[SPOILER] Yell0w - Rhoanna, Hippus

[Mafro]

Just checked the latest save...things appear to continue to be going reasonably well.

We're the only civilization with 4 cities (at least, that we've met) and it's been that way for 3 turns now. So, it appears we're winning the expansion phase, as we rightly should. Mardoc still has a huge population lead according to Demographics, but I think we might actually have more active tiles. Let's see....

He's got three cities of size 9, 8, and 3. That's a total of 23 active tiles (including the city tiles). We have 4 cities of size 7, 6, 4, and 1, for a total of 22 active tiles. So...we're nipping at his heels, but we've got more growing happening at the moment, so we should equal him in the next few turns and probably surpass him in the next half dozen or so.

Interesting that his size 8 city hasn't grown to size 9 yet...either he's past his happy cap with the size 9 or he's behind on workers and doesn't have a good tile to work yet. Or maybe he's got both his big cities pumping out settlers and workers. Or I guess he could be swapping food tiles. He still has a massive crop yield (he's got 75, we're at 57)...I dunno....

We're #2 in GNP according to Demographics, which means we haven't tanked our economy...and we're due to swap to Agraristocracy (Aristograrianism?) in 7 turns, which will bring in an extra 20 commerce or so. Seeing as we're at 46 now that's nearly a 50% boost, which should support additional growth. Aristocracy and courthouses from Code of Laws will help us keep maintenance down, which currently accounts for 13 of our 18 coin consumed in expenses each turn. Oh, and we also just landed Education, which means we can start laying down some cottages.

We're #1 in Mfg. Goods and #1 in Soldiers, despite our losses to the barbarians.

The only area we're not leading in is Land Area, where we're in the middle of the pack at #3. Mauros is Creative, so he probably is one of the two ahead of us (he got his 3rd city not too long ago). Runes of Kilmorph was founded by Suttree's Amurites a few turns back, so he has a spreadable source of culture. Of course, Suttree and HidingKneel's Elohim both started with Ancient Chants, so they could've been popping borders with monuments for a while. Speaking of which, next turn Conrond Mor's monument will pop its borders taking us from 58 land tiles to 65, still behind the 74 held by whoever is leading in this demo.

So...things appear to be going well thus far...what's the plan after researching Code of Laws? I assume we switch to Aristocracy and Apprenticeship, keeping Agrarianism...right? What then? With our economy in line it feels like we really need to lift our happy cap in order to combine upward expansion with outward expansion.

Here are some thoughts:
Hunting is cheap and might be interesting if we can get out there and capture some animals for much-needed happiness...not to mention get a better lay of the land and find partners to eventually share trade routes with. I still think there's time to harvest the wilds, but we need to act soon if we're going to do so.
Bronze Working. Assuming we stay in Nationalism, Training Yards will raise our happy cap by one. And if we settle near the copper resource to our east, with Warfare we could send a small stack of bronze axemen with City Raider I to liberate the gold resource (and its city) from the barbarians to our north - another increase to the happy cap. Need to see how nasty that city is first though.
Animal Husbandry for Cows and Sheep, both of which will yield improved tile performance, and because it's on the road to Horseback Riding, which is another potential route to capturing that barbarian city.
Fishing isn't very interesting...unless there's a sea passage to the southwest of our land that a work boat could reveal. In that case, it might reveal a lot about the land, our rivals, and potential foreign trade routes.
Mysticism for Elder Councils and to start down the magic and/or religion paths. I don't see much point in an early religion unless we want to follow Suttree into Runes of Kilmorph, but down the road Empyrean might be interesting...mmmm...horselord Rathas. Doesn't feel like a priority though.

Thoughts?

[Mafro]

Hey Yell0w, why so many workers? We have 7 as it stands, 2 being built, and only 1 city that has an immediate need for further improvements, with no settler on the way. Shouldn't one of those two workers be a settler?

