Turn Tracking Thread

[Sullla]

Turn 135 (500AD) City Planning

I normally hate the common reporting tactic of "post a picture of every single city", since 90% of the cities aren't doing anything important and serve to clog up the reporting threads with images. However, in this situation we have to figure out how to best manage a large amount of population in the next few turns, between whipping forges and drafting maces. Let's go ahead and look at our cities in order to figure out the best plan.

A note on forge whips. Most forge whips with Organized Religion civic will take 3 population to complete. Three pop whips produce 90 * 1.25 = 112 production with OR. This means that we need 8 shields in the box to be able to 3 pop whip forges, which is fairly easy to do. In some cases, we'll want to select certain tiles to line this up.

Another note about happiness in cities. Forges are worth +2 happy faces in every city from gems and gold. All cities will gain +1 happiness from the connection of furs in two turns (T137). Cities with markets will gain an additional +1 happy from the furs as well. Drafted units can also temporarily serve as military police in their cities to offset one part of the -3 unhappiness penalty.

I certainly don't agree with the comment we had earlier that we had "enough" happiness. I think that might be impossible in Civ4.

Adventure One

Draft: Yes
Forge: Maybe? Not sure

Here's the capital, no different from any other city now that we're out of Bureaucracy. We have whipped this city fairly heavily in recent turns, note the 34 turn whip duration as part of the failed Taj play. Now out of Bureaucracy, Adventure One will revert back to its traditional role of growing to the happy cap and then working all cottages. We have plenty of food here, which means that drafting the city is no problem. I am honestly uncertain on whether to whip a forge or not in the upcoming turns. A forge whip will cost 3 more population, and we're kind of recovering from three recent whips already. Yes, we want a forge eventually, but couldn't we simply grow back to size 14 or so and then work all the cottages for a little while? I dunno about this one. What does everyone think?

Mansa's Muse

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

Mansa's problem has always been the need to work all of those plains cottages and the gold tile, which strictly limits its food surplus. We can speed up growth here by taking back the deer resource, but the capital needs that right now to recover from its own whipping spree. This city seems pretty simple to me: draft for the free mace but don't try to whip the forge. We can slowbuild it and get it done eventually, at this current 8 production -> 10 production via Organized Religion rate. It's not like there's anything else all that compelling to build here either. Keep working all of those cottages and slowly building the forge.

Focal Point

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

Focal Point is not a terribly useful city until we get into State Property civic or discover Biology tech down the road. We're using as a military pump, and that gets reflected in our city management. Draft the city of course, since we can easily drop that plains farm tile, and then slowbuild the forge. I'm thinking we'll skip stables here and simply build an endless series of catapults. We have enough food to run a 10t draft cycle here with a few turns dropping the plains hill, and there's enough production with a forge to turn out 2.5 turn catapults. That seems like the best use of this weakish terrain.

Horse Feathers

Draft: Probably
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whipped

This is about the only city where we might want to avoid drafting, but the conversion rate of food into production on a drafted mace is still pretty incredible. I would suggest drafting here anyway, and borrowing the corn tile back from the capital for a little bit to make up the slack. Obviously we do not whip the forge here, and let it finish naturally, which won't take very long at all. Then we build a stable and go for a whole bunch of elephants -> knights.

Gourmet Menu

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

This city is fairly straightforward as well. It's a commercial city with average to weak production, and we've been accumulating population to whip here for some time. It's just about out of improved tiles as well. We want to whip the forge here and overflow into market, as well as drafting for the free mace.

Tree Huggers

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

See Gourmet Menu. OK, that's a little bit too brief. Same idea though. We've been stacking up the population here for a bit, and now it's time to use some of it. Whipping/drafting off of the immature cottages won't be particularly painful either. The next tiles that the workers dejungle here will be the ones north of the city; I've been quietly clearing out all of the jungle tiles along our border with the Germans and CivPlayers. The other teams won't have defensive cover next to our cities if a war would break out later.

Seven Tribes

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Seven Tribes also looks a lot like these last two cities. It has just enough production to 3 pop whip the forge next turn if we want (I think... might be off on this), and then we'll still be size 6 and able to draft the mace. That will decimate the city's population, but hey, we've got +7 food surplus here from the irrigated wheat and cows, plus we can borrow floodplains tile for even more food. It'll grow back quickly enough.

Forbidden Fruit

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Same story here, we want to whip and draft this location. Forbidden Fruit doesn't have quite enough production to whip the forge next turn though, which is fine, we'll just whip a turn later. It's not worth the effort to work non-improved tiles here just to get the forge whip in a turn sooner. Side question: does anyone know if there's a benefit to whipping before drafting, or drafting before whipping? We're looking at doing both the same turn here. I'm honestly not sure if either case beats the other in micro.

Eastern Dealers

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

Similar issue again at Eastern Dealers, the question is how we want to micro the city. I can swap off one or more of those coastal tiles to work mines instead, if we want to get the 8 production in the box to whip the forge faster. The question is whether that's worthwhile to do so; we could also just run max food and whip a little bit later. The city needs exactly 20 food to grow right now to size 10, so swapping off a coastal tile onto a mine will drop the growth ETA to 3t. But maybe that's what we want? I could use more feedback on how to manage this location. After the forge is done, we grow to the happy cap while building National Epic, and then run as many specialists as we can fit. Obviously we are going to draft here as well.

Brick By Brick

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, but slowbuild, not whip

This is the city closest to Focal Point in setup. It's a production city and military pump for our large civ, very little in the way of commerce. We want to build the forge here naturally, then a stables, then work on mounted units. We also do want to draft here as well; I think it takes 6t to grow back, and so that's 5 production less per turn when not working the plains mine (with forge). 30 production lost. But the mace is worth 70 production, so we still come out way ahead by drafting that pop point, and it gets even more lopsided with muskets and rifles later. So as most of your probably already knew, drafting more than worth it.

The Covenant

Draft: Yes
Forge: Maybe? Not sure

This is the only core city where we are working an unimproved tile. (There's one other grassland forest being worked at the size 1 brand new city, and we are 1 worker turn away from finishing a grassland river cottage southeast of the city here. Bah!) We will of course draft here, but we might not want to forge whip. I'm going to suggest we 3 pop whip a settler here instead; we want to keep expanding in the south, and this is the best city I can see for a settler whip. Low production, low infrastructure, no great need for a forge yet. Just work the cottages for now, and that's fine. Decent idea or crazy?

Starfall

Draft: Yes, heavens yes
Forge: Yes, whip it

If there is any city we want to abuse for whips and drafts, this is it. We can 4 pop whip the forge and get excellent overflow into Globe, so I think we should go ahead and do that. Then we can keep whipping catapults until it's done. Until we finish the Globe, we can't go too insane with drafting here, but every 10 turns should be easy.

Ditchdigger

Draft: Yes
Forge: Probably not?

This is a unique city here. We're running Artists right now to pop the borders at 100 culture; we need to run 2/2/1 Artists over the next three turns to make that happen. We also have a nearly completed courthouse. I don't have a great grasp on how to micro this one; grow to size 6 and draft, I guess? Maybe we then whip a barracks and overflow into finishing the courthouse? The forge feels like a ways away here. With the nearby tiles, I've cleared out the jungle from most of the attack paths to Ditchdigger, and there's a worker roading on the tile N-NW right now. We probably need to farm one more tile for +6 food surplus, and then I might watermill the tile on the German border. Watermills are pretty bad right now at 2/1/1 but we may as well lay the groundwork for those awesome 3/2/4 watermills later on. Feel free to make suggestions here.

Simple Life

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it, but after drafting

This city is similar to The Covenant, but since it has a library done, we want to give it a slight priority. That's why I suggest getting a settler out of the other city, and developing this one a bit more. We'll want to draft here first, and then 3 pop whip the forge. Since we need a few turns to build up the production for a forge whip anyway, this works out pretty well.

Cutting Edge

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it, but after drafting

Much like Simple Life, only this is a production city that doesn't need much in the way of commerce. We have a barracks here over halfway done, so we draft this city at size 6, then 3 pop whip the forge, then regrow population and start working the hill tiles as they get cut out of the jungle. This is going to be a very strong military pump in about 15-20 turns (20 shields base / 25 shields with forge once all the hills are mined; more than that in the State Property workshop era).

