[SPOILERS] Smackdown Game Thread

[SevenSpirits]

I missed the attack, so direct any questions at Mackoti.

Meanwhile we are just one turn from nationalism, and I will be able to claim the taj mahal at any point thereafter. RMOG just got banking and LAM has a high GNP after finishing optics, so I believe they are teching CS. Mackoti was worried they would go straight for astronomy but they sure don't seem to be.

Mackoti is finally finishing some banks and now for a few turns we are at nearly 100gpt surplus - of course this will drop precipitously with the end of the sumerian golden age and switch from bureaucracy to nationhood. But it's good to be researching at 100% again with Rome, and therefore making 600bpt. After nationhood we will probably pick up compass and optics before continuing on to paper and education, but it's not yet decided. After that we would be free to liberalize something like astronomy or military tradition or constitution.

The potential roman RMOG attack near our own bombed city was called off - they put in too many defenders. This last turn a spy of their was stumbled upon near the bombed city, so OK, they could see our troops massing I guess.

Also I forgot that spies are allowed this game. Also I didn't realize MoM applies to all members of a team. The things you learn.

[novice]

Nice going. You didn't ban MoM?

[SevenSpirits]

Why would we do that, it only works for the player who builds it...

Luckily our mids- and mausoleum-wielding friends are not too strong players other than wonder choices.

[NobleHelium]

I don't see why you would ban MoM just because it works for both players...your golden ages are still only per-player and you would need more GPs to get the same GA benefit you would get if you were playing one homogenous empire.

[mackoti]

well not totaly true dear noble , becasue in one homogeonus empire you dont have 2 capitols with burocracy or 2 moai statue city or 2 national epic or heroic epic cities.But yeah i asked seven about the GA for both and he tols me its just for one so we argued and as you see we play in difernt games now.

[SevenSpirits]

I don't see why you would ban MoM just because it works for both players...your golden ages are still only per-player and you would need more GPs to get the same GA benefit you would get if you were playing one homogenous empire.

I think in a 2-player team, you end up running 4.5 golden ages instead of 2.5 golden ages (assuming you have MoM in both cases). Each golden age still gives the same yield boosts as if you were playing solo. MoM is therefore giving you 13.5 extra turns of golden age yields instead of 7.5. That is like an extra golden age. Maybe this isn't particularly alarming compared to other wonders that you share with your team. MoM was already really good though.

[NobleHelium]

NobleHelium:
hey
so when you said 4.5 golden ages, that actually means 9 golden ages right?
SevenSpirits:
no, just 3.5
4.5
less per player but more total
NobleHelium:
yes, but the portion of the empire that it affects matters, no?
mackoti is right about the non-scaling civics and national wonders of course
SevenSpirits:
that sort of presumes that individual empires are smaller in a team game
which is not the case IMO
NobleHelium:
well i am comparing it to the case where you have a similar sized empire in a non-team game
i suppose that means that MoM is stronger when you start with 2 settlers
which i guess is a fair statement
SevenSpirits:
yeah, you could think of it like that
2 settlers and 2 palaces
it seems fairest to me to compare a single team member to an independent player
that does seem to be approximately the case, although you get like 20% fewer great people and some amount less tech
NobleHelium:
yeah ok, i can agree with that
SevenSpirits:
so anyway, there are other wonders that are literally twice as good
like stonehenge
(almost - I mean, the gpp are worth a decent part of it too)
and MoM is less than twice as good
but it was the wonder I'd be most interested in banning in a normal game already
ok, maybe secondarily to taj - but taj doesn't get increased in power at all
NobleHelium:
taj is hard to build without marble
unless you get a GE of course
SevenSpirits:
that is true
MoM too
NobleHelium:
mom is hard, but substantially less so
SevenSpirits:
what's this superior sign format you like?
NobleHelium:
just fractions
Chop 1/3, Road 1/2, Farm 1/5, etc.
SevenSpirits:
ah
that means there is only 1 turn of chopping out of three to go, right?
NobleHelium:
yeah yeah i just realized that it doesn't solve the count up or count down problem
but i've always used count up
SevenSpirits:
so you like it because you think counting up is the way to go, but it's also important to get the turns-to-go number correct?
NobleHelium:
yes, correct
SevenSpirits:
I agree with counting up
but I guess that after that I just value brevity
NobleHelium:
i think brevity would matter more if the signs weren't the same width regardless of how many letters you put in
SevenSpirits:
true

[SevenSpirits]

t107 we got alphabet. Here is what the other teams have on us/are missing:

* Everyone else is missing Aesthetics, Drama, Literature, Music, Nationalism.

* RMOG is also down Compass.

* 4H is also down Compass, Meditation, Code of Laws, Philosophy, Alphabet, Guilds, Banking

* LAM is up Optics. They are also down Alphabet, Philosophy

Next turn I am starting my Taj Golden age. Goal is to get 3-4 great people, and build 7 universities and oxford. (And of course research paper, education, optics, and then probably on to liberalism for astronomy.) I am going to be in caste (and I plan to stay in it after the golden age) so figuring out how to build all 7 universities in 3 turns was a challenge. I will be chopping 3 forests in my newest city, 3 third ring forests at Pad Thai, and my lovely fur forest and 2 4th ring forests at my NE city to accomplish it.

