[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

The ideal would be that this city isn't an eastern border at all but we can manage to draw the border with Darrabod along a horizontal line and keep going further and further east. On defensive tactics, every extra tile distance you can travel can matter a lot. E.g. there's a lot of value in not just being able to get units into a city in 1 turn but being able to strike anything adjacent, too. Or being able to cover both sides of the empire within a certain number of turns with some units. Mind you, this isn't looking like PB13 right now where literally every city had to be tactically considered as a war zone.

At the end of the day, we're in a situation by now where the worker micro is lined up much better for the closer site, and so the settler gets there 1 turn faster, the granary goes up sooner, it gets the 5 food site and a flood plain cottage earlier. So the heuristic that earlier cities should give benefit as early as possible favors it even though the incense site does have plenty of advantages, especially later. (Honestly, the one that bothers me the most to lose is getting the happy pop immediately upon getting Calendar and not having to use worker turns!)

This may be another decision where Commodore and Ceil think I'm on weed and vindicate you again.

Boldy is talking about an option of retiring to AI for a week. Lol, can you imagine if Darrell did that and gave us a few days notice to prepare? Dhal doesn't seem to care whether his turns roll without playing or not... I wish we had a close neighbor this engaged in the game! And not guys spamming the heck out of their thread and doing a lot of careful planning, heh.

Anyway, turn 58:

Not much going on, just worker micro. Our axe is out, and going to the city 4 location to maybe get some free xp from barbs. MYKI teched something in 5 turns. Ichabarrel have been whipping quite a bit, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see their city #5 go down in a turn or two.

Still no Oracle! If it doesn't fall by 60 that's definitely a world-wide mutual psyche out.




It looks like MYKI lost a warrior last turn. I don't have him whipping. It's possible that this was a victim of that hero barb warrior. We're going to show an axe spike here next turn which may be slightly intimidating. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

[WilliamLP]

What I want to say in the tech thread is: Qgqqqqq, don't be a selfish prick. You lost interest in the game, I get it. But you signed up for it and 33 people are waiting around because you can't be bothered to find time in your day to either play or pick up your phone and make a quick post to the IT thread saying when you'll play. I don't care if it's fun for you or not, you took on the responsibility so suck it up and don't be a bitch.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 59:




The scout in the west fog is making sure things stay really boring over there by preventing barb spawns. The settler for the fourth city starts moving next turn.

I can't see a reason to make some pretty aggressive worker micro. E.g. improving the corn in two turns with 2+3 farmers, even though it involves having 3 workers on a single border tile for a turn. I think with a head start in units and a spear to guard we can get away with moves like that.

Graphs on Pindicator:














I really don't want to go back through historical scores and try to deduce his techs, but he doesn't appear to be having a particularly strong start.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 60:

No Oracle yet. That probably means every IND civ is face-palming right now. If you plan way in advance, turn 60 is about when you can get it without really trying very hard, and without setting back things all that much. No GLH either, though it's nerfed in RBMod and this isn't an ideal map for it, though it's not terrible from our perspective. It's also not at all unheard of for Pyramids to have built now.




The settler for city 4 (the closer but possibly worse economic one) moves into place T61, settles T62. I'm doing a weird bit of worker micro that involves moving 2 workers to the north forest where they're going to road, before starting to cottage the flood plains. The method to this madness is that that road is more useful than one to the south would be, and I want to improve the corn in 2 turns when the borders grab it on T65, and the road helps the workers from the flood plain get there. Also forward roads are always useful for defensive tactics, even if you never need defensive tactics.... So, useful for showing you have defensive tactics in order that you don't need to use them, or something.

Ichabarrel shows a spear. For a civ that's packing only Rock and Scissors, whenever your neighbour builds Scissors that's a good thing. This weird micro that shows him two forward workers and a spear may make Darrell scratch his head quite a bit. I'm trying not to show him the axe and start an escalation.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 61:




Next turn we'll settle city #4 and start cottaging the flood plain tile. To clear the spot the axe chopped up a wolf at >99.99% odds, taking 3 hits in the process. City #5 should go down on T68 unless something disruptive happens.

[WilliamLP]

The general idea for the near future:




This sim has city #7 going down on turn 74. It's probably a little too early without more worker labor. City 5 (Old Sarai here) has a library built and captures the wet wheat for city#7 in a few turns.

