RBP3 - [SPOILERS] - Team DIM (Mehmed of HRE)

[meatbalz]

ilios, i'll look it over, looks good as long as we don't mind running a LITTLE bit light on military, and of course we lose 4 turns working the gold tile. that's what had initially put me off alternating max hammers + max food.

with the 25% bonus to hammers for workers you're very correct it would make more sense to chop into the workerr than the monument, we just have to decide which we prefer out of the two options:

i think the trade-off is 5 extra hammers for the chop going to EXP worker + 3 extra turns working 3/0/1 (9 hammers given it's into a worker)

one plan gets

worker T60
warrior T61
+14 hammers

another gets

warrior T53
warrior T58
+25 commerce
5 turns of production for (whatever)

we get the worker earlier, but the capital can build 5-turn workers (one of which would be done on T60 if we go for it after the settler), but can't work a +7 commerce/turn tile, so it's pretty break-even in my mind which we go for

[dazedroyalty]

I'm in favor of getting the worker out earlier than not. I'm pretty sure we won't be attacked anytime too soon as long as we have a garrison and our settler(s) are escorted.

[meatbalz]

dazed, i was referring to barbs, not other players even if those warriors aren't needed against barbs, it would be useful to get one down SE and poke around france's lands. not to mention our scouting N/NE is still hampered and given what we know of the map, someone is definitely out there.

our current understanding is civs are kind of arranged in staggered rows, i.e. instead of 4 immediate neighbours you have 6 (E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW). france gave away where they are (SE), we know who's W (ottomans), we thnk carthage is (SW) but we're missing everything else.

i think hernan showed off the power of scouting pretty well, meeting the ottomans early so we could get a head start on building relations and then following that up by finding india.

with the net result we're 95% of the way towards having a secure border and we're in an early 3-team agreement with the 2 teams that have pulled off power plays so far (india wiped out korea, india chopped out the henge).

we're of course not going for power plays, we're deliberately flying under the radar in the early game. still, if i had to guess i'd bet we're doing at least as well as anyone else in terms of map info + early contacts (a minor power play itself), and we're still in the part of the game where scouting can pay dividends. let's not forget, we've only met 4/15 civs out there.

so i'd be inclined to get more units out there scouting. the upside is going down that path we're also teching at a fair clip by working that gold tile.

the good news is in a 3-man team the vote's always going to have a clear result it stands 1-1 now, ilios the deciding vote's yours this time

[meatbalz]

also we should go back to A4 with a reply today. i'm not sure if you guys had a chance to look my thoughts on culture over, but the jist of it is for the marble site to be viable we need our first build (or at worst 2nd) to be a library, which requires A4 fronting us writing when egypt oracles alphabet

[Ilios]

Well, as soon as Cain (temporarily Khan) moves to our new city, we can move Tricky back on scouting duty. I'd like him to move SW to try and hook up with Carthage. (I'm hoping A4 can send them a message so they can send a unit our way)
After Tricky has met up with them, I was thinking we could swing him southeast to maybe meet another civ, and then northeast to try and find France's lands.
He's up to 3 XP already, let's keep our fingers crossed for 2 more battles won and we'll increase his speed by 100%, given there's plenty of forests on this map.

Brute is now headed for Aztec land, and after we meet up with them we either move north to meet the top row of civs, or just scout around our lands.

Krill thinks Rome might be either E or NE from us, so I'd rather not make our presence known just yet...

So I'd vote for worker quickly, so we can hook up that corn asap, and connect our cities to have them better defended. I've already marked out the strategic tile I'd park a chariot, which could reach each of our three cities in 1 turn.

I think the first build of horse city should be chariots. It has three good tiles to work from the start, and should we outgrow the improved tiles, we can always start on a worker until the borders pop. I've gotta say, I'm getting nervous, re barbs and especially now that France has discovered BW.

The good news is all our known neighbours have The Wheel, which means we should get a bonus when we head for it right?

After TW I suggest we go for Archery, in case we don't have copper nearby, and it's looking like we'll be the ones heading for HBR to trade with the others.

I'm really hoping France's warrior moves NE, so we can use him as cover for our settler, but I think he'll probably head E or SE...

[meatbalz]

agree w/ chariot.

agree w/ starting to get nervous re: barbs, hence why i disagree w/ worker build but majority has spoken just one point to make - if we're planning on building workers from DIM after settler for horse city comes in, it would be better to work the gold tile & build warriors to fend off initial barbs.

why does krill think rome's N/NE of us??? that would suck, massively suck all the more reason to get those horses in play asap

i'll need to 2x-check the math but i doubt we've met enough civs to get the discount to rsch. beakers are rounded down to nearest integer + discount from civs met is applied before pre-requisite multipliers. will check in a sec.

