{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[OT4E]

Hindi missionary was for Bodmin...
192 hammers, not bad. We still lack workers so much. HS doesnt give much in our situation: 1 worker turns from watermills, 1 from roads (not deserted and not tundra), may be some discount for deserted/tundra windmills.

I put Code of laws in 1, we need to get some courthouses before we begin spamming knights.
Dtay has banking and paper but still no Iron Working. So he cant make knights yet. And probably he wants to take economics.

Are we going to try to get "ruin"-event. If yes we need to keep it for some more turns.
I want to chop our 2nd furs since this tile is not good anyway and we are not planning to have city there soon. Hammers will go to Rhodes.

[2metraninja]

SOrry for the hindu missionary, I forgot we have Bodmin as stronger science city than capitol.

I knew Mack will hit HAK at some point. And I think our UU can give us opportunity to set foot on this "central" continent which is HAK's backyard and where REM/AI have a foot.

[OT4E]

The first knight is out and I couldnt conceal it from dtay. So I am going to use it as morale weapon. Dtay has already moved his small stack inside the city and built maceman which instead of some building. But I dont want him to understand that we have gone all military. We still need 5-10 turns for our core to start building and we also need some courthouses. I am going to send this knight on our island to show Adrien and teach him off attacking us. He has started golden age and might decide that he has enough to overcome our wall of triremes considering his vassalage and land something significant. From the other hand I want to remove trireme blockade and pull them closer to the middle of our waters to be ready to upgrade to Corracks. Our ability to get transport unit from triremes is unique.

The overall plan for military is to wait for the best output from our cities. How to use it? It is to be discussed. I see several options:
1) to make some sneak attack on dtay
2) to make combined land and naval attack on dtay
3) to make sneak attack on Adrien/REM
4) to make colonization expedition to the middle lands where Gavagai and mackoti are going to slaughter H&K and Adrien/REM probably still has weak position


Btw, for the some reason I couldnt build WM on the marked tile:

I am going to try to pillage WM on 4 from it later when we have some idle workers.

Our graphs you can see on the image below.


I like that our production is significantly higher than average, considering at least one golden age (I think that mackoti is in GA too).
We have average food but this is still the stat we need to improve and we have such capabilities. Dtay for example has 200 pop, we have only 121 so far.
Our GNP is not good but being in the back is advantage unless we are going to suffer from those others advancements. I have some kind of plan how to rise our economy and will put it down in on of the later posts. We need to align economics, military and expansion into one general strategy line.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Watermills.

[OT4E]

Watermills.

Ah, never knew its mechanics! Big thanks!

[OT4E]

So here is what perspectives we have in economics.

Suddenly we are in about 30 turns from Economics. I think that noone doubts that we need our UB as soon as possible and Free market will give us greatest free commerce burst. I think that 1/3 of our commerce comes from trade routes. But this is long way, because they significantly increased costs of renaissance technologies. The duration comes from:
- Optics ~ 2,7 turns (I am sure we need it anyway as soon as possible, it opens us many possibilities stated in my previous posts and some others)
- Civil Service ~ 2,5 turns (we can skip this tech but it gives discount for Paper and is mandatory for our later path to Nationalism)
- Banking ~ 3 turns
- Paper ~ 2,1 turns
- Education ~ 9,5 turns
- Economics ~ 9,3 turns
This all is possible if we make 300 beakers per turn. Right now we are making only 288 on 60% and have -40 per turn. But considering few courthouses and markets coming I think we will stay on 60-70% pretty comfortly. I havent taken in account the growth of our economics such as:
1) increased population, new cottages and coasts worked
2) increased trade routes because of higher pop and harbors
3) increased scientific % from monasteries and libraries.

So if everything develops in favorable way we can pass this way in 24-25 turns.

Our financial core still many lacks buildings but I've done a lot to rise base production in those cities. Those cities are:
- Maryland ~12hpt, will put priest and may be engineer, so ~20 turns for main buildings (market, harbor, bank, grocer, library), + 3 turns for extra monasteries
- Rhodes ~9hpt (need to rise to 16 + windmill and plain cottage and +4 from religion buildings, 32 turns for main buildings
- Bodmin ~8hpt (rise to 10 by hooking 2 plain cottages, or even to 12), 28 turns for main buildings
- Los Millaries ~8hpt (worst production because no religion yet, rising to 15 or even 16 (taking sheep from Bodmin but really need even numbers)), 38 turns for main buildings
- Lisblis ~11hpt (rising to 12 by hooking 1 plain cottage), 33 turns for main buildings
- Inside Outside ~10hpt (need Moai, probably will continue building without stone if Hit&Key manages to keep supplying us spices, because it saves us just 3 turns), 31 turns for main buildings
- Samarkand ~20hpt (best production), 18 turns for main buildings

Those 7 cities are the most suitable cities for universities. The only one arguable thing is Samarkand, with high base production it can be used for producing military units. Yes it has silks and gold but it cant have harbour or feitoria and therefore it is almost at the maximum of its commerce output. The alternative city is
- Longinus, it currently has just 4 hpt, but is growing swiftly and has possibility to get 16-20 hpts and complete all core buildings in 32 turns



We can also run golden age to make buildings faster, but it must correspond the latest possible civics changes. What civics do we need? In my opinion or goal civics are the following:
1) Universal Sufferage (too late for the 1st golden age, too few towns so far)
2) Nationhood (no upkeep, espionage bonus, happy bonus, draft possibility (we wont draft hundreds but it is still very usefull)) - we really need to think how to convert it at least at the end of the first GA
3) Serfdorm (Mills + Serfdorm seems to be better than Workshops+Caste system)
4) Free market (State property later when we get many colonies, right now the bonus from FM will be huge and we dont really need extra food from watermills since we have nowhere where to use it)
5) Org. Religion (till the very end, dont think that game finishes on the core buildings, we still need feitorias, levees, jails, agencies, drydocks, factories and etc.)

My current idea is to start golden age once we research Economics and head directly to Nationalism and convert it at the end of golden age.

[OT4E]

The plan on the few next turns is to tech optics and save gold for upgrades and next researches. Some markets will come in time.

[Dreylin]

The overall plan for military is to wait for the best output from our cities. How to use it? It is to be discussed. I see several options:
1) to make some sneak attack on dtay
2) to make combined land and naval attack on dtay
3) to make sneak attack on Adrien/REM
4) to make colonization expedition to the middle lands where Gavagai and mackoti are going to slaughter H&K and Adrien/REM probably still has weak position

I would like to go for 4, but can we do so without dtay sneak-attacking us? I imagine we'd want a blitz of 5-6 cities so that the colony became quickly self-sustaining, but that's a lot of investment heading off our shores. I doubt dtay would be planning to attack anyone but us since we've shown ourselves opportunistic and would go after him if he turned his attention to Commodore. I think it's a question of when, not if he attacks us and of course if he gets to dictate the terms then we're in trouble. The question then becomes, do we have a window?

[OT4E]

Liberalism gone to Gwazdak. Hope dtay lost the turn teching it. Am I evil? Gwazdak hasnt reaserched anything special so he probably takes Nationalism.

Hit&key stopped our stone vs marble + spices deal so we dont need to hesitate about it but need to think where to get spices.

They also made peace with Gavagay and probably mackoti too because H&k has done double turn otherwise.

So are foreign news.

[OT4E]

I am leaving for one day trip so may need to be covered if this turn rolls as fast as previous one.