RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

I logged in and moved a couple military units around.

I have also had a look around the latest micro plan.

With so many hammers, I agree that it makes more sense to go max-hammers in Antietam, rather than slave it. At size 6 it can make 18 hammers per turn by working 3 grass hills, 1 plains hill, the copper, and the rice at break even food. But instead, let's grow it to size 8 or 9 and work all the hammers plus 2 or 3 cottages! All it will take is a couple of happiness units, which it can bang out very quickly. With 18 hammers per turn, we can build 2 archers in 3 turns, or 2 axes/spears/chariots in 4 turns. We will want to build a fair few archers, to keep our cities happy, since they are the cheapest units we can build, and they are decent enough defenders in a pinch.

It would be nice to get a cottage on the river silk in Chancellorsville, since it will be a 2f 4c tile right away. We can later plantation over the cottage if we want, or keep it, since we have another silk right next to it.

I know that gold tile is awesome in Fredericksburg, with 8 commerce! But I fear it stunts our growth too much right now. I'd rather grow up to size 5 or 6, work 2-3 cottages, and then use the gold. Take a short-term penalty for a longer-term benefit.

I kind of want to chop Stonehenge in Chancellorsville. We still have 4 forests around the city, and make 7 hammers per turn base. I think we could get it with 2, maybe 3 chops. Can you imagine how badly that would crush Thebes culturally.

[antisocialmunky]

Burn Thebes down when you kill Greece. It is in such a weird spot as it is.

[T-hawk]

novice, yes we may indeed want to grab Priesthood; it might actually be cheaper to research that tech than go straight to Monarchy!

Not quite so. Priesthood is exactly 20% the beaker cost of Monarchy, but the prereq discount is not really 20% since you'll also have the other prerequisite Monotheism (so the discount comes out to 20/120 or 1/6 or 16.67%.) But of course Priesthood also leads to Code of Laws so it will eventually more than pay for itself in prereq discounts.

[Sullla]

Responding to Speaker:

With so many hammers, I agree that it makes more sense to go max-hammers in Antietam, rather than slave it. At size 6 it can make 18 hammers per turn by working 3 grass hills, 1 plains hill, the copper, and the rice at break even food. But instead, let's grow it to size 8 or 9 and work all the hammers plus 2 or 3 cottages!

OK, sounds like a plan. And if we do find ourselves in a war situation, we'll crash back to max shields, plus be at a higher size for emergency whipping.

It would be nice to get a cottage on the river silk in Chancellorsville, since it will be a 2f 4c tile right away. We can later plantation over the cottage if we want, or keep it, since we have another silk right next to it.

I think that's a waste, honestly... Our river cottages start at 2/0/3 already, and grow to 2/0/4 in a mere 10 turns. I'd rather grow a cottage that's going to stay a permanent cottage than mess around with the silks resource. Besides, we're probably only about 20-25 turns from Calendar tech anyway.

I know that gold tile is awesome in Fredericksburg, with 8 commerce! But I fear it stunts our growth too much right now. I'd rather grow up to size 5 or 6, work 2-3 cottages, and then use the gold. Take a short-term penalty for a longer-term benefit.

Gold tiles are one of the very few times where I think sacrificing food for commerce is worth it. That 8 commerce/turn is huge for us right now; it basically pays for another city all by itself. Once thing that we could do is farm another grassland at Frederick, to go up from +3 to +4 food/turn. Maybe that would be a good option? I really don't want to give up working that gold resource!

I kind of want to chop Stonehenge in Chancellorsville. We still have 4 forests around the city, and make 7 hammers per turn base. I think we could get it with 2, maybe 3 chops. Can you imagine how badly that would crush Thebes culturally.

Yeah, but what if we chop two forests and someone completes Stonehenge out in the fog? I'm still expecting it to fall any turn now; it's shocking that the wonder has lasted so long already. Why don't we save those forests for chopping the Mausoleum or a similar wonder down the road, one we can be assured of getting. (I'm not worried about crushing Thebes culturally; that city ain't going nowhere with its 2 food and 2 shields/turn output. At size 3 - which will take 20+ turns to reach - those numbers increase to... 2 food and 4 shields/turn. Wow.)

By the way, it's extremely bad news for us that athlete, kalin, Jowy, and Nakor are planning on being on the same team in RBPB3. One game isn't supposed to affect another, but they undoubtedly do; look at how regoarrarr and sunrise being on the same team in this game has them glued together in RBPB1. This further suggests that athlete and Jowy have some sort of agreement, and possibly Nakor too!

On the plus side, anyone playing in two of these games at once is crazy. There's no way you can focus your attention to the same degree when having multiple empires to manage. So go ahead, try and conduct diplomacy and builds for two or three games at once. We'll just keep winning at this one.

[Sullla]

Turn 81 played. It was very unexciting for us: no techs discovered, no cities growing to the next size, and so on. I'm just going to post the Demographics from the turn:



We're doing very, very well! Now let's hope we don't screw this up...

Speaker, all the military units are left for you to move as you see fit. (Except for Jubal Early, but his move onto Nakor's road network was really obvious.) I don't have anything else to report, other than the fact that IKZ didn't play their turn. IKZ and Dantski seem to have little interest in this game, but there's Dantski, signing up for RBPB3... I dunno what's going on there!

[Speaker]

For the record....we have double the next best crop yield. And that is by far the most important indicator in the early game. It's not number of cities, manufacturing, or even GNP. Crop yield = developed cities = win.


This gave me a chuckle. Why did he pick Mali?

[Dr. Nomadic]

Is there a strategy game of this sort where a population advantage DOESN'T translate into a win?

Obviously in StarCraft or Age of Empires a higher population means a larger economic workforce or a larger army. In Civilization higher populations allow you to work more land and/or hire more specialists.

I'm just agreeing with what Speaker said, nothing more.

[Sullla]

Looks like IKZ is abandoning the game... No surprise there, although I wonder why Kodii decided to bite off two Pitboss games when he had his hands full with one of them. Zeviz at least said from the beginning his participation would be spotty, but IamJohn simply disappeared with no word to anyone.

So... barely two months and we already need to search for a replacement player. I guess that's standard procedure for an online game, but it does frustrate me that people cavalierly sign up for these games without realizing the time commitment they entail. Ah well.

On the plus side, game disruptions won't bother us much at all, thanks to our extensive Excel charts. Teams playing things by ear could get thrown for a loop as we sit out a delay waiting to find a replacement player.

Maybe now I can find the time to go update the posts on the first page...

[Dr. Nomadic]

@Speaker: Dantski is probably keeping a small garrison because he knows that Sulla is not an ancient rush player. In other words, he trusts Sulla and knows that if Sulla backstabs him then his relations with the other teams will get spoilt, and a diplomatically isolated civilization cannot survive in the vast majority of occasions.

Finally...how far up the tech tree to games of this sort usually last to? Rifling and Democracy? I wanted to know this.

[Speaker]

What a debacle this whole game is turning into. But sure enough, many of the players, who barely post in their own thread, are running off to join RBPB3.