[Spoiler] Any volunteers for a human sacrifice? Brennus of the Aztecs, by Krill

[Qgqqqqq]

How are you going to reconcile teching with latest settler wave?
What is your base % rate?
Whose is CheeryGroveCity, and do you plan to kick them off at the same time?

[Krill]

Turn 145 - Real Life Strikes Back

Um, no, this would give me a grand total of 3 commerce per turn more.

So, if I needed another reason to attack azza...it would get me a shrine that brings in at least 9gpt. And would certainly be spread to a bunch of cities for up to another 20gpt. And the MoM fell so I can start teching this turn and two turn Construction and CoL. Note, azza finished his GP 23 turns after I got mine, and is playing EXP India, with a weak start. I don't think he did badly here TBH.

Going to be turning back very shortly.

Slavery it is. I really hope I don't get any revolts for the 5 turns I'm going to be in the civic...

All of these HA, save probably 1, are going to be attacking azza. With enough cats, most of them should not die and will be highly promoted, the worst being about 6XP and most starting at 8XP. And I'm only 10XP away from my first GG, which could become a super medic. OTOH, as I have an 8XP jag, I can make a W3+M3 super healer. That's a no brainer, make a medic 1 scout for now, and add the first GG to the jag and use it to keep an advance rolling across the map.

That isn't even the main stack of HA, they are just the units I have lying around at the Pingo front that I'm moving back towards Opportunism, to put things into a little more context.

Cats, courthouse or missionaries. Pick one. I will finish this market next turn, then save gold using the market.

The aim with DF is to spend the gold saved after the Crapital market has finished and turn off tech once I'm at zero gold (and can revolt out of FR) and save gold once more.

Medic 1 scout and growing vertically at last. It will not really matter until Machinery is in, but that is like the sixth tech on my "To Do" list, in it's lowest position.

Another stack defender. It will be completed after I revolt back to Theocracy.

Add wealth to the build queue so that hammers do not go to waste, but leave MoM in the queue to receive the fail gold.

Not slaving this...going to let it grow to size 7 and continue growing, but will not get to slave here because I will be out of slavery before I would be able to slave a court house.

Next turn work all the hills and prebuild units for Theo and stack up the hammers into cats for taking Saffron.

Next turn Wealth to save overflow for the court house.

Slave out a single catapult, as I doubt I'll regrow quickly enough to slave a second, but I'm happy to turn one pop whips and delayed growth into cats, to take more land and pop and cities. And it makes it much easier to figure out the worker MM.

Boring.

Made a mistake here, I should have slaved the lighthouse this turn but didn't, lost 4 food because of it *shrug*.

I changed this city, I worked the ivory to pop borders this turn.

Boring.

One more city defender, makes me slightly happier to move out the fast movers to prepare for the attack against azza.

Posterity.

High MFG...not really, not when bunch of people are getting forges out. And second power has peaked, looks like another battle is on the cards.

scooty got MoM.

[novice]

Why the CH in PRNGG? Shouldn't it be putting its precious hammers into a market?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

I hardly hear of anyone complaining about getting too many turns to play

[Krill]

Long story shorty, the court house will save close to 10gpt by the time it is built. The market won't make that for a long time, and by the time it will make that amount it will have been built.

[Krill]

Turn 146 - Choices

Got the gold for MoM and got Construction. Now onto CoL.

Oh, looks like Commodore is putting hte ivory to good use.

End of the road. Three turns from now I will uncover more FoW.

Three spears, two archers and a warrior, in a hill city with 20% culture. I'm not attacking that with HA, but with cats as well later on...

Thank azza for farming the grassland for me. I'll get it back when the turn rolls. If I have enough workers (to be specific, 7 without Serfdom, 6 with) I can road the tiles 9, 6, and 63 of Saffron and move a 2 mover stack from the tile 2 of Opportunism to the plains forest within range of Fuschia City. Fast movers from that staging tile can also reach the plains hill 87 of Cinnibar and the grass hill forest 47 of Cinnibar. The simplest solution of where to stage the slow movers, is 2 of Opportunism and from there they can attack saffron, are three turns Fuschia city (assuming the fast mover stack could take the city), and could attack Cinnibar two turns after the attack on Saffron. This also allows me to allocate the catapults as needed on the turn of the attack.

