[SPOILERS] Serdoas and Nobles Thread with a little bit of Gaspar sprinkled in

[Serdoa]

Thanks Noble. I'll look it through after work today. And make a report while at it, if I get home early enough. Took even a T65 screenie.

[Serdoa]

Ok, not really having gotten home early, but I'll do a report now. Lets start with the overview and our current state:




City and Worker Count: On T65 we had 5 cities, sizes 6,4,4,1,1. Total of 16 pop. 5 workers then (Nat finishing the 6th worker on that turn). Next turn we will have our 7th as Overspark finished one this turn (T67). As of this turn we are also up to 17 pop. These give us 21 points.

We are working only improved tiles, except for 1. Worker count is "ok" but we will add 2 cities shortly - and I'm planning for further settling to 9 till around T80 but have to discuss it with Noble as I'm pretty sure we are stretched thin for workers as is so that might not be sensible to do.

Technology: We have all first column techs. Pottery, AH, Archery, BW, Writing and Maths. Total of 12 techs, but for points-value Maths counts double. Gives 77 points for "13" techs. We finish IW this turn, should be another "2" techs points-wise, for another ~12 points.

As for further techs: I guess Currency after saving money is the most likely target. Calendar would be fine for another happy immediately and a second one with Sailing. Though the city for that second one isn't settled nor even planned yet, so that's probably not as important as Currency.

Else we have quite a few archers as Donovan was being a nuisance with his Impis and CH also had to snoop around with a Chariot. As we are PRO that actually doesn't matter though and they are doubly fine for our purposes currently, with Donovan is our only neighbour that we actually have a border with.

Checking the Diplomacy screen is something I've neglected since the start of the game and only now remembered that I could do that. The overview I got is that Donovan has just 3 cities which, given I'm unhappy that we have only 5, is really low imo. plako, CH have 4, Commodore and Borsche have 5, taotao has 6 and yuri leads among those we have data from with 7. yuri is IMP though, so I think him having 7 cities is not really a concern, he should be leading right now, as he most likely won't come mid- and end-game. Depends if his neighbours settled towards him or gave him free reign though, but that's nothing we can influence one way or the other.

Overall as stated above, I'm unhappy with our city count and would like to have 6 instead, but our cities are well developed in improvements which wouldn't be possible with more. Also we have not chopped much and still have many forests left. Nearly every city could chop a settler and worker right now if we would use worker turns instead of improving stuff.

Further plans are that we will settle 2 more cities till around T75, roads are currently being built for that. We can get two more settlers (one from capital built from T69-T74, a second from Nat Pagle, if we whip it on T69 [121/100] and slow-build another one from T70-T75). Alternatively we first build a worker at the capital and finish a settler there at T78. We will have 7 turns with the capital worker + the one improving the deer right now (haven't seen a plan for that from Noble) to build roads to the NE or Moai city spot. Would be exactly enough just for the new worker to finish the road to the NE-spot, having us settle on T80.

[Serdoa]

I'm thinking about researching MC, getting a Forge in the capital (should take ~7 turns if we get another mine) and building HG with the Stone we can get in 10 turns (+improvement time). Afterwards we could run an Engineer specialist and get a GE in 20 turns. We will need quite some time to research MC, so getting the Stone online should be easily doable.

We could get beaten to it, though we could pre-chop a few forests and get in done in 1-2 turns. And we can be up to 12 cities by the time we can build it I think, so that would definitely be worth it. But I'm not sure if getting MC and building a forge (and aqueduct) won't take too long.

What do you guys think?

[NobleHelium]

Well I actually want to build a fuckton of wonders but it seems we need quite a few more workers to chop those forests. I'm not sure about the HG itself even though I really like Great Engineers, the wonder itself is overrated IMO.

Wonder I'd really like to build, the usual suspect: Mausoleum. It's very hard to build the Mausoleum without a forge, so MC may be a good idea for that reason. But I'm not sure that means we should get it before Currency. Also, I count 10 forests at Murk-Eye which conveniently translates to 450h with marble.
Wonders I'd also like to build, some usual suspects: the Pyramids, Great Wall for culture on the Donovan border, Statue of Zeus (Mogor is a good candidate for this), Colossus in the Moai city, Great Library in the NE city...