French Riviera

Draft: Yes
Forge: Yes, whip it... eventually

This will be a pretty good commercial city down the road. The floodplains and irrigated wheat gets the city to +5 food even with the horses tile; we're going to add three grassland cottages on the green tiles within the city radius. Irrigation line goes through the plains tiles. I am currently planning on growing this city to size 6 so that it took can be drafted. We should probably swap this over to a forge as well, I forgot to do so for whatever reason. Note that French Riviera and Cutting Edge are the only two cities lack state religion. We'll fix that with some production overflow into missionaries from these forge whips.

Let It Snow and Frozen Jungle are both size 1 and don't need to factor into this discussion yet.

There you go, pictures of all of our cities at the moment. Note that I suggested drafting every city - that wasn't an accident. It's an insanely good conversion of food into production, the best in the entire game when you get to the rifleman. (At size 6, that's 15 food with a granary for 110 production. Crazy.) By my count, we can draft out 12 maces in the first wave, a few more following after that as cities grow, and then another 12 maces ten turns later on T137-139. Add in a bunch of catapults with some elephants for anti-mounted and later knights as soon as we can build them, and I think we'll be in good shape to take down the Germans. It will be hard for them to fight back if they don't have medieval units of their own, and there's no much you can do to stop an endless wave of drafted units when you don't have the draft yourself. If the war prolongs, well, we should have muskets on the third wave of draftees, and cuirassiers soonish after that.

That took quite a while to type, so let me know about your own thoughts on how to play this era of the game.

[Sullla]

Turn 136 - 520AD

This was a pretty quiet turn all things considered. Probably the most eventful thing was getting a map trade with the German team.

Thanks to recent map trades and our own exploration, we have a fairly complete picture of Apolyton's territory. They have 14 cities and this is 12 of them. Our scout is now doubling back to explore that tundra area to the north and then the missing area in the southwest. Apolyton just whipped 8 universities so that they can build Oxford in their capital. They have extremely good infrastructure in their cities: granaries, forges, libraries, universities, courthouses, etc. The tradeoff is that they have on of the lowest population totals in the game, and they didn't secure too much of the expansion pie. Looks like they are crammed into a relatively small space on the north side of the map. We're also pretty sure that they have the weakest military in the game right now.

Although it's premature to make any decisions now, Apolyton may be a good target for attack down the road, after our German war. A team with high infrastructure but low population and territory can sometimes be a tempting target. We'll see where we stand down the road in 50 turns.



Here are the polar islands after trading maps with the German team. We revealed a little bit more territory, nothing all that special. There is another silver resource further to the south across the worldwrap, neither one has any food resources in range that we can see. It will still be worthwhile to place a city down there for the silver... eventually. And island cities also get the offshore trade route bonus too.

There's a war chariot inside the galley which will be dropped off next turn on the southern island. Then we'll pick up the other chariot over in CFC land and use it to scout the islands too. In the west, I moved the Sentry chariot conservatively, not moving onto the tundra hill because there could have been a barb axe nearby. With Sentry promotion, we should never have to face combat if we move carefully. I did not want another barb disaster stopping us from exploring further west.



Here's the one stupid part of the turn. CivPlayers moved up their chariot and put our worker roading expedition in danger. Unfortunately we did not have another unit anywhere nearby to cover these units, so they are woefully exposed right now. I'm pretty sure that we're safe as long as we move first next turn, since I can cover the workers with our war chariot once the new city gets founded, but this is really irritating. That CivPlayers chariot is actually trapped by our borders right now.

Can we send CivPlayers a diplo message asking them to sign Open Borders and move their chariot out to the west? I really want that unit gone. Their insistence on never signing any deals with us is a huge pain in the ass. Sigh.



Here's an overview of our core cities. I was able to do some juggling of tiles and I'm happy with how these cities are currently set up. We have high growth just about everywhere (except for Mansa's Muse, which is going to take back the deer tile from the capital next turn). Brick By Brick picked up a third-ring forest chop to speed along its forge. We are deforesting the border there for future safety if CivPlayers ever does anything. Ditchdigger runs 2 Artists this turn, then 1 Artist next turn, and that will pop its borders.

Here's the only city that I think we should whip this turn:



This one seems pretty straightforward to me. Growth in one turn, we whip off the immature cottages, and the whip unhappiness counter is about to reset anyway. I wanted to get approval from the team before doing anything, but this one did feel like a bit of a slam dunk.

Gourmet Menu was in a similar position of being 1t away from growth and having no whip unhappiness, but we didn't put enough production into the forge there last turn. The forge would be a 4 pop whip this turn. We'll have to whip it later.



Here are the eastern cities. Forbidden Fruit will get its forge whip next turn, when it's a turn away from growing. Eastern Dealers is working away on that National Epic, needs five more turns. The Covenant gets swapped to a settler next turn for a 3 pop whip, when it's about to growth. (Or do we swap it this turn? I know that those settler whips can be a little strange, with the whole "grow after whip while building a settler thing.")

Overview:

We will finish Machinery tech this turn. The science rate can be dropped to 90% if desired, but I don't see any real point to that. First round of drafting to begin next turn. I suggest that we research Horseback Riding next, allowing Horse Feathers and Brick By Brick to construct stables (and a few elephants) after their forges are done. And Horseback Riding is a pre-requisite for knights as well. We might as well get it now and then go Feudalism -> Guilds.



The Demos look surprisingly good with three other teams in Golden Ages. We're second in GNP on a tech with standard 20% prerequisite bonus and no known civ bonus. No team in the game has either Machinery or Feudalism right now, and CivPlayers are still the only ones with Horseback Riding. Not exactly a militaristic world out there. CFC is the team with the 720 GNP when I took this screenshot. The only notable tech discovery this turn was CivFr picking up Paper tech; Apolyton and CFC were both stockpiling gold. We are nearly 100 Food ahead of the second place team (!!!) To have that much of a Food advantage while also being the tech leader and the Land Area leader and the Power leader is fairly disgusting.

We'll need a name for the sheep city to be founded next turn, suggest away. The only really irritating thing this turn is that CivPlayers chariot, so let's see if we can talk to them diplomatically and get them to move it back to their borders.

[Sullla]

Turn 137 - 540AD

This is a pretty quiet turn. Our first round of drafting will get underway.



We did not discover anything noteworthy on the northern side of the map. Down in the extreme polar south, we did find another silver resource, although no food bonuses as usual. With a lighthouse, those freshwater lakes will become 3 food tiles, but it's still pretty grim pickings down there. Maybe something else will turn up with more exploration. The galley will pick up the other war chariot and ferry it over to the island in the east next turn.

Remember last turn how we chose not to move the Sentry war chariot directly west, just in case there was a barb nearby? That worked out pretty well:



Based on our past history, I just assumed that there would be a barbarian axe in the worst possible spot... and that's exactly what happened. But instead of being next to the axe, we were instead safely off to the north two tiles away. Very nice. We should be able to explore the rest of the southwest in safety from here, at least until we hit CivPlayers borders somewhere off in the distance. Let's hope that the barbs aren't able to triangulate on our war chariot, I wouldn't put anything past them in this game.

I think that I like the tundra tile southeast of the deer for the next city down here. It can share the crabs tile with Let It Snow and the deer is a fairly good tile in its own right (it's 4 food / 1 production). We would also get 9 coastal tiles, many of them shared of course, and could mine the two hill tiles if desired. While it's a fairly crummy city, it's one of the best we can found in this area. It's also towards CivPlayers and would claim some mildly disputed land. Any better suggestions for down in this area, other than the offshore silvers?



We did found a new city this turn, and I went with the suggested name of Catherine. Odd choice for an odd city. This spot will be mildly terrible even with the sheep resource, and is majorly terrible before that. Fortunately we had a Hindu missionary present immediately for instant religious spread; 5 turns for the border pop. The workers will chop two forests while waiting, good for a granary and theatre here. I'm thinking of growing the city to size 3 and then working the sheep and two Artists for a little bit to pop the 100 culture borders quickly. Catherine desperately needs irrigation to come over from the wheat, and we'll need double border pops to make that happen. Without grassland farms, this city won't amount to much of anything, so we may as well get that extra food over there ASAP.

