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

[Old Harry]

Turn 79

- an academy won't get many extra beakers will it? Bulbing Maths or Alphabet seems pointless. Settle him? Early golden age?

Well, if somebody has a good commerce capital.. With palace + gold/gems/silver + some riverside cottages and resources you get easily ~25-30 raw commerce.. Extra 12-15 beakers would be a decent improvement for our economy.. It's all about snowballing: Extra beakers -> Earlier Currency -> Earlier CS -> Earlier Bureacademy capital -> win Liberalism. If we had river tiles in our capital, we would be doing that, or at least trying.. Let's hope that whoever got the GS does not have anything too juicy over there.

The extra beakers come at a cost of ~45 food (plus whatever the pop could have been working instead), which this early on seems a lot. Although not as bad as I'd assumed. It isn't dtay by the way - I don't think he's got a library yet:

About next turns worker micro: Let's move our workers S of Dunkirk (banana) and E of Dunkirk. I think that's better than SE of Dunkirk (which I proposed earlier), because it will help in our worker movements towards a couple of useful forest and dyes tiles.

I was going to suggest the same, but got distracted by something. I haven't move the workers yet, but how about if A&B get in place to road the two jungle tiles while C&E both road the rice? Leaving the plains mine half finished for later?

We have two bowmen in Dunkirk, one is healing this turn. One is earmarked for Hastings, which do you want to send there and which should go explore? The blue is a barb patrol, the red is to find dtay, the purple is an option I like less to explore land we've already seen. I think blue looks good to me. Although we want him to stick around and protect the workers don't we.


Suttree's axe has disappeared, possibly eating that warrior, so shall we put Lunch on the boat? 


While looking at the espionage screen I noticed we were ahead of all the others, and our spying only costs 99%, because we're SPI, also Suttree spent two turns wandering at the start. I wonder why?


Demos

[Fintourist]

The extra beakers come at a cost of ~45 food (plus whatever the pop could have been working instead), which this early on seems a lot. Although not as bad as I'd assumed. It isn't dtay by the way - I don't think he's got a library yet:

Yeah, you're right. An early GS does not come without a cost even if you are PHI. And good point about the dtay's culture. That one more steep change in the culture might be library(?), but I think you're still right. Not that it really matters much who of our 17 opponents got it, but speculating is always fun

I was going to suggest the same, but got distracted by something. I haven't move the workers yet, but how about if A&B get in place to road the two jungle tiles while C&E both road the rice? Leaving the plains mine half finished for later?

That works! I think I would like that C builds the road to our new city during turns T80-81, while E finishes the mine. That way E can start moving north, where it can next cottage the tile 2S of Endor and then help chop its forests.. C and new workers from BoP and Cannae should be enough to support our new city. (Of course I would like to have 5 more workers here to chop that f***ing jungle, but...)

We have two bowmen in Dunkirk, one is healing this turn. One is earmarked for Hastings, which do you want to send there and which should go explore? The blue is a barb patrol, the red is to find dtay, the purple is an option I like less to explore land we've already seen. I think blue looks good to me. Although we want him to stick around and protect the workers don't we.

I think the bowman with less EXP could go to Hastings? I think having our stronger units in the east, where we plan to settle aggressively could be the way to go. No strong opinion though..

And yeah, sorry for being so miserly with our military that we don't even have enough units for exploring.. It's kind of funny that if our opponents are not analyzing our power too carefully, the fact that we are building so many cheap barracks and that we get early-ish IW does not make us look as weak as we in reality are.

Suttree's axe has disappeared, possibly eating that warrior, so shall we put Lunch on the boat?

Yes! Dream of finding a 3rd hut is alive...  

While looking at the espionage screen I noticed we were ahead of all the others, and our spying only costs 99%, because we're SPI, also Suttree spent two turns wandering at the start. I wonder why?

Maybe he thought that his start was too strong and wanted to find a more average spot..

And here are the actual demos from this turn:

[Old Harry]

Okay, C+E roaded the rice, C will build the road to the next city while E goes back to finish the mine next turn. Moved the injured bowman to cover the new city and left the other in Dunkirk for flexibility.


Edit: Ended turn

[Old Harry]

The opponent analysis at the start didn't really know much about some of the newer players, and I didn't even realise The Black Sword was playing with Jowy for a little while. If you want to find out more about him check out Erebus in the Balance PBEM XXVIII where he does seem to know what he's up to (he's winning).

[Fintourist]

Good to know! We take him seriously for sure. He is the scoreleader now, but score is not yet a good indicator on how people are doing and oracle + oracle tech + possibly land from oracle culture affect his points pretty much.

