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

[Fintourist]

Do we get now 3 great persons in 3 turns as originally planned or has something changed?

Mack attacking with current power levels is unlikely as long as most opportunistic spots are covered. Suttree seems to have again fair amount of pop available for whips. fast execution if we attack is a must (as always). do we still have a chariot inside dtays borders? His power is slowly increasing but he seems pretty trusting.. As already stated before we need a miracle, one example would be: dtay attacks TBSJ, we backstab him, he gets pissed off and performs a Nakor defence and we also get 10+ free cities.. oh well..

Btw, from here on we should be careful about war-peacing suttree. One possible scenario: we sign peace, then see Mack attacking suttree, take his core cities and consolidate his gains while our hands are tied. On the other hand enforced peace could help suttree stop an attack or enable our attack against Mack.. But yeah, you know this stuff, just wanted to post a remainder so that we keep evaluating the situation and don't do anything just because enforced peace is comfortable..

Ubud is nice, but my stomach has finally realized that I'm not in Finland..

[Krill]

Ask Cyneheard about the trade route implementation for FM if you want a reply that is anything other than "I have no idea".

[flugauto]

Krill - if you're still reading I can't seem to see the +25% to commerce that Free Market should give in the test I set up - but the link to Mutal is showing 5gpt instead of 4gpt - so am I right in thinking it just boosts a trade route worth 4 to be 5 and 8 to be 10 but is hidden the same way the AGG discount is? Or is it doing something more complex? (If it is doing that we will get an extra 50 gpt on top of the extra 70 we'll get from the +1 trade routes!)

I believe the +25% is applied to the total of all the trade routes, that is 5 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 14 in the picture. So you should get 14*1.25 = 17 commerce from the trade routes. But maybe I am wrong.

[Ceiliazul]

hey, one way to get clean global views is select bare map and then hit the f5 screen. beats the minimap at least.

[Ceiliazul]

for free market machanics, dredge thru plako's on8 thread.

[Old Harry]

On phone so terse.

Ft: yes but om will pop the gm a couple of turns later.

Everyone else, thanks I'll go read plako and if that doesn't help test your idea flugauto.

[Old Harry]

Further reading: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...#pid367050

Reading plako it sounds like you're right Flugauto. I'll have to run another test to confirm.

[Old Harry]

Turn 154

We have Paper, and I voted for Commodore for Apostolic Palace resident (will those six votes change the outcome? No, he has enough to elect himself already). But the important news this turn is
1. plako moved in on Dhal who whipped 12 cities in response - lets hope that makes a good defence - and
2. We got a !#@%#$@&! artist (at about 5% odds) instead of a merchant. Sigh.
I'll change Cannae back to merchants again, although it doesn't matter what we get now, because I think that you get the bonus on the commerce they make twice that way (the market bonus while it's being made, the library bonus when it's converted from cash to beakers). According to civstats TBSJ got two score increases last turn and Suttree lost two points at the same time, but they aren't at war, so it must somehow be culture I guess? Confusing.


This is the Military Advisor with our Knights highlighted. We have four catapults on the mack border and Peterloo pops its borders to 40% this turn. Suttree continues to refuse to open borders, so I'm still paranoid about Mackoti coming through his land to snipe Hastings (he almost certainly won't, but paranoia is never a bad thing, right? There are seven units in Hastings, so it should be okay...)


I'm going to assume we're not going to get the shot at Mack's capital through Suttree's land. So I want to find his stack of cats instead - if it's not here next turn then we could plan to burn Madrid in seven turns.


