Confucianism still hasn`t been founded. It`s quite funny that The Eternal Empress pursues, well, basically all the religions! I guess we have a very good chance at landing our 3rd religion on t118. My hope that it lands in Dalietimishi, which is at least quite hard to attack. It could, of course turn up in a hard-to-defend city instead. Who knows.
The settler is ready to build a new city next turn. An archer is standing next to it, to act as MP. Danashri could use an archer as well, hence the build in Bulugan. Babukhan will get a wheat farm next turn, that`s why it wasn`t whipped this turn. Oghul Qaimish whipped out the Ger as recommended and is free to start another build next turn. Btw, the whip anger in our core is as follows (if we whip this turn): Oghul Qaimish 61(!) turns, Nambui 55 turns, Muqa 25 turns, Toregene 13 turns and Borte 11 turns. We`re getting control of the copper tile in 2 more turns! The banana is now ours.
Radnashiri whipped out a Library. Kokejin is building the missionary for the southern city. Muqa is almost completing the Ger. It gets a lot of overflow that could be directed into a Courthouse.
At full speed we`re making 280 beakers. The one thing that holds us back is our expenses.
Graphs and demos: We`re using the whip a bit more actively than the other players. Hopefully it`ll help us out in the long run. Our demos still look good, though we can`t match dtay in his Golden Age (not a surprise).
EDIT: We`re getting 7 population plus a new city next turn so the demos should look better then.
Yeah, I love how it looks like we're role-playing Isabella and her Maximum Religious Emphasis! Obviously not going to role-play the other aspects of AI Izzy's personality though. ... Unless dtay starts to look like a soft target for expansion at some point. (Still the only other player to adopt a religion! And it's not the same as ours!!! [Cue Izzy ranting and raving about the horrible, evil, very naughty Zulu!]) dtay being dtay though, and our border being what it is, I don't expect that to happen any time soon.
I'm going to hope for Confucianism to land in Muqa, though the chances aren't spectacular. As it'll be size 12, and with at least one religion in all our other big cities too, it's at least possible!
Great news on the cultural situation around Nambui! Also, the whip anger stuff is interesting. If I understand correctly, that means Borte will be completely out from under whip anger next turn (the mouse-over on the whip button shows the number of turns of anger you would have left if you were to whip now) ... but at size 12, with so many good tiles to work, at least one of which is sitting idle, and bureaucracy in its future, I think we may be done whipping it forever outside of emergencies and really special projects (e.g. to generate overflow for a wonder or as part of a major military campaign, though there could be other reasons as well). Toregene isn't quite in the same category, but I'd at least leave it alone for a couple more turns right now. Did it ever complete the worker it started a few turns back, or is it still waiting in the queue for at time when Toregene is stagnating?
We could really use some workers in the northwest, by the way: Oljei Taikhu will have corn and horses in its first ring that need improving, and we'll want roads on (at a minimum) Bulugan's corn and the tile where the Settler is currently standing.
Oghul Qaimish will have 17 base hammers of overflow next turn (>2 turns' worth of production) so there's a question of where we want to put it. We could 2-turn a Worker with a bit of overflow, get a good start on a Settler, one-turn a Work Boat (I don't know if we actually need one) ... or we could build Wealth for a turn (8 gold worth, or 5 if we drop the mine in favor of e.g. the farm for that turn) so the overflow will go into a Courthouse.
The turns are flying by and if Donovan plays his turn then t117 would be up already! (I`m not gonna play until tomorrow regardless).
Here`s a few screenshots of the area around us which I haven`t focused too much on. First, there are two workers lined up for improving the corn of the new city asap. The corn has a half-built road so both workers can head over to the pasture once the farm (and road) is done.
The gold island SW of Babukhan is under Joey`s firm control. We can`t do much about that for the time being. Note that his marble city, Red Coral could be targeted with a sneak attack. He`s got 3 units there to defend it but we might have an opening there. Fortunately, I checked the event log. Joey also started a Golden Age! Do we need to get out a GP asap in order to keep up with our neighbors?
