Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh, and Brazil were very lucky: that was no penalty.

Oy, hey some of us are DVRing the game until the small children are safely stuffed away to bed. Spoiler tags!!!!

[Becko]

Oh man, my bad. I hate it when that happens, though for me, it's mostly that I hold off on reading/watching things for so long that people think it's safe to start talking about them. Hard to get mad at people for spoiling The Crying Game in 2014 (nope, still haven't seen it).

But thanks for reminding me that this is an open thread. My next post was going to use analogies with the events of the last two books of Game of Thrones/ASOIAF, but I guess I'll hold off on that one.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ha, I've read those so go ahead. But maybe use spoiler tags or give a warning somewhere at the top of the post.

Or do you mean the two unwritten books, of which I've read only the opening chapter of book six published on the author's website? In that case, nice to meet you George. Will you please finish the damn books already?

[Becko]

Oh, Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring? Yeah, I can spoil those too for you:

GRRM won't ever finish them, at least not ADoS. Dude is 65, he doesn't exactly look like Jack Palance, and he's writing at a pace of one-book-every-six-years-and-slowing. OTOH, Iggy Pop looks like he's been dead for 20 years and he's still making records, so what do I know?

Note to self and TBS: Gaspwyn have Iron Working (spotted a plains mine with no visible resource). That's sort of early, no?

[Becko]

So turns 87 and 88 are in the books, at least from our perspective. I've been switching back and forth in the turn order with Lewgas, since I only have one time slot each day. I suppose I could have just ended turn and played at the end of the next, but best I can tell, we're neither in a settling race nor at the brink of war. His chariots seem to be keeping a lookout in the northern passage; they're certainly not behaving aggressively. Maybe they're planning to put a city up there?

Now, I'm just as much a noob at meta as I am at micro, but I get the impression that they are more looking to avoid a fight than pick one, at least with us. If I were them, I'd be very nervously looking out for Keshiks, though they might know we're not at Horseback Riding yet. We know we won't be for a while either, but they don't. Not sure why they went for Iron Working, but it could be related to their reasoning about us (whether offensive or defensive).

In non-meta news, not that much. Oxy popped a Great Scientist who presumably founded an Academy, and Commodore is Jewish. Thoth has had a big GNP spike followed by a 28 point increase, but I only realized it after looking at my screenshots, so no further info. We're still a turn or two away from turning on science all the way to Mono. We seem to be a bit short on workers, so whipped a couple. We'll have a settler for the island opposite Haunted Gold next turn, then another one in ~3 turns in The Sea Chase, who should be replacing the barb city. After that, we should only need two or three more cities to seal the borders (depending on where we want them to be), and we can start living off the shrine and growing with Hereditary Rule. Sound OK?

BTW, after trying to figure out what to do with the workers now that I'm starting to run out of instructions and signs, I'm finally starting to understand the puzzle skills you need for this.

[WilliamLP]

Worker micro is hell once you realize that every time you choose to put one turn into a road on one tile or another, that decision will cost you a turn on a city settlement 15 turns later, which means you'll miss math by a turn, which means you'll slow down a granary you really wanted, and so on down the line... FOREVER...

[Krill]

Great worker micro isn't just worker micro that lets builds finish with exactly the right number of hammers, and growing with no spare food. It ties together the micro for cities, pop allocation, research, military units and correctly predicts opponents actions in a holistic fashion. Perfection is something you have to strive for; I've never seen anyone reach it in a CIV game.

[Becko]

Indeed. The alternative cost bit is one thing, and that feels like something you could sandbox to find out which path gets you the most output (or the same output faster). But when you need to start considering things like "given that I'd like a strong army to my west and passable ones to my south and east, while at the same time getting to Currency within 15-ish turns, and of course settling the available land and growing ASAP, should this worker put a turn into a cottage or a farm?", that's when my brain starts making grinding noises. It's like laying a puzzle, except the pieces can fit together in different ways that produce either a picture of an elephant or of the Taj Mahal, and occasionally you have other people dropping by to try to set your puzzle on fire.

When I sandbox, I basically use brute force, but that's a bottom-up perspective. I'm realizing here that in order to make good micro choices, I need to get a lot better at making macro choices (as opposed to just moving the turn along, which is what I tend to do).

Oh, and turn played. Gaspar settled that canal site up north. Turned on tech, should be able to get Mono in two turns. Otherwise nothing that can't be saved for the debriefing, due later today. If the turn rolls in the next 8 hours, I can play one more turn, otherwise I'll leave it to you.

[The Black Sword]

Nice job Becko, I'll be able to play in 24hrs, so you should probably play one more if you can.

I noticed Gaspar had IW before you took over. They seemed to have some jungle heavy lands over by their other border, I reckon that's the reason. Nothing for us to worry about really, swords aren't any scarier than axes.

Too bad about that canal site, that's pretty annoying, it's probably better than the hill spot we stole too. Any idea what the military is like there? I remember they have a long land route to get there, so they can only be reinforced quickly by sea. Unless it's really weak though, I guess we should just continue to settle the other free spots first before deciding if we want to go at it. Regarding our hill spot, I think we want to garrison it with 2 axes and a spear, maybe a second spear if we can spare it. Using the OBs to put a chariot in his territory and keep an eye on his forces wouldn't be bad either.

What's our gpt at 0% right now, still around 30? And yeah, the worker situation in the east is pretty difficult, it's already fairly saturated with improvements, so it's hard to move around without losing worker turns.

Oh yeah, Brazil's penalty was pretty soft, but it had nothing on Spain's. I don't think the Dutch mind too much though.

[Becko]

Nice job Becko, I'll be able to play in 24hrs, so you should probably play one more if you can.

Np, happy to help. The turn rolled about an hour ago, so you could probably make it. Otherwise, I can definitely play around 7 pm CET tomorrow, but probably not sooner.

Too bad about that canal site, that's pretty annoying, it's probably better than the hill spot we stole too. Any idea what the military is like there?

Two chariots, IIRC. We only have one chariot in the immediate vicinity, but Westward Ho is garrisoned heavily enough that we could probably send some guys north. A few more units are headed for the south, but could be diverted.

What's our gpt at 0% right now, still around 30?

More like 20-25, I think. Could probably get a few more with a little tile swapping. We are getting ~160 beakers and losing ~140 gold at full science. A shrine would be nice.

Oh yeah, Brazil's penalty was pretty soft, but it had nothing on Spain's. I don't think the Dutch mind too much though.

Yeah, that was a crazy game. Am in the middle of the 11 hour cupathon right now, some nice games already.

Costa Rica just wrecked Uruguay, wasn't even close. Joel Campbell is going to be a rich(er) man in a couple of weeks.