[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

Put it all on red! Does one of them have 1xp? If so send him to the city...

[Fintourist]

I assume this means risking it all

[Fintourist]

Turn 63



Vamos!



And so did AGGressive trait save our precious 4/0 rice tile! Now we just have to win that 96 % fight and we have survived this barb invasion with only minor damages. Our worker duties of course were messed up in the east, but such is life... I hope we get now couple of peaceful turns and after that bowmen can take care of barbs.

In domestic news BoP grows to size 3 as its whip unhappiness wears off. Cannae is also calibrated to grow to size 4 exactly on the turn it loses its whip unhappiness (and gold comes online I guess).

Currently I'm thinking that we won't whip the settler in the capital as our workers are behind schedule and can't support the city as I had planned and our barracks chop at Dunkirk will wait until we get Maths. Any objections?

Our scout found yurimacks borders in the SE:



I'm moving Lunch currently only 1 tile at a time. Better slow info than no info..

Demos:

• Our foodhammers 55, rival average 47
  
• GNP Rank: 8th
  

Let's try to make that gap between our foodhammers and competitors bigger. We are most definately not leading the pack, but at least it's positive that we are above average. Gold will help our GNP, but we will still struggle with research. RB Mod known-tech bonuses will come to good use in this game.. I don't think we have a chance to get any 1st to get bonuses and I would not bet money on us founding a religion either. We just can't delay stuff like IW & Calendar with this start...

[Old Harry]

Fingers crossed here.

If dunkirk doesn't have a tile to use straight away or a chop coming in I think whipping the barracks becomes more attractive. Then you can time the copper mine for next time it grows.

If there is a hill forest available I'd move lunch 2, he'll just get odds on a barb warrior...

[Fintourist]

If there is a hill forest available I'd move lunch 2, he'll just get odds on a barb warrior...

Noted Quick report coming in a sec!

[Fintourist]

Turn 64

We survived! 95.6 % was enough But damn it was closer than it should have been:



Last hit decided the fight.. I guess slowcheetah did not have such luck, or can you think any other reasons why one loses points during interturn? Maybe he lost land tiles due to a culture war?

Here is how our domestic stuff looks:



BoP will pop borders next turn and our workers will move and start mining the gold hill. Meanwhile they finished a shareable cottage between BoP and Cannae. We have a slight shortage of good tiles here, but according to my initial calculations everything should be ok.. Granary whip in BoP (and maybe library/worker whip in C later) will help the situation somewhat.

In the east workers will now spend next turns roading that forest and copper and after that copper will be mined (T67). Then I think 1 worker will move northwards and keep roading towards city 5 and the other one will chop out barracks. I started building a worker in Dunkirk. I think we really need more of them asap! I would not like to whip the barracks, because +4 food surplus is still quite miserable and we would spend again 6 turns growing back to size 2. We will be working a forest tile here for 3 turns (or maybe only 2 if tile shuffling helps), it's not awesome, but it's not so terrible either. However, the more I think of this, the better it sounds, whipping is goooood... But no, I don't want to build a worker at size 1, or delay starting it until we have grown back. Anyways, micro planning regarding the optimal build sequence of barracks, worker and granary in Dunkirk would surely be beneficial. Oh well, next wave of barbs will surely screw our plans again..

Our demos keep improving.. 2nd in food:

I ended the turn, but if everything goes as usual we still have a lot of time to change builds and other stuff. However, I'll probably have a long day at the office today..

[Fintourist]

Here's 1 random positive stat derived from victory screen. Our population represents 7.5 % of the world pop while the average in a 18 person game (assuming no barb cities) is 5.6 %. Of course, this stat will probably be going down as we don't really have any good city sites available and also while we don't get pop growth this turn. Moreover, I think comparison against rival averages is not too fruitful because we know with high certainty that at least 2 civs have lost cities and some other players are possibly playing bad. E.g. m_h's expansion seems oddly slow. Aaand therefore we also must be doing significantly better than rival average if we want to remain truly competitive. I guess it's time for me to update the sandbox...

[Old Harry]

Dunkirk could work the agincourt mine, but I do think whipping rthe barracks is better because we get the cow sooner and get our surplus to 6...

[Fintourist]

Dunkirk could work the agincourt mine, but I do think whipping rthe barracks is better because we get the cow sooner and get our surplus to 6...

Currently Agincourt needs the mine so that I get the city to 70/100 hammers in order to whip settler on T67. I sandboxed quite a bit and that's the way to go there. Currently I still believe that we should just remain at size 2 because when we get copper mined that +6 hammers compensates pretty nicely fr that whip.. But damn, I have to run an extra test regarding that barracks whip... I'm sorry, I'm too tired to do it today, so if it's the right move it may have to wait for a turn.. Or maybe I try it quickly again..

Here is btw my try for the next ~20 turns. Of course barbs and opponents may and will change it, but I think it's always good to have a plan.. I'm happy to send you the savestack and discuss stuff, but you should enjoy your vacation first

• 7th city founded on T83
  
• 7 workers running around busy
  
• 5 Bowmen guarding stuff
  
• 3 barracks
  
• 5 granaries
  
• 1 library
  
• Maths -> Sailing -> IW and now Calendar
  

[Fintourist]

Ok, here are the results:

Whipping barracks wins 7 culture (barracks built T64 vs T71), but loses by 4 food, 5 hammers and 1 worker turn (finished T73 vs 72). Getting cows earlier online surely helps to catch those 9 foodhammers as working cow instead of rice nets +2 foodhammers per turn. Working cow instead of copper is probably roughly in the same ball park, but the effect comes of course through earlier city growth.

Additional variables:
- With later barracks we have more worker force in hand when we pasture the cow and the real difference between worked cow turns is either 5 or 6 turns
- Our workers have also other valuable tasks to do during the turns 72-77 as they chop us a settler in Agincourt, granary in Dunkirk and barracks + granary in City E.
- Remaining at size 2 enables an emergency bowman-whip

All in all, this is a really really close decision. I'm still leaning towards remaining at size 2 because of aforementioned reasons, because I'm biased towards my own sims and because I need to go to sleep! I hope you are not too pissed off by this! I promise that if this is a wrong decision the margin is very small!

PS. You're welcome lurkers. This was surely again super-duper interesting. for you too.