I just saw your last post. Oghul Qaimish has a lot of options next turn, I`ll have to think about it. My first thought was going for a settler or a Courthouse.
EDIT: Yes, Borte`s whip anger is about to disappear. I agree with letting it grow without more whipping.
Aha! Well done with the workers! Getting another Great Person out (presumably after our shrine) would definitely be helpful. It might be interesting to let Oghul Qaimish stagnate on scientists and/or merchants soon, for instance.
Half way into t117 all the others had pressed end of turn so I got to play another double turn. The turns brought mixed news. The good news is that we get to know if we landed Confucianism quickly. Take a look at that. It landed in.. Oljei Baaji! As for the bad news, you can probably guess what I`m referring to by reading the event log. The free Confucian Missionary is on its way to Muqa to spread the faith. It`s really annoying to lose 40 hammers like that. The rng clearly doesn`t like us much. We`re saving gold for now. Monarchy is actually a 1 turn tech now. If we only can control our expenses a bit.
I think Radnashiri`s border expansion would "give" us the seafood (2N of the city) in Oljei Baajis second ring for free as its surrounded by our culture. I`m working on getting a Buddhist missionary down there. We now have 5 Courthouses in the production queue. We can whip them out soon.
Nambui will soon get its Moai! It finally got control over the copper this (t118) turn. A worker is in place to improve it. Oh, and Mandukhai, our 18th city was founded the turn before. It will get a corn farm next turn. Btw, Oghul Qaimish is building a settler. It`s working a single scientist for the time being. Whipping out the settler would cost 3 population. Maybe we can do it next turn.
Finally, our galley NE of Empress GI found a couple of food sources. It looks, however, like dtay is about to claim that land. Let`s see! Gavagai`s archer is moving S on the gold island, I`m expecting a settler to appear shortly.
Graphs and demos: Joey`s stats are a bit scary to be honest. The Golden Age won`t last forever but he could probably target an advanced tech or two of his choice here. If it`s a military one - well, then we need to respond accordingly. Monarchy will leave us just one tech away from longbows, which are really hard to break through in the early Medieval era. Also, both our direct neighbors are doing better than us in crop yield now.
Gavagai is indeed settling the gold island next turn. If we want that island we`ll have to take it by force. Also, Dark Savant has quite a few workers at the island NE of Kokejin. It seems a bit overkill to me, but he probably wants to get his city up to speed asap. Maybe the workers on the mainland are starting to run out of things to do..
A funny thing I just noticed is that Dark Savant has declared war on both Krill and Gavagai once, as they have that -3 "You declared war on us". We really should find another trade partner to fill up all our routes but the only ones with Alphabet are Couerva and Dark Savant.
The pRNG result on the failed Judaism spread (and the Confucianism holy city for that matter) is indeed frustrating, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
One note: We don't need to rush to a golden age just to "keep up with the Joneses." Non-SPI civs usually have to time their GAs for civic swaps, and GermanJoey's hand was forced by landing a Great Spy in place of a scientist. (We're not the only ones the pRNG hates apparently!) We can plan our first GA to try to land us a first-to bonus, or to fuel a military push, or after Engineering MoM or something, if we want.
- Bayan Khutuug could really use some more culture. I agree that the lighthouse takes priority though.
- Whipping the Settler in Oghul Qaimish would (I believe) cost 3 pop and generate quite a lot of overflow. That city's been whipped rather hard already, but it also doesn't have many good tiles to work, so whether we do this depends on where the Settler is going.
- Our expenses (and GNP) should be looking better soon, thanks to the Courthouses we've got queued. They'll also help us stay ahead in EP unless someone is following us to CoL soon, so we should decide whose research we want to see, I think.
Just generally speaking, the things within our control are looking good! The whole "quantity of land available" thing hurts - it's clearly our biggest long-term problem - but there wasn't a whole lot we could have done about that short of blitzing State of Zijin and setting ourselves back in other ways.