[SPOILERS] Dazed and scooter play Stalin of Vikings and make a big mess

[scooter]

Wait, so we got a new city built and you posted a bunch of pictures and the new city was NOT included? Sadness. Anyways, random questions and answers.

1) You chopped the barracks in Redhead (new city) right? If so, I'd like that to be our sole military city for the moment - should be able to get units out a decent pace. Should get a WB/granary, but then full military as it's our one city with a barracks.

2) Baskervilles - I'd like a trading post in here once Sailing comes in to buff the fish and let us get Nav1 boats as this is a good place to get some navy. Not 100% sure on that though. For now though, Forge works. The chop would go nicely into the forge since we're IND.

3) SoF could also go Granary -> Trading Post as Sailing should line up perfectly with Granary completion. Yeah at some point we'll need to get some MP in these cities too but Pyramids is letting us be a little ridiculous here. I'd like Redhead to supply the military if possible for efficiency sake. I also agree that Brick probably doesn't have copper.

4) Probably should reconsider the Scarlet plan for possibly running an engineer. Basically, once Forge gets to 1-pop range, whip it, run an engineer, and that'll give us our GP even faster and more likely to be an engineer. We'd also build a Trading Post next so we could rush GLH if the great person turned up engineer.

On #4, whenever you get to login next can I get the following:

-Turn number of this info
-Hammer box status in Scarlet
-GPP counter info in Scarlet

This would let me estimate how quickly we could get the engineer (or prophet if we're somewhat unlucky) and then we can determine if that sounds like a competitive enough time for GLH. It's not like it would hurt to get it early and still miss out on GLH (could repurpose it pretty easily), but it would be pretty awesome if we got it for free.

[scooter]

I hit post and then more things popped into my mind that I missed.

Finally, our demos:

Food is the only one that worries me. Though our soldier rating is ridiculous!

Food concerns me a bit yeah, but we're working quite a few hammer tiles. Approval rate shows we have the most room for growth out of anyone, and we've been whipping (1-pop) a good bit to get our infrastructure caught up. I feel decent that we'll catch up a bit. We'll never be a monster food team though due to our lack of land - we're going to need to ride a tech lead to a position where we can convert that into land.

Speaking of Brick (), Dazed and I are a tad concerned about him being replaced and all that. This is not meant to knock Brick, but just being honest, he's fairly green and we recognized that early and planned accordingly. As a result, we played our light military wonder-whoring start that works when nobody punishes you for it. Our one major fear is that he'll get a good replacement (rather than just someone to help him pass a few turns) and that'll result in us getting military flung at us, which honestly wouldn't be a bad idea for his position. So we'll see. I think we'll be ok though. One thing that absolutely shocks me is there there are THREE people with less food than us.... how? I don't know. And yes, LOL at our soldiers and land area.

I have the WB we build in SoF heading out for scouting purposes and I thought I had a screenshot of it, but I guess not. It hasn't gotten to a place where it's uncovering anything new yet though so there's nothing helpful to see really.

Cool. Hopefully he finds good stuff up north. We have 0 happy resources, and Representation can only cover that so much. Gold or gems would be glorious because of our Forges.

[dazedroyalty]

OK. T76 is up. So first thing first, I noticed that we were 2 beakers of finishing sailing in 1T. That's just not cool. We were already running 100% science and working our highest gold tiles in every city. So how does one get two more beakers to finish?



Say hello to our newest city, Redhead! It has CRAPPY tiles in the first ring to work. I miscalculated our workers and was 1 worker turn short of finishing the plains hill to finish the barracks quicker (to pop borders). So what did I do? Well I worked a Rep powered citizen of course! We come out with 1 hammer still but also gain 3 beakers! Woot! That means Sailing finishes in 1 turn.

So then I pop over to Sign of Four and start thinking. It's working 2 seafood resources so it could really use a lighthouse for an extra 2 food. Plus if we do get lucky and land a great engineer (more on that in a moment) and the GLH hasn't been built yet, we need a lighthouse to rush the GLH. So, new plan. Granary just reached 1 pop whip range, so I can whip the granary and the overflow/build the lighthouse next turn when Sailing finsihes:



Dang it! I whipped off the FP tile and sailing is no longer a 1T tech with the loss of three gold. As painful as it is to lose 5 hammers of overflow from the granary, I swap off the Stone and work the FP cottage bumping Sailing back up to 1T.



Unfortunately, the overflow turns out to be just about nothing (3 hammers), but it'll get us there sooner. I haven't done the exact math yet but if the lighthouse isn't finished the turn before our great person would pop and the GLH still haven't been built, we can whip the lighthouse to make sure we can rush the GLH asap. Next turn we should be able to switch back to the quarry without delaying growth.

Also, great news! We definitely have islands to our north for intercontinental trade routes:



It's possible that the land to the west of the WB is connected to the main island but I doubt it. The land to the WB's east is definitely a 3 tile island. Really hoping for some sea food to be in the fog around that island!!

