Cheater Hater's PBEM58 Thread (with a surprise post lead!)

[Cheater Hater]

Even with my mistake, we still managed to get a turn done today!
T10 Report and C&D:
Not that much going on in the actual report, just a scout move:


Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there's that much good land in that direction--the pigs/rice/clams city looks good, but then we run into jungle, which means eastway will likely be fighting over the good floodplains land with me

Also, when Bronze Working completed at EOT, copper popped up right under my capital, just like I thought it would--now I can start sandboxing!

Since there wasn't much to the report, I'll cram the C&D in here, starting with the demos:


The biggest news here is that I have an espionage advantage on eastway--this means eastway met someone else, either with his scout going west (since I haven't seen it around my capital) or someone else found his capital from the south. Either of those could mean he's forced up into the good floodplains land that we're going to end up fighting over.

The GNP stats also help possibly collaborate who met who--seeing someone else at 22 GNP likely means eastway met either Twinkletoes or B4ndit, and that person is researching Bronze Working. The increase in GNP average doesn't tell us much at this point other than retaining the (predicted) status quo at worst.

In other news, the crop yield confirms eastway whipped the workboat and netted the clams this turn, and the minor change in life expectancy almost certainly means that someone had a lucky forest growth--I'm not going to track happiness/health that closely

[Cheater Hater]

(second time writing this post, computer crashed the first time )
Micro Discussion
Yes, I'm finally doing this--save is here, and here's a picture for reference if you don't want to open the save:


Note: I'm not taking known tech bonus into account, but everything else should be good
Also, there's a forest growth around T4 you need to worldbuilder out if you want to try stuff yourself

Current Plan: (Agri->BW->Wheel->Pottery) (Worker->Workboat->Warrior->Settler)
T3: Agriculture EOT
T7: Worker EOT
T10: Bronze Working EOT
T11: Wheat farm completes, work farm, city growth at EOT (work clams)
T14: Wheel EOT, city growth at EOT (work forest grassland hill)
T15: Workboat EOT
T16: Net clams, gem mine completes, work mine, Warrior EOT, city growth at EOT (work forest grassland hill)
T17: Pottery EOT
T20: Chop forest hill 1S completes, Settler EOT


Afterward the Warrior and Settler are moving towards the grassland city spot (my most likely first city), I'll probably revolt to Slavery and whip (hopefully 2-pop whip) the Granary, build a warrior for a turn, build a Worker once we grow back to size 3, send the first worker to the second city to farm the wheat and cottage flood plains, second worker will cottage a grassland or two at the capital before moving south, maybe try to 2-pop whip the second settler after the second worker?

I'll do more later (notably I want to try eastway's plan and see how it does), but I'll take a rest since my computer obviously doesn't like me right now

[NobleHelium]

Just so you know, the micro comparison of Worker-first/Workboat-first is coming; as a teaser, I can get a settler out end of T21 going Worker-Workboat-Settler (one chop, but I fit the Slavery anarchy in there--this is just my first try)

What happened to this?

I believe you do get the free beaker during anarchy. I am not aware of you getting shrine gold, however.

And finally, repeat after me: there is no research decay.

[Cheater Hater]

Just so you know, the micro comparison of Worker-first/Workboat-first is coming; as a teaser, I can get a settler out end of T21 going Worker-Workboat-Settler (one chop, but I fit the Slavery anarchy in there--this is just my first try)

What happened to this?

I believe you do get the free beaker during anarchy. I am not aware of you getting shrine gold, however.

And finally, repeat after me: there is no research decay.

I started it, then my computer crashed while I was putting it together, and now I have other things to do--you can see the start of it above you though
I know you get something during anarchy since I remember it from my single player games, I just can't remember if it's shrine gold or settled GP gold/beakers/etc.

[NobleHelium]

I doubt it.

[Cheater Hater]

Actually, thinking back to my SP games, I think it was GPT from trades I got during anarchy, not any of the above, so disregard everything I said about that

[SevenSpirits]

FWIW, I believe that you used to get the free beaker every turn regardless before BTS, but now you only get it after settling your first city and while not in anarchy. Not 100% sure though.

You certainly don't get any other commerce/hammers/food while in anarchy. The one thing that does happen, if you just finished a tech, is that your beaker overflow from the previous tech goes into the next tech.

[NobleHelium]

Lewwyn definitely saw his ETA go down (presumably from the free beaker) after his anarchy turn in 18, that's what I'm basing it from. I haven't tested it definitively.