Finally there. Finish CoL this turn then save gold for 1 turn, then reassess tech situation against the need for FR.

With only 4 turns after completing the market in Crapital until this market is completed, it doesn't seem like I would be able to research anything more expensive than MC before having to return to saving gold. And I don't really want MC other than for a workshop or two at WTF?

Stealing a further farm from GNAP to grow this turn to size 12. WTF? needs 125 food to grow to size 17, and it can do this in 12 turns, and on the last few turns should be able to work a hill or so. This allows it to work every tile except the wine, the desert, and the lake. It will require 56 worker turns for the seven watermills, 4 to move to and chop the silk forest, 5 to irrigate the silk. I could later on windmill the hills and workshop a tile or two to get more hammers once Guilds is researched, but I'm looking at 65 base worker turns tom alter this city. The downside to this math is that I will likely be using Serfdom to speed up the MM, and there is no definite amount of worker turns that I need to use, as I can MM the workers to use 4 turns of serfdom worker turns and 1 normal worker to to build the watermills in 5 turns, with no overflow.

Yes, micromanaging worker turns has never been more fun. I even have to consider just what I'm doing with tech research, because the longer I put off machinery, the slower I need to grow, so can move off farms and onto the mines again. Spiritual can be a total bitch.

Save the spear, just need ot make sure I have enough cats in the pieline to destroy azza.

Once the library can be 1 pop slaved I'm going to slave it.

Slow grow...this catapult will probably get 2XP from Theo, but after that I doubt I'll build a second, it would just take too long to be built and get down to azza to do anything. So court house next.

Boring

I'm going to give up the 20 hammers from working the plains hill and grow to size 10, allowing hte sugar and the plains hill to be worked concurrently. That will let Opportunism slow grow whilst it continues to build military and then the court house and FP.

3 hammers turned into gold that will likely never ever get spent (I mean, I need to have less than 3 gold in the bank to have definitively spent this gold). Whatever.

As I'm going to give the banana to PRNGG, slave the fifth pop for a catapult, I'll probably build a second catapult then go with the court house.

Court house due in 10 turns...

First slave for a while...

Built a market here, simply for the same reason I didn't see the point in building Wealth in NS. 1 gold is worthless, and I know I'm going to build a market, so might as well put the hammer into it even if the hammer doesn't pay off for 30 turns. The Wealth build won't pay off for that long either.

Jimmied a few tiles around, but this is basically it, one pop whip the catapult on T148.

Need. Court. Houses.

Oh, bollocks, F9 didn't take.

[Krill]

Turn 147 - Events are Annoying

Stupid Event. The only tile it can affect is the cow pasture...

Which is promptly fixed costing me a mere 4 worker turns.

Comment on Events. I think Events are some of the stupidest concepts introduced into a strategy game. Quests are different, they give you another decision to make, but events are just random smackdowns you receive for no reason. For me, BtS was the game were Firaxis stopped making strategy games and started selling the gaming equivalent of crack cocaine: everything after BtS is a failure from the strategy gaming point of view.

Vermilion city popped borders to 40%. Definitely not attacking it now. But note the defences, a CR2 catapult will have odds on the spears (just about) for the first attack and afterwards it only gets better. The difficulty of attacking Vermilion isn't that it's a difficult city to attack with combined arms, it is that I can do much more damage attacking through Saffron and Fuchsia before azza can gets units into position. After Fuchsia falls, it is basically just clean up and focus on taking each city out, one at a time, holding the four core cities of Pallet, Vermilion, Pewter and Viridian (the rest can be razed), stopping anyone trading with azza (yay coastal blockades) and stopping azza breaking out towards my cities.

