Macro Thread

[zakalwe]

I left the third-ring forests south of the capital intact. NE of the silk is where I'd normally settle. That gives us 6 forests to chop, for 180 base hammers. We need 225 base hammers, so we're not quite there, even with overflow from a one-pop whip. We can't put any hammers into it before calendar comes in, and we won't be able to produce many hammers, anyway, while growing to size 2.

We could settle one tile further north, and get six forests + a third ring forest. That would waste a couple of grassland tiles down south, which is ultimately irrelevant, I guess, but we would have no way to quickly grow to size 2. So in summary, I think building the mausoleum in this city will be tricky, unless we luck out with a forest growth.

If we ditch the crabs, we could build it easily 1W of the wheat. Or, if we build TGL using only three third ring forests (probably delaying it one turn), 1N of the wheat might work, for the mausoleum.

[zakalwe]

Or, if we build TGL using only three third ring forests (probably delaying it one turn), 1N of the wheat might work, for the mausoleum.

Indeed, this works. We even complete TGL on the same turn (EOT97), with 0 hammers to spare. I then went on to complete the mausoleum EOT101. A settler for the silks city is also born in BM on T102, and our workers are right there to get it started. (Except for two workers that are still in the north, ready to improve the spices.) So this plays out very nicely.

I juggled the city builds very carefully and got a ton of failgold from the great wall, and also made sure to get a full whip overflow worth of failgold from the great library, so tech wasn't really a major constraint. The micro felt pretty tight as it was., but I guess it might even be possible to speed the mausoleum up by another turn. It would require a lot of pieces to fit together, though. (Settle the city one turn sooner, get the tech one turn sooner, and free up 7 worker turns.) Either way, I'm very happy with the T102 date, and it's nice to have the mausoleum safely in our backyard.

Great library completing. It was built using 42 hammers overflow from a worker, 40 hammers overflow from a barracks, 72 chop hammers and 21 hammers of production, for exactly 175 base hammers.



Mausoleum completing. There's even a third ring forest left, but it's second ring to the silks city and can be saved.

[novice]

That looks great.

[zakalwe]

Yeah, I've opimized the micro a bit more and it's looking very good up until we build the great library. That build is a bit smoother now, because I got the grassland hill mined sooner. After TGL it just needs a bit more polishing of the worker micro, but that's 25 turns into the future.

Of course, TGL and Mausoleum might not be the right targets to optimize for, but if they are, my plan feels very solid.

And now that I've tallied all our unhatched chickens, I'm increasingly nervous that someone will beat us to the pyramids. Someone finishing the Great Wall early would also throw a spanner in the works. Incidentally, TEAM's gold city has a bunch of forests. I expect a wonder to appear there at some point.

[pling]

And now that I've tallied all our unhatched chickens, I'm increasingly nervous that someone will beat us to the pyramids. Someone finishing the Great Wall early would also throw a spanner in the works. Incidentally, TEAM's gold city has a bunch of forests. I expect a wonder to appear there at some point.

Only 5 turns left to bite our nails on part 1 of the plan

I think TEAM, M3 & Gillette are the three teams with Masonry. TEAM strike me as our most plausible competitors (gut feeling, mostly coz M3 & Gillette got other wonders recently). Maybe a good idea if we keep an eye on if they have stone hooked up? (There's bound to be one between them & Pirates)

[novice]

All our opponents are financial, right? I don't think any of them will bother with Pyramids.

[pling]

Well, if the team pessimist thinks we can relax I guess we can

[zakalwe]

Is the Parthenon worthwhile, btw? The marble city will be a production monster and needs something to build.

It could do the Paya but I don't think we can fit in Meditation until after Calendar.

[plako]

Parthenon would be decent for us when we're going to run lots of Specialists. If I could choose, I would take Paya though. It potentially saves us quite a few beakers since we don't need to research Theology and we could also delay Philosophy in case we don't want to bulb it.

[zakalwe]

We don't actually have a religion though, and we may well have to research either theology or philosophy to get one. Though I guess we could import one. Or run free religion.