I watched our finances as this city went down, and it ended up costing us basically nothing. I think we lost 1 gold/turn or something like that. The instant presence of four different 2 commerce trading routes from Great Lighthouse made it economically viable immediately. This suggests that we may as well found the other cities down here soonish, since they aren't costing us much of anything. I like the spots SE-SE of the furs (which can share furs and crabs along with its own deer) and the tile either west or northwest of the other deer. Probably west, to preserve the tundra forest for chopping. Feel free to dotmap this southern area now that we finally have vision. I outlined the spots I like, but I'm hardly the only one with an opinion.

Speaking of finances and spreading religion, check out this screenshot:



This shrine is pretty disgusting. We have 29 cities already with Hinduism present, and with the market that's 36 gold/turn independent of the slider. While running 0% science this turn, we hit the 100 gold/turn mark in Mansa's Muse. What an awesome city.

The other main issue to cover this turn is the draft. We discovered Machinery tech at the start of the turn, and that means it's time to start drafting maces. Here's our current city list:



We have 19 cities with the addition of Catherine. (Unfortunately the list only covers the first 16 cities.) And since that isn't too helpful, here is the overview of our territory:

We can draft up to 5 units per turn here on this Huge map, and I suggest that we do so immediately. We want to get the draft unhappiness ticker going down right away, so that we can draft again as soon as it wears out. We do not have enough happiness to double draft in most places, and I would rather save that for a true emergency. Best to start drafting now though, and get that counter ticking down in the same way as the Slavery unhappiness metric.

I suggest that we draft these cities: Horse Feathers, Forbidden Fruit, Eastern Dealers, Brick By Brick, and Starfall. The first three will all regrow immediately next turn, and they all have enough happiness to absorb the draft unhappiness penalty (if just barely at Eastern Dealers). Brick By Brick is basically at the food cap at size 9, and won't start regrowing for real until we draft it. Might as well do that immediately, in that case. Starfall gets drafted just because we can draft it so cheaply, and we want to abuse it as much as possible even before we get into the Globe. I would draft even more but that's the cap for a Huge map. Only 5 cities per turn. We'll get more of them next turn. How do those cities sound to everyone else?

We can also 3 pop whip the forge in Forbidden Fruit if desired, and I think there's a good case to do so. This will drop the city to size 6, but it will immediately regrow to size 7, and it will be dropping two immature grassland cottages (2/0/1) and a plains hamlet (1/1/4). The cost is not trivial, but we will be able to regrow fairly quickly, overflow into a missionary for Cutting Edge, and then we'll have the forge present for all future whips/production for the rest of the game. Again, give me your feedback on this suggestion.



Here are the Demos, and yes, we are now ahead by a full 100 Food over the next best team. (We won't be after drafting though, heh.) Production is hard to evaluate given the three other teams in their Golden Ages. CFC and German team are about halfway through their Golden Age, CivFr and their Mausoleum still has quite a ways to go. We are third in GNP at 0% science, and if you can believe it, we actually make a profit at 50% science right now! With zero courthouses and 19 cities on a Toroidal map! That's pretty silly. All the other categories are also... silly.

Our 50% science rate is 290 beakers base / 350 beakers modified before drafting. At this rate, it will take us roughly 10 turns to research Horseback Riding, Feudalism, and Guilds. We won't have many knights on Turn 150, but we'll have a couple, and we'll be training them in large numbers thereafter. I put us on 0% science for the turn and selected Horseback Riding, although we can also research the tech in one turn at 50% rate right now. Up to everyone how we set the science rate, most people have preferred the 100% / 0% binary science stuff, which I'll keep doing if no one objects.

There were no major tech discoveries between turns, a lot of teams continuing to stockpile gold. CFC now has 800 gold in their treasury, expect them to start burning through techs in the second half of their Taj Golden Age. They could go for any one of the Aesthetics line, the Paper/Education line, or the Machinery/Guilds line, and each would have a different meaning. Kjn suggested that Apolyton is probably heading for the Economics free Great Merchant, which I agree is very likely. CivFr, who knows at this point. Education, maybe? They just discovered Paper recently. German team spent down from 200 gold to 0 gold and picked up a Classical tech of some kind. Monarchy is the best likely guess; since they are in a Golden Age, they'd have a free revolt into Hereditary Rule civic.

I've been pleasantly surprised at the generally slow tech rate. Most teams remain extremely backwards compared to where we are. There has also been little attempt by anyone to build a military or discover military techs. We were the first to get Machinery this turn, and not even one team has gone for Feudalism. This bodes well for us and our attack, if no one else in the world has maces or longbows or elephants on T137. It will be interesting to see how teams respond once they see our drafted maces coming out. Too bad there's no way to disguise the surge on the Power chart. Let's hope the Germans aren't paying very close attention.

[Sullla]

Turn 138 - 560AD

This is another quiet turn. The turns are moving pretty fast right now, which is a good thing for us. Less time for the other teams to exchange messages, make plans, and evaluate the Demos.



We didn't really discover anything of note this turn down here in the polar ocean. The galley picked up our war chariot over in CFC territory and will drop it off on the southeast island next turn. Just looking for probably non-existent seafood amongst all of the ice. The war chariot on the mainland will stick around in that area to fogbust and prevent more barbarians from spawning.



Speaking of barbs, they are absolutely teeming to the southwest of Seven Tribes. That's two barb axes and a barb warrior moving around in this region. I'm glad that we have the Great Wall so that they all go and bother other teams. We have yet to turn up anything of interest here beyond a large stretch of tundra tiles. There's water peeking out from the southwest corner of that screenshot under the fog, so perhaps we'll find out more in the next few turns.



We were the last ones to play on the previous turn, and I may have used that opportunity to do a little step-in / step-out scouting of CivPlayers cities without our Woodsman II warrior. In any case, we now have vision on the central tile of Tula and the aptly named Costalot. CivPlayers have already spread Buddhism in that location and finished a plantation on its sugar tile. Maybe we'll be able to trade for sugar with them when they connect a second source.

Ditchdigger popped its 100 culture borders this turn, allowing us to fire the last Artist specialist in the city. This will allow us to control the tile southeast of the German city indefinitely; they would need to hit 100 culture themselves to start pushing back against us, and that won't be happening in the next dozen turns. Needless to say, however, this region is extremely cramped on culture between these three teams. We will probably have to raze Wolfratshausen and replace it one tile further north (which is where it should have been in the first place!) The current location is indefensible against attack, both from our team and also against CivPlayers. In a post-German world, I don't want quite that much overlap with CivPlayers. A tile north would be much better.



Here is the western half of our core territory. There's not too much going on this turn, the main issue is where to draft. I mostly agree with sooooo's ideas here; we definitely do want to draft Tree Huggers and Seven Tribes. Both of them are 1t away from growth and so will return to their current population immediately, minimizing the draft hit. They also both have enough surplus happiness to be OK. Gourmet Menu also looks like a good target, since it is currently working a number of water tiles and doesn't have room to grow further. That makes 3 cities.



The other two cities to draft should be Simple Life and Cutting Edge, in my opinion. They are both size 6 and will therefore cost the least food to draft away a population point. Cutting Edge and regrow immediately after drafting next turn, despite what the city interface suggests in this picture. Simple Life will take 2t. I would prefer to wait until cities like the capital and Focal Point are closer to growth to draft them. We'll still get them, naturally, but next turn looks better than the current one.

The Covenant is planned to triple whip its settler this turn, with the overflow going back into its library build. That's probably the only whip we need to do this turn. I mean, we can whip cities like Gourmet Menu and Seven Tribes for their forges, but do we really need to do so? I'm not sure that the need is that immediate. I would prefer to let them regrow the lost pop point from their drafts and only then whip. You could certainly talk me into whipping the forges, but with a lot of pop going into these drafts, I'm inclined to wait a few more turns for growth to recover first.



Here's the current state of our military, prior to drafting this turn. We should be able to get 16 maces out of the first round of drafting, and then another 18 out of the second round. We'll also build some elephants out of our stables cities while awaiting Guilds tech to build knights. (Did you know that at size 14, Horse Feathers can build 1t elephants? We'll do that until we have Guilds/knights.) We also have 6 catapults right now, plus however many more we can build prior to Turn 150. In other words, at a bare minimum we should be attacking with something like 30 maces, 8 elephants, and 10+ catapults. Then we build a lot of knights to add a mobile component, and we should be able to draft out 20 muskets in the third wave starting around T157. Barring something weird happening, I think that will be pretty tough for the German team to stop.