Now, the issue of what I should do with the Great Artist...I don not want to bomb the front against Pingo, it will just piss them off and I don't want to do that after they played ball with CPH. I can save if for a golden age simply by not using it, but with the GS I should get in 11 turns from Crapital I would not need it until a second golden age with another GP which is something that I can ignore for the time being. I do not have any reason to bulb drama, so it means I can simply settle it (...uh, no) or hang onto it for use as an offensive bulb. There are 4 potential options against azza: settle a city for the fish NEW of Vermilion and bomb, that should get me decent access to Vermilion but I don't plan to attack that way, so no point using it. I could settle 22232 of Opportunism, after capturing Saffron and bombing, but that would not speed up any attack on azza. I could move a settler down there through my land but that just telegraphs an attack. I could capture and bomb Fuchsia, and that should allow a one move tyo raze Cerulean because I don't want to keep that city, or I could raze Fuchsia and settle 1W and then bomb to open the one move on Cerulean but also enable a two move against Pallet town. But neither of these are particularly interesting as I expect to need to use catapults to crack the four core cities.

The end result is I want to keep the GA around, and show it occasionally to azza, forcing him to defend an area that otherwise he could leave weaker. But I don't ever want to use it against him. I'm likely going to just save it and use it for a golden age in 70 turns, but the most important thing is that I got it, and not someone else who could have used it to mess up any of my plans.

This will certainly be my next GP. What to do with a GS? An Academy is generally a bad idea IMO, I already have one. Settle it? It would be worth 1 hpt and 11bpt. Assuming the game lasts until T275 (rough estimate) it would give me over 1.2Kbpt, and 220bpt over the 20 turns after it has been popped. I could use it to research Philosophy, but as I have the Schedagon Paya I would only gain another tech, a new religion (I want to capture the shrine of a second and potentially third anyway), and the ability to build the Angkor Wat which does not interest me. I can save it for a golden age, which seems to be the default use of a GP.

This might pop out as GP #12, or not at all.

Like I'm ever going to build something else that adds to the GA points in this city.

Note, this city might be called on to build wealth before this catapult is completed.

Boring.

There is a decent chance I just build a bunch of cats and don't try to do anything fancy with the MM. Just build as many as possible and screw XP. It's all to do with the next research target being completely out of sync with my civics: by the time I'm ready to research the next tech I'll be have to wait a bunch of turns to revolt out of Theo.

28 turns! The banana will be hooked on T149 and immediately afterwards I'll be moving the 5 workers back via both hills, improving them and speeding up the construction time. And there is a sixth worker at the city anyway.

Can't slave this city next turn, but next turn the unimproved grassland will be farmed, and then I will have 8 workers at the city ready to improve SMS and PRNGG. But the city will be slaved on T149.

Three workers are currently farming one of the jungle tiles, it will be ready for use at size 5, then they will farm the second tile then add a fourth mine. Aim is to get the city to size 9 and that shouldn't be difficult to do with 3 dedicated workers.

Now this court house I can't do anything about speeding up.

Need to get SG to size 7, and basically I'm just going to do that working food neutral tiles and the farm then swapping to both hills. This city is will likely become a hammer city after the court house and build a barracks. Depending on the war with azza I might skip the barracks completely and just go straight units.

T148 will have 15 food saved, making 8, thus grow eot T149:

T148, 15/24F, +8fpt, size 2
T149, 23/24F, +8fpt, size 2
T150, 20/26F, +9fpt, size 3
T151, 16/28F, +10fpt, size 4
T152, 26/28F, +10fpt, size 4
T153, 22/30F, +11fpt, size 5
T154, 17/32F, +12fpt, size 6
T155, 29/32F, +12fpt, size 6
T156, 25/34F, +13fpt, size 7
T157, 21/36F, +10fpt, size 8 (and a mere 9 hammers into the court house)

After this, just continue to grow at a good clip off the grass farms, and onto cottages for commerce and windmills to build the markets etc. If I keep the four hills windmilled, then I want to work every tile excluding the peak, horse and southern banana, so size 17 with 4 windmills, a plantation and 12 cottages. It takes a total of 322 food to grow to size 17 from size 1, or 203 to grow from size 8 with a foodbox at 21/36F to size 17. That' means it will take a while, probably 25 turns or there abouts.

Slave next turn, then probably get ready to stack the slave anger with another slave when it regrows.

City maintenance is only going to get worse as I grow the jungle cities. The best way to deal with this is court houses, but I really am going to have to force out the FP in Opportunism at the first chance I get, specifically because taking over azzas land will cost a significant amount. I'm also going to have a rather interesting choice between Free Speech and State Property later one.

