[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

Two relatively eventful turns:

T83




As predicted, City 9 crashes the economy, but does not affect the eta of Alphabet; if we want it eot87 we can have it.

Plan is to go Granary>Library>(Walls). Two workers improving the corn, then either split to chop the granary and finish with a 1 pop whip, and then dump a second chop to get the library to 40/90 for a double whip. The culture opens up the fp, copper, gives perfect vision once borders pop, and we'll need the scientist slots whatever happens. The walls are just because.

Work forest hill T83, T84, then work corn and growth@2 eot88. Worker moves onto plains hill forest T85, then chops to complete T88 (second worker moves 1S and roads towards OH as we lack Sailing for trade routes, have to road into the city). Offer OB T88, whip the granary T89 and move both workers onto the unclaimed forest on T89 whatever the answer to OB: if declined, reoffer showing some military. After the road is completed T91, T92 the workers move back to mine the hill and chop the remaining plains forest. This is inefficient micro for getting the library or other hammers, but quickest way to get trade routes without showing workers on T88 when demanding OB.





Gems. Horse, copper, nothing unexpected. We have 5 improved, worked but unroaded food resources as of T84 (just played) that are not showing in this list. 9 total. 10 next turn, for 9 cities. OH has 10 showing already. We got land, some food and 1 happy. He got food, less land, and 1 happy.

Land doesn't show until late game if you can get happy.





Despite being broke, 2 other players have worse GNP than us. OH is one of those players. Gav must be the second. I don't expect Gav to beat us to Mids, however OH has Masonry and OR, so he could.

[Krill]

Turn 84:




Hello.





He just settled his 6th city this turn, this settler will be his seventh. We don't know if he is settling and island or his mainland. We will know next turn if he has Sailing. Sailing now presents itself as an option after Alphabet. Best case scenario? Alphabet eot87, Sailing eot91 with research builds. More likely I delay Alphabet slightly, start research T86 with the capital library in place? Oh not, one turn trade routes is worth more than a turn of 100% research through the capital library.





Chariot checks next turn to show units in the city. Wait until size 2 and capture, chariot to return to Sing Sing Sing to lower supply costs and barb cities don't grow if you have units outside them. I want to delay capture until closer to IW, but I won't turn down the happy if it's attainable.





This forest disappeared on T83. The world map from T82 shows the forest there: someone has settled a city off the forest, as no one settled a city last turn, and then chopped it. Could be anyone. I was wondering if we could make a play for the marble, but obviously not. I need to get the HE chariot down here with the medic scout, see if it is OH, or someone different. Probably OH, which is setting this continent up for some ethnic cleansing. I expect the city to be 1SW of the sign, with a future city to go 1N of the corn, and a missionary popping borders.








Stream of consciousness: as the worers are running off to desecrate the land to speed up Mids, there will be no further tile improvements for 10 turns. The deer is given up next turn, meaning there are only 8 tile improvements to work. I want that commerce from JJ, so plan, grow JJ to size 3, work sheep and two furs. Finish the work boat then build another: I'll have to get workboats out of JJ for the coastal cities anyway, and galleys aren't available yet. Next turn it only needs the sheep and a furs to work anyway.

BCR therefore picks up both farms and the hill. Growth@4 eot87. Yeah, one of these cities gets double whipped...Worker whipped T89, overflow into further worker leaves it around 40/60 eot90, likely completed either after growth@3 eot92, worker eot94, stack whip anger and whip T91 leaving BCR@size 1 with 14 food in the box, or just complete at size 2...or potentially, just hide the overflow behind a research build and regrow. If JJ does the double whip though...growth@3 eot85, growth@4 eot87, double whip worker T89 exactly the same, and then hide the overflow, but I can't complete the first workboat because I'll burn overflow. I could delay the worker slightly to finish the workboat. This would only delay the worker by one turn, so probably worth it, and then JJ can hide the overflow until it is ready to finish another worker, or I can dump it into a galley to whip. That's better IMO. The downside is that BCR doesn't have a third tile to work next turn. I could one pop whip a further worker in BCR on T88 actually, stopping at size 3 and working a bare plains hill to reach 6 base hpt. Or give up 3 hammers for 3 commerce and work a river plains tile.

I'll mull this one over. I am going to need workers if we hit Mids to improve the extra 25 tiles I want to grow onto immediately after swapping to Rep, but at the same time I want to grow BCR onto mines to build research, mines that we don't have. Fuck it, the unhappy would wear off before reaching the rep happy cap, so it's probably worth it to whip the workers in both cities.





I reckon Gav is 100% reliant on his capture gold to reach Alphabet, and OH isn't much better off looking at his graphs. This game feels like PBEM5B again: some players balancing expansion with bankruptcy, others balancing expansion versus tech.

[Dreylin]

Any reason to discount Barbs being responsible for the missing forest?

[Krill]

Have you ever seen barbs chop a forest? I suppose you are right, they could do it, but I think assuming the barbs did it leaves us open to being taken advantage of somehow. He's to scout the area and find out.

[Krill]

I think OH and Lewwyn are in a turn split with Donovan.

This might be interesting

[Krill]

And DZ lost a size 4 city to OH.

[Krill]

Turn 85

Turn rolls are starting to become more tense, waiting to see if someone completes Mids, and the turns gain in complexity as new players start to affect decisions.