Overview:

We turned on 100% research into Horseback Riding tech, which will easily finish it at the end of turn. We should get quite a bit of overflow into the next tech as well (Feudalism), something like 350 beakers by my best estimate. The timing of Horseback Riding is perfect for stables construction, with Horse Feathers and Brick By Brick about to complete their forges. They should be able to do the stables quickly and then turn out some double-promoted elephants as we research towards Guilds.



Demos look about the same as usual. Drafting 5 maces last turn didn't hurt our Food stat too badly. It did increase our Power very noticeably; sadly, there is no way to avoid this. Each mace is worth 8000 points, so drafting 15 of them will cause us to go up by 120k even before we add catapults and elephants and all that. Not to mention, even forges increase Power by 3000 each. Ah well. GNP is also looking very nice. Remember, three competing teams are all in Golden Ages at the moment (CivFr, CFC, Germans).

There was again surprisingly little movement in techs from other teams. Apolyton and CivFr ran break-even research and didn't finish anything. The Germans went with 0% science and gained 150 gold. CFC went 100% research without finishing a tech. My best guess is that they are researching Paper, and will finish it at the end of this current turn. CivPlayers and UniversCiv both stockpiled 200 gold each. There are quite a few turns with a lot of gold in the treasury, so expect some techs to fall over the next couple of turns. But for the moment, no one appears to have Machinery or Feudalism, and time is running out for the Germans to get those crucial defensive techs. (German team does have Construction though, as we saw catapults in their territory. That was to be expected.)

Let me know what you think about which cities to draft/whip, I have taken neither action thus far.

[Sullla]

Turn 139 - 580AD

More quick turns, the last turn rolled by in just over 24 hours. I'm not sure if this is good or bad for us; at the very least, it's less time for teams to exchange messages and talk about how worrying the big, bad Egyptian team looks. We were last to play on the previous turn (with 22 hours on the clock!) so I went ahead and drafted the suggested cities and whipped the settler in production. On to this turn.



This happened right as the turn was rolling. CFC popped a Great Engineer in their Pyramids city; no idea if this was a lucky dice roll or a planned forge Engineer + Pyramids strategy. In either case, they have their pick of a free wonder of some kind. The good news is that there's nothing much out there to rush at the moment. Notre Dame is the most useful one coming up, but they are a long way from Engineering at the moment. Perhaps CFC will sit on this Great Engineer and try to save it for something like Statue of Liberty later (?) That would be a strong option. I guess we'll see what they choose to do with it.



Here's a little bit more detail on the southern islands. I guess there's an iron there, for what it's worth. We'll probably want one city down here for silver, and that's about it. The only way to make these spots viable would be free corporation food from Sid's Sushi, which will hopefully never factor into this game.



We did finally spot the borders of CivPlayers in the west, while continuing to dodge even more barbarian axes. This is one of the most desolate regions I've ever seen, almost nothing but bare tundra everywhere. Not much can be done here even with Biology farms and State Property. We'll snoop around a bit more on the border, and then return home to try and have this Sentry unit take part in the upcoming war effort.



Quick management question at Let It Snow: do we cottage the grassland tiles and run this as a commerce city, or save them for workshops later and make this a production city? I'm thinking it leans towards commerce, given the lack of hill tiles and the fur resource (5 commerce tile). I thought that I'd let people weigh in with their opinions before making any final decisions. The borders just expanded this turn, and the cows will be pastured next turn. (Working the crabs resource over the unpastured cows does not delay the work boat, which finishes the same turn regardless.)



Here's the center of our territory. I've been moving drafted maces in the general direction of Tree Huggers, which should be a useful place for them to hang out for the moment. German team should not have seen any of the maces thus far. We are tiptoeing the happiness line pretty closely in a lot of these cities, even with all of our happiness resources. That will get better with time; the main thing that we need are forges (+2 happiness) and barracks (also +2 happiness). Drafting without having barracks in place always means a rather nasty hit. Anyway, forges are going up across our territory and barracks will be next in the cities that don't have them. We do not have enough happiness to double draft these cities. That would put them into unhappiness - only in an emergency. Notre Dame would be a godsend, hopefully we can land that one.

The cities to draft this turn are fairly straightforward: our original core of Adventure One, Mansa's Muse, and Focal Point. The capital and Focal Point can both immediately regrow after drafting, which is why I saved them until this turn. Mansa cannot regrow, and indeed will give up a grassland farm and sit at zero food after drafting. Mansa is paying the price for us whipping the capital so many times before; the capital needs to regrow back to size 14 to work all of its cottages, and that means no deer tile for Mansa. We'll give the deer tile back once Adventure One reaches its happiness cap, and then get some food going inside Mansa.

The Covenant is only size 5, we'll draft it next turn when it regrows. Ditchdigger, French Riviera, and Frozen Jungle are all also sub-6, and will get drafted when they hit those targets.



Since there's not much else to discuss, here's the tech overview for the current turn. The main news here was CivFr discovering Machinery this turn, shortly after our own discovery. They are almost out of gold, but appear to be running break-even science most of the time. Still in their Golden Age as well, about halfway through. As far as I can tell, none of the other major competitors discovered techs this turn. The pace continues to be quite stagnant there. Apolyton ran 100% rate but didn't finish anything. So did UniversCiv, and although we can't see their techs, it doesn't look like they finished anything either from score tracking. CFC ran break-even science without getting anything. CivPlayers and German team amassed gold. I ignore what WPC and Spanish are doing because they are essentially irrelevant at this point.

No one has Feudalism tech, still, despite being 140 turns into the game. The German team hasn't revolted into Hereditary Rule civic, which means that they probably do not have Monarchy tech either. It's looking less and less likely that they'll have longbows or maces on Turn 150, which will make things a heck of a lot easier for us.

Overview:

As I said, we are drafting AO, MM, and FP this turn. The only other pop change is the 4 pop whip planned for Starfall, which will finish the forge and overflow about 45 shields into Globe Theatre. Then we'll start double whipping catapults for the upcoming war effort.

I set research to 0% on Feudalism, and we overflowed about 350 beakers into the tech. We could research it in 3t of break-even science, but of course the min/max binary strategy seems to be working quite well for us. If we want, we can save gold for a few turns here until we can go 100% research and push straight through both Feudalism and Guilds. There's really no reason not to do so, as there's nothing at Feudalism that we particularly care about. Why drop the price of Feudalism for other teams before we have to? I'm think that we should probably do this unless someone can make a good case for not doing so.

Since we had some comments on this before, I am quietly putting roads down along the German border in preparation for our future war, while also adding tile improvements on the same tiles to make them look less suspicious. There will be roads on all the crucial border tiles before our battles begin. There's also a worker about to connect our iron resource as well, to be available when we start to train knights.



We're largely treading water in the Demos, but that in and of itself is exactly what we want. In the last two turns, we whipped or drafted about 18 population across our territory, and we've only seen a minor drop in Food and GNP. We've been timing our population abuse to coincide with regrowth in most cases, and I think we've done a solid job of minimizing the damage to our Demos. The tradeoff has been our huge increase in military power, which will be up 150k in three turns after we finish drafting on the current turn. That's not to mention three cities about to go all military, and our Heroic Epic city which will start one-turning out units for the forseeable future. CFC and German team are also getting close to the end of their Golden Age, I think it's 2 more turns after this one for both of them. CivFr's Mausoleum ensures that they still have quite a ways to go for theirs.

UniversCiv has now spent enough EP against us that it's become clear we're never getting their bar graphs back again. Not until much much later in the game, anyway. They have 170 EP and climbing against us. That's a losing race, so I shifted our spending over to CivFr. Hopefully we can get their graphs at the very least. Our complete lack of courthouses has left us behind in this area, but given our need for forges and barracks at the moment, I still don't see us building them any time soon. It's fairly impressive how competitive we've been on tech despite making no effort to build courthouses at all, on a map where they are fairly strong builds (Emperor, Toroidal). When we finally do hit Communism/State Property, our empire is going to be frighteningly powerful.