If I had left WTF? on unit builds I would be over 100K soldier points up on second place. Not that Soldier points actually mean anything once catapults are in play.

[Krill]

Turn 148 - Civic Decision

So, azza is continuing to put more and more units into Saffron. The garrison is not threatening, but it is increasing the number of cats I will need to take the city. I'm not complaining though, if he were to put these units into Fuchsia I would have to completely reconsider my attack plans. I'm expecting to use 5 cats to attack this city now, along with 10+ HA or chariots.

And azza is adding more spears in Vermilion. I'm going to have to improve the garrison in SG before I go to war: two LB would be a rather nice garrison.

I'm not deleting the warriors here because I think I might need them for extra happiness in WTF? and DF.

This is one city that I would feel happier if it had a couple more units in it. rego is a player who would try something sneaky. Maybe 2 warriors here?

Adding on to what I wrote on turn 146, I need to not only manage growth but also get back to one turning units as fast as possible. Well, I have a very easy solution to that, I'm going to irrigate the silk and use the chop to fuel a bunch of one turn units. I need to be aware that with the sheer number of worker turns needed to alter the tiles, I either need to trail a bunch of workers up from the jungle, or build a bunch of new workers.

Slaved the library and will immediately regrow. Saving gold this turn, and turning tech on next turn for the mediocre 6 beaker bonus.

I'm building Wealth this turn, and for the next 5 turns. Unlike building Wealth for a single turn with a mere three hammers, I'll make 55 gold and the majority of it will be used to fund tech, so this is a reasonable usage.

I'm working the coat instead of the granary this turn to make gold instead of beakers in a city that has no beaker skew. The gold will be used to fund the slider to push more commerce through the Academy at Crapital. Next turn work the mine though.

Catapult #1 finishes eot T148. Cataplt #? finishes T151.

Next turn work the banana, making a reasonable 7fpt. Grow onto the hills, and use 1 worker to road the grass jungle.There are 6 workers here.

I have 7 workers here doing jungle chops. With Serdom, the 13 workers I have at SMS and SC will be able to do work equivalent to at least 20 workers due to rounding. Slaving the unimproved river grassland next turn. But I need to remove some of these back to Opportunism for roads towards Fuchsia. Which is why I'll need Serfdom, to keep up whilst I have fewer workers in this area.

Farm will be completed next turn, then another farm on T152.

This is the only city that really benefits from Caste. Serfdom is just generally more useful for the empire and a bunch of other cities. Is it worth revolting to Caste in 2 turns, or should I research Feudalism? I'll need workers to improve WTF? and I'm in slavery...I can just make use of the good old double pop slave trick: build into a worker for 2 turns until it is at 26/60. Then double slave, 89/60 with 29 hammers overflow. Next turn, build a worker, 42/60. Turn after slave again, 85/60. Just stack the unhappiness, I have enough of it to go around. The limiting factor is how long I'm going to be in slavery. There are more happy efficient methods of slaving but I'm more interesting in the most hammer efficient use of the population.

Grow eot T148, T150 and I think eot T152 and T155. At size 7 it can make 11 hpt, enough to reliably make a Longbow or two before returning to the court house.

As per last turn, focussing growth.

Continue stacking the one pop slave unappiness for catapults. And this is Catapult #2. Catapult #? should be T151.

I'm paying 1gpt for unit supply to get a road from Opportunism to PD. Need to road two jungle tiles, and then get the workers back to prepare for the invasion of azza.

Second power is all over the place.

[Krill]

Turn 149 - Some turns are just boring

Boring.

I've serve research to 50%; I'm not sure I'll have enough gold left to run 100% next turn, but I shouldn't need to. 90% followed by two turns of break even (basically one turn just below break even, one turn above) are enough to get Feudalism.

This market, at breakeven, is worth about 16 gold over the two turns, or about 5% of the slider on a given turn.

The worker on the forest startyed a road for hte workers due out of BL to help farm.

Catapult #3

A court house, could be slaved for 4 pop but the trade off is about 3gpt saved in costs, 2ept from the court house and 9cpt lost from coastal tiles. Maybe later.

If I need to work the plains hill mine and take a small food loss so be it.

OTOH, this city might be worth slaving for the court house. Work the plains hill for 4 turns, then slave for 3 pop and regrow to size 5 the turn after and work nothing but coast.

