[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[Lewwyn]

I'm sure most of you have read EMC's thread and that they have been updating about it, but they basically just handed us the game. They are going to plant 7 cities in the center island and they are gifting us 3 of them. Then we complete HG and each of them can whip a skirmisher with the new extra pop.

How does this happen? Ellimist goes to Noble looking for peace. Noble says I want access to the island, and Ellimist proceeds to negotiate against himself to the tune of 3 cities. I mean... my idea of a demand was basically 2 cities, and they give us 3? I've said in this thread that I was trying to look for a way that we could actually not go to war, but I wasn't going to settle for anything less than at least 2 cities so I didn't think it was possible, but here they are, giving us half the center island! We're going to have 14 cities and get HG... And Ellimist is actually HELPING us do it. Knowingly even! Saying he'll rush the settlers in place so he can gift them before we finish HG. I'm still in shock.

And yes, that's enough for me to back down from war.

Resources we are getting on the island from our new cities:
2x Deer
Incense
Banana
2x Spice
Sugar
Clam
2x Silver
2x fish
gems
Possibly Silk
13-14 total

OMG

We received the cities this turn and we finish HG this turn.

Kuro looks to be headed after EMC and EMC is between him and us anyway so EMC won't escape war. While we only have to deal with Jkioan... who actually we could go run down and crush at any point because they HAVE NO MILITARY.

Like I said, thanks for the game Ellimist.


One other note. We have 14 cities and our closest opponent, Kuro, has 11. EMC has 7 atm. and Jkioan has 6. What??

This means that our economy is by far the most strained at the moment. The 2 furthest center island cities are costing us 8 gold each and the 3rd 7 gold. The awesome thing is that each one is basically paying for itself through intercontinental international trade routes! Each is getting 6 gpt from trade routes with Jkioan + the center tile's commerce. Also we can easily take this economic hit because our home island is Boss. Its completely covered in cottages except for the mines. I don't know if everyone else has the same level of development on their home islands. I think we're going to be able to develop our new lands and really start to run away...

[Lewwyn]

Oh I also forgot to mention we can tech IW in 2 turns, and finish the pyramids in 6.

Go go Bismark of Mali...

[NobleHelium]

I think you forgot to mention the much more important fact that they are *not giving* us the cities. We are trading settlers for them. They're basically spotting us the cities ahead of time. We will get three settlers to them across a span of 5 to 9 turns or so. In the deal I said 5-8 but it's not looking like I can get the third one there that soon.

We got like 140 score at EOT. Hopefully that doesn't attract some seller's remorse. I definitely don't think we've won the game, but we're in a very good position.

Oh and that 2T Iron Working value is at deficit. We're not making much research at breakeven, lol. We have approximately 60% of the highest GNP at EOT.

I will make an extensive report soon.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, so we're up to turn 102.

It's well known that city production resolves city by city, down the list as shown in the F1 screen. But it hasn't really been noted how this interacts with the Hanging Gardens. The HG gives 1 pop to every city when it's completed, of course. The HG completes when the city that is building it resolves its production. The interesting part is that means all cities that resolve production after it will get a bonus pop immediately and get to work an additional tile for that turn! This leads to some very interesting effects which came into play this turn.

Let's have a little before and after. Hydrogen production resolves before Helium obviously...

What happened was that Hydrogen resolved its production, growing to 7. It had 8 food surplus, so there was 1 extra food after growing. The food box was 32f, so 16 food was carried over by the granary, plus 1 to make 17. You can see we now have 17/36 in the box. It would actually have been better to have Hydrogen resolve its production after Helium, since the new citizen would have been put onto the whale by the governor. The whale has 3 food, so we would have exactly been able to grow from 7 to 8 naturally (food box increases by 2, we had 1 food extra anyway), so we would have gotten two additional commerce from working the whale for the turn. And we still would have ended up with 17/36 food since the food box would then have been 34f, half of which is 17f. Obviously completing Moai Statues has caused the governor to go berserk and not work both villages, which we will fix next turn.

Oxygen was in an interesting situation. We wanted exactly 14h worth of production for the worker so that we can 2-pop whip it next turn. This led to us working the bare riverside grassland over the forest, since the additional pop will get placed onto one of the forest tiles which will contribute two additional hammers via the Expansive bonus. If we had worked the forest (or the flood plains which I gave back to Carbon), the new citizen would have put us over. You can see that we do in fact have 14h in the worker despite the forecast production being 12h. And Carbon needed the flood plains cottage back anyway, since it will get the grass mine back via its own bonus pop.

Fluorine is really interesting. You can see that normally we would not have been able to grow it this turn. But the bonus HG population allows us to magically work the second fish, which gives us an additional 3 food surplus. We would have been 1 food short, and with the additional size of the food box, we have just enough food to grow to size 4. I am inclined to say we should not whip the mint at all, and simply grow to size 5 while quickly finishing the mint naturally (it should complete quickly with the new seaside mine). Then we can 2-pop whip a lighthouse and overflow into a worker. That seems backwards, but we cannot 2-pop whip a worker here due to too much production. I think that's a good way to go. Normally I would go with a settler or something, but we really need more workers right now.

Here's a look at our other cities, since we never did a turn 100 report due to what happened recently.

Currently working an engineer. It's not actually working the coast since that was from HG completion. Next turn it will take the cottage back, as noted.

I queued up workers here and abused the HG to grow while preparing workers for whip. We'll whip these next turn. Need more workers...

