[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

Okay, seriously? I give you a freshwater site with riverside copper, corn, lighthouseable lake, crabs, and horses and you complain?

Seriously, it's just funny, because the veteran Mao complained too. Sorry, next time I'll put up a huge neon sign saying "SETTLE HERE"

In no way am I complaining about the lush terrain....but couldn't you AT LEAST have put a riverside gold next to that copper? :neenernee

What can I say, we all knew Mao was jerk. Number One wants to talk about that site with the copper there anyway so it's not a given that we move ahead with C3 as planned. We'll figure it out before we get the next turn. Settling 1N of the corn would indeed be an amazing city and we could still get the southern crab in a revised city for later, likely 1SE of the current C3 marker, or SE,E. The second choice there would overlap more with Newt for quicker cottage growth (potentially 5 cottage tiles it could grow for a later bureaucracy capital), but after it loses those tiles to Newt it would be a bit gimped.

One nice thing about the current C3 site is that all 4 forests are immediately choppable, for a quick GLH attempt. We'd need a border pop somehow to get the 4th forest in the revised location, but if we could get a border pop that would give us 5 forest PLUS a better base hammer rate. I'd have to look more closely to see if that would save us time getting the GLH built, because it would probably require us to tech Mysticism and chop a monument early enough to let the borders pop, to let us chop the forests outside first ring borders.

Another problem with moving C3 to the mega site would be how it cramps the proposed stone city. I know it's still a legal settlement site, being on a different landmass, but it would overlap even more tiles than the already close C3 does. But that city is probably a ways off and is mostly relevant for ICTRs and the stone, so even if the city sucks it's not that bad. Just grow to a high pop on borrowed crabs and corn for max TR income, or for infrastructure whips. That's still not a bad outcome for that city, assuming there isn't much else to be revealed in the fog.

Anyway, these are my thoughts for debate, Number One. Commodore, thanks for making the map, I'm not on a rant by any means. Which thread was it where someone said that only a pitboss game admin was a more thankless job than map maker?

[Ceiliazul]

I tried to bank a worker turn by roading/cancelling, and then save that cancelled action and use it on a chop

You can cancel a half-built improvement, and the game will maintain the progress on that improvement. Example, I sometimes have workers in transit stop with 1-road movement left and put 1 turn into a cottage (or whatever). This way I waste less worker turns on the road.

If a cottage takes 3 worker turns to build, the game doesn't care if they happen 20 turns apart, or all at once. But if you put 2 turns into the cottage, they can't count toward a workshop.

More commonly, chop and chop/mine are different commands, and don't discount each other... bears remembering.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T31 - This was a busy turn. I ended up holding the save for about 8 hours because I was waiting to talk things over with Number One before playing. As a result Dazed may or may not have had time to play last night in time to get the save moved back to our Danish friends....If I delayed the game, sorry guys.

First up, after talking things over we decided that Number One was right about the placement for C3 (the city will be named Rick Santorum). The dotmap in the image below has been updated to show the new site. This will let us work the copper/grass/river and we will not be settling a city on that tile. We added another city site 1 SE of the original C3 placement, that city will be a fishing village/capital cottage incubator for settlement later on.

Basically the decision came down that the site with copper was too good to resist. The immediate function of this city is still to land us the GLH since we think we can get it faster here than in Mitt Romney, even though Mitt is already settled and growing. The reason is that we can get 5 forests in the BFC quickly with a monument (only a 5 turn border growth on quick), and can work both the grass copper mine and the pastured horse, plus plains hills if the city can grow that large before we need the GLH finished). I've resisted doing it so far but I think I may have to do a sandbox project for this to see what the best micro is here. Or maybe this would be a good job for Number One . Our infrastructure build order will be 1. Granary (chop/overflow) 2. Monument (pop borders, grab 2 extra forests + horse) 3. Lighthouse 4. the GLH. I'll have to test in the sandbox to figure out what size the city will be and what tiles it will be working to achieve the fastest GLH completion. I know Sian will be competing with us to build it since he had an agreement with Catwalk. I just don't know whether he will be working on the Pyramids first or the GLH. I hope pyramids, but he started with Fishing and may have an advantage on us in this race (nevermind being IND/ORG).