The odds are not fantastic, but I'm reconsidering trying to kill 2 warriors with the F1 chariot. The chariot would get 3XP for a victory, so one outcome is to attack, promote to F2, heal, attack again, promote sentry and unlock HE (I say outcome, because another is to plan extensively then bounce doing no hits to the first warrior. I don't want to tempt fate). Odds of the chariot dying over both attacks is something like 30%. But this is not unreasonable: It's to unlock the HE, not to take the city. There is backup from the axe to take the warriors out, and I would not want to take the first battle unless teh axe was in position anyway, and only after the city has grown to size 2. The 4XP chariot in Sing Sing Sing could promote C1 and get 89% on the first battle, and then 96% with the second if promoting shock, which is around 18% chance of dying at some point. But the main point is the 6XP chariot can remain to the west and try to get 2 more barb kills itself. So two opportunities to get units to 10XP.

The barb city is right in the perfect location for the dotmap IMO. There is so little food in this area no point cramming the cities in, and every city can be covered from the tile 2SE of Sing Sing Sing.





Galley. I wonder if I'm the only player to not have Sailing at this point? Also note superjm has Henge.





Exploration plan: this workboat should probably head straight east. The workboat from TX can go straight south and see who is to the east of OH, or if we get OB, it can try and go through OH.

The more interesting point is that I likely need to settle City R sooner than expected to put the boundary down between Superjm and us. I expect he may still settle for the islands. Fair enough, but I want him to know that his settling on the mainland is not going to be tolerated. OTOH, he has Rome, so "tolerate" means breaking anything he sends the turn it lands and walls in city R because it's on flatland. more on Superjm after the demographics screen.

superjm had a worker mining the copper, so I reckon the galley is empty and moving it forward was a thread to not declare war. Like I want that, I want trade routes even if I still need to tech Sailing to get them with him.





Someone is 8 turns ahead on the GS. I'm actually surprised I'm not further behind, I usually screw up the GP game until CoL lands and then bang out 5 GP like most people do. I'm still thinking that the front city here is the tile west of the corn. Pop borders, vision from two hills, a longer line of movement along hills for attackers and a straight forward canal city. Easy to set up with single inner ring forest to chop to get the granary, but going to have to irrigate everything from the north over plains once CS is in. And again, pressure to set up a third front city when I'm broke.





Over halfway, 9 turn rolls to go. As of next turn, this is 5 turns of max tech, of 400 base beakers available now. Pretty much at the point that we can go straight Currency if we miss Mids.

You'll note that the screenshots have shown various tech rates. I calculate, that due to growth over the next 3 turns, I only need 40% slider this turn to finish Alphabet eot87, so that's what I'm going with. Next turn grow onto a furs and LBJ picks up another capital cottage, and the capital gets the library. Base bpt jumps to over 80.





I was fairly sure that Superjm is top food, if only because when I logged in, I don't remember the top food being triple digit but now it is, after he played. And with his just settled 6th and 7th cities, I'm doubting my memory. F8 shows OH still has top pop at between 15-16%, I have 28 pop at 13%, so roughly that captured city plus a pop point or two is the difference, 34 pop maximum. I don't see superjm making 102 food given that two new cities make at most 8 each unless he has about 4 source of happiness and all his other cities are between size 6-8 but then he'd be top pop. Superjm can't be second in land eihter, as the new city gave 3 tiles but second place land went from 108K to 110K, and OH is still way below us in F8. That could be anyone, OT4E settled a city but borders can pop between turns.

Still no one with trade routes though.

[Dreylin]

Have you ever seen barbs chop a forest? I suppose you are right, they could do it, but I think assuming the barbs did it leaves us open to being taken advantage of somehow. He's to scout the area and find out.

I was thinking more in terms of the barb city being on that spot rather than having been chopped - agree that it's not really reasonable to suppose they'd have had the time / inclination to chop it. And definitely just as a possibility than as an assumption worth building a plan on.

I guess the only reason I pointed it out was that the turn report moved from "here's this Barb city over here" to "here's why this tile over there has to have been chopped" it seemed odd there was no mention of the possibility.

Unless there's something about settling preferences that means the barn city couldn't spawn on that spot, in which case I'm just rambling pointlessly.

[Krill]

Back of the envelope calculations: third library completes eot in capital. Fourth library eot88 in second city. Academy potentially T95. Without Mids, T95: 33 beakers from 8 scientists, but capital unlikely to run 2 scientists, 17bpt from research from Kalamazoo, 11bpt from research from capital, LBJ and MtK. 62 base bpt, 51 base bpt without capital scientists. Fail gold gives minimum 5 turns max research: 500 adjusted beakers.

With Rep, capital is growing, but 3 cities on 6 scientists gives 45 base bpt. Kalamazoo is crippled at size 3 with an empty food box and needs the pig and deer to regrow ZZ plus a farm but can get 11bpt from research from other 3 cities.

And costs are constant: trade routes impact bpt so that might help some more.

Crux: missing Mids is going to suck but we can now get Currency and Sailing via fail gold, so the GNP pit we fell into has been escaped IMO.

[Krill]

Have you ever seen barbs chop a forest? I suppose you are right, they could do it, but I think assuming the barbs did it leaves us open to being taken advantage of somehow. He's to scout the area and find out.

I was thinking more in terms of the barb city being on that spot rather than having been chopped - agree that it's not really reasonable to suppose they'd have had the time / inclination to chop it. And definitely just as a possibility than as an assumption worth building a plan on.

I guess the only reason I pointed it out was that the turn report moved from "here's this Barb city over here" to "here's why this tile over there has to have been chopped" it seemed odd there was no mention of the possibility.

Unless there's something about settling preferences that means the barn city couldn't spawn on that spot, in which case I'm just rambling pointlessly.

I thought barb cities spawn on blue circles: in that case I'd expect overlap with the marble and/or the fish. Is this understanding wrong?