[Cheater Hater]

T11 Report and C&D:
This turn's actually kinda boring, even though things are finally starting to happen. First the scout move:


So much jungle to my east

Now, since my first worker improvement completed at the capital, a update from back at home:


You can see the copper under the capital as expected, as well as the completed wheat farm. I see no real reason to deviate from the path I micro'd out, so we'll stay with that path for the time being. I still need to figure out what I'm doing after researching Pottery though--do I go super-aggro and go for Iron Working for Praetorians (as well as to clear out all this stupid jungle), try to leverage Philosophical with Writing and an early Library, or split the difference by going for Animal Husbandry for Horses as well as the various animal food resources (notably the sheep at city 2)?

Not that much C&D today, but there's still some interesting stuff:


Obviously my GNP and Crop Yield changed, and there was some fluctuation with the Life Expectancy I don't care about, but the important stuff is with the soldier count. One of the people with Bronze Working increased their soldier count by 2000, and it can't be by researching a tech or growing (since there's no change in score), so they must have built a warrior. My guess is that eastway used the whip overflow to 2-turn a warrior--this is something I should certainly test in my next sandbox session--and assuming my computer cooperates, that should happen shortly

[Cheater Hater]

Micro Discussion Part 2:
Since there's been a lot of posts since the last sandboxing discussion, I've started a new post. As a reminder, here's the first plan I tried, that probably corresponds to what I'll do in the game:

Current Plan: (Agri->BW->Wheel->Pottery) (Worker->Workboat->Warrior->Settler)
T3: Agriculture EOT
T7: Worker EOT
T10: Bronze Working EOT
T11: Wheat farm completes, work farm, city growth at EOT (work clams)
T14: Wheel EOT, city growth at EOT (work forest grassland hill)
T15: Workboat EOT
T16: Net clams, gem mine completes, work mine, Warrior EOT, city growth at EOT (work forest grassland hill)
T17: Pottery EOT
T20: Chop forest hill 1S completes, Settler EOT

Since I obviously cannot read eastway's mind, I'll try a couple plans, using what we already know from C&D and going from there:
Note: I'm going to be using my sandbox for these tests; obviously it isn't exactly the same, but the resources are the same and the layout should be close--the biggest assumption is that it takes 2 turns for the worker to get from the wheat to the gems, but from what I can see I doubt it's less than that.)
eastway's Plan A: (BW->Agri->Wheel->Pottery) (Workboat->Warrior->Worker->Settler)
T4: City growth at EOT (work wheat)
T6: Bronze Working EOT
T7: Anarchy turn
T8: 1-pop whip Workboat
T9: Net clams, city growth at EOT (work wheat), Warrior completes EOT???
T11: Agriculture EOT
T13: Worker completes EOT
T15: Wheel EOT
T17: Wheat farm completes
T18: Pottery EOT
T19: Settler completes EOT



So, obviously, eastway is not the one who built the warrior, since not only would the warrior have completed one turn earlier, the city would have grown on that turn. I assume AT would have been the one to complete the warrior, which makes much more sense in retrospect (since he doesn't have Fishing to build a workboat yet)--I'll confirm that in a bit, but first I'll look at eastway's more-probable plan:
eastway's Plan B: (BW->Agri->Wheel->Pottery) (Workboat->Worker->Warrior->Settler)
T4: City growth at EOT (work wheat)
T6: Bronze Working EOT
T7: Anarchy turn
T8: 1-pop whip Workboat
T9: Net clams
T11: Agriculture EOT, Worker completes EOT
T12: City growth at EOT (work wheat)
T14: Warrior completes EOT
T15: Wheat farm completes, Wheel EOT
T19: Pottery EOT
T20: Gem mine completes (switch wheat to mine), Settler EOT


So this plan has very similar results to mine--we complete the settlers at the same time, but while my city is a lot bigger, he didn't need to chop a forest to get there. However, there are a lot of small enhancements that could be done to possibly optimize this plan. If eastway was really risky, he could only build the warrior for 1 turn to grow to size 2, then immediately start on the settler to finish it EOT on T18, two turns early. Conversely, eastway could build a second warrior for a turn to grow to size 3, then build the settler--which ends up also completing on T21, which makes it a much better choice


And before we go, a couple things:

• Did a quick test of AT's setup--the warrior comes out EOT on T10, just as played out in the game
  
• If I were to reorganize my pictures in my Dropbox folder, will it break all my links in the thread? I want to separate the sandboxing pictures, as well as my turns into 10 turn folders, but I don't want to make my thread unreadable in the process.