HBR is looking more and more likely so archery's my preference as well, also gives us something else to contribute when alphabet comes in.

i'd be VERY hesitant about leaving our settler uncovered around france's warrior, NAP or not.

haven't checked how many movement turns we're talking to get our warriors to make contact based on currently available info, will go back and dig up previous posts to get an idea of a rough timeline. should be good to meet before T60 but the earlier the better + barbs may have their say in the matter.


edit: confirmed that at the moment we wouldn't receive a discount from meeting other civs. with 4 teams met, we would need to be generating 14 beakers/turn to get a 1 beaker/turn discount

if we meet a 5th team it's much more favourable and we'd only need 11

[Ilios]

Rome:

Exploit is to India's west. Dantski is to former Korea's NW. Rome is to their west again, which could mean Rome is to our E or NE (because of the E-W wrapping)
Anyway, we're talking about including Rome in the tech alliance, which will give a NAP with all those involved. And let's not forget, with research and upkeep costs going through the roof, Rome won't be getting those aggressive Praetorians that fast.
So even in the unlikely event of Rome coming after us, it's not like we're going to stop 'em with chariots...

Discount:

Well, with the gold mine in play we should be getting close to 20 beakers/turn right? Four percent discount per civ that knows the tech if I remember correctly.

Scouts:

Brute should reach the outskirts of Aztec lands in about 10 turn, provided he doesn't need to heal up after a barb attack (and provided he doesn't die!)

I've just sent a quick message to A4 asking if they have an idea where Carthage is located, and to have them send out a warrior to meet up. They are probably located to our S SW. I would think we'd need 10-15 turn to get there. (depending on barbs and them moving our way as well)

Marble site:

Well, let's hope we have a religion by then, because I'm not looking forward having to build an expensive library in a city which won't produce any beakers...

[meatbalz]

rome: yup, but chariots are just fine for a choke in case they're not in the tech alliance. and we have to assume they'll be beelining IW so maintenance costs etc aren't going to really bite them until that's already researched. we have to hope they single out one person who's outside the alliance to target, otherwise i would consider us to be at significant risk of attack. i'd like to meet rome sooner rather than later in order to decide for ourselves whether they're likely to be in or out, and if the latter take pre-emptive action i.e. choke.

rome cont: i'd like to get a unit up there right now. they will find our approximate location out in the negotiation process regardless of whether they end up in the alliance or not. if they're in the alliance we need to meet them before techs are traded anyway. if they're not in the alliance and we haven't met them we'll have absolutely no idea whether they're coming for us or not + they might be more likely to attack us if they've met all their other neighbours and not us. all our plans are for naught is rome does turn out to be our N/NE neighbour and they come after us.

rsch costs: i went through the tech rsch mechanics many pages back "tech discount" is not a discount but a multiplier and depends on number of starting civs (the 4% rule of thumb applies to standard 7-civ start). for 17 starting civs the multiplier to base beakers per civ is 0.0176. so if we've met 4 civs who've rschd the tech, we get a 7% boost to (base beakers + 1). unfortunately this is rounded down so even running binary science @ 20 beakers/turn we only get a 1 beaker/turn boost. you then get an additional multiplier to beakers based on pre-requisites, but that's applied to the rounded-down figure and itself then rounded down. on the + side, we'll zoom through pottery: @ 100% science it'l take us ~5 turns. great news as we get those cottages up + running sooner.

scouting: yup my main worry is barbs. we're going to start seeing them very soon & need to factor in not just it might take longer to move over safe terrain (i.e. not necessarily a straight path), and time spent healing. it looks like we should be ok to meet carthage + aztec, what about if rome is in the alliance as well? we'd need to meet them too. i can't recall whether we have a spare warrior available to scout towards france.

marble site: ottoman blue dot will get a library very quickly, half-priced too. it'll take ~30 turns for borders to pop but after that the wheat tile is toast until we hit 100 culture ourselves. i walked through the culture mechanics i think on the previous page because of the concern you first raised and rightly so as we need to take action or end up with a badly stunted city. religion is fine but we'd need to get it in there first, and it would only add 1 culture per turn. we could build a monastery + pump out missionaries but that depends on what our military situation looks like. and we'd need meditation. again, the discussion is either 1 page back or 2, but the bottom line is we need culture in marble city ASAP if we expect blue dot to be a near-term priority for the ottomans.

[meatbalz]

two side notes:

1) india's thread has shot up in view count. they're up to something
2) i'm guessing france might be settling in our direction + were blowing up our behinds with the "our land's terrible in your direction" BS. would be good to get a unit out there sooner than the ~20-25 turns best-case it'll take tricky to get there.

[meatbalz]

ummm... i'm playing the turn but there's a bit of a problem



if there's a wolf in the circled tile we lose the settler. so be it...