I don't think there's too much to discuss on this current turn, but fire away with your thoughts and suggestions. I'll finish playing the turn this evening.

[Sullla]

Turn 140 - 600AD

Suddenly it's marble, marble everywhere on the map. Wish we had found some of this back when we were building the Mausoleum. (But in all honesty, it would have been too far away to be practical.)



Not too much up here in Apolyton territory, just wanted to let everyone know that our scout here is alive and well. I was amused to see the barb warrior wandering into Apolyton's borders as we passed by. We're going to finish defogging their northern coast and then head south to reveal the remaining 2-3 Apolyton cities further to the south.



Here's what I meant in terms of marble. We spotted a source of marble in amongst all of that silver, along with a whales resource on the island to the west. I think that the hill tile where our chariot is standing might be the best place for a city down here; it has the whales for a 3 food tile with a lighthouse, and the freshwater lake also becomes 3 food as well. We could mine the iron tile for minimal production as needed; 0/3/0 ain't much, but it's better than a lot of the other pickings here. Any alternate suggestions? I'm guessing we will only put a single city in this polar region, so it might be a good idea to claim both silver and whales here. Give me your thoughts.

I'm going to load the war chariots back onto the galley and start pulling them back home next turn. They can get back in time to serve as either military police or invasion units for our upcoming war, and that will be more useful than exploring these islands further. I think we've found about everything down here.



And here is marble source #2, one that's more practical for our purposes. I am thinking that this pretty much locks us into the red and yellow dots for our planned cities down here, and maybe another spot further north in the tundra to make use of that extra deer. The Sentry war chariot is going to move onto the ice hill to the west next turn, and then return home as well. I've counted out the turns, and there's just enough time to make it back and join the invasion force come Turn 150.

I believe that we should use the settler currently in transit down from The Covenant on the red dot spot indicated above. We don't have the roads in place to settle the deer/crabs spot over to the east right now, and a city planted in that spot will be wasting a lot of time getting up to speed. This location can be roaded to quite easily, and have the deer connected almost instantly, and of course can borrow the crabs tile from Let It Snow as needed. We'll get the eastern deer/crabs spot with the next settler.



Here's our core of cities once again. Note that Horse Feathers and Brick will both complete their stables next turn and then can go onto churning out more units. I think we'll do elephants from HF because it can 1t them (at size 14, which it will hit in two turns) and catapults from BBB. Then we swap them both over to knights once we have Guilds in hand. I've been chopping all of the third-ring forests near Brick to clear out defensive cover from a possible CivPlayers invasion, and then bonus production has been a nice extra. Outside of a few hill tiles, there will be no cover anywhere for a CivPlayers attack force.

Other cities are pretty much growing and recovering from their draft penalties. Here's one location where we may or may not want to whip:



Gourmet Menu is about to grow, and is therefore primed for a 3 pop forge whip. We'd be whipping off of 3 coastal lake tiles, and will overflow into the 2/3 completed market, which we very badly need here to help us with our massive empire costs. We're also very much up against the happiness cap, with Gourmet Menu only remaining in the green zone thanks to some drafted maces military police, which we won't have once we go to war. +2 happiness from the forge and +3 happiness from the market are both very much wanting. So this one does seem pretty straightforward for a whip here. However, our economic situation is not exactly ideal at the moment with the recent whips/drafts that we've been carrying out, and yes, it will hurt temporarily to lose that extra commerce. I wanted to check with the team before doing anything.

Basically, I say yes, whip away, but give me your quick thoughts before I do anything here.



Here's the eastern half of our territory. The Covenant grew to size 6 and as such is due to be drafted this turn. I haven't done so just in case someone has an objection, not that I really expect one. It will regrow in 2t after losing the pop point. Workers continue to clear out the jungle and build roads connecting our cities. Eastern Dealers is another place where we can use some feedback, so here it is:



We'll finish National Epic and grow at the end of this turn. However, we have a problem on our hands here: not enough happiness in the city. We'll only manage to stay happy with the extra drafted mace for military police next turn, and we need to grow this city up to size 12 or so to run the full specialists that we want. So we need more happiness inside the city in some form. There are two ways that I see to do this.

Short term solution: we build a barracks next, using the overflow from National Epic and 2t of working the grassland hill mines. That will add +2 happiness from Nationhood civic, enough to get by for the moment with no further changes. Then we go full specialists and start working towards the next Great Person.

Longer term solution: we use the overflow from National Epic to start a forge, then 3 pop whip the forge the following turn. This delays our working of specialists until further down the road, since we have to run max food for a bit and recover from the whip. However, it also provides +2 happiness and puts us in better shape for the future, partly because it grants bonus production to all future whips, but especially because we can then run an Engineer specialist in the city. At present, we'll be running 2 Scientists, 2 Artists, and 2 Priests as the city's specialists, because we're not going into Caste System any time soon. It would be really nice to get a forge in here for an Engineer specialist, and a market in here after that for the +3 happiness and 2 Merchant specialists.

I think I lean slightly towards the forge idea, but you could certainly talk me into building a cheap barracks instead. I don't think we need a Great Person all that soon (we really just need one by the time we research Communism so that we can pop the 2 person Golden Age and revolt into State Property for free). Again, give me some feedback here on these plans, or another, different way you would manage this city.



Here's Starfall getting its overflow from the forge whip into the Globe. We'll be at 128/300 after this turn, almost halfway done. The plan is to whip 3 catapults in succession next; each one will grant 75/50 production, and allow us to overflow roughly 75 total shields into the Globe. At that point, we'll be at about 210/300 production, and we can grow Starfall to size 8 and 4 pop whip the wonder to completion. I think we'll finish Globe slightly after Turn 150, and then we can draft endlessly to our heart's content. Everything on schedule here.

Overview:

Our economy is a bit stagnant from having carried out so many whips and drafts in short order. It's rather brutal for the moment, but things will improve quickly now that many of our core cities are finishing forges and regrowing population. The next big round of whips will be pure economy: markets and courthouses as appropriate in core cities. We've also raced out to a massive military lead, and the other teams are not reciprocating that buildup as yet.

Break-even research rate is about 45% science right now. Not great, but not in the danger area either. I'm still suggesting that we build up gold until we can race through Feudalism and Guilds together at 100% science rate, and that will take some turns longer. I think we'll finish Guilds around roughly Turn 148.



The GNP number is absolutely awful for this one particular turn; nearly every other team is running 100% science, and of course CFC/CivFr are also in Golden Age mode. It still did not make me happy to see that #6 number up on the screen though. I felt better when I looked at the Food and Power numbers. We're honestly not doing badly here, it's more of an unfortunate coincidence of other teams going max rate right when we were on minimum science. And of course our massive size means massive costs as well, which has not been helped by accumulating such a large military. As I said before, we'll get the forges up first and then deal with the costs next.

The German team ended their Golden Age, CFC and CivFr still have a few more turns. CFC finished Taj at the start of T134, which means next turn is the last one for their Golden Age. CFC also popped a Great Scientist this turn, one turn after their Great Engineer. That was a massaged Caste System/Pacifism Scientist for sure, and they can use it for another lightbulb (Printing Press?) or save for a second Golden Age. CFC has not used the one-person Golden Age so far, just the free one from Taj Mahal. CFC also discovered Machinery tech, which appears to be the only one discovered amongst our major rivals. Apolyton will probably get something expensive soon themselves. Still no teams with Feudalism yet.

I have our espionage points going against CivFr, since it became hopeless keeping graphs on UniversCiv. We should have CivFr graphs in a turn or two. I will draw up a post today or tomorrow outlining a tactical plan of attack against the Germans. Been thinking about that a lot and I think I have it worked out. As always, fire away with questions and comments.

[Sullla]

Turn 141 - 620AD

This is getting late, so the report will have to be short. Or as short as someone as wordy as I am can make it.



We found the first place for a city that's not completely terrible down in the polar ocean. We could put a city on this hill tile, where it grabs crabs, marble, and two freshwater lake tiles. That's +7 food, infinitely better than any of the other spots. The downside is that the silver is third ring, so we would have to whip an early theatre and run some Artists to get the silver. It would probably take a dozen turns to get silver, as opposed to some of those other spots where we could settle on the silver immediately. The difference being that this spot would actually be worth settling, and not be a giant steaming turd. This location is also in a strong position in terms of controlling the sea lanes to the south of CFC and the north of WPC. A fortified city here would make it very difficult to stop us from raiding the southern coast of CFC later, and would provide easy fort/canal access across this particular island to either side.

