[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Gavagai]

Bacchus, we will need to have a chat today in the evening about how to proceed. I have a gut feeling that we need to move a worker and a settler up in a queue and put them before the third WB. We will be able to found a second city at T33 (simmed inside my head, assuming that we are going to delay converting to religion) and start working corn at T36. We will be able to have our third clam netted at T38. So, basically, we are gong to delay our third clam for 11 turns and in return we will gain earlier second city center, earlier corn and earlier cow. We will need to sim if it will even work out but our research schedule is going to become super-dense (we will need to research Agri-AH fast enough to enable our worker to improve those resources without delay). So we will need to attempt to grab meditation.

[Gavagai]

OK, this turn gonna take us a while. I found out that I put "standard" world size in my sandbox... So, all our tech estimates are off...
We found clam in the east, will show a pic later.

[Gavagai]

Sian got a score increase this turn. Chances are high that this is Mysticism and that he is beelining religion like us. I want to OK it with Bacchus later in the evening but I think we will go for Meditation anyway. Beakers are going to be a real bottleneck later and we don't have commerce to waste on a more expensive tech. Also, I'm confident that we can beat Sian to it. He hasn't grown this turn which means, I think, that he isn't going to grow anytime soon, unless he is straight up growing on a grassland forest which would be pretty weed. This means that we can always outtech him, working two commerce tiles. Also, at no point anyone was working 3-hammers tile which means that he won't have WB out sufficiently earlier than we will.
Researching Meditation while working 3 commerce tile should give him 21 GNP which we will notice immediately in demos. And if we notice that, we will just delay second WB and start to work unimproved clam. He should have no answer to that.
Of course, there are scenarios in which he can still beat us but he will need to really butcher his long-term growth to do this.
Also, BaII is another person who got a score increase this turn but I don't think that he can seriously compete for religion:
1) He has neither Mining, nor Mysticism. This means that to beeline religion he would need to research BW only as his fourth tech. I doubt anyone would be bold enough to do such a thing.
2) He isn't financial, he doesn't have fishing as his starting tech, so he won't be able to compete with us or Sian in a raw commerce output.

[Bacchus]

Micro for the new queue. The tiles worked include an unimproved clam to get Meditation a turn earlier, but no anarchy for switch into slavery.



Please re-sim on the proper sized map to get a feel for where the techs fall. Judging from the demos you took after Sian founded, he has no extra hammer in the capital, and he hasn't grown, so no 3f yield. This means that even if he is building workboats, he will be at least a turn behind, leading to a corresponding lag in the tech. If he has multiple seafood he might try to break himself getting Meditation off unimproved coast, but there isn't much we can do against such an eventuality, and in fairness it's probably not going to happen.

[Gavagai]

Actually, he will have the first WB one turn before us, assuming he is building it on 1f2h tile (and this is really his only build which makes sense). Our advantage is that we will be able to work two 3c tiles for three additional turns.
(And having said that - I'm not sure that it will give us large enough beaker advantage to finish Meditation earlier. Really need to sim it today. The question is how clearly he understands that there is a competition. Because I doubt that he would work 2 commerce tiles unless he would feel really desperate.)

[Bacchus]

From the demos you took, he was working 2f1h on the turn he founded the city ( http://i.minus.com/ib2dpHBw3WpYCt.JPG )

What we need is the tech cost multiplier. Sad that they know what it is in neghbouring threads.

[Gavagai]

Those demos also suggested that he started to research BW... However it is possible that he just didn't have a hill immediately nearby. Anyway, on 2f he should grow on T11 but his WB would be seriously delayed. We should watch best rival GNP closely. Increase to 21 would signal us that he has netted his seafood.
Regarding multipliers: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...search.php Known tech bonuses are irrelevant for our case.

[Gavagai]

Sad that they know what it is in neghbouring threads.

Btw, I don't think that "they" are numerous. Lurker's thread hasn't been updated for a long time. It looks like that this game attracts much less interest than other ongoing games.

[Gavagai]

Made some quick sims. The earliest date when Sian is able to research Meditation is T17. This is even assuming he would work two 3c tiles after growth. We can research Meditation by T16 if we work 2 high-commerce tiles after our first WB is built. What is puzzling is that I still was able to get a settler out at T33 in this scenario.

[Bacchus]

That's not puzzling, as you can see from the micro table, there is a overhang of hammers on the settler, the delay would have delayed the worker by a turn, delaying the chop by a turn, but the thing is that by T32 there are already more than 40 hammers in the settler, so you can whip him even without the chop going onto the queue. So all we lose by working the clam in the near future is a worker-turn, and then we probably delay the city growth a turn, which is 2 food and 3 commerce.

Here are some demos from within the game, the good thing is that the gold leader doesn't appear to be Sian [we win the tie at 22], and I think the leader is a financial guy researching something with two prereqs off a 3-commerce capital. Maybe, Jowy — Pottery. This guess is based on the fact that to get 22 science with a single prereq tech, we need an awkward 5 coins (including the capital coin). Culture from Creative isn't counted in GNP, is it?







Also of interest and not shown: on 21 GNP we appear second and on crop yield of 6 we appear first.