[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Brian Shanahan]

well from what you've put up the silver island to the wesssssht is a backwards "c". So gold island next door may be a better bet.

[scooter]

Turn 219

Plako accepted a map swap.

Could we see a screenshot of his lands? He's not reporting, so you're all we have to go on... ;(

Here you go:





He's still at 5 cities, so these are fairly up-to-date. Let me know if there's anything else that would be nice to see.

[scooter]

Turn 220

Apparently I took mostly city screenshots this time around.



I realized there was an easier solution - borrow the pigs. The capital can still get to sz6 with food to spare, so it works out to get us to 54h right on the dot to 1T this worker.

We're up to 14 workers now with two more coming the next two turns, and that should be good for the time being. Actually, every citizen is working an improved tile this turn except for two tiles in Praetorian Tour that'll get whipped away next turn for a worker, so overall things are pretty good.

I'm pretty happy with the trio of north cities, so here those are:



The iron will bounce back and forth with Merchant Gank, but I'm just going to try to cottage this up and get a library in here.



I whipped off the just-improved cow this turn so that Rage Quit could work it.



The plan is to get a settler out of Rage Quit to follow the settler coming in a couple turns out of the capital. I think I can get essentially a 2T settler here with just a double whip. Generally the plan is to whip the Altar right as it finishes to generate a bunch of overflow. I'll hold that in Research until the 3 forests chops land, and then dump it all in one turn. If I did the math right, I think I can bring it into double-whip range on the following turn. This settler will probably go to the double banana location. Not 100% sure yet.



Picked up research visibility on REM, and I swapped to Plako next. They're saving gold on Constitution currently.



Not bad. GNP is still horrible considering our EPs are inflating it a fair bit, but it should slowly start improving.

[Dp101]

Are you ever going to fill in all those tiny bits of land on your east coast? Seems like a lot of wasted grassland, and depending on how long the game goes they could become very useful tiles worked by small filler cities, maybe build a whole bunch of workshops and just pump ships out of them.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 220: THE KILLING TIME

The first data of rival research efforts has just been dropped outside the headquarters of the C&D, revealing that the Khmer are gunning for constitution, the prelude to training buffed representation specialists. The Aztec economy is catching up, with almost peak efficiency achieved between citizens and improvements as leaders prepare a consecutive altar-research-settler overflow queue in the prime city of Rage Quit. However, despite these projects the Khmer's golden age means the gap is not going to be closed in the immediate future. New demographic data shows that the Aztec citizen can expect to live to a grand 77 years of age, in spite of near certainty of their dying at the whip before seeing 40, as earlier editions of this periodical can attest. Needless to say, such projections are optimistic as they are based on health parameters, not statistics of actual lifespans, a fallacy of the census.

[scooter]

Are you ever going to fill in all those tiny bits of land on your east coast? Seems like a lot of wasted grassland, and depending on how long the game goes they could become very useful tiles worked by small filler cities, maybe build a whole bunch of workshops and just pump ships out of them.

We'll definitely fill it in eventually. That area is plenty green enough to be useful, especially if I can chain-irrigate some of it. There's just so many other food-heavy and/or land-claiming spots that are more important right now.

[Sullla]

I finally had a chance to sit down and type a nice long post about what’s going on in the game. First some overall thoughts and then moving on to specific issues.

In big picture terms, I think we’re in pretty nice shape here. If it weren’t for REM’s excellent opening, I would even say we’re in the lead right now, but I have to give them the edge with their double wonder + fast growth opening. The Demos are just great at the moment: first in Food, first in city count, first in Land area (by a lot), surprisingly tied for first in Soldiers (was not expecting that!), and second behind the Golden Age team in Production. The only number that looks bad is GNP, but we’re actually middle of the pack there, somehow sitting in 4th place despite running 0% science in scooter’s screenshot. There are two teams doing worse than us, and we’ve made essentially no effort to conduct research yet. That Rival Average is also highly deceptive due to REM’s Golden Age; take out the Rival Best, and the average GNP drops to 95. Now scooter’s correct that there are some caveats here: we’re getting a good chunk of “fake” GNP from all our Sacrificial Altars, and as one of the Imperialistic team, we need to be leading in Food and cities right now to be in a competitive position later. However, that still doesn’t take away from the fact that we have those cities already down on the ground, claiming territory and producing Food/Production/Commerce earlier than anyone else – it makes a real difference. And having EPs counting towards your GNP isn’t exactly meaningless either, since those Altars are cutting our costs and boosting our overall research capacity. I actually thought our economy would be a lot worse than this, racing out to 8 cities so quickly without doing much more than connecting our food/production resources. Once we start growing upwards and growing onto grassland riverside cottages, with the Organized + mass Altar combination slashing our costs everywhere, our economy is going to explode. We just have to ride things out for the time being while we keep pushing reckless expansion. Which we will definitely keep doing.

