RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[DMOC]

I've got a Warrior nearby, although I get the feeling this may be a quick war so we won't even see much by the time we arrive.

War's definitely started though... logged in this turn to see that Luddite had declared on Mackoti as he said he would. Luddite mentioned they'd been negotiating with him, but apparently that didn't work out. Will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Regardless, you should be celebrating. Virtually any time your neighbor gets stuck in a war, it's beneficial to you.

[Senseless]

Actually, might this war be detrimental to us in the long run? Last I checked, Luddite was way over Mackoti in the power graphs. Of course, I haven't checked the graphs since I last posted, and I haven't seen how much whipping Mackoti's done in his border cities recently. I'm not even sure what the right play would be if Luddite were to just steamroll Mackoti. Just something I thought I would bring up.

[Lord Parkin]

I've played in a duel game with Mackoti before. He's a very tough opponent. Luddite's not going to take him out in one sweep, I'm confident of that.

What I'd be more worried about is if Mackoti and Luddite somehow work out some concessions and suddenly become best buddies. That sort of thing has happened before in games. However, given the NAP break from Mackoti earlier, I'm hoping Luddite will have sufficient reason not to do that.

[Lord Parkin]

Preparations are being made for settling the silver city. A settler is on its way from the east.

Granary was finished in Pantherinae, working on a Library there now.



The Temple of Artemis is on schedule for completion in a few turns in the capital. Meanwhile, Tigris is growing while it builds a Granary, and Magadan is working towards the Moai Statues.



Evermore and Felidae are working on building Libraries.



Leo has switched to building a Worker now that it's reached size 2.

[Lord Parkin]

Well, Civstats tells us that Luddite took and razed one of Mackoti's cities this turn. (Luddite confirmed this in chat.)

That's... unexpected. Apparently Luddite didn't have the force necessary to keep the city, so he razed it. So the net result is that Mackoti loses a city, which is obviously bad for him - but Luddite doesn't immediately gain anything out of a razed city either. Oh well, guess that's good news for us anyway, if neither of them are getting much out of this so far.

Possibly too early to tell though, so we'll see what happens from now on.

[Lord Parkin]

Updated screenies for this turn. Not much new. We're only 2 points behind Plako in food (129 vs 131) and 7 points behind in score. By the time we get Currency I'm hoping we'll be close to competing with him in all categories.



For those who hadn't already noticed, you can see Rego's borders at the far right hand side of the following screenshot. The contested Clams site that Rego's agreed to let us have is the one at the bottom right of this screenshot.



Libraries in both Felidae and Evermore will be finished in 3 turns.



Worker down south has moved onto the Gold to road it before the borders expand. Named the Axe and Spear pair guarding the Worker "Asterix" and "Obelix" respectively.

[Irgy]

You seem to be saving up quite a lot of cash. Do you really need that much before you can 100% your way through Currency? I gather the slow rate of gold accumulation is a result of your quite rapid expansion, 10 cities is quite a lot to support before Currency. Don't get me wrong though, I'm quite sure it will pay off fairly shortly.

[Lord Parkin]

Don't worry, I've tested it thoroughly in my sim. We switch to 100% on turn 97 and get Currency on turn 101, burning through all our gold. We do have quite a large deficit at the moment due to expansion, but it'll be fixed soon.

I did test whether we can get it earlier, but even turn 100 isn't possible without both delaying our Silver city and stunting growth in several other cities. Besides, turn 101 isn't too bad - only 8 turns away.

[nabaxo]

More cities > everything else.

Currency one turn later is not an issue. However, not expanding will be.

[Lord Parkin]

More cities > everything else.

Well, to a point. If you wreck your economy beyond a certain point, the recovery time becomes so long that you pretty much permanently fall behind in tech. We're not at that point though.

Currency one turn later is not an issue. However, not expanding will be.

Well, it's Currency 1 turn later vs the Silver city 3 turns later (and slowed growth in a few cities). It's probably roughly equal in reality, but it just feels wrong to delay settling a city when a Settler is ready. I'll maybe check over the sim once more, but my inclination is to go ahead with settling the Silver city on turn 97 at the moment.