Meanwhile we have some work to do.. Here is once again a new save stack as our current optimized plan is about to run out..

Couple of points regarding micro planning:

• I'm fairly satisfied with the result, there are many things that I managed to make work nicely. However, there are again many things that I know already that we will change, but the next 5-8 turns should be pretty solid
  
• I hope that you have time to play our sandbox once all the way to T100. I think that's the best way to get a feeling on how (crashed) our economy will be. Unit costs will play a significant role. Getting Calendar and luxury resources online will help a fair bit, but the grind towards Currency will most likely be slow.. New cities are going to cost a lot less than I thought since they off-set our unit costs, etc. etc.
  
• If you have time and interest, play a test run in our sandbox before looking my saves. At this point there are so many variables that you most certainly will do things differently. That provides a much better basis for our discussion since your thinking has not been influenced/corrupted yet.
  

That said, I'm not explaining my approach apart from this info:
I grew our capital to size 6 while building a work boat (T81-83) and I like it. This will delay our 8th city by 2 turns (T90 vs T92), which increases the risk of someone else settling that land, but I'm fine with this move anyways.

[Fintourist]

Turn 80

Aaand I was faster this time

We have one source of Iron nearby:



Do we want to change the location of City G and put it 1 tile S or SW so that we get iron into 2nd ring?

Pros:

• Well, Iron..
  

Cons:

• 2 extra worker turns now for roading (that should not be a problem though)
  
• We lose 1 riverside grassland cottage
  
• Not on a hill
  
• Maybe costs some extra maintenance?
  
• Can't borrow rice --> Starts slower (Will work 2x grassland forest and 6x grassland farm before reaching size 2)
  

What do you think? Slower start is always a curse word for me, but getting iron and maybe extra dyes in BFC might be worth it..

Otherwise everything proceeds as planned:

• Tech is still on by purpouse: Cannae produces this turn 16 raw commerce, which turns into 20 beakers thanks to library. Next turn it resumes growth and gives gold tile to BoP and we switch back into gold saving mode
  
• Settler and worker finished. Originally this worker was supposed to move onto the forest next to our new city G, but if we settle to iron, it should NE-SE-preroad next turn and start building a farm on T82
  
• I think settler moves next turn anyways onto the original spot. From there we can decide.
  
• "Lunch" is on his first boat trip...
  
• Endor switched to worker and will whip it in couple of turns and then finish a bowman with overflow
  
• We might want to move the bowman in Dunkirk NW-NW so that it is in a better strategic position if we get visitors. I don't think that fortify bonus matters that much thanks to the city defense bonus (This has not been done yet!)
  
• Is the bowman on the island going somewhere?
  

Aaand I haven't ended the turn yet.

We moved couple of positions in the scoreboard, but will come down as other people finish their techs. I guess we won't be adding many new techs during the next 30 turns... Demos:

[Old Harry]

Aaand I was faster this time

Do we want to change the location of City G and put it 1 tile S or SW so that we get iron into 2nd ring?

SW also gives more overlap with Cannae so cottages can be grown earlier. But I'd really like to put a city SW of the Iron where we'll use our insane amount of workers to chop out a mid-game wonder... I wonder where mostly_harmless has been settling so far?

G is going to get a library rather than a barracks isn't it? Should that be an early build?

• Tech is still on by purpouse: Cannae produces this turn 16 raw commerce, which turns into 20 beakers thanks to library. Next turn it resumes growth and gives gold tile to BoP and we switch back into gold saving mode
  
• Settler and worker finished. Originally this worker was supposed to move onto the forest next to our new city G, but if we settle to iron, it should NE-SE-preroad next turn and start building a farm on T82
  
• I think settler moves next turn anyways onto the original spot. From there we can decide.
  
• "Lunch" is on his first boat trip...
  
• Endor switched to worker and will whip it in couple of turns and then finish a bowman with overflow
  
• We might want to move the bowman in Dunkirk NW-NW so that it is in a better strategic position if we get visitors. I don't think that fortify bonus matters that much thanks to the city defense bonus (This has not been done yet!)
  
• Is the bowman on the island going somewhere?
  

• 
  
• In fact unless we go barracks first that forest doesn't need to be chopped for some time, so I approve
  
• I agree
  
• Hope he doesn't get seasick
  
• Great
  
• He can cover the workers when the border pops more easily from there too.
  
• If he stays where he is then the worker is protected, he could move back into the city instead, up to you...
  

