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

[Fintourist]

Given the bitching in the tech thread it sounds like no-one got a PBEM quality start.

Maaaaybe. Maybe my own bitching is for nothing. Maaaaybe not. Based on demos during the first 30 turns and timings of people settling their 2nd and 3rd cities (and pure guessing), my hypothesis is that like in PB8 we have starts with significantly varying quality (this wasn't even supposed to be really balanced I think).. But yeah, I hope that nobody has a completely green land full of rivers and food resources.

Once our hut money runs out will our gnp look worse or is it the library bonus that affects that?

It will look worse, because when saving gold we don't get the pre-req bonus for our commerce. Library will surely help and our breakeven research in 10 turns is hopefully better than our current efforts with 100 % science.

Btw, cross your fingers for barbs leaving us in peace for the next couple of turns. Of course, we can deal with them, but next turn our worker will again move onto the same forest, from where it had to run away during the last invasion..

[Fintourist]

Turn 68

We found suttree!



He is located more or less directly east of us (somewhat SE) and has fairly close borders with yurimack. Let's hope that there will be tensions for the next 100 turns and we have a shot of taking control over the eastern "river valley". I plan to move next turn E-N and hope that neither suttree or barbs eat our lunch.. Btw, it's nice that we approach suttree from the south - assuming no map trades he should have no idea of our real location.

Random comment about map trades: I would not like to make any trades before we have built some actual military and boosted our power ranking. Let's try to stay under the radar and expand peacefully as long as our neighbors allow.

Domestic stuff:

• BoP whipped granary and will have exactly 12/24 food in the storage.
  
• Agincourt bounces back to size 4 and will start another settler next turn. (I have to revise my micro and make sure that next builds "bowman + galley + 2 settlers" will be done optimally)
  
• Sailing started. After that we save gold until library is finished and then start IW
  

Our demos are now at the low point. Next turn they should look more solid again though:

[Old Harry]

Interesting! With Suttree there we're packed together closer than I'd thought. We should think about defensive locations for our cities from now on. I agree on map trades. Dtay has sight on our capital so he could trade that info away, but no reason to give any other details to anyone.

Does Agincourt need to be working that forest to grow? Also should Agincourt put the overflow into a settler or library rather than bowman? I'd rather be building those in cities with a barracks, but we do need more, so I suppose it's okay to build one there...

I'm back now, but you're doing a great job (are those really our low-point demos?), so if you want to keep turn playing for a while I'll be happy...

[Fintourist]

We should think about defensive locations for our cities from now on. I agree on map trades.

Yeah, definitely. Our builderish approach works only as long as we don't incentivize our opponents to attack us. From now on, our city plants will by farther and farther away from our core and we must have enough defences that nobody wants to punish us.. Until now having enough cash to upgrade units and ability to whip bowmen has been enough, but that will change soon. That rival best power is quite high...

Does Agincourt need to be working that forest to grow?

You have good eyes! And yeah, it kind of has to.. Agincourt needs +10 food surplus to grow and with fish+corn+grassland mine we only get to +9.. (earlier city growth earns us +2 foodhammers while working forest costs us 1) Of course we could borrow the fish from BoP, but I think that the fish is more valuable for that city..

Also should Agincourt put the overflow into a settler or library rather than bowman? I'd rather be building those in cities with a barracks, but we do need more, so I suppose it's okay to build one there...

Fair point. The way I see it, our capital will be sharing its fish tiles quite a lot with BoP and city E, meaning that it will work a lot of mines... and build settler+workers. I don't see it putting enough hammers into library for quite some time and I think bowman is the build that makes more sense while growing. (we surely can use couple of them even without the +3 EXP) I could try putting the overflow now into settler, but because our city E will steal the fish tile next turn, I think now is the right moment to quickly bump our capital to size 4.

I'm back now, but you're doing a great job (are those really our low-point demos?)

Yeah, kind of, with the new city and new pop in the capital we will have +2 food and +10 hammers in our demos next turn. I do expect that our opponents who are now behind but do not have to chop thousand jungle tiles will snowball ahead of us eventually, but next turn we should kind of reach the next level in our expansion.

so if you want to keep turn playing for a while I'll be happy...

Oh no! I can take care of next couple of turns until you have time to check my save stack and create an improved version Then I'm more than happy to give you back the driver seat.

PS. I just spent yesterday couple of hours planning with a friend a 3-week trip to Indonesia in January so if the game continues (and we're alive) still then...

[Fintourist]

Just for the record: I tested a continuation where capital works 3 high food tiles (no forest) and BoP works the mine this turn.. --> it delays the growth in BoP and thereby destroys the benefits of tile shuffling...

Forest wins.

[Old Harry]

Just been through the score increases for the last few turns, it looks like Ichabandit (t64) and Lewger (t66) are the first to 5 cities, however the screw up with civstats on t63 means that I don't know exactly who settled a city that turn. Nakor/Jester and williamLP might have but it might just have been a pop growth. Edit: not sure where YuriMack got their 4th city, but checking the diplo screen says they did.

5 Ichabandit
5 Lewwyn
4 Azza
4 dtay
4 Old Tourist
4 Retep
4 YuriMack
3 or 4 Jester
3 or 4 WilliamLP
3 Bacchus
3 Commodore
3 Jowy/The black sword
3 Mostly_harmless
3 pindicooter
3 plako
3 slow
2 Serdoa/Dhalphir
2 Suttree

BTW I wasn't doubting the forest! Just checking it's deliberate

We want to get our EPs onto Suttree ASAP as I suspect he's top power. Nice that we've got graphs on m_h now. I'm tempted to put another turn of EPs into dtay until we get contact with Suttree, what do you think?

I've got another big turn or two in the Demogame coming up so it might take me a little while to get a thorough look at your plans, hopefully tomorrow or Monday.

[Fintourist]

Thanks for the update! I'm sorry that I was too lazy to update the points!!

BTW I wasn't doubting the forest! Just checking it's deliberate

No it's really good that you challenge my plans and I yours. It's not like every option has been explored. Not even close.

We want to get our EPs onto Suttree ASAP as I suspect he's top power. Nice that we've got graphs on m_h now. I'm tempted to put another turn of EPs into dtay until we get contact with Suttree, what do you think?

Agreed about suttree and no strong opinion about dtay vs m_h. So go ahead and switch! It might be a good signal to m_h that we only wanted his graphs!

[Fintourist]

Turn 69

We join the 5-city club and make contact with suttree.

There are real tensions between Yurimack and Suttree (F4 screen tells that they are not in war though). There are 3 axes in Minimax and two archers on that pig hill:



At home we settled Endau (if you have better city name suggestions, go ahead and change!)



Aaand our MFG looks again reasonable:

We are currently 15 foodhammers ahead of rival average. I guess it's reasonable to state that we are not in the economic lead but at least in the top 5 demowise.. Demos are not everything of course, but it's better than nothing.

PS. Our EPs are now targeted on suttree.

[flugauto]

Nice farmer's paradise you have there. Do you have any military units beyond warriors?

[Fintourist]

Nice farmer's paradise you have there. Do you have any military units beyond warriors?

Nope! Our capital can 1-turn a bowman if needed and Dunkirk also has 1 hammer into bowman so that it can whip one without penalty if needed. And we have still enough cash for emergency upgrades..

Obviously we want to build as little military as possible while not getting busted.. Currently we do not feel any kind of threat from our neighbors, which is really nice considering that our start has really forced us to work with micro. Take a look at our land-based food resources...

No worries, we will react accordingly when border areas become more tense... Or we will die miserably against 3 horse archers..