[SPOILERS]The Tyrant realizes that once the world burns it gets really boring....

[flugauto]

Is that 30GPT at 0% science? Could you show your costs report (F2?), please.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Thanks for putting all the maps up. I couldn't help counting rivers at other capitals as I went through. Overall, it seems our land could have been worse, I suppose, but I'm still not letting the mapmaker off the hook.

At least now that we have chopped into the jungle and have our calendar resources hooked up we are developing into something resembling a decent empire. We've very tenuously defended, though, on the northern and western edges across the channel. Fortunately, our opponents over in those areas are not military powers, and Kuro particularly seems to be playing short turns, so I'm not terribly worried that he's invested enough to make us miserable.

I'd like to go ahead and finish Meditation and start pushing out some Jewish missionaries. Our options are currently Mister Love, Happy Face (has barracks, so keep pushing military), and Tyler (no production without the whip), so Mister Love it is. But I agree that the trireme build is good to finish, so 2T on Meditation is about right. We're 4t from our GP in ML, right? So maybe the monastery isn't even needed, but if we're going immediately to the AP religion then it's a useful building, plus the 10% science bonus in our only decent research city, so...yeah, let's go ahead with that monastery build in ML. Our first targeted religion spread should go to either What We Have or The Boathouse (my vote is TB unless infrastructure builds are more needed there). It's 3t to deliver a missionary to either city. Then spread to the other of the two next, and have both build missionaries until we're done spreading the faith. We'll definitely want to get it to our Moai city early, and spread north from there.

Overall, how are we doing on our infrastructure push? And, what did you think of my notion to swap to Feudalism/Theocracy down the line for amphibious cataphracts? This would also open up nav1 boats for us.



This could be retep's nightmare...

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Is that 30GPT at 0% science? Could you show your costs report (F2?), please.

I took a look around the map while I was here, noting which buildings we had finished in each city. Then I looked at the religion spread across the map. WilliamLP's shrine is netting him some serious money. I counted 38 cities with Hinduism.Wetbandit, LP (obviously), and Kuro are all adherents to the Hindu faith. One of these days we should look at the possibility of razing that juicy shrine city. Yes, I want to kill everything that is shiny and pretty, with no regard for how we'll fend off the revenge-seekers.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T149 - Oxy and Suttree made peace.




That's quite a stack with nothing to do Oxy has there. If he decided to attack Beside You we'd be unable to keep the city. Ordering up some catapults would be a great idea. Finishing the cats would be another matter, though. The golden age begins next turn and I'm hesitant to whip off any population right before it. Then there's the matter of changing slavery for caste system to run extra specialists during the GA. If we can't trust Oxy to keep his eyes off us that's a risky change to make. I don't think he'll try anything but it would be bad if he did. I think we have to swap to caste and run lots of specialists to try and get more great people, regardless of the possible threat. We need to catch up.




Not much to talk about for this turn, BGN had done some of the worker moves and tile swaps yesterday. We're still growing and about to outstrip our tile improvements, in time to run caste specialists. I've been juggling tiles around a lot to keep from working unimproved tiles wherever possible but we've basically hit the limit on that now. Workers are converting jungle to cottages at about one tile every two turns around Tyler now, then as the city grows I'll convert some of those river farms into cottages too. The other major project around Beside You is building the farm chain toward Hell Below at a nice pace now, farming a jungle every two turns. All the roads are in place to expedite that process now so it will go quickly. Hell Below will grow in two turns without a tile to use, but it finishes the forge the same turn and can run an engineer for a while until the three farms are ready. I would prefer to later convert those farms to cottages but with them on the front line it's probably to just leave them as farms.




I'm kind of curious what Retep is doing with his chariots up there. If he's trying to settle another city to the west he has another thing coming, that won't fly. We're not going to let him have cities so close to our exposed island core, plus I intend to eventually settle that terrible wheat city and don't want his borders all over it. We have a few triremes being built, the one visible in the picture there needs to head west toward Kuro's border to be available in case Kuro tries anything when our enforced treaty expires in a few turns. BGN put up a sign in I Burn saying we need more defense and I agree, but with me laying off the whip hand over here there isn't a lot of production for the task. So, should we whip some defenders in before we start the golden age? I'd rather not.

Demographics, yawn. Maybe we aren't terrible, we're just thoroughly average and uninteresting.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T150 - Turn played.




Demographics:




Major suck, farmtastic, otherwise uncompetitive right now.

Ended turn, we spawned a Great Prophet. Good thing we wanted a golden age anyway. Would report better but wife agro. FFS, the kid is sleeping...go away.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T151 - Golden age, 3 civc swaps (bureaucracy, caste system, organized religion). We had climbed to number 2 in crop yield at the start of the turn, down to third at the end of the turn. Some cities are going a bit hungry right now.




Bureaucracy is good for your economy. The rest of the empire basically breaks even on cost and this city makes up all of our net income. Research also comes from science specialists all over the place but when we run slider it's basically here that counts the most.




Sisu built a settler, let's see where he sends it. Sure, spread your defenses out. The only loss is that he'll probably settle west and chop some of those trees. I don't care, 'phracts are coming soonish.




Growth sure does slow when you work a lot of specialists. At least these cities aren't very hungry (except Happy Face, they're probably going to starve a few times).