[SevenSpirits]

Captured another RMOG city. 1t later, our artist arrived to bomb it.


The "after" pic didn't take, but here is the situation the following turn. Note that we've now also captured "Americano". Americano had been left empty next to a LAM Landsknecht, and named "AlmostDeadCity". I assume they were hoping that LAM would raze it, as LAM plays between them and us. I think there might have been some inappropriate choices made in frustration here, but a) I don't know the situation and b) nothing bad seems to have come of it. (Well, unless it caused LAM to avoid razing the city!) Anyway, "Always Diplo Cocktail" didn't fit and I couldn't find any real A-D-C drinks in 15 letters or less, so I just treated its previous name as a single incomprehensible sequence of letters starting with A, and named our version as you see it.


Here's an overview shot of our new world holdings. We're getting there!


And the rest of the Sumerian empire:


Here's a culture view of the whole thing.


The three Sumerian cities with Banks, which provide much of our gold income:




Power graph. Sumeria is finally back to top power after ending turn, having of course lost the spot in the process of capturing an 80% culture defense city with 2-movers. Second place is Bismarck of Native America, 4H's coastal civ. They border Darius of HRE (LAM coast) and Gandhi of Egypt (RMOG coast), the former being our biggest rival this game and the latter being the one we are taking cities off of, so that's good. Though, 4H are so behind in tech that it's unlikely they can accomplish much.


You may also have noticed from the pics that we are leaking gold. Well, we are currently still running Rome at 100% science, and we had a couple hundred built up from the Sumerian golden age, and we are also getting some nice failgold from Taj and Notre Dame. (LAM built Notre Dame, and we wouldn't race them given our other plans, so I just put hammers into it in a few cities.) So we should be good for a while yet.

[SevenSpirits]

For Rome, I ended up doing a ton of micro for the golden age, so I'm just going to step through all the cities. First point: on the turn we built the Taj (on which we also 1t-teched Paper), Greek Salad spat out another great person. It was supposed to be a scientist (56%), but it wasn't - it was another freaking artist instead. This meant we couldn't double-bulb education and then finish it off with a fraction of a turn's research, and start on universities t110. But we did have a good enough tech rate to get the rest of Education (after a single bulb) in two turns. And I'd tried to make the university micro plan compatible with getting Education a turn later, despite not figuring out the specifics. So anyway, here is the timeline:

t107, Moai finished and we teched Alphabet.
t108 was the turn of building Taj (where we get golden age hammers and GPP in subsequent cities, but it's not a real golden age turn yet), getting a great person, and teching Paper.
t109-110 Rome swaps to caste system (because not only are we going hard for Oxford, but we want to produce more great scientists), and we tech education.
t111-112 Rome builds 7 Universities without using slavery.
t113-114 Rome builds Oxford.
t115 the golden age is over.

TS would not have trouble building a university in one turn. But, we don't want that. We want maximum overflow into Oxford. Anyway, a grocer over 2t was the right number of hammers so that we could almost complete the university, and we will need the health later, even if the gold bonus does little.


PT is making a great scientist over four turns (starting last turn, even though it says "4 turns" in the screenshot currently). For three turns it will use up its food supply, and on the fourth it will run only specs and starve a pop. PT also has to build a university, but this is trivial because it has three third-ring tundra forests available. 3rd-ring forests are worth 16h, so 3 is 48. With OR/Forge/PHI we have a 2.5x multiplier or university hammers, so only 54 base hammers are needed, meaning PT itself has to produce but 6 over two turns.


SF needs to build a university. It has enough hammers that it can build one in 2t with a little overflow, so I set it to build 2 spies for the first two golden age turns (each one producing a little overflow and preserving the existing overflow).


GS is set to produce a GP (again) on the same turn PT does. If they are both scientists as we would like them to be, we can fully bulb Printing Press the following turn and immediately start getting the commerce boost. In addition, GS needs to build a university too! Luckily, it has two fourth-ring forests (13h each), and that forested fur, which I will sadly be chopping as well.


PS is refreshingly simple, it's enough to make one cry. It just builds a spy over two turns, followed by a university over two turns.


FC... doesn't have to take a break from building military to build a crappy library and university! It's running a merchant right now instead of an engineer (with the free spec from Mercantilism) because I thought it might be building up too much overflow but I was too exhausted to do any more micro after all the GPP and university stuff.


Apple Pie is thankfully exempt from University duty. It does have some 3rd and 4th ring forests but they're close to the RMOG border so it would be kind of risky, and I also don't have enough worker turns to manage it. However, it is making a great person. I decided there wasn't too much hurry with this one so I am not starving very much. I think it will finish shortly after the golden age is done.


Sushi is great. And this city is building a university over 2t. Wealth build for this one turn is to preserve overflow from the library.


Here is the only city that isn't doing anything critically important.


CC has a lot of overflow from a library whip + chop, and it will be building university #7.


Here is a view of the border with RMOG. I am chopping the "GS" forest for its university, and the "TS" forest for oxford, although I have a backup plan of workshopping over a wheat tile if the forest looks unsafe.


Here's our current tech situation. Btw, since we got alphabet and I posted what techs other teams have, LAM has teched gundpowder and alphabet, and RMOG has teched Nationalism.


Here are my finances. I just wanted to show Krill that literally half my expenses come from civic upkeep. ORG's bonus is strong.