On the turn that the forest is chopped we'll switch to a settler and then 2-pop whip it the turn after, as before. Unhappiness is inflated here right now because there's no garrison. A warrior will arrive next turn. Oh and I successfully spread Judaism here.

Going to build a library really quick here before cranking out more defenses. Or maybe we build a market too...we're currently at 20-30% breakeven so the library might not be so useful. It's a lot cheaper than a market though.

Waiting for the chop to finish the library then we will whip a settler. No garrison here right now either, but a skirmisher will arrive next turn. Its original skirmisher is shifting to Neon so we can put it on a galley.

Not much going on here. Waiting for chops to come in then we will whip some stuff.

All being whipped next turn. Sodium is in a pretty safe location for now and can wait on defense. Actually, we can wait on the whip in Sodium since the food box is not nearly half full. We'll get hammers for free (well city maintenance is slightly higher) by waiting on the whip, at the cost of not starting the whip decay timer. But we're not going to run out of happiness anyway.

We're going to chop this granary instead of whipping. It's going to suck for a while until we can get some improvements, but that horse will be pastured soon and the cows a bit later. We'll whip a mint at 4.

Oh and apparently EMC also thought about the barbarian city and the GLH, and Ellimist told me that it is in fact not there. I really don't see why Krill decided to put the city in then, it's sitting on boring ivory. The culture will not extend any further because of intercontinental culture rules.




We are still somehow #2 on land area, according to the demographics. But the victory screen says we have more than the highest rival. That doesn't make sense. At any rate, Ellimist sent me his self-made map of the entire world, and apparently we have the smallest quadrant of the map. The reason is that the map is an even number of tiles but the donut has an odd tile width and height. Krill must have just counted tiles from the edge of the map and assumed the distances would be equal, but no. So the starting islands are not equidistant from the center of the map. The islands on the east are one tile closer horizontally, and the islands in the north are one tile closer vertically. As a result, Kuro has the largest quadrant, EMC and Jkioan are middling, and we have the smallest.

We finally activated all trade routes, mostly ones to Kuro which we were missing. That helped a bit. Not quite sure why we got them, but I think when we found the other set of Kuro's cities (with the western warrior moving down from EMC), he has a continuous block of land from there to his capital. His other cities in the south middle are not fully connected. We're not actually getting 6 gpt from trade routes in the new cities (as you can see I guess), since there aren't enough foreign trade routes, and some of them are not intercontinental because the game isn't smart enough to distribute the trade routes in such a manner as to always be trading across the sea. It's some combination of city order that I don't care to figure out.

[Serdoa]

Victory screen rounds down the rival number afaik.

[Lewwyn]

Everything looks great.

I think you forgot to mention the much more important fact that they are *not giving* us the cities. We are trading settlers for them. They're basically spotting us the cities ahead of time. We will get three settlers to them across a span of 5 to 9 turns or so. In the deal I said 5-8 but it's not looking like I can get the third one there that soon.

I want to point out something here. You say *not giving* but these are cities that they would have planted and thus we wouldn't have been able to plant ourselves. In that sense they are giving us the cities, they are giving us land we had no chance of claiming ourselves.

Additionally, we are giving them settlers back but if they had said "We'll give you the land but you have to plant the cities yourself." That would have taken 20+ turns. We might have lost to Kuro or Jkioan in that time. Additionally we would not have gotten the extra pop from HG. Additionally that 20+ turns of growing and production that would not have taken place.

My point is that they are in fact giving us the cities. And they are giving us the cities in a way that allows us to snowball from the moment they are built. They hadn't even planted their own cities at this point so our cities were snowballing before they even got theirs down. I know we agree that its a great deal for us, and I admit that we *could* still lose, but I think if we play it out at the same level that we have been, we'll come out on top and that is something I couldn't say before this deal.

[NobleHelium]

I wouldn't say the cities are snowballing right now. They can't snowball without workers. Right now they're mostly costing maintenance, but that's the cost of assuring the land. We probably would have gotten 2/3 of the land I would say, at a much later date but also with much better worker support from the get-go. And I'm not totally sure about that, since neither Kuro nor Jkioan have galleys on the inner coast, and Jkioan doesn't even have copper in their borders. We have vastly better worker management than them.

Oh you're talking about them planting the cities vs us getting the cities. I highly doubt they would have planted the cities after they saw our reaction to the situation. We would have been racing against the other players for them, and I definitely think we could have planted two cities on the island.

[Lewwyn]

Well it depends on your definition of snowballing. Having those cities now lets the grow and produce for 20 turns that we would have to spend trying to get our settlers there. I think of snowballing as any action which produces growth, continued and greater expected production in the future. These cities don't need to work improved tiles to grow and produce. And the longer they are there the bigger they grow and more they produce. Workers just exacerbate the effect. In the early game settling more cities faster has the effect of giving more cities growing which means more citizens and more tiles worked. Snowball. Working a cottage is an example of both passive and active snowballing. When you work it you game the tile production but you also get another turn towards allowing the tile to produce more.

In this case we have received cities, which will grow, earlier than we ever could have expected on our own and more land then we may have been able to secure. I consider it a win for our present and future production, and thus is a snowballing effect in my eyes.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, but working unimproved tiles often doesn't generate a net positive effect because the maintenance is equal or greater than what you produce from the tile. Early on it's definitely positive, but this late in development maintenance is very high and cities are mostly negative until you can improve them.

[Lewwyn]

Still, the cities are almost breaking even as is with trade routes. And cities like Sodium working the deer and the sugar aren't doing too badly.

In any case its semantics.