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spacetyrantxenu · September 12th, 2013, 13:37

Yeah, I'm coming around to adopting the CS first approach, which means turning in our fail gold for research money now. I'm getting hazy on the details since it's been a while since I played the last turn but I think I just double whipped Moai City so we should have overflow coming in to finish something this turn. If we want to open up the research spigot we can set that overflow to finish Moai now, otherwise we can wait a few turns to finish slow researching CoL and then finish Moai, that will give us just a bit more extra gold since we're fail building to the tune of like 25 (future) gpt right now in The Boathouse. Either way, I'd rather spend 2 pop on maces than on crossbows in general, although having a few xbows around will be nasty additions to the Kuro attack stack.

But honestly...if Kuro is behind on military tech (and we need to determine the extent to which this is true) we may be able to take and hold some eastern cities. If it takes him a long time to get cats/maces of his own we may be OK to take and keep some cities. If we think that is possible we'll probably need to research Horseback Riding soon after Civil Service so we can prepare horse archers for catapult flanking. Lots of IFs involved there, though. Burning is safer, but less rewarding obviously.

Boldly Going Nowhere

I see very little point in making an investment that we won't benefit from. Pillaging a shitload of cottages would give the economy a shot in the arm, as well as punish him for the unforgivable sin of taking a 99.4% shot with a spear vs. (injured?) chariot. lol

Seriously, let's take his silver/marble city when it grows and just otherwise be annoying. Save the troops for conquering what's left of Sisubstan, as well as showing to suttree as needed. He's more than likely not finished being aggressive, so we'll need a counterweight against him. Once geography and graphs favor aggression against us, he may stop a turn or two based on your reputation as a TOTAL WAR FOREVER AAAAHHHHHH kind of player. But he's shown that he's willing to go in fast if the situation is favorable, so save our troops for that.

I'm fine cashing in the Moai fail. How many turns would it take us to get to CS at 100% science? Then how many turns at breakeven to get to Feudalism?

Here's a thought too: We could just skip Organized Religion and go straight for Theocracy. Only build barracks/stables in HF and WWH. Barracks elsewhere if it makes sense and times out well. To do this, though, we have to either tech Theology (boooo) or build the Shwedagon Paya. If we can get gold from someone, that is a potentially attractive option. Or, if you want, we can skip CS for now and go straight to Feudalism for Vassalage in the legal column. Police State/Vassalage/Slavery/blah-till-banks/Theocracy?? This would get 3 promo 'Phracts/HAs out of the gate where we build the stable/barracks. Then whip out a ton of Phracts and blight out the sun.That would be a handful for anyone. The problem is how to get a couple of GP to make this swap impermanent. I wish we could trade for SPI.

If I can get in game I'll try to count up beakers and give an estimate. I know Bureaucracy is best for our economy longterm since our capital is basically our entire economy.

spacetyrantxenu · September 12th, 2013, 17:09

I haven't been in game yet so I don't know what the odds were, but it would have been lower than 99.4%, not that it matters. Chariot was C2/shock.

We don't want his silver/marble city, he built it in the wrong spot. It misses the silver until third ring borders. lol

Maybe he already has silver and just wanted the marble, so settled for fish first ring. Anyway, it needs to be burned and we'll have to spend a settler replacing it. So we probably need to just have the settler at Stars Above hang out for a while until we're ready to burn his city and replant ourselves. I don't see a point in settling the wheat city right now, it doesn't add any new resources and isn't a good spot in its own right.

There really is no such thing as going straight to Theocracy in our economy. We have to plow through the cheap ancient age techs, that's easy enough, but then Monarchy is of a middling beaker cost, and Theocracy is kind of expensive for now, right? We definitely don't have enough cash to run through CS and then through to Theocracy, we'd have to pick one or the other and CS is a better value for us between economy and maces. I think we can afford one expensive tech (like Civil Service) or a bunch of cheap techs from the ancient age (HBR and up to Monarchy, probably that's as far as we can get on our current funding). I don't see any case where we can afford Theocracy, though, that's going to have to wait until right after Guilds, I think. It's more important to be able to build 'phracts than to build triple promoted 'phracts.

