RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[Gazzahk]

Yes, so simply no need for it then. Just wondered if anything else in the thinking; isn't it at all useful? More expensive?

[Ellimist]

The "cost" of switching to it is a turn of anarchy. Right now there is no benefit. So he'll adopt it later or never.

[Gazzahk]

Cheers just wanted to check in case there was something else I was missing.

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks LP

On Civics, why have you not adopted HR?

As others have said, HR is simply not needed for us with the enormous amount of happiness resources around (plus Markets/Forges/Temples most everywhere, plus Charismatic/Stonehenge). To be honest, resources in this game are spread far, far more liberally than I'm used to, which allows for an unusual strategy. Normally Monarchy would be one of the earliest techs I'd get if I didn't get the Pyramids, but I simply never needed it on this map (at least until I went for Divine Right).

The "cost" of switching to it is a turn of anarchy. Right now there is no benefit. So he'll adopt it later or never.

At this point I think I'm more likely to skip it entirely and switch straight to Representation (post-Constitution, which is incidentally available for research now). Though with (hopefully) a Golden Age coming up, I might switch to HR it just for the hell of it, amongst other civic switches.

What's next on the agenda?

More military and economic techs. Plus multiple whipped Universities so we can start on a capital Oxford ASAP.

[Lord Parkin]

Seven whips for a total of 14 pop this turn - a record so far for us, I think.

Here are some more of the less frequently seen screens, along with a graphs/demographics update.

Religion spreading is going well around our empire. 23/24 cities have Christianity so far, with the 24th getting it next turn, and the 25th getting it soon after it's founded.



Votes in the AP:



The top 5 cities screen:



GNP is... uh, good?



Production's great as well.



Food's also decent. Plako's pulled ahead again due to his captured cities coming out of resistance, but I'm not particularly concerned.



The power graph... quite a few rises recently. I'll build up our own military soon just in case. Rego's had the most notable rise - although from chatting with him it seems he's focussed on attacking Plako at the moment. He's NAP'd with us until T250 anyway, so I'm not particularly worried. Might even help him out against Plako later on, if things continue the way they look to be heading.



Demographics numbers (breakeven research on a 1-prereq tech, no wealth builds):

[bato]

I see you landed Islam, congrats on that, are there any plans with this religion? Maybe a shrine later?
You also seem to have developed quite a lead, would you mind telling us how you see the meta-game developing and how to you plan to carry your lead to victory

[Lord Parkin]

I see you landed Islam, congrats on that, are there any plans with this religion? Maybe a shrine later?

A Shrine for Islam probably wouldn't be worth the GP cost, unless somebody else goes all-out with spreading the religion for us. Simply put, the 40h missionary cost from spreading the secondary religion in our own lands isn't worth the 1-2 gpt gain from the Shrine when there are so many other things to invest hammers in (buildings, wonders, units, even wealth).

At this point in the game, I'd need a pretty good reason to use future GP's for anything other than Golden Ages.

You also seem to have developed quite a lead, would you mind telling us how you see the meta-game developing and how to you plan to carry your lead to victory

I expect alliances to be developing against us at some point, although we might benefit from the psychological phenomenon of nobody wanting to make the first move (as has happened before in this game with the attempt against Plako). Depends how far ahead we end up, though - at some point people will probably want to tackle us just for the hell of it, even if it isn't in their best interests. Guess we'll see if we can avoid that.

As long as our opponents respect the NAP's that they signed with us, we'll be in a position to defend ourselves reasonably well by the time they end. Plus we already have (I believe) some reasonable allies of our own, and I'm working on developing more. It's not easy negotiating alliances from the #1 position of course, but I like a challenge.

[Lord Parkin]

920 AD city numbers:

Us - 25 (+3 in a few turns)
Plako - 25
Luddite - 24
Rego - 24
Locke - 21
Nakor - 18
Moogle - 14
Adlain - 9
Mackoti - 8

I'm quite surprised how high Luddite's gone (must have been spamming them lately)... and I'm also surprised at just how low Moogle is (he's seriously been falling behind lately). Nakor's relatively low too, but he has the excuse of being out of decent land - whereas Moogle still has plenty available for expansion. I just don't get it.

Incidentally, for anyone interested, I've finalised a city placement plan over our land. We can support up to 35 cities with the land we've got, although a few of those would be "filler cities" with very few tiles of their own.

[Lord Parkin]

Oh, and Locke got Liberalism this turn. Bit too late to touch us on the Taj unless he pulls a Great Engineer out of left field... and given that he only just got a Great Scientist for bulbing Education, I kind of doubt that.

Will be interested to see if he picks Nationalism or something else for his free tech, given that the Taj is likely out of reach for him.

[Lord Parkin]

Got Rego's map this turn. We had a discussion about a few things, including Iron placement. I originally thought it was scarce, but that's not the case - there are 17 sources that I can see on the map, and many people have 2 or 3 sources. It seems Iron was only scarce for Rego and I. Check out the numbers:

Us - 1
Rego - 1
Luddite - 3
Mackoti - 1 (even with tiny empire)
Moogle - 2
Plako - 3
Nakor - at least 1 (though some land is still fogged)
Locke - 3
Adlain - 2 (even with tiny empire)

Rego's source was at least reasonably close to his capital. On the other hand, mine was extremely far away, and I could quite feasibly have lost it to Plako or Nakor had they expanded north a bit more aggressively. Hopefully we have easier access to some future resources compared to other nations, because that Iron distribution seems a bit odd otherwise.