What do you think? Worth settling here soonish for the silver, marble, and overall strategic position? (Not with the current settler, of course, but maybe soonish.)



Here's the actual south. Our settler is inside French Riviera, heading for the tile two west of the eastern crabs. It looks like the city gets founded T146. Catherine is about to expand borders next turn, and two workers will pasture that sheep for some food. The other worker will chop a plains forest into... something.

I'll request again the ability to use that chop for a theatre and run Artists to bring over irrigation. I think this city sucks bigtime otherwise, but up to the team in the end. Otherwise, we overflow/chop into lighthouse and simply work the coastal tiles at +4 food.



Overview of our western half of the civ. Stables finished in Horse Feathers and Brick By Brick. I set HF to a war chariot because it's the only unit that it can build in 1t right now; next turn, the city grows to size 14 and will be able to 1t war elephants. I'm pretty sure that we can use another 5XP war chariot, and it feels most useful to build a unit this turn rather than 90% of a catapult. Brick will build some elephants for the moment while waiting on Guilds tech.

Gourmet Menu is recovering nicely from its forge whip, and the market in there is about 80% completed with the whip overflow. Most of the happiness issues are gone there with the addition of the forge. Focal Point finishes its own forge next turn, then will go onto some catapult builds. Capital is letting Horse Feathers borrow the corn for this turn to grow to size 14, then it will take back the corn and grow itself to size 14, and then pass the deer tile to Mansa to allow poor Mansa to grow a bit.



Here's the only population abuse for the turn: a fairly standard forge whip in Seven Tribes. Only 2 pop and not 3 pop because we've gotten quite a bit of production into this thing already. I plan to overflow into a missionary here for one of the cities still lacking Hinduism.

We have no cities up for drafting this turn! Yeah, first draft cycle is basically complete now. Six more turns until the first unhappiness penalty wears off. We don't have enough surplus happiness to double draft cities.



Eastern half of our territory. Cutting Edge is waiting on that Hindu missionary from Tree Huggers (or a free spread - it's four tiles from the Shrine, darn it!) before whipping the forge. The overflow will finish the city's barracks, and then we'll grow and go all production. Forbidden Fruit, Simple Life, The Covenant are all just growing and working cottages. Eastern Dealers still needs more discussion:



Here's the city working specialists after finishing National Epic, as was requested last turn. Honestly though - I don't like this setup. The rate of Great Person Point accumulation is not that strong, and the city still has major happiness and cost problems. The city is happy neutral at size 9; I'm having to keep the drafted unit here for military police just to keep it from revolting. And check out that maintenance cost: just shy of 15 gold/turn. Yikes.

What I want to do is grow this size to size 12 and work 7 specialists. Unfortunately we don't have the happiness or even the specialist slots to do that right now. I would much rather we put the specialists on hold for another half-dozen turns to solve these problems first. Like this:



I'd like to ignore the specialists for the moment and run this configuration. Set the city to a forge, triple-whip next turn, and then use the overflow and work some mines to finish a courthouse. We need the forge for happiness purposes, and the maintenance costs without a courthouse are getting ridiculous. Plus, we can actually get good value out of both the Engineer and Spy specialist slots, which are probably more useful than Priests and Artists. I don't think we're in a drastic hurry to produce a Great Person in the next dozen turns, so why rush to work these crummy specialists when we can significantly improve the city first?

I hope I'm not crazy in posting this. I really think that we want a courthouse here ASAP, and we need either a forge or a barracks here to control unhappiness. The forge is obviously much more useful to the city.

Overview:

We're still saving gold for the Guilds run. It might not look like it yet, but our cities are economically recovering pretty nicely from the forge/draft abuse we put them through. That was a bit of a nadir for our economy, and of course it looks even worse on the Demos screen because we were running several Wealth builds previously. If we set our top production cities back to Wealth again, we'd be over 300 gold/turn right now. So the numbers we've been seeing have been a bit deceptive; we didn't suddenly collapse into a huge economic rut. With forges mostly in place now, courthouses and markets will come next and help us out significantly.

Probably 2 more turns of running 0% science after this one (until eot 143), and then 4 turns of max science for Guilds. End of turn 147 looks like our planned finishing date.



GNP still looking not so hot, although we did go back up to 3rd at 100% rate. This is the final turn of the CFC Golden Age, and CivFr is getting closer to the end of theirs as well. Lots of teams burning through cash at max research right now. German team's Golden Age has ended. Notice that no one else is building any military in response to our huge surge in Power. Five turns ago, we were 313k to the Rival Best of 293k; now it's 472k to 325k. Not exactly keeping pace.

Apolyton discovered Machinery tech and CFC discovered Engineering this turn. We'll see if CFC uses their Great Engineer on Notre Dame. We almost half to hope so, since there's not much anyone can do to stop them from just slow-building it with stone. This is another race we're not going to win... Can't do everything in this game, always have to make some sacrifices. Well, we'll see who's laughing when we've devoured a dozen German cities and nearly doubled our territory.

We should have graphs on CivFr in two more turns.

[Sullla]

Turn 142 - 640AD

Fairly quiet turn overall, a few minor things to discuss.



This is from our exploring chariot in German territory, and we've basically found where all of their units are hiding. Right there on the border with WPC as expected, sitting inside the city of Willhelmshaven. Their army is extremely heavy on axes; this particular tile has 9 axes, 4 chariots, 3 catapults, and 1 spear. They also have 2 axes on the pigs tile northeast of the city, and 2 axes + 1 spear inside Wismar. (Note to anyone reading: this force is too axe-heavy. It's just asking to get torn apart by horse archers or another type of mounted unit. They need more spears in the army composition.) Needless to say, an army made up mostly of axes is not likely to fare very well against maces and knights.

It also suggests that the German team is expecting to fight WPC in the near future, but has no idea at all that we'll be attacking them. Their whole army is off on the opposite border. I genuinely think that they've forgotten about our NAP ending on Turn 150, and of course we've been trading resources and acting like a friendly neighbor. They are not going to be pleased come T150 at all.

We'll have to keep back a small part of the second drafting force in the area around Simple Life to protect against a possible counter-attack from this German army into our territory. Since we can easily whip city walls (and castles once we have Engineering tech), plus draft maces and whip knights, I think we'll be reasonably safe from them mounting a counter invasion. Have to see how they choose to play it, let's hope that WPC can tie up much of that force.



We also picked up vision on a CivPlayers city this turn in the deep southwest as our Sentry chariot begins returning home. Like all of the CivPlayers cities that we've seen, it has a lot of infrastructure inside: granary, forge, sacrificial altar, Buddhist temple and monastery. CivPlayers has very low costs by virtue of being Darius (Fin/Org) and having their UB courthouses everywhere. Their biggest weakness is that they were horribly squeezed on territory by starting next to us and CivFr. I agree with what many others have said that CivPlayers would make a good ally to have on our side. We don't really want to fight the Apostolic Palace civ, all that religious unhappiness would make fighting them a nightmare, and we have bigger targets to go after amongst the game leaders. Apolyton, for example, would be a very tempting target in a post-German war. But that's getting too far ahead.



Here's the western part of our core territory. We already had a question about the capital, so let me explain there: like many of our other large cities, the capital needs happiness. It's only staying happy-neutral right now by virtue of stuffing extra military police units inside. We need to move those units up to the front line soon, and that's to say nothing of war weariness down the road from fighting (which is going to SUCK, we really need to settle for silver and hopefully trade for CivPlayers sugars to combat that). The forge will not complete in Adventure One for quite some time, not in time to combat our unhappiness. So I'm suggesting we break off from the forge for now, complete the barracks to solve the happiness problems, and then go back and finish the forge. It's an inefficient way to do things, but the forge is simply going to take too long, and with all of our drafting plans it's not as though the barracks is a waste of a build.