Also, is there a benefit to our capital working a 3-hammer tile instead of a 4-food, 1-commerce tile while building a worker? Seems like we'd get more production and an extra commerce if we were working the farmed river grasslands instead of the plains hill.

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[Yell0w]

We're #2 in GNP according to Demographics, which means we haven't tanked our economy...and we're due to swap to Agraristocracy (Aristograrianism?) in 7 turns, which will bring in an extra 20 commerce or so. Seeing as we're at 46 now that's nearly a 50% boost, which should support additional growth. Aristocracy and courthouses from Code of Laws will help us keep maintenance down, which currently accounts for 13 of our 18 coin consumed in expenses each turn. Oh, and we also just landed Education, which means we can start laying down some cottages.

Yes, I got our finishing date for CoL down another turn, we'll swap to Aristocracy and Apprenticeship.

Hey Yell0w, why so many workers? We have 7 as it stands, 2 being built, and only 1 city that has an immediate need for further improvements, with no settler on the way. Shouldn't one of those two workers be a settler?

Also, is there a benefit to our capital working a 3-hammer tile instead of a 4-food, 1-commerce tile while building a worker? Seems like we'd get more production and an extra commerce if we were working the farmed river grasslands instead of the plains hill.

Well after the Worker in our Capital we'll build another Settler. The workers will be busy laying down roads and Cottages. I plan to expand to the Pink dot next, while also trying to liberate the barbarian city which happens to be exactly on Brown dot. I think our workers will have enough to do. Every road we build now will speed up unit movement later. I don't plan on building more Workers for a while though.
The 3-hammer tile was a mistake, thanks for pointing it out, luckily it was only one turn.

So...things appear to be going well thus far...what's the plan after researching Code of Laws? I assume we switch to Aristocracy and Apprenticeship, keeping Agrarianism...right? What then? With our economy in line it feels like we really need to lift our happy cap in order to combine upward expansion with outward expansion.

I don't know what then to be honest. There are multiple options:
Fishing and Animal Husbandry next to be able to use more tiles, set up our fishing village and try to get HT. This option is the one which will give us an effect fast, kinda the "default" option.

Drama to get the great artist followed by Masonry and Construction -> pop Sanitation with the GA. We get to build culture, so no more 40 hammer Monuments.
We get Bath Houses as well, this is the longest route though probably the most rewarding.

Bronze Working, will buff our Warriors and we need this for when we get GotN for stronger Mercenaries. Also I'm a little concerned about priests of winter fucking us up for good. BW would give us more of a fighting chance, though we really can beat them if we manage to build GotN really quick. This is the safe option, though I don't know why Mardoc would send his PoW towards the military leader. But he is a good player, so if he does it he'll be sure of victory. Opportunity cost is rather high with this option.

I want to send out another party of 3 warriors and 1 scout to open some lairs, maybe we luck out on an GE which would probably win us this game, and secure us from Mardocs PoW.

All those options have their appeal and I'd like your thoughts on that.

Here are some thoughts:
Hunting is cheap and might be interesting if we can get out there and capture some animals for much-needed happiness...not to mention get a better lay of the land and find partners to eventually share trade routes with. I still think there's time to harvest the wilds, but we need to act soon if we're going to do so.
Bronze Working. Assuming we stay in Nationalism, Training Yards will raise our happy cap by one. And if we settle near the copper resource to our east, with Warfare we could send a small stack of bronze axemen with City Raider I to liberate the gold resource (and its city) from the barbarians to our north - another increase to the happy cap. Need to see how nasty that city is first though.
Animal Husbandry for Cows and Sheep, both of which will yield improved tile performance, and because it's on the road to Horseback Riding, which is another potential route to capturing that barbarian city.
Fishing isn't very interesting...unless there's a sea passage to the southwest of our land that a work boat could reveal. In that case, it might reveal a lot about the land, our rivals, and potential foreign trade routes.
Mysticism for Elder Councils and to start down the magic and/or religion paths. I don't see much point in an early religion unless we want to follow Suttree into Runes of Kilmorph, but down the road Empyrean might be interesting...mmmm...horselord Rathas. Doesn't feel like a priority though.