We do have gold via a trade with Oxy so if we research Aesthetics building S.P. becomes an inexpensive substitute for researching Theocracy. I can't imagine anyone is in a big rush to build it but you never know. But until we get the marble spot settled and the quarry connected I think we're better off leaving the Aesthetics/Literature line for now and spending our research gold where it will get us a quicker return. I think that has to be Civil Service. If we go through the top of the tree we're basically investing in a lot of future research since I'm sure we'll build those wonders a couple times each.

Yeah, getting the great person we need for a golden age for these civics changes is a problem, what we can produce doesn't line up at all with when we'll need it. The closest city is our capital and we don't want to run a ton of specialists there if we don't have to, but once we get the market in we may have to suck it up and pull off some cottages and run merchant specialists to speed it up. Happy Face can probably pick up the dumped cottages but every unit of commerce that is run through HF instead of ML won't get washed through modifier buildings so hopefully we won't have to do that for too long. I think squeezing out one GP through the capital wouldn't be too bad, but future ones should be generated elsewhere.

Yeah, log in and poke around, that always helps with planning. nod

Boldly Going Nowhere · September 12th, 2013, 22:57

Can't log in tonight, just got home. Shweddy Papaya is the only route I'd consider for Theocracy. We don't have spare beakers to research it. CS all the way should be the goal, whipping in courthouses to bring our costs in line with what is actually affordable. OR would be helpful in that for efficiency but that's a luxury we don't have right now. Tech path should be CoL, CS, then clean up the cheap ancient religion techs on the way to Feudalism. Slot in HBR to get a couple of stables up (no more) in HF and WWH, and Aesthetics ONLY if it is profitable at that point to build SoZ (is that legal or has it been built yet?) or, my preference, Parthenon. That pairs very nicely with Mids.

You'll have to figure out how to mix into this:

Skirmishing war with Kuro just because.
Appropriating Sisustan lands into our holdings at minimal cost.
Discouraging suttree from adventures in our direction.

Sound like a plan?

spacetyrantxenu · September 13th, 2013, 00:20

T141 - Kuro offered peace, which I accepted. Ten turns sounds about right to begin mobilizing against him, if we go that route. If we do it will be maces instead of crossbows. WilliamLP had a trade offer for us, too. He offers gems, we offer spare deer and rice. Mkay, even more happy cap, we can whip more.

My previous estimates of how much gold we'd get from Moai were a bit off. We should receive 826 gold from it, not ~1,000 like I previously thought. Still, that's four turns of 100% research, which is how long Civil Service will take to discover. Good enough.

I've started a library in Happy Face (swapped to wealth later in the turn though). While it's not at all a commerce city and will get worse over time, the city will need two additional specialist slots as Mister Love bureaucap extraordinaire will steal away the good grassland cottages soon. HF is too large for the food supply it has and will need to be whipped down, but I'm sure we can find something useful for the population to do. whip

I swapped the shared cow and a cottage for this turn so ML will grow a turn sooner. That should be swapped back next turn.

At this point I had intended to take notes and write a decent report while playing the turn but BGN got on chat for some harrassment instead. So, quick summary to the end, worker movements preparing to chop out more jungle and prep for chain irrigation, and tile microing to be able to complete Code of Laws this turn. To do that we had to run 100% science, build wealth in Happy Face to cover the extra defecit, and run three more specialists around the empire. I hired a pair of scientists at Tyler and a citizen specialist at Suck Magic, because the forest tundra tile it had been working was the worst one anywhere. So cities finishing builds next turn (three of them) have the option of starting courthouses. One of them is definitely overflowing to a crossbow, though, in Stars Above. Our northern axe is pinned at the moment and we may need to cover Suck Magic from a late barbarian axe. (update, after the turn rolled the barb axe was nowhere to be seen so he went east somewhere and is still up there. Looks like a good candidate for 4th XP for the new crossbow).