The largest strategy question right now is when to trigger our Golden Age. Since the capital is just about to hit size 6, and we just whipped Pocketbeetle down to size 2, I think we should get in one more whip cycle and then grow upwards for the Golden Age. We will need the capital, Pocketbeetle, and Lurker Killer to each be about size 7 when the Golden Age starts, so I’m thinking something like whip the capital for its current planned settler in 2 turns (T222), then grow after that, with Pocketbeetle doing essentially the same thing since it just whipped. That puts the Golden Age timing around T230 or maybe just before that. I think that will give us enough time to grow our core cities upwards to run specialists, while also giving us enough beakers to finish Constitution before the end of the Golden Age. Any thoughts on this?

Here’s another related thought: since our Golden Age is hitting a little later than we originally planned, we may have the opportunity to get another Great Person out during it. What if we did this: have Pocketbeetle produce the first Great Person during the Golden Age, at the 180 GPP level. The odds will be very high for a Great Engineer to come out, and we could save it for Statue of Liberty purposes. If it’s a Great Scientist, then no big deal, we get another lightbulb to help our teching. Then the capital produces the third GPP at the 270 level, which will be a Great Merchant with a pure 100% Merchant GPP pool, and Lurker Killer pushes out the 360 GPP Great Person, who will almost certainly be a Great Scientist. If we can spread religion into one of our other high-food cities, we’ve got a great chance to push out some or all of the fifth GPP at the 450 level as well. Merchant Gank looks like it could be a good choice there, with its double wet corn/wheat food resources. Get a missionary out of Pocketbeetle to convert it, let it grow for the remaining turns up to the Golden Age, and then run a ton of specialists. The city gets 14 food from working the center tile, the corn, and the wheat, so we could take it to size 8 and run 6 specialists + 1 free Mercantilism specialist… that’s 7 * 3 * 3 = 63 GPP/turn during the Golden Age. That’s enough to get another Great Person.

So to summarize:
90 GPP: Great Engineer (already done) – Golden Age
180 GPP: high-odds Great Engineer (Pocketbeetle) – save for Statue of Liberty
270 GPP: Great Merchant at 100% odds (capital) – Constitution lightbulb
360 GPP: high-odds Great Scientist (Lurker Killer) – Education lightbulb
450 GPP: even higher-odds Great Scientist (Merchant Gank) – Printing press lightbulb

Worth discussing at the very least. Anyway, so I would grow these cities after one more whip at the capital and Lurker Killer in preparation of our Golden Age. Of course, our remaining cities absolutely can and should keep whipping themselves to death while the core cities grow upwards. The only annoying thing is that we won’t be able to whip while we’re in Caste System for 6 turns, but we can always run some specialists. Once we pop out of Slavery for that brief period, we’re going to be growing faster than our worker labor can keep up in the worst way.

Random other points raised by scooter:

* In the north, I like the spot NE-N of the crabs for a city, on the tundra forest. That seems like it grabs the available goodies up there without trying to cram cities into a sardine can. I think we waste two jungled grassland tiles, a furs resource, the crummy desert marble tile, and a few tiles along the very top edge of the map with that city placement. My thinking is that this map is big enough that we won’t want to use two settlers on this particular little corner until much later, and by then we’d be better off just going for one stronger city rather than two weakish slow starters. Obviously this location is still a low priority for the moment.