Thoughts?

Well I gave you my thoughts, Mysticism doesn't give us a lot compared to the other options, also I don't think we should go for an early religion and horselord Rathas indeed don't feel like a priority. Elder Councils kinda suck if they don't happen to be cheapened by a Civ trait.

Hunting is so expensive, and I don't like to go for random happiness, it's too luck based for my taste. Also I think the other options are better.

Raising the happiness cap is indeed what we need to do, to that effect I started building DBH which will give us another +1 and I hope to liberate the barb city to get Gold for another +1 . The Sanitation route would give us access to Bath Houses which seems to be our best bet at raising the happy cap significantly, it is a long way off though. I think that the resources are distributed relatively fairly between players, so I don't think we will fall behind too much if we keep expanding.

I'm sorry for not posting more often but I'm really busy lately.
If you feel up to it you can play the next couple of turns. Overflow hammers into DBH, try to liberate the barb city, if there are 3 units inside or two archers we can't do it. You might want to world build test an attack before actually attacking, it is quite possible to lose 3 warriors to one archer. Continue to build Warriors in our production city and expand to Pink Dot. Get another settler out of our capital and try to finish DBH. Our food high city could slow build another settler, cottage a lot of tiles there, even gl ones, we have way more food there than we'll ever need. ALWAYS let the merchant specialist work there so we'll get our Currency pop as soon as possible. Build up our new city, get the mine on the hill up so we get the monument quick and get a Market up there, Markets are great, we love Markets.
This is just a suggestion, I'll be able to play a turn a day but if you feel like playing a couple of turns post here that you will and go ahead have fun =). And btw. thanks for your continuous input.

[Mafro]

There are multiple options:
Fishing and Animal Husbandry next to be able to use more tiles, set up our fishing village and try to get HT. This option is the one which will give us an effect fast, kinda the "default" option.

Drama to get the great artist followed by Masonry and Construction -> pop Sanitation with the GA. We get to build culture, so no more 40 hammer Monuments.
We get Bath Houses as well, this is the longest route though probably the most rewarding.

Bronze Working, will buff our Warriors and we need this for when we get GotN for stronger Mercenaries. Also I'm a little concerned about priests of winter fucking us up for good. BW would give us more of a fighting chance, though we really can beat them if we manage to build GotN really quick. This is the safe option, though I don't know why Mardoc would send his PoW towards the military leader. But he is a good player, so if he does it he'll be sure of victory. Opportunity cost is rather high with this option.

I want to send out another party of 3 warriors and 1 scout to open some lairs, maybe we luck out on an GE which would probably win us this game, and secure us from Mardocs PoW.

All those options have their appeal and I'd like your thoughts on that.

I honestly don't see much value in Fishing. Once we build a monument in Radonnor and its borders pop, then having Fishing will get us 2 more food and more health (which we don't need). I don't see any other tiles that will be worked. Not worth the 152 beakers now, in my opinion.

I do like Animal Husbandry. For 172 beakers we immediately get 3 food, 2 hammers, and 1 commerce, the ability to subdue animals, and we're a step closer to Horseback Riding (we haven't discussed eventual military makeup, but chariots always seem a welcome addition to any force). We may also find horses in our territory. Not that we need the resource, but it's a decent tile.

Drama is very interesting, but obviously risky. Our GNP isn't bad, but we're not at the top of the class either. We also didn't go straight for it after Education...we're taking the scenic (and profitable) route through Code of Laws. If we target Drama, then we probably have to go straight there after CoL. What's interesting is that we can probably keep science at 100% all the way to it, though we might have to pillage our soon-to-be castle one more time near the end. Not sure any of the others are in a position to do this.

So, I say we go for Drama...unless we see one of our opponents convert to Aristocracy before we do. If so, then they'll have a lead on us and we'll need to give this plan a second look.