I don't really know but my instinct is that we should go for the guaranteed and no-effort economy helper in Currency for now and then look at other wonder-related techs afterwards. We can also consider Code of Laws for religion. It's also true though that on a huge map such as this production is more valuable because you can't really crash your economy by expanding. Normally in a PBEM we'd be like 30% science breakeven right now at the trough right before researching Currency, yet here we are at 70% science instead.

Also, I'm not sure what you meant by Sailing earlier, but Sailing is a prereq for Calendar.

[Gaspar]

I also like GEngs and dislike HG. I also like building MoM, especially with marble. I would research Currency and build workers and settlers and go from there. No sense worrying about wonders until you correct the worker shortage.

Also, 3 cities is pretty freaking awful.

[Serdoa]

Well, we could use the GE for the MoM. Or later on Taj. Though if we want MoM we will have to go for Calendar now as I don't believe it will be around for long.

Also assuming all others have a similar setup than we do there are capitals with 8 pop right now. For some time, so I doubt these are unhappy pop. That leads me to believe that they have another happy - which could either be traded with their neighbour - but it seems every happy that is multiple times available is under jungle beyond the first so trading is unlikely - or they got the Whales, indicating they have already Sailing or the Dyes, indicating Calendar.

Basically my conclusion is that if we want MoM we either go now for it or we won't get it as with Currency -> Sailing -> Calendar we look at something like 25-30 turns before we actually have Calendar. Even if we can setup all the chops + 10 (!) workers to finish them in the same turn, I have my doubts that it is even left at that point.

As for HG: I think it is quite strong. With 10 cities gaining 10 pop + the GE-points which can translate to another wonder is imo quiet strong. Especially if it costs us only 200 hammers with Stone. I think we should really consider it. Nat Pagle can go up to 15 base hammers right now. EOT77 it can finish an Aqueduct after the settler. EOT78 we should pop borders for the Stone. So at least T80 before we have it connected (I think Quarries take 6 turns right?). We could grow to 7 with the Aqueduct, 2 pop whip for overflow and with 5 chops finish it in 1 turn (150h chops + ~50 from production [15h produced + whip overflow of 35+ which is possible). Should be doable around T82 or so. We can have at least 9 cities at that point with some whips, maybe more but would be a little bit underworkered.

I'd like to discuss that a little bit more. I do think it has value, not just for the pop but also for the GE-points. I realize that the additional pop isn't worth that much if all are working unimproved tiles btw. But it still seems to me it is worth more than 200 hammers. One question of course is if we instead should delay it to around T90 to get more cities up and be better prepared for the additional pop. Does make it more likely that someone else gets it of course. Currently I think we are already a little behind as we had Math for several turns now, so others should be equally far with tech already.

[Serdoa]

@Noble

Regarding Oversparks Deer: Overspark will grow in 1 next turn by taking the deer instead of the gold. That 1 turn the gold will be worked by Blingtron. Overall we lose 2 commerce (if Blingtron would instead work the Oasis) but gain a turn which should translate to 3f,1c.

[NobleHelium]

Well the fastest I have ever built the Mausoleum is ~t100 and I believe nobody has ever built it that fast otherwise. We are on t68 right now. Sailing will take us 3t and and Calendar will take us about 15t or less. We will also need Masonry which will take about a turn. I'd guess we'll end up with about 5t to build the wonder by t100. I didn't realize the time was passing this quickly. Sailing and Calendar aren't terrible techs to get at this point, but probably not as good as Currency. We could use a lighthouse in some cities.

Nobody that we know has Currency (can't trade gold) and I'm confident that one of the guys with a size 8 capital has religion. Gavagai is the other one with religion and he didn't settle on the first turn, so the other size 8 capital can't be him, so that person could have Calendar.

Anyway, I don't really feel strongly about any of these things, but I pretty much always want to go for the Mausoleum if possible, especially if marble is available which it is in this case.

Okay @ Overspark micro.

[Serdoa]

One 8-pop cap is Commodores.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah you're right, forgot about the civ name.

taotao's scout is going to see our settling party, but I doubt he can do anything about it.