AT's PBEM 58 Thread (or, AT Break's Bad)

[AutomatedTeller]

Welcome to Turn 59 of PBEM58!!!

In which we found another city, regret our lack of workers and fear the demos.

Founding another city:



It was a choice between this episode and Face Off - Face Off was the season 4 finale, featuring (what else) a major antagonist of Walter dying. I chose Blood Money because it's the episode that began the final half-season and really marked the beginning of the end of Walter White. At the end, you wonder if Walter would actually follow through on the implied threat he makes.

Anyway - that's a nice city - 2 deer, crab, fur, 2 mined tundra forest, bunch of hills - very strong production city, with some commerce and it leaves me room to backfill another if I choose, to get the clam and share the deer.

I'll chop that forest my worker is in to speed growth. Ozymandias is going to create a missionary for Blood Money - the one partly built in Felina will get finished and will be used for whatever is next.

I am in dire need of workers - I have 2 cities about to grow onto unimproved tiles and 1 working one right now to facilitate growth. I'm going to make one in Say My Name after the temple completes, chop-enhanced.


Demos:



eastway plopped down a city on an island - with foreign routes and lighthouse, that city is pulling in some 12 gold on trade routes, to say nothing of guaranteeting 2 gp routes for all his cities. Sure, a lot of his GNP is culture (stonehenge + 7 monuments + lighthouse), but still - 200+ is pretty damn scary.

one thing hidden here is that TT is ramping up power, as well. I hope it's after eastways - I didn't grab a screenie, but they have butted heads before and are doing so now, up in their shared lake area. I'm 5th in power, so have to start paying attention. Fortunately, am just 8 turns from pyramids and the ability to get a 25% boost of unit whips, which is very nice. that makes, for most places, a HA a 1 whip item after a turn of building - I think I might be able to 2 turn HA in Say My Name, or 2 every 3 turns with whips.

I was worried abotu the cost of OR, but I'm not anymore:



My civic costs are 10, but if I dropped out of OR, they would still be 7. 3 GPT is a very small price to pay for what I get from OR - building missionaries and 25% boosts to hammers for forges, granaries, etc.

[AutomatedTeller]

T60:

Got OB with B4ndit.

Decided to build a 2 turn settler in Say My Name, instead of the worker. Will build a worker in Ozymandias instead. Settler will go north of the iron, getting the iron/wine/corn/whales spot.

in 2 turns, i can close borders with eastways, which i want to do to cut down on his trade routes. I think I'm good for trade routes with the other teams.

In Felina, I'll grow this turn and next, will be at 30 hammers and can 2 pop whip the forge in, allowing that to make 10 hammers instead of 8 for anything.

I caught up to TT's military easily, by building an axe and teching HBR. Now I have 2 axes, a spear and a chariot, and i have the 3rd strongest military in the world. I need to start turning my tech/forge advantage into actual soldiers

Oh - eastways got a priest, so will be able to build a build a shrine if he wants.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn 61:

Eastways is doing very well this game:



plus stonehenge and the great lighthouse.

He's reinforced Dale



Demos:


Definitely cutting OB with him - gotta cut down on his Lighthouse advantage.

I still think the idea of a forest lake tile is funny, but here's one in use:



Tweaked Full Meausre so I could get 8 hpt base +2 for OR. 10 will be a common number of hammers for me for awhile, I think.



I didn't grab a screenie, but it looks like whips don't take OR into account - I think that Felina does a 3 pop whip for the forge, which then overflows 20 hammers into between 25 and 30, depending on what we are building.

C-H's latest city:



B4ndit's land

[AutomatedTeller]

eastway declares war on cheater-hater - does he not realize that he is the #5 military and cheater-hater is #1? interesting move - presumbly, C-H is losing a worker or a settler or something here. eastway is turning out to be pretty aggressive.




I did close borders with him, which hurt him a little and me very little. (I lost 1 commerce, he lost 5). he still has OB with TT and b4ndit, though.

Did my Felina whip:


Nice to get a 25 hammer overflow, which goes to 31 with just a forge, 37 if I build a building. Not bad.

decided to change the forge in full measure to a spear, which I'll 2-pop whip in next turn



that will give me a 24 hammer overflow in full measure, which ain't bad.


Chopped into the WB into Blood Money, got the religion in there, so that's a full WB plus some granary overflow.

Started saving for a machinery run.

[AutomatedTeller]

Nothing seems to be happening in the eastway/C-H war, though eastway soldier count jumped - I'm now 5th!! (isn't the power graph supposed to reflect 3 of soldiers? cause, power graph still show eastway last).

Guess that's what happens when you have 10 cities - you can build an army out of nothing.

Nothing very interesting to recount. 4 turns to my engineer, so I'll build collosus that turn and add pyramids, as well. then it's some military time - if eastways is tied up with C-H, maybe I can grab Dale and either burn or take and keep the lighthouse.

[AutomatedTeller]

Guess graphs trail demos by a turn:



TT is giving b4ndit a bit of of a scare - if he wants, he can kill that city. My guess is that TT leaves B4ndit alone, but this game has
had a lot of aggression. I wouldn't mind seeing TT and eastway go at it, though.


