Couple of thoughts on your thoughts on thoughts on thoughts:
I'd like blue dot on the marble because of the overlap with YM. Yaqob Marley is not a very good capital and we don't need it to work all the tiles in its radius. I don't even know if it has enough food. In that case, we're better off with 2-3 size 8 to 12 cities on the same land in the long run.
In the same vein, reach for cows will be a good late game filler. Even right now it can help work cottages for the surrounding cities. The more cities: the better. That's the essence of high-level play from what I can tell (see spoiler)
PB34 spoiler
That is the essence of OT4E's strategy in PB34. I'm dead-lurking (thank YOU!) that game but I can still tell when someone has 30 plus cities. That's why he's going to win.
So, from that perspective, let's keep our focus on what helps us expand ASAP. To that end, I'm really liking Civil Service: chain irrigation helps us boost up newer cities, and makes more city spots immediately viable. Great Library is nice, very nice, but is it, even now, going to provide a limited return? 8 gpp + 6 beakers: that's 2 great people and 200 beakers over 37 turns for 175 hammers... Okay, that's worth it. MoM is worth more though: 225 hammers for golden age/mini spiritual. But is there any spot that we have access to with 7 forests? I'll see if I can find one.
Chopping into a resource doubler for fail gold isn't a good play (as far as I can tell; it's better than chopping into a not-doubler) -- but whipping a wonder (national epic) for fail gold is. From what I've see the way it works is: whip national epic one place, cancel and put on another another another until you get it in the place you want. Then you failgold cascade out of it.
So, I'll look for a MoM spot in my turnset, as well as a Great Library spot. Do we have alphabet yet? Doesn't anyone else have calendar (Mansa does -- anyone else)? Maybe I'll put some spies in Mansa and Boudica.
(January 9th, 2017, 16:31)Zalson Wrote: whipping a wonder (national epic) for fail gold is.
I would not recommend whipping wonders for failgold except in very special circumstances. If you're desperate to get a bunch of gold RIGHT NOW and you have the doubler resource (and preferably are IND and OR) I guess I can see it, but I almost never would want to turn population into cash (with the wonder whipping penalty) this way. (Whipping into a wonder with the resource doubler and OR, even for failgold, is a whole different story.)
Also, I'm suddenly delightfully behind on my city write-ups! (Delightfully because it means the empire's been expanding nicely!) It might take me a while to catch up, but here's the next entry:
The city of Bwca has a Welsh name that tends to be used as a generic term for anything supernatural, and in the United States is mostly connected with stories told by Welsh miners - like those of the iron mine right in the city's first ring - who crossed the Atlantic with stories of Bwcas knocking on the walls of their mines to warn them of (or according to some to cause!) impending cave-ins. The image I selected here is the work of Greg Pro:
"Eddie was so startled he dropped his tools all over the ground. The voice sounded just like that of his old friend Joe who had died in a cave-in a few months back. Eddie had borrowed five dollars from Joe and had never returned it. Eddie went into the shaft, and sure enough there was Joe Trelawney's ghost, shrunk to the size of a two-foot dwarf with a big ugly head, large ears and a crooked nose. He wore a peaked hat, a leather jacket, and water-soaked leather boots." -S.E. Schlosser, Spooky California, from "Tommy Knockers"
"Tommy Knockers" is the more common American name for this version of the Bwca, which (as in the quoted story) is much more likely to be considered a ghost than most Bwca in Wales itself - where the name seems most often to refer to house spirits like Bogles or Brownies - the likes of "The Elves and the Shoemaker" elves. Unlike those elves (at least in modern retellings) though, Bwca inflict much worse punishments than mere abandonment on those they once helped if slighted, cheated, or tricked into being seen.
Of course the name Bwca also derives from the same root as bogey, bogle, hobgoblin, and bogeyman. The interrelation of folkstories and their names and characters is a fascinating study.
The wonder penalty is negated by the resource doubler -- so you're converting population into cash. I've seen some YouTubers do it (that's why I said it was a good play). With OR/Forge, you're converting population into 150% cash. Is that valuable? Anyone have an answer? i agree with your answer that it should be used in specific circumstances. Maybe saying it was a good play was too strong.
I took a look and we've got two spots that don't require CS to be viable spots. The other ... 7 spots we've got available need CS to be useful. So, my first research is going to be Civil Service.
My goals will be Blue Dot and Chinook. Other than that, without CS, we don't have enough viable spots.
Another excellent entry, RefSteel! I especially liked the bit on the naming and derivations thereof. The picture makes me think of the svirfnebli or "deep gnomes" from my Dungeons and Dragons days. D&D certainly grabbed myths of every kind and mashed them together into a huge jumble of influences.
Whipping wonders is something I usually try to avoid, because of the penalty. Much prefer to whip something for max overflow and dump that into the wonder, instead. There is usually something useful that can be whipped, less costly buildings or military units or another worker or whatever.
