RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Congrats, Dantski! It only took him 35 turns to get that rice farmed at Djenne. (Of course it was only 1 food/turn, but still!)

I'll keep the micro note in mind when moving out of Antietam. We can station a couple of units in "zone defense" positioning between cities if you like. And spear before barracks for Gettysburg is fine with me. Going to work on our plan for the next five or so turns (up to T85) today or tomorrow, and it will be easy to shift the numbers around.

I think Antietam should stop whipping and simply grow to size 6, where we can pump 18 shields/turn working the rice + copper + 3 grassland hills + plains hill mine. That would make a dynamite military (and worker/settler!) pump for the early period of the game. Our other cities can carry the research load.

For research, we'll knock out Polytheism over the next two turns, then pause and run min science for 2-3 turns. If Judaism is still available, then we go through Masonry and Monotheism to Monarchy. If not, then the cheaper path via Priesthood. I looked at the numbers, and 50% science at break-even comes out essentially identical to min science oscillating between 0% and 100%. I'd prefer to stick with the min science for now, since it gives us a little more flexibility... and also turns the GNP Demographics chart into an unreadable mess of peaks and valleys.

Here's the northern disputed region before and after Jowy's turn:



Sparta built a spear with its whip. Jowy decided to keep that unit inside the city on defense. It's unclear if the archer moved back into Sparta, or SE onto the rice. I suspect the latter.



We founded Hampton Roads (former White) this turn, first team to city #5. The city has a chop completing its work boat next turn (T79), then a second chop completing a monument the following turn (T80). Check out those extensive islands to the west; we need to explore them and see where they go! Obviously the third build here is a granary, but maybe a galley is the fourth build.

It looks like the islands may connect over to the islands north of Athens. Wouldn't that be an awesome sneak-attack to make, slipping two galleys out of the fog to capture a capital on the first turn of a war? Something to keep in mind if we can't work things out with our neighbor.

Pretty quiet turn overall, aside from Broker double-whipping and single-whipping two cities. It looks like Whosit is going to be attacking Broker soon, based on their actions. If war does occur, a lengthy grinding war of attrition would be wonderful for us...



So as far as these Demographics go, the GNP stat was real interesting to me. Our number is somewhat inflated because we're running at 100% research, but I checked and we were at ~65 GNP at break-even research, so we're definitely well ahead of the pack. A lot of these teams seem to be hurting pretty badly right now on the commerce front. Everyone raced out to claim land (because of the tight spacing), then rushed to build military defenders for their territory, and then got hit with a lot of upkeep costs. That's the only reason why we still have a chance to grab Judaism so late, everyone hurting on research.

Last, check out the Soldier Count power rating for this turn (well, last turn technically!)



athlete is the one way up there at 102k, and he's been whipping himself to death cranking out more units. I guess they really want to destroy regoarrarr... Personally, I think they'd be better off leaving a pillaging force in place, teching up to catapults, and THEN coming back to finish them off. Instead, athlete is assembling a massive force of chariots, axes, and swordsmen; even if they win and take Athens, it's going to be a monstrous slaughter. Let's hope that they attack and come up short, losing a huge amount of units!

Jowy is at 72k and Dantski at 50k; we have perfect breakdowns of all their units. Jowy has 2 scouts, 1 warrior, 5 archers, 2 phalanxes, and a spearman. Dantski has 4 warriors and 2 skirmishers. These may not be completely accurate, but they should be pretty close. Our defenses should be sufficient at the moment against either.

So that's all for today, happy New Year to all, have a great 2010!

[Sullla]

We start Turn 79:



- Chop completed into the work boat at Hampton Roads.

- Camp finished on deer at Chancellorsville, now a 5/1 tile! One of the best in the game.

- Antietam grew to size 5, which actually puts it into unhappiness. But we finish mining the gold resource at Fredericksburg next turn, so we'll only have a single turn with the unhappy citizen.

- Gettysburg swaps one cottage out for a grassland hill mine, in order to finish a worker next turn. (Otherwise we would be at 59/60 production, which would just be silly.) That's why our science is slightly lower this turn.

- I didn't move Chamberlain yet or end our turn because I wasn't sure where we were going with him. Speaker, do you have one of those sentry positions you'd like to send him?

OK, check out how I highlighted the tech bar in the screenshot above. Notice how we received 94 beakers last turn for our research into Polytheism? (We had 1 beaker already from one turn of min science.) We can use this info to work backwards from the research formula, and determine how many teams have Polytheism tech!

94 [total beakers] = 75 [base beakers last turn] * (1 + (.03 * X [number of civs with Polytheism])) * 1.2 [Polytheism pre-req discount]

94 beakers means that we didn't get much of a bonus from other teams having the tech. It looks like the missing number was X = 1, 2, or 3. Just to test it, if we put X = 2 into the formula:

75 * 1.06 = 79.5 = 79 * 1.2 = 94 [Perfect!]

Thus we know that only two other teams already have Polytheism, and we actually know the identity of those two: IKZ (who founded Hinduism) and Nakor/DMOC, who lost a same-turn tiebreaker to IKZ. In short, this is very good news for us, because hardly any teams have one of the necessary pre-reqs for Monotheism/Judaism! The odds of us landing this religion are looking a lot better now.

Jowy has confirmed our new NAP by email:

Hello Sullla,

Good to hear that I'm glad we had that chat. Thank you for not settling east of Thebes. I had planned to settle that fish-silk spot myself, but it's a small price for peace. Good luck with the long overdue southern expansion! I really didn't know there's jungle there, though I'm going to scout it out soon. Congrats on calendar, in case you already researched it! With that GNP I wouldn't be surprised.