Elsewhere, Ditchdigger gets drafted next turn after it grows. Brick will grow back to size 9 next turn, where it gets 20 base / 25 modified with forge production. We'll get a few elephants and probably a couple more catapults there while waiting for Guilds. Focal Point finished its forge this turn, it gets 15 base / 18 modified production for 3t catapults. Sadly, we need to farm another plains tile up there before it can reach 16 / 20 production.



Horse Feathers has reached the magical size 14 target, and can now 1t war elephants and 1.5t knights. We get a base of 27 production here, and then we add on to that another 27 production from Heroic Epic and 6 production from the forge for 27 + 27 + 6 = 60 production/turn. Very nice for this stage of the game. When we've sorted out some of the capital's various happiness issues, we can grow this city another size by borrowing the corn and working an Engineer specialist at size 15, which gets us to 29 + 29 + 7 = 65 production/turn. And of course, super lategame with Railroads and Biology farms can do better yet.

I know that other spots can theoretically produce greater outputs for a Heroic Epic city, but I believe we made the right choice by choosing Horse Feathers. Timing is everything, and having such a strong location up and running this early in the game will be a tremendous difference. Case in point: by Turn 165, we will have produced roughly 15 knights out of this one city alone. Just like an early Forbidden Palace in Civ3, it's better to get a good Heroic Epic city running on Turn 150 than a great Heroic Epic city running on Turn 200.



Here is the eastern half of our core. Cutting Edge is whipping its forge next turn when the missionary from Tree Huggers arrives. Mansa is finally growing now that we could give it the deer from the capital. Eastern Dealers is working the resource tiles, the two farms, the grassland hill mines, and 2 Scientist specialists, as we worked out last turn. And at Simple Life:



I think that we should go ahead and whip the city for its forge. There's no whip unhappiness at present, it's a 3 pop whip with a lot of overflow, and the city will grow back to size 4 next turn. Yes, a little bit brutal in the short run, but the stronger play for the long haul. Any thoughts on this?



Here's the south, finally starting to develop nicely. Let It Snow's work boat is ready to complete, and another worker is chopping into a likely lighthouse for its next build. French Riviera finishes its library this turn with help from a forest chop, it also will be drafted this turn. It should finally get religion from Seven Tribes in a half-dozen more turns. The settler is on its way to the deer/crabs spot in the southeast, should found the spot T146.

This is the turn where we have to decide next what to build in Catherine. How about we do this: lighthouse first, then theatre next after that? We don't necessarily have to work Artists either, we could simply rely on the passive culture (5 per turn with monument, religion, and theatre) to pop borders in 15 or so turns. Then we could bring irrigation over from French Riviera as I wanted to do. One forest chop gets us the lighthouse, and the second one should finish a theatre. How about it?

Overview:

Here's the overview picture. We caught a break with CFC researching Feudalism last turn, which cheapens the cost for us. Min science strategy was a winner in this case. I was looking at the numbers on this today, and I think that we can turn on 100% research next turn and then get Guilds at the eot 146. We'll be running 100%, 100%, 100%, and then something like 70% research on the last turn. I think we might have to squeeze out a Wealth build here or there, but I think it's worth it to start building knights a turn sooner. Good idea, or just run one more turn of 0% research next turn?



Demos for the turn, CFC is now out of their Golden Age. They made extremely good use of it, getting a Great Engineer and two Great Scientists during the 8 turns. Unfortunately, they look like our top competition to win right now, and you know that means more rules-lawyering ahead in the future.

GNP is pretty sad at 0% science, although it does go up to a value of 600 (3rd) at max research rate. Production is hard to evaluate with CivFr still in their Golden Age. We of course dominate in Food, Land, Power, etc. Still no one building much of an army. We will have graphs on CivFr next turn, for what that's worth.

[Sullla]

Turn 143 - 660AD

Still quietly building and planning, getting closer to Turn 150.



Here's a picture of the land to the northwest of Apolyton. This area is pretty fertile considering that they haven't moved to settle it yet. It's one more good city up there at the very least. Our scout will go ahead and move to the south from here to explore the central Apolyton territory that we missed on the last pass through.



Sentry chariot over by CivPlayers continues to dodge barb axes in the tundra. I'm hoping that we'll be able to move two tiles northeast next turn. We have just enough time to get this unit back to the main stack for the T150 attack. The other war chariots in the southeast who have been exploring the ice islands are doing the same thing, and should also make it back to serve on military duty.



Here is our western core from an overview shot. I do not agree with kjn about working multiple plains hill tiles in the capital; we have no burning desire to speed up the forge build (I mentioned before that we have just enough time to get it done in time for the war's start) and we want to keep some growth going here for when we draft the city again in 6 turns. Trading off mature villages and towns for plains hill mines in a commerce city doesn't feel like a good exchange to me.

Elsewhere, Mansa finally has some nice food surplus coming in from the deer tile. Focal Point is building catapults at a 3t rate. Horse Feathers is churning out 1t war elephants while we tech towards Guilds; we'll be able to set up the overflow there to turn out a knight in 1t on the first turn we have Guilds. Brick By Brick is doing more war elephants for the moment to take advantage of the stables; we have 2 elephants on the field right now, and I think we'd like about 5 of them to serve as anti-mounted defense for our main stack, since we won't have access to pikes until after the war starts. Ditchdigger has hit size 6 for the first time, and as such will be drafted this turn for another mace.

Two questions for everyone, the first at Tree Huggers. What does everyone want to build here? The best options seem to be either a barracks or a market, both of which add more happiness to the city (+2 from barracks and +3 from market). As a commercial city, the market would absolutely be helpful for our economy... with the tradeoff being that the market is triple the cost of the barracks. I was thinking that we build the barracks for now and whip the market later. The current happiness cap is size 11, for the curious. Thoughts on this city? I didn't take a picture but can do so if requested.

The other issue deals with Frozen Jungle and Ditchdigger. These cities both have about all of the grassland farms they need for the moment, and I was thinking of laying down some grassland workshops for them with our workers. Yes, the grassland workshop is terrible right now as a 1/1 tile, but we'll have Guilds shortly to make them 1/2 tiles, and what else are we going to build on those tiles? More farms when the cities have plenty of them already? Cottages that we don't plan to work later? (We had earlier decided that both would be production cities, not commercial ones.) There are no cities nearby that could take back the cottages later after a period of incubation. So... I'm thinking we lay down some workshops now, even if we don't work too many of those tiles just yet. Is this a decent plan while we continue to hack down the jungle?



Here's the east, where there's a little bit less going on. The main question surrounds Cutting Edge:



We now have religion in the city, and that means we can whip the forge with the Organized Religion bonus. We probably want to whip this city next turn, right? Cutting Edge is intended to be a production city; the forge whip overflow should finish the barracks (or close to it) and then we simply grow on the grassland farms to size 10 where it works the rice tile, four grassland farms, and the five hill tiles in range for 17 base / 21 forge production. That's not bad for a filler city reclaiming unused tiles, and the cottages can all be given over to commercial cities after being incubated here. Let me know if a forge whip next turn is the correct way to play this.



Here is the deep south; workers finished a pasture on the sheep at Catherine, and will head down to improve the upcoming crabs/deer city next. Settler will found that city in three more turns, sadly the terrain is pretty rough down there. Our two war chariots are in the galley and coming back to the mainland. Work boat will connect the crabs at Let It Snow and finally get some real food going there next turn. I'm assuming that we do want a lighthouse as the next build in LIS to take the crabs up from +4 food to +5 food, which is definitely needed. Other workers in the area are chopping forests. Starfall, off screen to the north, gets double whipped for its catapult this turn in accordance with the micro plan written out by Seven last week.

We finally turned on research this turn at 100%, and we'll run that for the next three turns. We caught a bit of a break here, as both CFC and Apolyton discovered Feudalism while we were accumulating gold towards our Guilds run. This dropped the cost of Feudalism nicely, giving us 6% bonus beakers. I'll certainly take that. Three turns of 100% science should leave us roughly 500 beakers short of Guilds with about 150 gold in the bank, and we'll run rough 70% science on T147, possibly with a Wealth build squeezed out somewhere, to finish Guilds at eot 147.