There's a settler finishing that turn here, so if we really wanted we're at the point where we could spam cities like crazy. But break-even here is a little above 50% at this point, and I don't want to go much past that without being on the track for the key econ techs like Calendar, Currency, CoL.

In this game, the really good news is that we've already done the heavy metagame lifting in PB13! That is, proving (multiple times) that if someone plants a pink dot closer to our capital than theirs they're going to get a fast military campaign aimed at that. So, I could be wrong (which would change everything) but I don't suspect Darrellbod will try to encroach on our northwest first-ring land while we grab the more strategic sites first, the horses and gems.

[Ceiliazul]

The general idea for the near future:




This sim has city #7 going down on turn 74. It's probably a little too early without more worker labor. City 5 (Old Sarai here) has a library built and captures the wet wheat for city#7 in a few turns.

You original city 3 with deer, fish, rice now doesnt even make the top seven? i hope Commodore and i didnt dissuade you from that site!

[WilliamLP]

Well the original #3 was going to try claim fish + whale + rice + wheat with an as-fast-as-possible border pop, and enable working cities larger than size 3-4. Heck, we could have 1-turn chopped Oracle in it a couple turns before now with perfect foresight into others' actions.

With the assumption that Pindicator is going to have the fish in his borders in a few turns, another city on the coast to the east may only get the mediocre dry rice before a border pop, and it can't even share anything. So it's not productive soon, and we're not racing for that land either. Popping borders to acquire a netted fish from Pindicator is going to be a tense move for him, even if it's our first ring. (Although, unlike a certain other game, I don't intend to be be so far behind on tech as to be forced to play an inland empire and ignore all sea resources and technology forever! )

The southwest stuff is strategically vital (our only horses, gems). Getting to 7 cities with a layout like this is already costing a lot, so to me waiting until city number 8 or more to get the very first happiness seems unreasonable. Adding 6 more cottages to the empire, without the escalating maintenance of a new city is what we need at this point, more than yet another snowball food site to accumulate more costs on settings with higher than normal costs.

We're also down happiness to Darrell and MYKI, who have it in easier spots than we do, and as they vertically grow before us we fall further behind that way.

The gems site looks pretty dumb where it stands without first ring food but getting the gems is vital (and makes the city pay for itself), and every other location has severe compromises too.

Am I over-valuing GNP here compared to raw growth and production potential? We'll see! After being so slow to 4, I expect to be pretty competitive with how quickly 5, 6, 7, and 8 go down, though.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 62:

Another peaceful micro turn. The more of these we get, the more interesting the later game will be. Not having to engage in early skirmishes is a tremendous advantage over those who do. However, there's probably at least one of "that guy" out there who is managing to get someone else's stuff practically for free.




Black Stallion was founded. The corn should be improved on T66, it gets a granary done EOT69 with two math chops, and two workers are cottaging the flood plains. The corn and the flood plains cottage are two really good tiles for it, but it will have to work a mediocre tile 3 like a plains river cottage, until its border pop, which will take a while. It will probably use a whipped barracks for this.

Darrell seems to have built an axe now, so his power is basically at par with us. Hopefully showing him a spear discourages chariot rushes and the like. Really though, every sign we've seen points to him being happy with a fully peaceful co-existence for a while. I'm quite curious what they think of our fourth site, whether they see it as fair, reaching, a terrifying threat to geometrically cut them off from most of the map, etc.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 63:




I'm looking for signs that we can't get away with just peacefully expanding, but I'm not seeing them. Workers 5 and 6 finished, and I double-whipped worker 7. I'm speeding up the settler out of Mr. Ed one turn by chopping the plains hill that the city will settle onto.

I think that, as a general rule, double-whipping in RBMod isn't that bad in a happiness constrained situation. You work even to a little ahead in hammers, behind in commerce, and ahead in tempo. And worker turns are the critical path for a lot of things.

Pindicator has a scouting work boat out. This is a pretty good idea! It probably doesn't take that long for the 30 hammer investment to pay off in known tech bonus, if not favorable resource trades. It also must mean he's not in a dire military situation if he can afford to invest 30 hammers in this way.

Demos before the whip:




We're doing alright, above average in most things that matter. The real average GNP is 37 or 38, inflated by the lurker civ.

Ichabod and MYKI haven't met each other yet, which is kind of surprising. MYKI's demos look surprisingly decent for a player who could have been in literal last place on many power ranking charts. He's still at 3 cities. This is the part of the game coming up where your status starts to really reflect whether you've been making decisions that will create an accelerating growth into the future.