buildup we should pursue. Anything that precludes us from getting this advantage should be eliminated. And, anyone who gets between us and gaining military advantage in this time period should be mocked, belittled, and destroyed, using whatever military we have currently at hand. Which may or may not be profitable. But, we should only war when profitable. Got it? Contradictory orders FTW.

My head hurts. Feels like

Ugh.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Yeah I'm ignoring your advice until your head is cleared.

Played a quick game with BGN earlier today, a small teamer. He was so hammered he couldn't type coherent sentences in the game chat and somehow managed to lose a city to a barbarian warrior, in spite of it being INTERNAL to his empire. Meanwhile I'm conquering a neighboring AI across a sea with Gallic swords upgraded to maces (that's some fun stuff, wow at the AI having now idea how to defend against two move mace stacks! ) At the same time I'm telling him he needs to build SOMETHING that looks like a military unit because my scouts (over on HIS end of the map) have spotted incoming stacks from two of the AIs BGN had randomly ALT+clicked as soon as he met them. So we'd basically been at war with everyone the entire game and he...didn't build any military. Hence losing a city to a barb warrior at a time I'm conquering elsewhere with maces.

Moral of the story: When you're that drunk, just let the game play for you -- automate everything, use the governors, and focus on clicking the big red button every turn.

Advice for BGN: Just go ahead and , you'll feel better.

Playing the turn now, report incoming soon after.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T144 - WAAAAAR!!!!!!!




OK, it isn't us but our chariot cruising through Oxy's land happened to be in the right place at the right time to see the big showdown from this turn. Visible in the picture above is two armies thoroughly tattered, with Suttree looking like he took the worst of it. Both sides apparently generated great generals (unless Oxy somehow generated two). Fortunately for Oxy his general spawned close to the conflict and he smartly attached it to a chariot to make a medic, which will be in full healing mode next turn. Suttree's stack is basically dead, the units that have survived will probably die before they can retreat. I don't know what the turn order is between these two, but Oxy has enough workers in the city to build roads wherever needed to get to the remnant of the Suttree stack, and surely he has enough units that can promote and be healthy enough to fight that he can kill those seven units.

By my count Oxy has 30 units inside that city, on a hill, behind walls. I don't know how many he lost, or how many Suttree lost on the attack, but attacking that many units in this age of the game without an apparent technological advantage is a dubious proposition. I know I don't have complete information here, but I think Suttree has made a major mistake with this attack. Good job Oxy!

So, what does that mean for the state of this game?




WilliamLP seems to be in an advantageous position right now. He has the MoM and is in the beginning turns of a golden age. He's going to grab a lot of beakers in the coming turns and bears watching. He has kept competent garrisons along his border with us and Suttree, so I don't think he'll be easily caught off guard. If he gets ahead later he may be difficult to deal with. Let's hope he's not too far ahead by the time we get to cataphracts, if he needs reeling in back to the pack.

While we're at it, here are the other graphs as of this turn:

Food - Catching up here some, I'm trying to lay off the whip in advance of our golden age.



MFG - Forges are nice.



Power - This will be interesting to watch in two turns when the graphs catch up with the board. Suttree's power dropped by 104k this turn. I don't know what Oxy's losses were, but I bet there a lot less than that.



Culture - Steady as she goes. Amusingly enough the small city Suttree culture bombed is still in the top 5 cities.



Espionage - It's easy to see who has been building courthouses and who hasn't. Not pictured are Retep and Wetbandit who both have plenty of espionage points, too. So we're probably the sixth team to CoL.

Around our empire the main switches were the previously mentioned specialist moves in the first two cities.




Five specialists are working in the capital to get the GP spawned for a golden age and our second city is running three specialists (for now) in a food deficit that will be ended by whipping away the hungry population. Other than that, workers chop jungle and are lining up for when chain irrigation can begin.

Up north I made an executive decision that we're going forward with the clam city instead of letting the settler hang around for ages on end until we're ready to fight Kuro over the ice.




Sisub has a boat poking around. It is the same boat they used to build the city Retep quickly razed and I'm pretty sure it's empty. In retrospect, though, the right tactical play with my galley near our Moai city would have been to place it 1E of the clams so Sisu would have to plow through us with a loaded boat to make an attack. I also should have moved the archer out of the stone city and gone ahead and garrisoned Moai, but I'll do that soon. It doesn't make sense to leave these cities easily exposed at this point in the game, I can't farm forever without someone calling me on it.

Demographics and I'm out.




Maybe we'll be competitive in these numbers once we're in a golden age.