Anyway, turn rolled, we only got the fail gold from Stars Above so we'll have to scrounge around for cash to run 100% next turn until the rest of the fail gold comes in, or just lower the slider. More details on next turn when I play it. Maybe not in the morning, it's after 1 AM now, I think I'd rather sleep in a bit after staying up so late.

Photos. I've assembled a fair sized ministack 3N or the northern red city, it's covering four workers who will farm that jungled river tile. The idea is to be defensive, not menacing, so I didn't throw the catapult or the CR2 axe onto the pile, just everything else. I think I have 5 or 6 units covering the workers, should be fine. I'm chopping in a library in the SW at Beside You because we need cultural control down there. A city wall is next, hopefully soon followed by a swarm of garrison. After CS chain irrigation that will be a good city.

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Not a lot to see here, just the most piddly Moai city anyone has probably ever seen. Size 4 when it completes. Worth it? Yeah, it's all about making it rain fail gold. And eventually growing the city onto decent water tiles. Also visible the market will finish in ML soon, right in time for bureaucracy. I think we're going to have to simply eat a turn of anarchy to make the switch.

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And the northern map, where I got NH killed. Opportunistic of Kuro yeah, and I shouldn't have left the chariot sitting there. But why didn't he put up a fight? Not one hit. Lame. Anyway, I'm not going on tilt yet, I'll do it later when we can send a proper force. But beneficial or not, Kuro is going to experience a Byzantine intervention later on, because I was playing nice and he took a swipe anyway. nono

Yeah don't worry about this, we'll fix it.

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Running 100% slider and adding extra specialists, good enough for 4th. 123--> 287 from 0% to 100% slider.

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Not good. I think we'll pick up our economy soon though, between courthouses and adding more specialists as we grow maybe we'll come out of this dark age at least within shout of the leaders. Okay, no, we won't. But we can try anyway.

spacetyrantxenu · September 13th, 2013, 00:34

Chat transcript, mostly worthless because BGN wasn't saying anything useful at all.

Apologies to anyone offended, he says it was the beer talking. toast

Commodore · September 13th, 2013, 05:27

Looked under yer car, found yer problem right here!

(September 13th, 2013, 00:20)spacetyrantxenu Wrote: I've started a library in Happy Face (swapped to wealth later in the turn though). While it's not at all a commerce city and will get worse over time, the city will need two additional specialist slots as Mister Love bureaucap extraordinaire will steal away the good grassland cottages soon. HF is too large for the food supply it has and will need to be whipped down, but I'm sure we can find something useful for the population to do.

(September 13th, 2013, 00:34)spacetyrantxenu Wrote: 11:59 PM - spacetyrantxenu: i realize now we're completely doing our SE wrong
11:59 PM - spacetyrantxenu: we're...not running many specialists
11:59 PM - Boldly Going Nowhere: ha. you think?
11:59 PM - spacetyrantxenu: yeah.
12:00 AM - Boldly Going Nowhere: duh
11:59 PM - spacetyrantxenu: told you i'd be terrible at it
12:00 AM - Boldly Going Nowhere: we have lacked the food for that since forever
12:00 AM - Boldly Going Nowhere: we have happy cap, we just lack sufficient food.

spacetyrantxenu · September 13th, 2013, 05:32

Yeah, I know. Civil Service soon, and the food problem should be solved where it remains after a bit of worker labor.

Commodore · September 13th, 2013, 05:41

Meanwhile:
[Image: Civ4ScreenShot053A.JPG]

spacetyrantxenu · September 13th, 2013, 06:56

(September 13th, 2013, 05:41)Commodore Wrote: Meanwhile:

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