RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[SleepingMoogle]

I updated the turn plan on page 1 to reflect the gold situation, and realized we can improve a bit with Feros. Right now, it will finish its granary on T63, however it will only have 6/24 food stored at that time. The optimal time to finish construction is when the city is exactly halfway towards increasing population, since that will allow the Granary to completely fill its stores by the time the city grows.

Since Feros' borders expand on T59, we'll have access to the spices, which are a 2/1/1 tile even if unimproved I think. Would it be an idea to switch from horses to this tile on T60 for two turns to increase our food output?

It would go like this:

T60: 0/24 food, 45/60 production, switch to working spices
T61: 3/24 food, 47/60 production
T62: 6/24 food, 49/60 production, switching back to horses this turn
T63: 8/24 food, 54/60 production
T64: 10/24 food, 59/60 production
T65: 12/24 food, Finish granary with 4 overflow.

In essence, we would deliberately delay the granary for two turns to maximize the long-term growth potential. This should help the city's slow growth a lot.

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, turn 47 has been played according to the turnplan. Kyan & Co haven't played theirs yet so I'm not sure where their Warrior is.

On the scouting front:



I'm guessing that gold resource will be snatched by Babylon eventually. Maybe we can find a resource for ourselves in the desert to the south though. Also note that we can see a corner of Babylon's borders bleeding through the fog to the SW of Jenkins (it's hard to see in the screenshot though).

Shall we move him SW-W next to skirt around Babylon's northern borders? It should keep him safe from barb attacks and we get some visibility on their land.

[SleepingMoogle]

Turn 48:

The Citadel was whipped this turn to rush our first Chariot to completion. It will regrow to size 3 next turn though, and aided with a forest chop, will overflow into 2/3 of a Worker. Our Worker Barla Von will start mining the hill next turn.

In the meantime, Feros is now one turn away from finishin its monument. It will then switch to another Worker, aided by a forest chop or two from Anoleis.

I have moved Jenkins towards Babylon's borders this turn; no tile improvements or units were revealed though. We'll spend the next few turns skirting it towards the West so we can hopefully contact Mali and England. I'll send them a quick message reiteraing our peaceful intent.

Babylon's scouting warrior is back in view again, currently on the western shore of the lake. It looks like it was attacked by the lion on the interturn and is currently at 1/2 power so it may spend a few turns healing.

[Bobchillingworth]

Good to see that there are other precious metal resources on the map. That particular gold is going to be out of reach for a long time, if ever, but I assume that we will have our own source within reasonable distance.


I think that chariot will be scouting, correct? How about East first for the contact?

[SleepingMoogle]

That was the idea, yes.

We might want to start with sending the Chariot to the southeast to defog some tiles there, and then swing back NE assuming our eastern neighbour's capital is roughly east from ours.

Additionally, Babylon has sent us a map that will get us in touch with England!



It also gives us a look at their northern lands, which don't appear to be all that impressive. We seem to have drawn a better starting location with that river wrapping around it. They mentioned having two food resources at their capital, so I assume they will be to the south of the capital.

Anyway, we should follow their suggested route at least. We'll meet one of the two Civs to the west that was and keep continuing to scout Mali's lands. I'll send them a quick note of thanks and see where they stand on our initial offers.

[ManiaMuse]

Sounds good to me, although at some point we are going to start meeting civs that are a bit less friendly.

If we can pick up hunting/archery in trades and research HBR/IW ourselves we would be in pretty good shape as well as pretty much taking care of all our defensive needs for quite a while. Just one question, you mentioned mathematics as part of the trades but writing is a pre-req for that. Is the intention to research maths after we get given writing? In that case we might need to make some sort of guarantee so that they trust we will go through with that part of the deal.

[SleepingMoogle]

Actually, it would be the other way around. They would research math while we research Metal Casting (or HBR), because of the lopsided IW for Writing/Alphabet trade.

I'm fairly sure that Babylon's counterproposal will be to trade IW for Writing + a low-cost tech, rather than IW for Writing + Alphabet as part of a two stage trade. The Hunting/Archery for Meditation/Masonry was offered to make them more amendable for a trade that, while fair in the end, sees us benefit more in the short term.

[SleepingMoogle]

Turn 49:

Both the Citadel and Feros finished their builds this turn. Feros finished its monument and will slowly start expanding it's borders now. The Citadel regrew to size 3 and trained our first Chariot, which will start scouting towards the east.

Now there is something odd happening, and I'm not quite sure whether I made an error or whether it's nothing to worry about. Here's the citadel this turn:



Ignoring the 7/26 food for now (I know I misjudged that already.. and that turns out to actually benefit us too), we seem to be missing 10 production towards our Worker. Our turnplan had us at 40 overflow last turn, and with 11 added production this turn, we should have had a total of 51 production rather than 41. When I saw this I remembered reading about some sort of overflow cap, but I can't quite remember the specifics of it.

So here is a technical question that I hope isn't spoilerish to answer for any lurker out there: what happened to those 10 hammers? Did I mess up the math somewhere, or is there a game mechanic I'm not aware about? Last turn we had a Chariot at 18/30 towards completion, added 2 hammers from tiles worked, and both chopped a forest (20 hammers) and whipped the citadel for 1 pop (30). Combined together, we should have 40 hammers overflowing into our Worker, aided by 11 total production from working the three tiles this turn.

As for the rest of the turn, Anoleis finished his forest chop this turn, adding 20 hammers towards our fourth worker. Jenkins is following the scouting path suggested by Babylon and revealed nothing new. Our chariot (renamed SSV Normandy.. bet you didn't see that one coming ) is now 1N of our third city site. From there on it can scout the SE before moving east towards other neighbours.

Finally, Babylons warrior is on the run from another lion. It looks like there might have been two down there. In our turn plan, we're moving our Worker and Warrior onto the tile S of their current position next turn; perhaps we could offer to lend them a hand?

[Jabah]

I think the overflow is limited by the max of (production per turn AND last produced item) so in your case, you could not have an overflow bigger than 30 (chariot value).

In the previous version, the 10 hammer overflow would have been turned into gold at a decent rate. In the last patch, I can't tell for sure if you have any or none of this gold saved.

[SleepingMoogle]

Ugh.. it would not be good if those 10 hammers were just lost.

Well, the turn hasn't rolled over yet and I'm tired. Guess we'll find out tomorrow.