* Definitely try to settle an island city ASAP. The overseas internal trade routes are worth a ton for the rest of our civ. In fact, I’ll suggest that the settler coming out of the capital might want to go to the silver island. Or maybe use the capital settler for the bananas spot, and the Rage Quit settler for this island city, although that’s a lot of wasted turns walking across the map. Anyway, swap Masterclass to a galley when it hits size 4, double whip it, overflow into the work boat for the fish. We’d be settling somewhat blind, but we know the grassland hill NW of the silvers has at least a fish resource for food, so it’s worth grabbing. And of course that spot also brings us silver for the happy cap increase and picks up key disputed territory. If we can make it work, I think it’s worth doing. (Masterclass has a wet rice and plains cattle for food, so we can delay the work boat slightly by double whipping out the galley first.)

* I concur that the double bananas location is the best spot for the settler coming out of Rage Quit. We also want to start pushing into that jungle region to claim that territory away from plako. Eventually we’ll want to do the same on the mackoti peninsula as well, once we can get a knight or something similar to whack his explorer off the one-tile isthmus.

* 14 workers are definitely not enough. The moment we stop whipping every city as soon as it hits size 6, we’re going to be horribly crunched on improved tiles. I would keep building more workers wherever possible.

* Regarding the other teams, could you give us a city count number again and a screenshot of everyone’s techs? I’m in the ded-lurker role for this game, which means I’m not logging into the game or watching CivStats on a daily basis. Thanks!

* As far as who to target later on, we know that Alhazard would be the best choice. Unfortunately, he’s the only team we don’t border which rules that out as an option. Among the other four teams, I think plako is looking like the most tasty opportunity right now. He’s significantly behind us in expansion despite his Imperialistic trait, and he doesn’t have much in the way of economic stuff to back it up (no Financial or Organized). It also helps that we have his full maps too. One of the reasons why I like the idea of continuing to push expansion towards plako is that it will also weaken his civ in the long run if we can steal away some of “his” territory on the landbridges and on the islands. Perhaps most importantly, plako appears to be playing this game in checked-out fashion: no updates in his thread, no discussion with teammates or lurkers, not much logging into CivStats. Even though I think RMOG bungled their opening badly, their higher interest level in the game makes them a less appealing target to me. Of course this can and will likely change, and plako will have Redcoats down the line to contend with, but he looks like our best longterm target at the moment. Food for thought.

I think that’s all for now. Thanks for the stream of constant updates.

[scooter]

Lots of good comments. A few replies.

The largest strategy question right now is when to trigger our Golden Age. Since the capital is just about to hit size 6, and we just whipped Pocketbeetle down to size 2, I think we should get in one more whip cycle and then grow upwards for the Golden Age. We will need the capital, Pocketbeetle, and Lurker Killer to each be about size 7 when the Golden Age starts, so I’m thinking something like whip the capital for its current planned settler in 2 turns (T222), then grow after that, with Pocketbeetle doing essentially the same thing since it just whipped. That puts the Golden Age timing around T230 or maybe just before that. I think that will give us enough time to grow our core cities upwards to run specialists, while also giving us enough beakers to finish Constitution before the end of the Golden Age. Any thoughts on this?

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I've been thinking - T230ish has been my target. That last double-whip of Pocketbeetle down to size 2 will probably be the last time I whip that city for quite awhile.

Here’s another related thought: since our Golden Age is hitting a little later than we originally planned, we may have the opportunity to get another Great Person out during it. What if we did this: have Pocketbeetle produce the first Great Person during the Golden Age, at the 180 GPP level. The odds will be very high for a Great Engineer to come out, and we could save it for Statue of Liberty purposes. If it’s a Great Scientist, then no big deal, we get another lightbulb to help our teching. Then the capital produces the third GPP at the 270 level, which will be a Great Merchant with a pure 100% Merchant GPP pool, and Lurker Killer pushes out the 360 GPP Great Person, who will almost certainly be a Great Scientist. If we can spread religion into one of our other high-food cities, we’ve got a great chance to push out some or all of the fifth GPP at the 450 level as well. Merchant Gank looks like it could be a good choice there, with its double wet corn/wheat food resources. Get a missionary out of Pocketbeetle to convert it, let it grow for the remaining turns up to the Golden Age, and then run a ton of specialists. The city gets 14 food from working the center tile, the corn, and the wheat, so we could take it to size 8 and run 6 specialists + 1 free Mercantilism specialist… that’s 7 * 3 * 3 = 63 GPP/turn during the Golden Age. That’s enough to get another Great Person.