As for the timeline, Rick Santorum will be settled next turn. We already have Audie Cornish doing a chop/mine (5T) on the PHF that will go into the granary. Brian Naylor will begin farming the corn next turn, 4 worker turns required there. Next we'll mine the copper, and the city will be size 2 already working corn and copper. At size 3 it will work the mine unless borders have already popped and the horse is improved. I don't have the save or my chat with Number One in front of me, we may have already nailed down some of these details. I'll have to check.

Newt starts building its granary this turn and will dump 34/40 modified hammers into it immediately, and will grow to size 5. Next turn I'll pause the granary build, put one turn into a worker, and then double whip it to completion the next turn. The overflow from the worker whip will go back onto the granary to finish it with overflow, which probably goes onto another worker (Newt should be regrown back to size 4 by then, which is all the improved tiles it has available to work right now).

By the way, the bowman that had been queued forever finished this turn, providing garrison for Newt as the warrior heads off to scout our land east of the FP site.

Mitt Romney is still working on the granary, which I'll whip next turn. Leaving aside the whole debate about whether it's right to whip a granary or not, we only have one improved tile here so I'd rather whip the city back down to 1 and put the overflow onto a worker that can help us chop and improve the tiles we need at Rick Santorum for the GLH push. After that worker we'll probably build another one at size 2. We need labor right now. We'll complete the shared GFH between Mitt and Newt, someone will get those forest hammers onto something buffed by EXP, and Mitt will work that hill mine when it gets back to size 2.

Our tech path is set, established by the infrastructure needs at Rick Santorum described above.

Finally, here is a peek into Catwalk's Oracle build. Looks like he's well on his way. Dazed and I will both be eating dust in score and official GNP very soon.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I would be interested to know if any lurkers agree with my idea to start city 3 (Rick Santorum) on the PFH building the granary until the corn is done in 4T. This gets the most benefit out of EXP granary but slows growth, a bit. Tradeoff would be 3 food/turn vs. 6hammer/turn, with knowledge that the farmed wet corn will let the city grow like a weed immediately thereafter.

Granary = 40
city center (1) + PFH (3) = 4*2 (exp bonus) = 8h/turn *4 (corn completes), so 32h into granary vs. 12 food into growth on unfarmed corn. Whips are worth 20 on quick? I think using EXP bonus and delaying growth is worth it here. We need 14 food for size 2 and a whip, that will take 3 turns of growth on the corn. So we could still whip the granary at 38/40 before it completes and have massive overflow into a worker to facilitate chops. Or into the monument, but you'll lose some overflow. I prefer the worker.

Thoughts?

[Commodore]

Well, first off, the corn isn't wet until Civil Service, but it's still a nice 5fpt tile. Secondly, EXP makes things tricky and you have a slightly unfortunate setup there. A one-pop whip for 20 hammers gets multiplied to 40, so granary is done in a 1-pop with just one hammer in it. Sadly, your overflow gets halved after the granary finishes, too. So generally, it'd be best to grow on the corn, whip, and then regrow or whatever.

But, you're also about to get...13 or 20? You have math yet? Whatever, you're getting something from that chop in four turns too. So that complicates things, but also potentially gives you a way to get both granary and monument in five turns with one whip and almost no sloppy overflow. I leave how, of course, to the player.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Bah. I forgot that overflow hammers will not receive the 100% EXP multiplier like the granary. All that we could overflow into and receive a bonus would be a worker, but at 25%. And 13 for chop vs. 20.

I wasn't sure about the CS through the city for the wet corn. Thought the city might act as an irrigated tile anyway. Never thought about it before. Thanks for pointing that out.

Working unfarmed corn we'll grow in 5 turns and have 10h into the granary. 4T for chop to come in (26 +8) so T4 = 34/40, T5 (growth) city 2 + PHF 6 = 42/40 granary complete, 1 overflow toward monument, whip that bitch when you can overflow into lighthouse.

Does that make sense, Xenu?

[spacetyrantxenu]

@Number One: Got it.

T32 - Catwalk completed the Oracle on his turn, I don't really have a guess at the moment what tech he chose. He did not want to take Monarchy, he has an agreement with Sian to not build the Colossus, so MC wouldn't make a lot of sense unless he's after early forges or triremes. In the trade screen I can't propose open borders with Korea so I assume that means they don't have Writing yet, so they didn't Oracle something at the top of the tree either. I don't think it was CoL and can't be Theo since as I haven't seen an announcement of Hinduism and Judaism falling (unless that wouldn't get reported until T33 starts, so my next turn. But you wouldn't Oracle those when they're so cheap, surely). Leaving all that, then, what's left...Feudalism? IW? HBR? None of those seem terribly important to economy in the early going and I don't peg Catwalk to make a play at an early rush (wouldn't need Oracle to do that). Masonry wouldn't be worth taking with the Oracle -- if you want the pyramids you'd just tech Masonry. Maybe I'll get some free info out of him in a conversation and he'll tell me what happened. I'm not putting money on it, but I'll guess MC since it seems to have the most early benefit.

