[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[SevenSpirits]

As mentioned, I determined at the start of the turn that Mackoti had finished Sailing. Based on my run with the Mackoti sandbox it also looks like he got a settler last turn, as he grew and produced a warrior this turn.

Therefore I think we have no chance of competing for the GLH and I'd rather not go down completely in flames, so Novice and I chatted about alternatives. The two main paths would could initiate this turn were a) Meditation-Oracle or b) Wheel-Pottery (the most generally strong techs at this time). Wheel-Pottery doesn't look like it has much abuse of philosophical in our near future so I tried a run of Medi-Priesthood-Wheel-Pottery-*Metal Casting*. It went pretty nicely, and I'm excited about getting some powerful gpp sources online. So Novice investigated it a bit too and gave me the go-ahead. We'll be coming up with a more complete plan soon.

Unlike the GLH (sadly), I think we have pretty good odds of winning the oracle race. Our advantage comes from being the clear first to Meditation. It's incredibly rare that someone tries to out-Oracle the guy who gets Meditation. The only risk is that someone who wants it will recognize how long it's going to take us to get Wheel-Pottery, but that seems unlikely.

I'm excited to try the Oracle because I suspect that forges are pretty good with PHI. Yeah, we're not IND to make them twice as cheap, but our engineer gpp are 2-3x as effective. (The rate is doubled, and the hammers we save by rushing a wonder with a GE are 50% more than for an IND leader.) And that's ignoring that wonders are better for us because they all produce gpp... There's a reason there's no PHI/IND leader - it wouldn't be broken on RB but those two traits definitely play well with the same things.

Btw, one possible variant of the wheel/pottery plan, suggested by Novice, was chariot-rushing someone. [You can guess whether "someone" is the guy who got a really late BW and built the GLH, or one of the other players.] The fastest way to invade someone is through the crappier land - the cold pole. Very interesting map design I have to say. This also made me notice that there's no coast route through the cold pole! It's all blocked by ice. So cool. I joined in part for the Commodore map, and he did not disappoint.

Getting back to the turn - I started Meditation, worked the lake and started a workboat. See, good thing we got Fishing! It's like this was our plan all along.

[SevenSpirits]

To tide us over until we have a full plan:

* Max tech on meditation.
* Worker B: chop a forest for Blamless Yin.
* Worker C: farm FP (no immediate activity required)
* AM: grow to 5 for another 2whip
* BY: grow, work horses only at size 3

[novice]

[novice]

I played t28 yesterday, Buddhism is ours.

We're planning to Oracle MC ~t39 and whip/chop a forge in BY, then slowbuild the Colossus there and engineer rush the Mids there ~t54. At size 10 the city can run 5 specs for some nice mixed gpp pool action.

Admittedly, neither GP farm nor Holy City are your first instincts looking at the BY site, but that's how it goes. We can give the city NE and WS, or save either for a late game NP city.

[novice]

Also, we'll be at 3 cities ~t32 and 4 cities ~t41. Lewwyn founded his third city this turn.

[novice]

You know, caste will solve many problems for us in this game. I think we may want to go for it even while non-spi and non-golden. Get early Feud for security and eat a turn of Anarchy in an emergency. Or maybe early construction fits better with our UU and CoL research (since we won't need Monarchy and will have the prereqs for Civil Service.

[Rowain]

3 posts within 15 minutes?? I guess you got Regoarrities

And the Hwacha is a nice tool.

[novice]

Rowain, I had a few minutes at the mall, so I typed up some thoughts on the phone.

Anyway, I played t29 and devised a short-term micro plan.



Attach Mimes has grown to size 5 and is ready for a worker whip overflowing to settler. Although we would like to grow back building the Oracle, and put food-based overflow into it as well. Since Priesthood is due in 4, we started the worker this turn, but will put one turn into the settler on t30 before whipping the worker t31. We'll then complete the settler t32 with a good chunk of overflow into the Oracle, which will complete alongside Pottery eot38. In addition to the initial overflow the Oracle will receive two chops.

Our third city won't be founded until t34, but will get a kick start working corn, corn, copper mine for 3-turn growth to size 2. I guess we'll build a monument there, followed by a work boat for the clams.

Our fourth city will be founded t41 by a settler from Blameless Yin. Said settler build will overflow into a forge build, which will receive one chop and then we'll 2-whip it. Blameless Yin just completed a work boat for itself, and will grow to size 4 on a second work boat build before starting the settler.

[novice]

Updated sandbox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM29/...dSwordSave

Seven pointed out a simple improvement to the above plan - we whip the settler and overflow to worker and then Oracle, instead of worker-settler-Oracle. This gets Cruel Guitar one turn sooner, but the copper improved one turn later. Still a net win since Cruel Guitar can borrow food tiles from the capital in the meantime.

[novice]

And here's our updated map hypothesis, based on our current scouting information.



We pretty much know how the mainland is shaped now, with our separate rectangular blobs being connected to a large rectangular jungle area, and a smaller rectangular polar area. That means there are two big oceans, and these contain at least some islands. We know little about their shape, but I've filled in the correct total amount of land tiles. So that tells us the oceans are worth exploring. We can also expect them to hold valuable resources, since we've already spotted gold and stone on these islands, but nowhere else.