So to summarize:
90 GPP: Great Engineer (already done) – Golden Age
180 GPP: high-odds Great Engineer (Pocketbeetle) – save for Statue of Liberty
270 GPP: Great Merchant at 100% odds (capital) – Constitution lightbulb
360 GPP: high-odds Great Scientist (Lurker Killer) – Education lightbulb
450 GPP: even higher-odds Great Scientist (Merchant Gank) – Printing press lightbulb

Worth discussing at the very least. Anyway, so I would grow these cities after one more whip at the capital and Lurker Killer in preparation of our Golden Age. Of course, our remaining cities absolutely can and should keep whipping themselves to death while the core cities grow upwards. The only annoying thing is that we won’t be able to whip while we’re in Caste System for 6 turns, but we can always run some specialists. Once we pop out of Slavery for that brief period, we’re going to be growing faster than our worker labor can keep up in the worst way.

Yeah, I definitely think we should just squeeze out as many great people as humanly possible. I have to assume we'll be in a race for SoL because obviously we aren't the only ones who would like it, and we're likely roughly last-ish or close to it in beakers researched right now. I'm betting Plako is teching that way, and Nicolae has already set their research on Constitution, so that suggests a similar path from them as well. So yeah, the more great people we can squeeze out of this golden age the better.

* Definitely try to settle an island city ASAP. The overseas internal trade routes are worth a ton for the rest of our civ. In fact, I’ll suggest that the settler coming out of the capital might want to go to the silver island. Or maybe use the capital settler for the bananas spot, and the Rage Quit settler for this island city, although that’s a lot of wasted turns walking across the map. Anyway, swap Masterclass to a galley when it hits size 4, double whip it, overflow into the work boat for the fish. We’d be settling somewhat blind, but we know the grassland hill NW of the silvers has at least a fish resource for food, so it’s worth grabbing. And of course that spot also brings us silver for the happy cap increase and picks up key disputed territory. If we can make it work, I think it’s worth doing. (Masterclass has a wet rice and plains cattle for food, so we can delay the work boat slightly by double whipping out the galley first.)

Good call on the galley->wb suggestion. Yeah, I think we should definitely settle an island ASAP. Like you, I'm thinking capital settler -> island and RQ settler -> bananas. That saves a couple turns of walking too. The RQ settler for example can get to its tile in 2 turns (settling on the 3rd) if I add a single road.

* 14 workers are definitely not enough. The moment we stop whipping every city as soon as it hits size 6, we’re going to be horribly crunched on improved tiles. I would keep building more workers wherever possible.

Hah, to be clear I meant it's good "for the moment" which means the next, oh I dunno, 5 turns or so . Our southwestern cities in particular should be pretty good for whipping out a few workers.


Other stray comments:

1) I'll definitely include techs/city counts for this turn tonight. I'll try to include those a little more frequently, although until this turn nothing had changed in the last few turns. More on that later.

2) I'm not quite ready to write off Plako in that I'd say he's known for slow-ish starts and great finishes. I don't know if I've ever seen him race out to an early lead, but I've seen him make up ground in a big way as the game progresses many times. It's definitely worth watching, though.

[Nekira Sudacne]

As far as workers go--On the other hand, the point of taking Aztecs is that you basically never will stop whipping at size 4-6 in most smaller cities. That army has to come from somewhere

Might be best to start thinking now about which city locations can be grown higher to work specalists or wonder production, and which can be safely turned into troop pumps forevermore after basic infastructure is done.

On a related note: are the two Epics available on this era start?

[Epoxy]

As for settling towards Mackoti of Byzantium, the jungled hill at the neck of the isthmus is a prudent option. Its radius denies Mackoti settling too far on our end of the isthmus, while grabbing clams, bananas, and a hill for defence. Mackoti possibly can't afford to lock down that location yet with a settler, given the worker labour everyone is burning through. We can certainly take that site more easily than Mackoti can deny it. If possible it would be good to have new intelligence of the explorer fortified there, to see if it's been reinforced.

Edit: The site can only use one clam, not two.