I also still think Animal Husbandry -> Hunting is a reasonable secondary option. I reeeally don't like how blind we are to what's happening right outside our borders. For all we know a rival could own territory just beyond our view, and with 5 players on a map this size I'm pretty sure that's the case in at least one direction, probably west or south. Hunters would allow us to explore with little fear, find our opponents, identify potential trade routes, etc. The happiness from caged animals is just a side benefit, in my opinion. Hunting is also on the way to Animal Handling, which we'll eventually want for hawks, right?

And I still like Bronze Working as an option, though I think it should wait a bit. I don't feel like we're at risk of invasion - yet. And we have Carnivals to build - we don't need to build Training Yards for happiness.

That said, your comment about Priests of Winter is a great point I hadn't considered. Not sure how much power those three represent on the chart, but given they all appear at once I'd think they'd be a noticeable 1-turn spike, which I am not seeing. However, Mardoc's Production has nearly doubled in the past 4 turns, so it may be he switched from growth to production in order to work on The White Hand, which requires 268 hammers. I'd be surprised if he had more than 25 hammers per turn available to him, so it should be a 10+ turn effort. If we see him get a power spike in 5 or 6 turns, we'll know he's built The White Hand and has three PoWs ready to start running about. I wish we knew where he was.

If you feel up to it you can play the next couple of turns.

If you feel you're too short on time, then I'm happy to play for a bit until you're through it. But we should probably have a "formal" handover so we're not both playing and submitting turns...that'd sure screw with whoever's next in line...!

That said, you're off to a great start, so while you have the time it's probably best to keep you at the controls....

[Yell0w]

I do like Animal Husbandry. For 172 beakers we immediately get 3 food, 2 hammers, and 1 commerce, the ability to subdue animals, and we're a step closer to Horseback Riding (we haven't discussed eventual military makeup, but chariots always seem a welcome addition to any force). We may also find horses in our territory. Not that we need the resource, but it's a decent tile.

I also still think Animal Husbandry -> Hunting is a reasonable secondary option. I reeeally don't like how blind we are to what's happening right outside our borders. For all we know a rival could own territory just beyond our view, and with 5 players on a map this size I'm pretty sure that's the case in at least one direction, probably west or south. Hunters would allow us to explore with little fear, find our opponents, identify potential trade routes, etc. The happiness from caged animals is just a side benefit, in my opinion. Hunting is also on the way to Animal Handling, which we'll eventually want for hawks, right?

Honestly, I'd like to have hunters and hawks, I'd like to have a lot of things I feel like getting all those toys will leave us in the dust of someone who focuses on one line. That said, my plan before turn 1 was always to get Mounted Mercenaries. We are Financial and great at producing gold. With Consumption civic + Financial we get a 45% boost on any gold we produce, + cheap money changers it gets to 70%. Mounted Mercenaries can fortify and get defensive boni, they are by far the best mounted unit we can build buy until Knights and they don't require HBR or Stables.

That said, your comment about Priests of Winter is a great point I hadn't considered. Not sure how much power those three represent on the chart, but given they all appear at once I'd think they'd be a noticeable 1-turn spike, which I am not seeing. However, Mardoc's Production has nearly doubled in the past 4 turns, so it may be he switched from growth to production in order to work on The White Hand, which requires 268 hammers. I'd be surprised if he had more than 25 hammers per turn available to him, so it should be a 10+ turn effort. If we see him get a power spike in 5 or 6 turns, we'll know he's built The White Hand and has three PoWs ready to start running about. I wish we knew where he was.

I think they give a power spike of at least 70.000 if not more, so yeah it'll be quite noticeable. Still, knowing that he has them doesn't mean we can do anything to stop them.

I kinda like the Fishing/AH option cause I like a strong HT fishing village, but yeah... we don't really need it and Drama gives us more. Additionally there doesn't seem to be any Marble so HT would take ages to build.