Here's an overview:



After Sailing our plan--i believe--is monotheism for OR. We won't be able to keep up 100% research sadly. I'll have to calculate how long we'll have to save gold to turn research on for Mono. I'd like to have 1 library by then but it's probably not gonna happen. Let's take a closer look inside Scarlet to see what's up and make Scooter happy with his info



Whips are worth 30 hammers but with Industrious they'll be doubled to 60, which means we need to have 60 hammers invested for a 1 pop whip. So we'll be able to cut two turns off the forge. At that point we'll be at 70/100 GPP with 8 turns left to go without a engineer specialist. The odds of the engineer go down slightly each turn since we're getting 2 GE points and 2 GP points. The engineer would add 3 GE points/turn and would bring the total GPP up to 7/turn. That means it would take 5 more turns to get a Great person. In other words, running the Egnineer would save us 3 turns to get the great person and increase the odds of an engineer. I did the math and if I did my math right, we'd have about 69% odds of getting the GE.

Also, I went back and checked. Trading post is 60 hammers. Working the quarry means it'll take 10 turns so we'll definitely need to whip that (if the GLH hasn't fallen) the turn before the Great Person is born since the Great Engineer (if we get one) is due in 7 turns.

[scooter]

Is there an easy rule of thumb for determining when it's worth spending 2t in anarchy for religion + OR swaps? We're finding this to be a difficult puzzle. We could REALLY use OR... But we are having a hard time being able to afford 2t of anarchy. We could really use the infra boost (and would be really nice down the road while building colossus too), but 2t of anarchy (1 for Hindu, 1 for OR) in our current expansion/infra state is brutal. We're already in Rep so it's not like we have another revolt soon to pair it with. Granted, it's less painful on Normal than Quick, but it still hurts. Does anyone have a rough rule of thumb they like to use?

Anyways, we have a 69% chance at a great engineer on eot82. We'll have a Lighthouse then too. That means if we win the 69% roll we can rush GLH on T83 if it's still standing. Cool. Two scenarios:

1) If we get a prophet, we will probably settle it. It's Rep boosted, the hammers would be super useful, and it would be a bit before the shrine is worth more, and we're willing to make that trade-off for the short-term gain (hammers are valuable there). Tech is not our weakness, growth is.

2) If we get an engineer but it falls... We'll have two options. Bulb Machinery or settle. Unsure on what we'd do there. Bulbing Machinery would mean it's a race to Civil Service for Zerks. Settling is better economically, but we'd still need to get Machinery at some point. EDIT: to be clear, we could also ice it for MoM or something. We don't view that as a good option though. That's far too long to be missing out on the benefits of the GE.

So that's the future outlook. This is such a weird game. This may be one of the earliest great engineers ever in patched BtS where Great Wall doesn't give GE points anymore.

[novice]

I suspect the rule of thumb is "it's not worth it".

We popped a 97% engineer on T52 (quick speed) in PBEM29.

[scooter]

I suspect the rule of thumb is "it's not worth it".

This was becoming my sneaking suspicion. OR would be amazing for us, but I'm guessing it'd take a good 30T or so to pay for itself (total blind estimate on no concrete data) and that's not nearly good enough given our current situation where we basically need more cities yesterday.

We popped a 97% engineer on T52 (quick speed) in PBEM29.

I think the use of PHI is cheating .

Another GPP mechanics question that Dazed and I were puzzling over last night. This is not important whatsoever, but I'm curious if anyone's ever researched the mechanic. We'll have 98/100GPP the turn before the great person pops. However, at that point we'll be producing +7GPP/turn, 2 for prophet, 5 for engineer (mids + specialist). The 98 breakdown at this point will be 68 engineer and 30 prophet, so if we got 1 apiece that'd be 69% engineer odds.

However, I'm guessing it doesn't work that way. My GUESS is that you add all 7 (so 105/100) for a breakdown of 73/32, which is actually 69.5% odds. Or if there's some "order" in which the GPP are produced, then the engineer points could both go in first and it could potentially be 70%. My guess is it overflows, calculates, then subtracts 100 from the current counter, but I'm really not sure. Anyone know? Again, really trivial and unimportant, but it was something on my mind last night.

[SevenSpirits]

My guess is it overflows, calculates, then subtracts 100 from the current counter, but I'm really not sure. Anyone know? Again, really trivial and unimportant, but it was something on my mind last night.

This is correct. Btw the overflow gpp will be typeless and therefore not counted when calculating the odds of the following GP.

The other quirk is that odds are based off the base gpp values before multipliers like National Epic - if you run a merchant for 5 turns generating 15gpp, and then a scientist for 5t in a golden age with pacifism generating 45gpp, you will still have accumulated only 15 "great scientist odds points" and your odds of a scientist will be 50% at that point, even though the majority of the gpp you generated were with a scientist.

[NobleHelium]

The other quirk is that odds are based off the base gpp values before multipliers like National Epic - if you run a merchant for 5 turns generating 15gpp, and then a scientist for 5t in a golden age with pacifism generating 45gpp, you will still have accumulated only 15 "great scientist odds points" and your odds of a scientist will be 50% at that point, even though the majority of the gpp you generated were with a scientist.

Huh, really. Very interesting.

[flugauto]

1 Turn 123/161. Science is 32. So 123 + 32 makes 155, not 161. Why? How?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Can I ask why Redhead wasn't settled 1N? Or have I missed the answer?