More catapults

Size 9 would be the aim here, but two of those tiles are a going to be worked by PRNGG in the next 20 turns, but it's worth getting the two cottages worked before then for growth. With a lack of reasonable tiles to work, I might have to build a light house and work coast.

Slaving the catapult next turn to gain 1 food and 1 commerce. The spare farm is available for PRNGG and will be handed over in the next 10 turns. I want to get the jungle hill mined and the lakeside jungle, but that wille take a while, with the workers needed for the war against azza.

It will take 5 turns to grow even with the extra farm. I don't think I'll work the farm until size 6, I don't want to delay the court house and the gold that will save.

I'm going to slave this next turn, I think.

Definitely need a longbow in this city.

Every unimproved riverside flatland will farmed, the rest can be cottaged. Will grow onto windmills before working plains cottages.

Definitely slaving away the lake on T151, but will not be able to get another slave out of the city.

One Academy, 3 libraries, 3 monasteries, the Great Library versus one market and a shrine. Beaker skew in action.

Crop yield is increasing again, but that is because Nazul are working hills and the hammers are going through the forges.

[Krill]

Turn 150 - Temptation

Pingo...you just love giving me reasons to invade you. Your shrine must be worth a bob or two by now as well. I voted abstain because my votes won't have any effect on if they win or not, so why bother.

No change here, to either of the garrisons.

Sail little boat sail.

4 cats getting into postition..

90% is good enough for Feudalism in 3 turns, due eot T152, with two turns of breakeven or one turn saving gold one turn with the highest possible slider. I would consider building wealth to run 100% but...why? I'll just push out this missionary then reassess.

One more turn...need to start thinking about what to build. A barracks? It won't actually make much difference, as I can run Theocracy and Vassalage to get double promo defensive units, which are the only land units I want to build here. Galleys? Nah...Monastery? Maybe, 10% extra beakers with 30% break even slider isn't an awful lot though, 1.5bpt. Lighthouse? Possibly.

This is the last turn of major food surplus, next turn I'll reset to 3fpt to grow to size 14, then reset again to max hammers and grow slowly at 2fpt. Assuming 15 turns until Machinery, that's 32 food produced (one more population as well).

SC has been size 6 for almost half the game...If CS is 10 turns away, I need to prepare to farm all of the flat land to enable growth and build a court house. At least farm the grasslands so it can grow to size 11 and work hill mines.

I changed this city to stop building wealth and continue growth on the catapult. I don't need any more gold to finish Feudalism. After the catapult...*shrug*

I wouldn't be in slavery long enough to slave this, so max growth...and try to get a worker or two to mine the desert hills and improve the flatland tiles. I'm probably going to watermill both grassland tiles in the medium term...

No comment.

Part of me wants to strengthen this garrison with a couple of spears. One of my fears is a fast mover attack from the tile 4E of the city.

Slaved the catapult. Will have the option of slaving the next one and it popping out with 5XP. I think I'll take that.

One option is to slave the court house for 2 pop next turn...doubt it's needed, but it is an option.

I slaved the worker. Next turn drop overflow into the court house instead, and grow to size 5. T152 build a worker, and T153 slave it before revolting to Serfdom. Then drop the extra hammers back into the court house, total overflow hammers probably worth over 40 hammers total.

If I do revolt to Theocracy and Vassalage, now more need for a barracks in this city, I'll definitely build a few CG2 longbows to hold the city better.

More growth...

Slave this next turn, will likely get another slave in on T153 as well with Vassalage to get the 5XP. Then I suppose it is on to the court house.

Boring.

131K soldier points over second place now. And let's be fair, until recently all of my cities except WTF? have been on peaceful builds. I've built the 4 wonders at Aesthetics and Lit (SoZ in the HE city, SP in a junk backline city that had nothing else to build, Parthenon in a front city to take cultural control of an area and the GL for a quick Academy to keep up in tech) and one NW in the HE. And the HE basically has produced something in the region of 10HA, 1 catapult, 1 jag, 3 archers and a chariot because of the 100% multiplier, which is close to 700 hammers...and it cost me 100 base hammers to build. I think I've leveraged that tech gamble pretty well.