Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[novice]

Good to have you and your quality reports back!

[waterbat]

Thanks for the update, Sullla. I've been away from civ forums for some time (my last participation in a MP game was an SG called 'LK25' ) and since I've been back, I've been following the PB threads - it is interesting to see what Team1 is up to!

[Tredje]

Good to have you and your quality reports back!

Seconded. This is probably my favourite game to follow at the moment, and your reports are an integral part of that.

[SevenSpirits]

Welcome back.

Could we get some more city shots? We've seen Requiem a lot and your HE city fairly recently as well as some big picture shots of India, but I wonder how you are improving around your other cities, especially the ones in sunrise and Speaker's empires. And will there be any mass renovation due to the flurry of tile yield changes coming at around this part of the tech tree?

[Speaker]

Welcome back.

Could we get some more city shots? We've seen Requiem a lot and your HE city fairly recently as well as some big picture shots of India, but I wonder how you are improving around your other cities, especially the ones in sunrise and Speaker's empires. And will there be any mass renovation due to the flurry of tile yield changes coming at around this part of the tech tree?

Basically every grassland and flood plain is cottaged, every hill is mined, and a few select tiles are farmed as needed to get a +6 food surplus before maxing out. We won't be doing any mass renovations. I think Sullla is building a couple lumbermills in his newest city (for some reason).

Here's a recent picture of my land:

[Gazzahk]

Great to have your posts back here, they are greatly valued, especially as has been noted because of the quality of the posting...

[Ceiliazul]

Sullla, welcome back. I've been checking garath.net every two days or so... I'm happy to hear the lack of updates there isn't a symptom of in-game boredom.


Keep up the awesome reports!

[timmy827]

It's a pretty interesting game, because so rarely do we reach this point on the tech tree with the contest undecided.

As I have no experience with MP and later era starts, I was wondering if that (ie one team having unstoppable lead at this tech level) is common with Medieval starts as with Ancient.

[Speaker]

As I have no experience with MP and later era starts, I was wondering if that (ie one team having unstoppable lead at this tech level) is common with Medieval starts as with Ancient.

Definitely. It's the snowball mechanic of Civ. We are not a runaway in this game, however, because of my poor play in the mid-game (I don't have Oxford University or anywhere close to 8 Universities), and our inability to leverage Sunrise's poor land, combined with Team 3 really leveraging their Civ choices better than we did. They took a bunch of land from our front because of Aggressive Rome, and defended well against our naval (tech) superiority with drafted Musketeers.

I am interested to see the map when this game is over because Team 3 just has *soooooo* much more land than we do, despite the fact that Sullla is by far the strongest civ in the game, and I had a huge culture bomb taking land away from my neighbor. My best guess is that Team 3 took a lot of land from Team 2 (due to them building tons of wonders and sacrificing expansion) and Team 4 (due to their early game struggles with turn coverage), while we did not.

It has basically turned into a classic case of:

Expand early - tech late vs. Tech early - expand late (via ).

At this point, I'm not sure which will end up being more successful. Only time will tell. Either way, kudos to Team 3 for a well-played game.

[Sullla]

Speaker's picture is actually pretty outdated. We were researching Economics techs about 10 turns ago. I'll see if I can get some screenshots of Speaker/sunrise land later. Here's an overview of my territory, spoiled for size:

I actually hate the "giant screen grab of every city" that I've seen in a lot of online games here. Outside of the capital and one or two other key cities, there's rarely much to see, and they take up a ton of room. You can pretty much get the full idea of what I'm doing just from this screenshot. Cities have almost all built in the following order: forge, library, university, observatory. I have massive beaker multipliers everywhere, and basically zero gold multipliers. Cities with extra production have added some military stuff (barracks and stables). I'm also going to need more happiness in the most developed cities, so that means theatres (dyes) and mausoleums. Port cities are adding drydocks. A couple cities will also start levees next turn; unfortunately my capital probably does not qualify. Ah well. Factories soonish in every city, we need 1t for Steam Power and then 4t for Assembly Line.

A lot of these cities are straining the health and happiness caps right now. The one unhappy face in my capital actually comes from war weariness, heh. Killing those French ships must have ticked over the first war weariness threshhold. Well, mausoleum are pretty attractive to build regardless for India (yay!), and I'll get Mount Rushmore in time later. Beyond that, I need to get the remaining resources on the map. Here's where they are located:



I need both deer and silks, which this latest city will grab. I actually goofed badly with the planting of Feel No Pain, which was supposed to go one tile south. However, I put my "X" marker on the wrong tile when I zoomed out, then never realized it until after the city was planted. Oops! At least all of the lake tiles are 3 food thanks to the lighthouse, making it viable. Later I need to get another more deer resources and the silver down in the extreme south. I will probably plant the eastern location first despite being much weaker, if only because it's also far easier to defend. I have not settled over in the west because that will create a 2 city front, very vulnerable to forking attacks. Only when we have very strong military superiority in this region is it worth taking.



The next city is going on this X tile to pick up wines and clams, both of which I lack at the moment. Thunder Claws also has a bananas resource which is yet to be connected, and another dyes. I actually have dyes right now from Speaker, but he can really use the resource himself for more happiness. Just needs the 50 culture border expansion, and that's easy to force with a rushed theatre. Together, the bananas + deer + clams + wines resources are worth 3 base health and 5 health with a grocer. This should be enough to absorb the hit from factories and power plants in my top cities. Meanwhile, wines + dyes + silver will get me additional happiness to cover any war weariness popping up.

I'd like to add another city eventually on the red dot tile, but once again safety is an issue. These seas are a heavily contested region, and just defending what I already have is a burden already. Dave has at least one more city in the fog between Louisbourg and Dien Bien Phu, which I'm hoping to explore next turn. We probably won't have real control over here until we get to Combustion and can pump out destoyers, which is still a long way away. Ironclads will have to hold the line for some time.

We'll be able to see coal though next turn. Hopefully it's already connected!