I guess Drama it is.

And dear lurkers: I promise I'll give you some screen shots from next turn!

[Mafro]

That said, my plan before turn 1 was always to get Mounted Mercenaries. We are Financial and great at producing gold. With Consumption civic + Financial we get a 45% boost on any gold we produce, + cheap money changers it gets to 70%. Mounted Mercenaries can fortify and get defensive boni, they are by far the best mounted unit we can [strike]build[/strike] buy until Knights and they don't require HBR or Stables.

Okay, I'm with you now.

I haven't played much as the Hippus...maybe once...and wasn't aware of Mounted Mercenaries. In looking at them they seem pretty awesome, especially for only requiring Currency (and Guild of the Nine). If we're buying units, then we can put our production into commerce multipliers. How much do Mounted Mercenaries cost?

Building the GotN will be a pain as it's a whopping 335 hammers. Our best hammer city appears to be our capital, which can only produce around 20 hammers until we raise our happy cap. Assuming we do so in the next 13 turns, presumably with Deruptus and a Carnival (Gold would be great, too), then I still don't see us getting much above 25, which is a 14-turn build. Your point about having a Great Engineer really hits home....

All that said, from a timeline perspective it feels like it'll be something like this:
Currency - Bulbed T73
GotN (335 hammers) - Built ~T87 (maybe by starting off with creative overflow we can bring this down a turn or two)

So, we could realistically be ready to rock around T90, depending on the cost of Mounted Mercenaries and our economy.

I'm not sure what our research output will be after our civic switch, but assuming it's 50% better than now that means Drama would drop from 12 turns to 8 turns. The research timeline would be:

CoL - ~T64 (1 turn of anarchy for civic switch)
Drama - ~T73
Masonry - ~T75
Construction - ~T83
Sanitation - ~T83 (popped by GA)

That would get us +3 happy from 100-hammer Bath Houses, and +1 happy from 100-hammer Theatres (assuming we spend a turn switching to Consumption). Add in +1 each from Markets (via Consumption), Deruptus, 80-hammer Carnivals, and Gold and our happy cap ends up at 15. Not too shabby, though it will still probably prove restrictive given our food surplus.

You know, just a thought experiment here, given our focus on coin and the raising of our happy cap, what if we were to instead go for Writing and Mathematics. That would take a few turns longer, 3 to be exact, but we'd get the Bazaar of Mammon as well as Gambling Houses. At that point we'd be set, with up to +10 happy from 134-hammer Gambling Houses. They would actually be cheaper than Theatres and Bath Houses (combined cost of 200 hammers).

That timeline would look like this:
CoL - ~T64 (1 turn of anarchy for civic switch)
Writing - ~T70
Mathematics - ~T86

That's actually not too far behind Sanitation, but we don't get the benefit of ignoring monuments. We also miss out on bridge building from Construction, which means rivers will slow us down. And our time to happiness payoff is probably 5 turns delayed (three for research, another two for the additional time-to-build).

However, our best city should have 50+ commerce at that point, so the Bazaar of Mammon could really help bring in the coin and buy a lot of Mounted Mercenaries. And the 3 coin from each Gambling House adds up as well, though much of it may be consumed in the +10% to maintenance. Our final happy cap would be 11 to 21, depending on how much we put into coin each turn.

Given the higher happiness cap for less hammers (and let's face it, we don't have a ton of those) I think this might actually be a more effective and less risky route than pursuing the Drama bard and Sanitation.

Thoughts?

P.S. I haven't seen a save since the 4th...is the game still moving?

[Qgqqqqq]

Will you tech up the iron/mithril tree before mass-hiring, or try for a bronze blitzkreig?

[Mafro]

Will you tech up the iron/mithril tree before mass-hiring, or try for a bronze blitzkreig?