What defenders does Chinook have at this point? Cultural pressure in the area may be a problem if/when you take it, but it would be a nice acquisition if it will not immediately get swamped by AI culture.
Since part of the idea is to learn about the game (and not just about cool ghosts) I'll try to treat this in some depth:
There are a lot of bad strategies espoused on Youtube videos. Whipping for failgold can feel pretty good because you get lots of gold ~right away, which looks really impressive, but unless you desperately need to use that gold just as immediately, either you've mismanaged your city to let it grow beyond its good tiles with nothing better to whip it for than gold, or you're better off just continuing to slow-build the failgold, swapping to wealth after the real wonder completes, and whipping whatever other stuff you would have built in lieu of wealth. (This isn't likely to be your best build order - just better than a failgold whip.) At a city with decent production tiles, it's still better to refrain from whipping even if you would still have been building wealth after whipping the wonder! (And at a city without decent production tiles, you're better off working its commerce tiles instead of whipping off of those.)
Some things to consider:
- For a project that can wait to be completed, like not-instantly-urgent gold (assuming Wonder with doubler and neither OR nor Ind vs. just building wealth, so the conversion is the same) working a grassland hill mine is strictly better than whipping the mine's pop point away. Even with a granary, the same is true of a plains hill mine if the city is at size 6 or above. At size 10 or higher, it's better in the long run to work any mine - even desert, snow, or tundra - than to whip it away! (Again, this assumes you won't need the thing you're building right away. In many cases, you do! Failgold is rarely one of them.) And if you're not working mines, you're either making a mistake or working tiles that are even better (for your situation at least).
- The forge actually makes whipping wonders for failgold worse for a long-term gold need: You'd get the same +25% when building anything else, including Wealth, so the extra from OR becomes x6/5 instead of x5/4. (The doubler resource just "cancels" the whip penalty.) This means that - again unless you desperately need the failgold ASAP - it's a mistake to whip off of a grass hill mine with Forge + OR and a doubler (without IND) in any city above size 2! (Above size 8 for a plains hill mine; above 14 for the lame mines.)
- None of the above even takes the whip anger into account.
- The opportunity cost of whipping a wonder is enormous! First you have to build enough of the wonder that it's whippable (or grow really large on tiles so poor that you don't mind whipping them away) in each failgold city. Then you have to commit the whip in each as well. That's a lot of resources committed to turning hammers into gold - and if you wait for other cities to get enough hammers in to do reasonable whips, it could be a long time without a wonder you want and could have already completed.
- If you were building a national wonder without a resource doubler, would you - under non-cash-emergency circumstances - seriously consider slow-building another copy in another city just for the extra failgold from OR in comparison with building wealth? Of course if you would otherwise have been building wealth in that city - and can wait for the gold until the wonder completes - then you should ... except that's a really big, double-barrelled "if!" The real problem is that in most circumstances, building wealth is itself a mistake: It's really good in certain special situations, but not something you have time and build queues for normally, because other builds are more valuable to the empire. Whipping Wealth (even at de-facto +20%) needs a very, very special case.
-Also note that it doesn't work except in cities later in the default city list - generally those founded later - than the one where you actually want the wonder to complete. Otherwise, you'll end up with the wonder in the wrong city!
- Finally, since this game is partly meant to prepare for MP, note that some MP mods (like RtR) eliminate failgold for wonders when you complete them elsewhere in your own empire. This isn't to prevent whipping: It's to prevent slow-building failgold with e.g. the combination of Ind, OR, and the resource. Building "Wealth" with a +100% bonus (or more!) can indeed be powerful if leveraged correctly.
(January 9th, 2017, 16:31)Zalson Wrote: I'd like blue dot on the marble because of the overlap with YM. Yaqob Marley is not a very good capital and we don't need it to work all the tiles in its radius. I don't even know if it has enough food. In that case, we're better off with 2-3 size 8 to 12 cities on the same land in the long run.
In the same vein, reach for cows will be a good late game filler. Even right now it can help work cottages for the surrounding cities. The more cities: the better. That's the essence of high-level play from what I can tell (see spoiler)
That made me stop and think, which is good. I haven't read any of PB34 yet - I'm still wading my way through PB27, and there's a lot wading yet to do...
Your statement makes we think "why don't we then see ICS as a strategy in games?".
I suspect there is a selection bias in my thinking - people post more screenshots of their large cities, and I remember them more than ones of filler, so I think of super-cities when I think of RB games. And those supercities, driven by national wonders, academies or specific functions (great person farm, wonder builder) need all their tiles, eventually at least.
Other than that, I guess there is the cost of setting up a city.
The cost of settler + MP unit isn't that hard to pay (whip) back in any non-terrible city, and maintenance can be handled (yay for ORG), so I can see that trying to work every tile better than tundra could be a net gain. But it compete against other infrastructure or the military to take "better" cities more cheaply from other players...