I held off on founding my new city, since that HA could turn around and kill it before the spear got there. It almost certainly won't - either it will kill TT chariot after TT killed his city, or he'll hang around for city defense, but no reason to take a chance. Expenses are already at 38/turn.



Building a temple in the cap, for A) a priest and B) to get my happy cap hi. The priest will combine with oracle to give me a GP in another 15 turns or so.


Say My Name will spend a turn on collosus, a turn on a stable, then back to finish off colosus, build pyramids with the engineer, whip in the stable and build military while growing onto water tiles as the happy cap goes up from ivory and fur


The extra culture will help me with these tiles



These tiles are steadily growing more carthaginian, because he has at least 7 culture in that city and I have (currently) only 6.


Full measure is going to grow onto hills and start producing military. Might whip in a stables along the way.



in 3 turns, we get an engineer, and pyramids. My plan is to switch to police state with pyramids and do at least a 5 turn build up.

At size 8, fuill measure can do 18 base hammers - that's 27 with forge and PS, which is 4 HA every 5 turns. Add in a chop, and it's a lot more.

Say My Name could be that strong, but I want it to grow onto some tasty water tiles (it will get moai at some point), but still - it should easily be able to 3 HA every 5 turns, more with a whip in the middle.

I do have forest I can chop in for some hammers, as well. Worker availability is my limiting factor right now on chops. I built 2 more, for 9, but that's barely ahead of my needs if you assume 1.5 per city. Maybe I should build some more.

[AutomatedTeller]

2 turns today - cooking with gas!!

inter-turn - eastways gets Theocracy



somewhat odd choice - I assume he's going to adopt theology, but he's in a way and needs religion to make it work, so that's 2 turns of chaos to get any value - and he hasn't been spreading religion around.

maybe he wants to build the AP?

he's losing a worker here:



C-H goes after me, so that worker is done. If he doesn't have another unit around, he's not going to be able to kill the praet, either, though my guess is that he has a numidian somewhere.

Dale now has 2 spears in it:



He'll be able to whip in a 3rd, so when I land, I'll need some 8-10 HA to be sure of taking it. Challenging, but doable.

Founded To'hajiilee (I might change that to Face Off, just so I don't have to remember how to spell that)



This is the episode where Hank captures Walt. I had a bad feeling about this one when it ended...

Note that I swtiched to CoL - might as well enable running Caste, get some scientists going.

[AutomatedTeller]

so, is eastway blowing me away in tech?

Some analysis:

I see him have at least 49 culture + espionage per turn - palace, stonehenge, 10 monuments, Great lighthouse
buddhist holy city, 1 city with judaism, christian holy city, at least one library.

he's got 10 cities - i figure some 57 commerce from trade routes. I figure the lighthouse is giving him about 23 commerce per turn.

at 100% science, my GNP is 141 - 27 culture plus espionage. I'm running 70% (since I have no commerce multipliers, no big deal), he's running binary - at 100%, he made 200 GNP last turn.

so, that's 60 more than me.

22 from culture means about 40 bpt more than me. half of that is lighthouse. That said, his costs have to be close to better than 50% higher than mine - I went from 38 to 47 by founding my 7th city - he has 10, though he's not running Org Rel and his cities are smaller.

Collosus will cut that some - I'll get another 7 or 8 commerce from collosus - it's not the lighthouse, but it helps.

I guess our research is similar - I'd say he's a little ahead, but it's close. I'm going to lay down some more cottages, which will help.

[AutomatedTeller]

Bonus 3rd turn!!

pics later...

looks like C-H took the worker but didn't delete it, cause it's sitting there under an axe, with no praet around. That was a mistake by C-H - shoulda deleted it. The AI would have!!

eastway whipped in walls in Dale, which he probably shouldn't have done - he should have whipped in another unit. Walls are ok, but he's not facing a cat threat - he's facing HA and maybe cho-ko-nu, and the city has a 40% defense already.

Eh - no worries.

Nothing very interesting - C-H planted a city right up againt Felina, so I'm going to pop in a lib there for a little culture warring. It's in a nice spot, so I hope to get it later.

i get collosus and my engineer in the interturn. next turn, I get pyramids, then CoL, then back to machinery.

[AutomatedTeller]

huh - maybe I should have gone theology instead of CoL. Theocracy would be quite helpful right now - i could get 2 promo HA without stables.

2 promo HA are pretty important - with plain HA, many of them bounce off, doing no damage, maybe retreating. With C1, the first ones do some damage, but not a lot. With shock, though - they have a 9% chance of winning outright and generally do some damage. You still have to bank on 3 HA per spear, but really, it's 2 per spear, plus a couple of extra. 8 shock HA should do ok vs. 3 spear, but I'd like 10 or so. That's assuming 2 there and one being whipped in as I land a group.

Probably won't be able to hold the city, which is too bad - lighthouse is a nice wonder on this map, but he'll come after me and his culture will cause problems. Well, that's quite a few turns off in any case. I figure I can't launch an attack for 7-10 turns in any case.