Well, that brings up a broader question: what capabilities are we willing to live without, at least for the first war? Here's my analysis:

Visibility - Yell0w has said Hawks are a nice-to-have, and to me Floating Eyes are a non-option at this point, so it looks like we'll be relying on old fashioned scouting to pierce the fog of war for the time being. That said, as our economy grows approaching T90, about when we'd be "ready", we may find that Hunting and Animal Handling don't look so expensive (861 total beakers).
Bombard - Given the mobile nature of our army, catapults seem rather useless. Instead, we probably would want to look at fireball wielding mages to reduce enemy fortifications. Probably down the road, and probably not critical for our first war if we can get in it fast enough.
Collateral - Fireballs would also seem to provide collateral, so maybe we pursue fire mages for the two-fer. Alternatively we start with Air, so we could go for Maelstrom (though it requires more finesse in its use). Either one isn't happening anytime soon, however.
Mobility - We'll already have that in spades, though more never hurts. I'd like to see us get a Body mana node and add Haste to our repertoire. We should end up with at least two mana nodes in our territory, so we could turn one to Fire and the other to Body. Engineering would also help a lot here, and it's right after Mathematics.
Healing - If we get a religion spread, perhaps we can have an acolyte join the stack. Other than that, I don't see any good healing options until Regeneration, which is the other reason Body mana is awesome.
Strength - Bronze seems like an early option here. Iron and Mithril perhaps down the road...I think we'd probably be good to go without them. I don't see Bless in our future, and neither Enchanted Blade or Poisoned Blade are interesting.
Buff - I don't see us going for Blur, Dance of Blades, or any of the other buff spells.
Debuff - I don't see us going after Rust or Dispel Magic.
Disruption - Personally I love the idea of disrupting the enemy through spells like Charm Person, Blinding Light, Entangle, and so on. I just don't see that happening unless we go the Empyrean route down the road.
Summons - Not happening.

Have I missed anything major?

The other part of the analysis is the nature of the war and who it is against. In a defensive war, most likely against Mardoc, we don't have much choice - we fight with what we have. In an offensive war we could go after the weakest player in an attempt to gain momentum before attacking greater powers. Or we could go after the strongest player, in an attempt to stave off the loss and/or go for the win. Right now there's only a 33-point spread between players in terms of score...so it's really anybody's game. I think we need time and intelligence before we know how this is going to all play out.

All that said, we certainly don't want to launch a war without knowing what we're up against and without a plan to bring it to an end. I think as we approach our first Mounted Mercenaries we look around and see if there's anyone we can thump without requiring us to have additional capabilities.

[Mafro]

Putting my creative hat on, the only other alternative I can think of is to aggressively pop dungeons in the hopes that the RNG gives us a disciple of some sort.

I want to send out another party of 3 warriors and 1 scout to open some lairs, maybe we luck out on an GE which would probably win us this game, and secure us from Mardocs PoW.

Ummm...I was reading through the tech thread and just realized why we haven't found any lairs. It's that whole "no lairs" setting.

So....

[Mafro]

Looks like someone's GNP just went through the roof. We're at 47, whereas the rival best is at 73. In looking at the graph, we appear to be better than Molach and Mardoc, which suggests it has to be either HidingKneel or Suttree (unless the graph isn't in sync with the demos...not sure about that one).

I'm guessing someone got Code of Laws and converted to Aristocracy. I checked the Foreign Advisor info screen, and neither Molach or Mardoc are in Aristocracy, so again this points to either HidingKneel or Suttree. I wish we had scouts out exploring and making contact...hard to know who's going to be a tech threat without that.

Next turn we get Code of Laws ourselves, so we should be seeing a nice bump in our own GNP...though I don't think we'll be quite hitting 73 from what I can tell.

Thing is, if someone got Code of Laws last turn (or two turns ago, taking into account anarchy), then they may very well have a leg up on us in going after Drama. And given their GNP, they'd probably beat us to it anyway (though we may have more gold than they do, enough to keep the slider at 100% research). Altogether, I think it makes the Mathematics and Gambling Houses route more appealing.