I suspect that I may be under-dense in my settling (I remember reading that it's more efficient to share food between two smaller cities for whip purposes, at least).
As for sharing tiles, I can see "reach for the cows" working nicely, swapping cottages back and forth with Brocken and maybe Chinook until the age of the whip is eventually over. I've looked at exactly which tiles Blue dot would share with YM. I think its the floodplains, plains hill mine, the gold and some flat plains. I am having trouble seeing much gain here, as we want to keep putting the gold through YMs infrastructure, even more so if we go Bureacademy, but I guess that BD could work the mine to let YM grow some more, and pick up some of those plains post-irrigation if YM hits a happy or health cap?
And yes, Civil Service to get some irrigation going around YM and the new cities looks sensible - I'd not really appreciated the impact of settling the drier land.
Sounds like you're happy to stay building for a little while longer? Suits my play style...
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
Hi guys, nice to see this SG moving along.
Unlucky with Boudicca being set on your destruction, but nice job in holding her off.
Having gotten peace with her and your peaceful expansion prospects nearing an end, now really is the time to think slightly further ahead.
As I see it you've grabbed a good portion of the land available and your economy is doing fine, but just playing decently isn't an automatic win.
You could play this peacefully.
Get MoM (always great).
Get GLib (better than normal with hardly any food-rich cities and marble)
Cottage "all" green land you have.
Put up filler city/-ies near Brocken (for cottage growing) and eventually add Oxford.
Be first to Liberalism.
Grab Taj.
Run over the backwards nations with cavalry.
Re-evaluate situation or just keep on going until you hit dom.
Though...
Boudicca has shown that she's not afraid to put up arms against you. (so you'll need some defensive capability)
and
Mansa might just be the best techer in the game. (he won't trade his way to a tech lead, but financial + emperor vs noble tech costs do matter)
and he seems to have fairly good land...
Actually, in your situation I might consider taking the fight directly to Mansa.*
1) He's got better land (at least nearby compared to the Celts)
2) He's a bigger long term threat (so unlike the Celts there's value just in hurting him)
3) Fighting at equal tech is good MP practice
4) From screenshots it looks as if you've got decently sized cities without really working many cottages. Why not practise whipping up an army before someone with better land passes you by?
*Actually, I'm playing a shadow game from your t19 save and at t110 I've so far only fought against stray barbs and don't have any attack plans as of yet.
I don't see why we can't do both: peacefully expand and go try to kill Mansa
I'll see what I can do. Taking Chinook will put us in a nice position to take it to him. Civil Service/Machinery/Construction seems like the order of the day?
RefSteel, thanks for the in-depth explanation on why you shouldn't whip national wonders. I shall no go and whip the palace in every city, just to make sure we get fail gold (joke). Need to do some ghost research. Cuman needs renaming!
(January 10th, 2017, 11:44)Zalson Wrote: I don't see why we can't do both: peacefully expand and go try to kill Mansa
I'll see what I can do. Taking Chinook will put us in a nice position to take it to him. Civil Service/Machinery/Construction seems like the order of the day?
If we're really lucky, he'll build some nice wonders for us just before we invade.
The downside of this is that we'd need enough troops to cover the Celtic flank as well as to take down Mansa, but yes, we gain more from taking him down than Boudicca. He'll probably have war elephants, which makes waiting for knights a little less valuable, so maces + cats? Real treachery would be to trade for ivory and whip a few elephants of our own and then declare... (you can do that with a two-way trade I think?). That's if we have time to get HBR and a couple of stables up, of course.
Will let the turn player get on with it now.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
(January 10th, 2017, 11:44)Zalson Wrote: I don't see why we can't do both: peacefully expand and go try to kill Mansa
Perhaps this is some new definition of the word "peacefully" that I was not aware of?
Mansa can be a rather mixed blessing to have in a game. He can make an excellent trading partner, and is usually not all that aggressive against his neighbors. On the down side, he can be a threat to run away technologically and his skirmishers make taking him down early rather difficult.
The skirms should not be much of a concern for you, since it looks like you will likely be facing longbows and/or war elephants by the time you can muster an army to attack him. Not that this is better than skirms, of course. Some elephants of your own from traded ivory could be nice, although HBR and stables are a bit out of your way if you are not planning to eventually go down the knight path. If you are thinking sooner then going directly for maces and cats would probably be faster; make sure to bring some spears for the elephants in either case.
![[Image: 0_33243800_1333665987.jpg]](http://www.gregpro.com/wp-content/fancygallery/8/18/0_33243800_1333665987.jpg)
I especially liked the bit on the naming and derivations thereof. The picture makes me think of the svirfnebli or "deep gnomes" from my Dungeons and Dragons days. 
D&D certainly grabbed myths of every kind and mashed them together into a huge jumble of influences.