We moved couple of positions in the scoreboard, but will come down as other people finish their techs. I guess we won't be adding many new techs during the next 30 turns... Demos:

About that. I think we need to get currency next. From my limited run-through I think we're hooking the whale soon after we get calendar (if we go barracks first in France, which I'll come on to in a bit), which means we have three extra happy to grow onto at the same time, but we don't have the tiles ready to do that. If we get currency around t94 we get 18 gpt extra for free and can build wealth to get us to calendar. Calendar is getting us an extra 10 gpt and some extra food, which is good but building wealth is the big difference. I haven't looked through your save stack yet, but in mine our ETA for currency is t116ish. Which is just horrible. I'll try it the other way around tomorrow morning and see how that works.

My volte-face on granary-first in France is just due to the happy cap - if we're delaying calendar by ten turns we need that whale sooner rather than later. Anyway this is how my version of Calendar-Currency goes:

[Fintourist]

Ok, now we are discussing important stuff. Currency vs Calendar. I totally get your point about Currency. But note that it's only +9/10 gpt until we found a 2nd island city, which we do not really have in sight yet (might have soon though). Ability to build wealth at this point would be totally awesome however.

I like your sim results, it seems that we are approaching the situation similarly on the general level. However in my T98 save our Currency ETA is already ~T111 with the current tech rate and that does not count in any economic improvements (and we are already at 9 cities so the maintenance hit has already been taken), so I would guess that we will reach Currency latest by T109. Still late, that's true. I think I can promise a turn or two improvement from that as well as I have couple of ideas on how to improve the micro in the current save stack. So let's say fairly conservatively that T108-109 would be our Currency date.

I'm really struggling with this. Building wealth would be very very very useful, but getting those food resources online (bananas and sugar) does have a large impact for our economy as well (we reach higher sizes faster -> more cottages).

Ok, I'm still voting: Let's stick with Calendar, expand to 9 cities, grind to Currency ~T108-109 and settle then our 10th and 11th cities. Get ourselves CoL supported by some wealth builds, whip a few courthouses and try to reach 13-15 cities by T125. However, I admit that I haven't tested Currency first approach. So if you think that we should go for Currency or we should at least be thinking about it longer (which would be very reasonable). Go ahead and turn our research down to 0 %. That will probably lose us a beaker or two, but it's a minor cost compared to putting 1-turn full research into wrong tech.

The City G stuff is also very important, but we should still have time for that discussion and I have to run now! I'll be back in the evening!

EDIT: Damn, our economy is and will be far away from decent. I just checked couple of screenshots from my PBEM45. There I was making roughly 150 gpt with 0 % reseach or 400 bpt with max research by T110. It's a different game, but it tells something about the land quality (and settings) that even though I'm a way better player know, we have never had a change to reach anything that can be even compared with those levels.

EDIT2: Based on the demos (GNP) it seems that most of our opponents struggle similarly and we are not too behind yet. However, I'm betting that at least somebody has just that much better land and can get the snowball started and everyone else just bites the dust..

[Old Harry]

Yep, I forgot about the lack of a second overseas city. I ran through again with currency first and it felt better optimised than the calendar first one I did, but still probably not as good as yours.

My eta for Calendar is eot102 and with some refinement I think it might be possible to get eot101. The wealth builds make a huge difference - they take our economy from 45% break-even to 100% break-even. It looks like this from t97 onwards:










The wealth also allows us to grow our cities in anticipation of the higher happy cap. I'm really happy with how this version ends up, so I'm going to go in and switch us to Currency (as I don't want to lose those beakers you microed from the library). We'll have at least another six hours to change if you want me to set us to 0%?

In any case I think the whale tile is so good that we should go barracks-granary-lighthouse in France. I'm still not sure about city G though.

Edit: Changed to currency, but left the Bowman in Dunkirk so he can cover the workers on the cows in two turns time.

BTW - I'm listening to a program about Salmiakki - these Finns are crazy!

[Old Harry]

For the lurkers here is the world as we know it:


For our purposes I think this is where our plans for cities are. The western blue could go S or SW without affecting these plans. Without knowing what mostly_harmless is up to it's hard to say if we'll get the red and green cities. If blue stays on the hill we could plant red on the iron - it can then share the banana for a quick start and chop a barracks. If we do move blue from the hill and don't get the red site m_h will get the iron anyway and we'll have a hard-to-defend front city.


I'm inclined to keep blue on the hill - it shares useful cottages with the capital and starts quickly with the rice and if we don't settle red I doubt we'll keep the iron wherever blue is placed. Perhaps we should settle (on?) the iron before the eastern red.