Overview:

One thing that we do need to decide is whether we want to play in the first or second half of the turn timer for our upcoming war. We need to figure this out and then communicate to WPC so that we're on the same page. It's probably easier and more fair to the German team to play in the first half of the timer; I've always thought that this is a more natural arrangement, and it would be easier to synchronize this with WPC. Just attack and move in at the start of T150. It could also be helpful diplomatically, as when the timer runs down it will look like the Germans are the ones holding up the game, the same way that it happened in their last war. On the other hand, it's tactically more advantageous to have the second half of the timer, as the Germans would have no chance to react with unit moves or whip on the first turn of the invasion. It's a bit of a scumbag play, but I'm absolutely willing to pull clock shenanigans if we think it offers a significant enough advantage. What does everyone think? How do we want to set this up?

If anyone has time to experiment with what exactly this mod does with turn timer splits in war, that would also be hugely helpful. What happens in a 3 way war? Can we play around with this and test it so we know what's going to happen ahead of time?



Demos for the turn. GNP at 100% sadly only occupies the 4th spot, although we are within shouting distance of the leaders. We are back to #2 in Production now that all of the Golden Ages other than CivFr have ended. (In other words, we are actually first in Production.) Our Power continues to climb without too much in the way of a buildup from anyone else. Imagine if our production were going into all economic stuff instead of units, or if we weren't sitting on a -3 unhappiness penalty from drafting in every city. Our GNP would probably look a lot better too. The difference is that you can always improve your economy later, while obtaining more land once all the empty stuff has been claimed is a lot tougher. Even with a conservative estimate of success, we should be able to get about 10 extra cities from the Germans, cities with highly developed infrastructure and tile improvements, and then another 5 cities down in the tundra/ice to the deep south. That would put us at 35 cities, and no one is getting much beyond 20 cities without going to war on this map. I like those odds.

Apolyton discovered Feudalism this turn (dropping the cost for us to research) and CFC discovered Horseback Riding. As kjn wrote in the C&D thread, it's looking more likely that CFC used their Great Engineer for an Engineering lightbulb, given the number of techs they researched in such a short time. Even in Golden Age mode, we're pretty sure they didn't have that much research power. We are kind of treading water here on research, keeping pace with the other game leaders or losing a little ground to them. Apolyton, CivFr, and CFC are likely all researching faster than us at present, due to us investing so heavily in military while none of them are investing in it at all. The results of the German war will tell the success of our larger strategic plan.

We now have graphs on CivFr, but they aren't too useful since they're still in a Golden Age. Need to wait until that ends to see much of anything. We should be able to keep graphs on everyone other than Apolyton, CivPlayers, and UniversCiv - the teams who have heavily emphasized courthouses.

[Sullla]

Turn 144 - 680AD

The countdown continues. Six more turns to go.



Our exploring chariot in German territory has just about traversed their whole land at this point. We've seen no units other than axes (a lot of axes), spears, chariots, and catapults thus far. Based on the unit and city builds that we've been observing, we know that the German team researched Iron Working, Currency, and Construction techs. They do not appear to have Monarchy tech thus far, judging by their lack of Hereditary Rule civic (and remember, they are Spiritual so they have a free civics change as soon as they discover that tech). This means that they are still a very, very long ways away from Feudalism and longbows, and the clock is running out for their team to get that tech.

I'm going to swing this chariot into WPC territory next and shadow their army when it moves in for the attack. We might want to send WPC a message just to let them know about us bringing an observer along.



Here's a quick screenshot to demonstrate the usefulness of Sentry promotion: note that we can see into Xochicalco from three tiles away, because the city is located on a hill. The field of vision these units create is a lifesaver when you're at war. Anyway, this chariot will have time to rejoin the main attack force for the Turn 150 invasion. Two more war chariots from the deep south are heading up to the main army as well.



This is the standard picture of the western half of our core. There's a couple different issues to discuss here.

Brick By Brick finished an elephant last turn (being ferried over on the galley to Horse Feathers) and had a third-ring forest chop finish another elephant at the end of this turn. The next build should be whatever auto-upgrades to a knight; can someone remind me again which unit does that - war chariot? Horse archer? I can set up a Worldbuilder test here, but if someone just knows, you can save me some time.

We want to do something similar in Horse Feathers, setting things up so that we can build a knight on the same turn that we discover Guilds. Right now, the city makes exactly 60 production per turn (into military units, but that's all we're building). We have 14 production overflow right now, and therefore are getting 74 production on this turn. My thought is to finish some 50 production catapults to bank a little extra production on the next two turns, like this:

eot 144: catapult (74 production)
eot 145: catapult (84 production)
eot 146: auto-upgrade knight (94 production)

Plus, we need more catapults over more war elephants anyway; we have 4 of them going along with the main stack, and that should be sufficient for anti-mounted defense. We can always get some pikes a little later if the Germans would turn up with horse archers.

The other issue here is where and how best to split up the main stack while awaiting the arrival of Turn 150. We don't have too many turns to go here, so don't get too elaborate, but feel free to suggest where and how to put these units in the meantime. There's a German chariot up north of Tree Huggers that may move into our territory, and there's an Apolyton chariot just off screen over by Ditchdigger that looks primed to move into our territory as well. Just keep in mind that the stack needs to be on the tile northeast of the rice / southwest of the gems on Turn 149.

Then that leaves us with Cutting Edge:



We're whipping the forge in this city... right? I think? This is intended as a production city, and we're in the process of mining those remaining hill tiles right now. There hasn't been a particularly clear decision on whether to whip or not whip this city so far. Well, the time to make that decision is now. What to do with this city?



Here's the rest of the eastern cities. We have a forest chop coming into The Covenant which should just about finish its library; I think it goes to 88/90 or something like that. I would assume that forge is the next build there. Eastern Dealers was about to grow into unhappiness, so I hired an extra specialist for the moment:



We dropped the grassland river farm for the Priest specialist; I figured that was more valuable here than the Artist. The forge is coming along nicely, and we can probably do a courthouse next (working 2 Scientists + Engineer at size 11 or size 12).



And here's Starfall, since I haven't shown a picture of the city lately. We are still following the plan that Seven outlined a few pages ago in this thread, which I believe finishes the Globe on Turn 152. The overflow from the last catapult whip puts a gigantic 51 production into the Globe this turn, and we'll swap over to another catapult next turn to do the same thing. This is something that we haven't talked much about compared to other teams; we're the only one of the major competitors who teched Drama and built a bunch of theatres. Well, maybe CivFr did, but we can't see any of their cities. Everyone else is still dozens and dozens of turns from setting up the Globe Theatre, while we'll have a permanent drafting camp churning out new units almost every turn as early as Turn 152. It's basically like having a second Heroic Epic city, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Overview:

We've finished over 90% of Feudalism tech, and will continue to run at 100% science for the moment. Two more turns of max science will get us very close to finishing Guilds, and we should be able to run 70% or so science on Turn 146 (possibly with a Wealth build somewhere) to finish Guilds at the end of turn 146. Keep that in mind if we're looking at these cities as possible places for knight whips. (The economic builder in me requests that we keep these fairly limited, and whip markets or courthouses instead in most of these cities. Pretty please?)

You might have noticed that CFC was listed as an "AI" in some of these screenshots. While I was playing, they logged into the game and Paused it, which is also visible in the pictures. I have no idea what that's about, and whoever was logged in left immediately, so I couldn't ask them in-game. There is nothing posted about it over at CivFanatics as yet. Maybe one of our representatives could ask what exactly is going on with this team?



Demos are roughly the same as they've been in recent turns. Our GNP continues the slow climb upwards as we recover from drafts and forge whips. Most core cities have forges by now; I'm looking forward to economy-focused whips for their next big projects, markets and courthouses as appropriate. We also continue to invest much more heavily in military than anyone else:



Can you tell when we adopted Nationhood civic? The draft penalty for the first 5 cities wears off in three more turns, we're getting close to the second round of drafted maces getting underway. The German team has a pretty flat line on this graph, and they recently 4 pop whipped a market in one of their border cities with us. I genuinely think they have no idea that they signed a Turn 150 NAP with our team. I mean, it was like 6 months and 100 turns ago that we made that agreement. This has the potential to be a complete blindside war declaration, they don't seem to have any idea at all what's coming.

Oh, and do people want me to cancel the gems/spices deal and reoffer it as just spices? Did we ever agree on that? Let me know how you want me to play that with the Germans. Thanks.