This turn I settled Rick Santorum on C3, started onto the granary working the corn tile as previously discussed. Audie Cornish is still chop/mining, Brian Naylor moved onto the corn and began farming it, due in 4. Newt finished the bowman and is beginning its granary now, due in 2 (will whip the turn it would complete anyway to get rid of the population working an unimproved tile, overflow to worker -- I'm trying to follow The Plan). I whipped the granary in Mitt, so back to size 1 they go working the lone improved tile, a pastured sheep. Regrows in 2 turns, starts a worker next. Scouting continues, will post an updated map in a few turns or sooner if anything interesting is revealed.

On the espionage front I'm a bit irritated that Sian's EPs continue to climb against me despite the fact that he had agreed to spend them elsewhere. It seems that Sian, Catwalk, and I all allocated our points against each other in the early game and left off points on Kuro in the early going, probably because we were a bit late meeting him (at least I think that's what happened, could be wrong). Anyway, for some reason Sian has points against me even though he had graphs a few turns ago, and now I've lost visibility on him. The paranoid part of my dinosaur brain thinks he's up to something. I wonder if he's heard of our GLH plan? He has a non-compete with Catwalk on that (a concession from Catwalk in exchange for Sian giving up on the Oracle), but obviously has no agreement with me. Although Catwalk expressed concern over Sian sweeping several of the other early wonders (SH, 'mids, Colossus, and GLH) and I may have (foolishly) indicated interest in GLH -- I can't remember -- it would seem a bad idea to pass that information along to Sian if he is worried about Sian wonder-whoring it up. Anyway, the espionage screen shows I only need 1 more point to get graphs back on Sian, but I wonder if that is enough since he'll play his turn and probably spend more points on me again. We'll see next turn, but right now we're 50/44 Sian/me. I have 1 point in him so we should be at XX/45 next turn. If it's more than a point he's running on me I'll chat him up about it and ask why he changed his mind on spending and didn't let me know. (And probably assign a hidden diplo penalty ).

I haven't done this yet, but here's a city count with populations listed. I must have been saving this for when it looked favorable to us, at least on city count.

1. Civilization (Sian): 111,000
Pacal II (5)
Victoria (3)

2. Korea (Slowwalk): 96,000
The Holy Grail (4)
Seoul (4)

3. Republican Party (Mao!) :50,000
Newt Gingrich (4)
Mitt Romney (1)
Rick Santorum (1)

4. Land of Logic (Dazedroyalty): 23,000
Pythagorean (3)
Quadratic (1)
Integer (1)

Some useful corresponding information is that only Dazed and I are in slavery, making the population numbers less important. Clearly he and I will be killing our citizens for hammers. I whipped off my first population this turn, not sure if he has before without looking at past demographics screens (probably an activity better left for anyone interested, I've posted a lot of F9 screens). Anyway, Mao loves the flesh to hammer conversion process so we'll be doing a lot of that.

Photos:

[Ceiliazul]

I haven't seen an announcement of Hinduism and Judaism falling (unless that wouldn't get reported until T33 starts, so my next turn.

Make sure the check the event log (button in top left corner, looks like a book?) for all the game notices. I don't think religions give a text notice under the tech bar in PBEM

[spacetyrantxenu]

Make sure the check the event log (button in top left corner, looks like a book?) for all the game notices. I don't think religions give a text notice under the tech bar in PBEM

I checked F7 when I was looking at that last turn and didn't see any religions other than Buddhism off the board. So far there is only one true way to enlightenment.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Buddhism is all that is known at this point.

Easy turn, explorers continued exploration. No worker turns, no city management. Granary completed in Newt, I decided a whip would be worthless, plenty of overflow into a worker for next turn from Granary. We can whip next turn and see how close we can get to a 1T worker with overflow. I suggest W/W out of Newt. I want to improve our special tiles and chop GLH, and that means worker turns. Also, can't neglect our other two cities.

No pictures, I played in 5 minutes.