I say that because Paper means I've just seen Suttree's techs - he hasn't got HBR, Currency, Calendar, Alphabet, Feudalism, Iron Working or Metal Casting yet. So Axes, Spears and Cats are all he has. I guess he just built up that huge army and then couldn't tech any more. Other folks of note:
- Azza has Guilds so he should give Lewwyn a good fight.
- Lewwyn has Guilds and Engineering
- TBSJ have Banking, Compass and Optics but are down Calendar, Construction, Meditation, Aethetics, Literature, Alphabet and Paper
- Retep doesn't have Mysticsm, Maths or Sailing yet
- Commodore now has Optics
- Pindicooter still don't have Optics
- Plako has Engineering
- I'm probably not going to keep on top of this


There is a little unprotected-worker honeytrap from Mackoti on our border. I've got plenty of ancient trash in Peterloo that I'd like him to kill, then I have more cats and axes behind the city just in case. I'll get a look at what he has in Ur and behind that hill next turn with the sentry chariot.


This is our last turn of golden age, next turn we'll switch back to slavery (I've got a limited amount of whipping planned), but I'm wondering about Vassalage/Bureau and Pacifism/Organised Religion. Until we finish Education we don't really have any more buildings to build, so we could stay in Pacifism, and if we're carrying on building units for five more turns we should really stay in Vassalage. Any thoughts? I think we'll get Education in 4 turns (7 turns without the scientist bulb) and Economics in 6 turns after that (although it's hard to judge our non-GA tech rate).


Demos and power

[Fintourist]

1. Damn artist. Lets hope its the only low odds roll..
2. Remember that vassalage+paci are a pair, paci becomes probably too expensive without Vassalage.
3. Estimate that we create ~125 commerce less when not in GA. That can be converted fairly straightforwardly into decrease in break-even beakers.

One night in Kuta, fairly lame place. Tomorrow towards lombok again!

[Old Harry]

Turn 155

Ha! Who's a popular boy then?


Welcome to 900 AD. Lots of stuff going on this turn, we got the 100% merchant, and our golden age ends. Mack got economics and Plako took his first city off Dhal. I haven't seen any defenders here for a while, so I'm not sure what sort of defense Dhal will put up. I'll have a look in Aiur next turn (where I presume Plako will head next).


Mack is putting on a nice show of strength for us, this is most likely the majority of his army. My guess is that if we had our 10 knights (yep we built four more last turn) down by his capital we'd stand a good chance of taking it. Obviously I'm not going to base our strategy for the rest of the game on a guess though, so what if we spend the rest of Mackoti's golden age whipping knights while getting spies down there to check? Over here Mack could road the workshop and hit Peterloo with four Knights and seven Horse Archers. Our three spears and longbow will all have odds on the Knights and our five Axes will beat the HAs. Then we would pummel his stack into dust. So he won't do that.


I found Suttree's stack of workers, the cats must be down towards Mack, so if going after the leader doesn't work out we could always take Madrid instead...


Now that we're not starving everyone anymore we can work out where our universities are going to go. Max base Commerce and total hammers are:
A = 56, 20
B = 33, 20
C = 53, 10
D = 23, 23
F = 35, 7
G = 40, 13
H = 31, 11
J = 35, 30 (although commerce will drop as we pave the cottages)
L = 34, 4
O = 17, 5 (more with specialists)
P = 20, 10
We'll need seven uni's for Oxford, A, B, C, D, G, H, L, P could all use them, I'll try to time whip overflow in the crappier ones to coincide with our next period of Organised Religion. We could start building uni's in two turns, but I thought building Knights for the next five turns would be important...


We'd make an extra five hammers a turn from organised religion and an extra five hammers and 30 odd commerce from Bureaucracy. But we'd pay 40 gpt more for the privilage (I presume before inflation) so I'm going to stick with Vasselage/Pacifism as the extra promos on the units we'll keep producing are all very nice and the extra GPPs will get us our next golden age quicker. Slavery for five turns is a must though.

Before I start the whipping Al-Razi puts 1941 beakers into Education, meaning we can complete it in two turns. Things whipped include: Trireme into Settler in France, Spear into Knight in Hastings, Longbow in Konig and Temple in Omdurman. Should we take advantage of Mack's golden age lack of slavery to whip a bunch more knights? Or will he just out-produce us using his extra territory and GA bonii?


Demos and power - we have the third biggest army now, I wonder who is bigger?