At 100% science we were #2 in GNP, but down by like 150 to WilliamLP's golden age. So here we go, let's hope for the best. If we get attacked during the golden age we're going to have problems because we can't whip out defenders. And given that we have a military tech advantage over most of our neighbors that would be...unfortunate.




I'll post more pictures next time hopefully, or whatever else if anyone wants anything in particular.

[flugauto]

Is it 1 tile distance between Magic Bullet and Dirt Road?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Yes. You can get around the minimum 2-tile distance in settling when the cities are on different continents. The reasoning behind the city placement there is that otherwise that clam tile would go unused. We settled Dirt Road in a supremely suboptimal location in terms of city growth and future potential so we could settle on stone and get the Pyramids.

Good job getting us to the golden age. The Parthenon would be pretty nice for times like this. I'm assuming no one has built it yet. But, Guilds is the next target. Tech path is PH --> Monarchy --> HBR --> Feudaism --> Guilds? That's the no-bulb path. I recall us needing Alphabet and Paper to open up a GM bulb for Guilds, which I think is overall stronger for us if we're thinking of dabbling with the monk economy. Which specialists are you running? It looks like artists in Beside You, I'm guessing you want third ring borders there. Elsewhere, we should be running merchants primarily because our slider rate is so low. Actually, what are our bulb options for Paper? [edit: I looked it up, Paper is blocked by Philosophy, so no GS bulb of Paper. BUT, we could bulb Paper with a GM, then a second GM could bulb Guilds]. Or, we could just run a GM mission. Didn't someone build ToA or am I thinking of my PBEM?

Anyway, looking good. Let's finalize our path to Guilds. At the very least, let me know what kind of specialists you are running. If not a ton of merchants, let me know your reasoning. Thanks!

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm running merchants in one city, don't remember which one, I think it's in Tyler, but scientists in the others (and Artists in Beside You for the reason you stated). The reason is that the other cities don't have markets but have libraries (or will have them soon). We won't be able to finish all the great people we're starting during the golden age unless we really starve hard, and I don't think we'll be staying in caste at the end of the GA, so we'll need to finish the great people running the specialists available in those cities without caste AnySpecialists. Is that the best reason ever? No, we can obviously build markets where needed if we want to run merchants in more cities. I also played the turn kinda quickly this morning and am open to revision of specialist allocation since I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about it. I assumed that for the typical medieval bulb situation that Scientists are usually stronger since you get more beakers out of them than out of any of the other great people. But maybe targeting a specific tech with merchants is better, I dunno. Oh, and each city is running an engineer in addition to the science specialists so we can possibly get a low odds engineer for fun with wonders. If we could somehow get into the Taj Mahal race I'd spend a GE on it in a heartbeat for basically a second 1 man golden age. But I think TM will be long gone by the time we get to Nationalism.

We could run a trade mission, I think it was Wetbandit who built ToA and him who has a size 20 capital. That would be very profitable but given our cost structure a Scientist bulb may get us more beakers anyway. Hard to say without the game in front of me. But we'd probably get 1500 gold at least from a trade mission with him, and that's more flexible than any single GS bulb target.

And yeah, flugauto, what BGN said about the city location. If we wanted to we could place a city on each of those islands and it would be legal, it would just be a horrible idea.. Kind of like putting me in charge of a specialist economy!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I popped in to check on stuff before Oxy played at the end of the turn, and I'm glad I did. Xenu didn't know that you could swap civics and religions during the same turn while in a golden age.

Fo real?

I got a good chuckle out of that when I caught him on chat. Anyway, disaster averted, no big deal. I swapped some tiles around here and there, went ahead and reemphasized merchants over scientists where we didn't have a preference due to existing multiplier buildings, and also fired a few specialists where Xenu had cities starving (for no point, not pushing out a crucial GP on a schedule), opting for a more sustainable balance between food deficit and GPP generation/SE. I also vetoed a couple of library builds, opting for markets/courthouses instead. Our slider is garbage when it isn't being propped up by massive numbers of merchants. As is, I have it up to -21g/t at 50%, which is sustainable for 18t. Obviously the GA ends sooner than that (7t left).

I talked it over with Xenu, and we're going to go for Aesthetics this turn and get started on the Shwedagon Paya in Mister Love. We can build it in 5t. 450h is a lot cheaper than the ~800b needed for Theocracy, plus we're getting the full discount rate now (OR + Forge + IND + gold + Bureaucap bonus). Am I forgetting any? 40% slider this turn, then HBR (1t), Monarchy (1t), Feudalism (3-4t), then Guilds (5-6? The GA will end after about 1-2 turns of Guilds). So, no time for bulbing Guilds, but I'm thinking a trade mission to Wetbandit's ToA size 20 capital all the way across the map would be an awesome deal.

I want to swap to Feudalism/Theocracy by the end of the golden age. We'll build our barracks and stables with the OR bonus. I'm going to furiously spread the Jewish faith before we swap over to the wartime civics, then we're going to steamroll Sisub and hopefully wrong-foot retep with nav1 galleys and amphibious Phracts.

Sound like fun? If so, spam up this thread. If no one comments, I may go back into hiding, and you'll be stuck with Xenu's awesomely detailed reports and great pictures...

Well, comment anyway.