Happy new year!

I'll have to send him back something nice later today. That's one major relief off our mind.

athlete wants Open Borders:

Good afternoon Killer Angels,

We have a warrior approaching your borders through Mali territory and
we were hoping to arrange safe passage through your lands so that he
may unlock trade routes with your great nation. Would you be willing
to sign an Open Borders agreement?

Sincerely,
Athlete for A/K
Ottomans

I don't see any reason not to give them to him. Speaker, unless you object I'll answer them positively later today.

Finally, I had some time to type up a micro plan for the next little while. We're up to plan #6!

http://www.cassiopeiathedog.net/Images/P...ullla6.xls

This takes us up to the founding of our next city on T88. I think it balances growth and military defense pretty well. Please feel free to give comments and feedback!

[zakalwe]

Where are you planning to settle that 6th city?

[Speaker]

Open Borders to Athlete are fine.

Let's send Chamberlain down to the Green Dot area. It'll take a while, but he'll get there eventually, and can check on what sort of seafood resource we can expect. I have also taken Beauregard and sent him down toward Gettysburg, to head toward Dantski's land to act as sentry and maybe scout his land a bit. Jubal Early, once he gets home, will form the 3rd piece of the sentry unit in the south.

After the Archer in Chancellors, I'd probably vote for a Spear/Spear or Spear/Archer pair, instead of the Barracks. We still need 1 spear in Hampton-Roads, and 1 spear in Fredericksburg, and some sentries out to feel reasonably secure from any weird crap happening.

Other than that, it's pretty much full steam ahead. Work lots of cottages, get some Archers built to serve as MP in Gettysburg once we get Hereditary Rule. A favorite trick of mine is to slave a cheap unit just before or as you get Monarchy, and put the overflow into another unit. The happiness hit is negagated, and then you maximize growth.

I ended our turn.

[Speaker]

Fun picture from a 2v2 Modern Era game I played tonight. Starting in later eras is a fun alternative to the standard Ancient Era game, allowing you to not only jump into a later part of the tech tree, with access to better civics, but you also start with more settlers, workers, units, scouts, and free buildings and population in every city you found. It's an interesting twist on Civ for sure, and popular in the MP community.

[antisocialmunky]

How well do nukes work in MP? I'm assuming not very as you have over 9000 tanks there.

[Speaker]

How well do nukes work in MP? I'm assuming not very as you have over 9000 tanks there.

Nukes are awesome, so awesome in fact, that they are usually banned. In this particular game, however, nobody had researched Rocketry, nor built Manhattan Project yet.

[Krill]

What, and Panzers aren't banned? I didn't think antitanks are usually that good against them...damn times change...

OT: Thanks for the plan sullla, it makes for interesting reading.

[novice]

If you're going to Monarchy through Monotheism, would it make sense to research Priesthood after Monotheism anyway, for the extra prerequisite bonus?

[Sullla]

novice, yes we may indeed want to grab Priesthood; it might actually be cheaper to research that tech than go straight to Monarchy! I'll run the numbers when we get there. At the moment, I'm trying to get us to Monotheism ASAP to try and land that religion. It looks like we will get there in four turns:

0% science this turn (T80) [20g + 40g]
100% science next turn (T81), finishes Masonry [60g - 27g]
100% science (T82), knocks out most of Monotheism [33g - 27g]
60% break-even science (T83), finishes Monotheism [6g]

So hopefully we will found Judaism at the start of T84. Cross your fingers!

Turn 80:



- Jubal has found Nakor city #3, Sethanon. They planted on a sugar resource for 3 food/turn in the center tile, and there's unirrigated rice and gold in the second ring. Although Sethanon does have a monument inside, it looks like it could use some more worker improvement. (City is working a grassland forest - not what you want!)

- Fredericksburg has its gold resource fully mined and connected to our trade network. That made the unhappy face disappear in Antietam, and added another +8 commerce/turn to our civ! Very significant at this stage of the game.

- Gettysburg finished its worker, Worker Gaeta, and is now back to growing. Our first cottage reached "village" status this turn:



I love the little money bag icon!

- Speaker requested another spearman in Chancellorsville, but we actually have to do the barracks first. Sorry; otherwise we get too much overflow from the forest chop to double-whip the settler the way we want. Just trust me on this one!

- After getting a forest chop to complete its work boat last turn, Hampton Roads gets another forest chop this turn to complete its monument. It will expand borders one turn after Sparta.

- I left our military units unmoved. Speaker, you should log in and move them around as you see fit. I also started doing some renaming to avoid confusion; I'll give all our axes Frankish names, since they have a bit of a "barbarian" feel to me. Maybe give our spears Carthaginian names, just for change of pace (?) I don't want to use Greek ones with our neighbor being Greece!

- Both Athens and Sparta grew this turn, to sizes 5 and 4. They also both completed builds: monument in Sparta, and a 25-shield build in Athens that is 99% likely an archer. Dantski's power has been slowly building recently, although a lot of that comes from him researching Iron Working last turn. I'll keep an eye on it and let us know if anything too dangerous starts appearing.

- Everyone else's science really sucks! Dantski, Jowy, and Nakor all have GNP barely higher than they did at the start of the game. If we can just get like 50 turns of peace, we'll out-tech everyone to the point of crushing military superiority...

Please don't post that in the other threads, lurkers!