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

[Krill]

That score increase was mostly 2 National wonders completing.

I'm mostly still amazed the economy hasn't imploded.

[Dreylin]

I thought that had happened a while ago and now you were running on duct taped square filters in a round hole a.la. Apollo 13.

[Krill]

T139 GA T4 continued

Carrying on with the south, and then south west city overviews and planned terrain improvements.




Size 8, making 24hpt at Guilds/Caste, growing there pretty much on max food and a forge. This will require 92 food, so should be done relatively quickly, especially if I steal the flood plain (it's a possibility, but it basically comes down to available worker turns, growth is quicker here than in ST because this is lower pop).





3S is a bit weird. It can go to size 10 and 28hpt, or it can build a lighthouse, work the two lake tiles and reach size 12 and work an extra workshop for 32 hpt. I'm tempted to go with the quick lighthouse here, because it will help with the growth from the lakes, and make the two coastal tiles useful to not delay growth on lower food tiles. There are going to be spare tiles no matter what I do (and I can swap some tiles around with ATAT if I want to and even both out at 28hpt). Given neither city is actually a safe one, I'm not sure it matters that much how I plan it right now.





Size 13 and 28hpt? Given 3 of the tiles are just plains farms, that is an awful lot of food just to get a good rounding. Size 10 (and save 66 food!) is more realistic.





Size 11, 3 farms (fp and 2 grassland), fish, and a bunch of specs as the backup GP generator. Not exactly a safe location, but not like there is much else to do with this city. It will steal the plains hill to knock out the courthouse at some point though.





Overview. In a note to T140 and reaching top score, none of this land was guaranteed to be mine. OH could easily have settled 3S himself and sealed it off, keeping 2 happy res away from me.

The next two cities are easy though:





Because of how I need to irrigate the corn for HWD, MiF has a food surplus of 9, then works 3 workshops to drop it to +4 and nothing to sink it into except specialists. Therefore Merc isn't entirely relevant to this city, it will always run an engineer just because of the way rounding will work: Size 10, 20hpt and 1 lake tile, clam, cow, 3 workshops and 2 farms





Just going to keep HWD small: Size 10 and 24hpt, or size 6 and 20hpt. Given that it will reach Guilds after HWD reaches size 6 (and it therefore would only be at 16hpt) I'll just grow it on the coast and allocate worker turns as they become available.





Best bit of this screenshot: borders popped in OH's front city Free At last. But because of the monument, the clam won't be lost.

[Krill]

T140, GA T5




This is everything Donovan holds. And OT4E triggered his GA, and he already has Feud. So he will easily be aiming to get to banking for this GA, and his revolt to Confucianism is likely a "Just because" part of his plan.





I can't slow AC down enough. I would just have to not work specialists. Probably not going to try.





Confirming, sticking with Caste gives a 300 point GA from here eot147. AC above could pop a mixed odds GP eot143 and then another eot153. SA can't hit a 400 point GP until eot...154. Funny, really. Going to just pull on the handbrake at AC then: I do not want to be accumulating that many artist points or culture here. It will throw out the artist then grow to size 11 as planned. Merchants here afterwards.









First 2 courthouses down, and now both HE and one NE down. In 4 turns we get to see how much of the imploded economy is actually left.

[Krill]

I aim to do a big update on T144, to check the state of the economy and see if it has unimploded after the GA. Because of shifts it's difficult to write the reports when I get in after a late shift , but I have the screen shots and will update the missing turns today, or more likely, tomorrow.

The main thing from T142 is that Lewwyn has lowest power of everyone save superdeath or DZ whom I do not have graphs on. I ran 10% EP slider because I didn't know what happened in his war with DZ, but looks like DZ defended from top power, which was Lewwyn at the time, and didn't lose any cities. So with OH looking else where, I have next highest regional power and I'm safe.

[Krill]

OK, couple of updates. I'm going to write up T141 and T142 and then play T143 a bit later after I've run a few errands. I've just done a run of 3 late shifts, and because I get back late at night I can just about play the turn, but there's no spare time for updates. Or if the turn has not yet rolled, I have to rush it in the morning before I get kicked off the PC so my fiancee can use the room for work. So some of these decisions were a bit rushed.


T141




My paranoia restarted on T141 with Lewwyn sending the trireme forward. I know he just declared peace with DZ, is he coming for the island cities? He has graphs on me, and I was about 7 turns from getting them on him, so I went to 10% EP slider. This has essentially been paid for by the turns of wealth built in ITM during the GA (It was that or an EXP Aqueduct. The wealth was a smarter choice IMO). If he was coming for me, then graphs aren't going to stop him, but if I'm just being paranoid then I can be more certain in my decisions. I also have a scout working its way back to his capital so I could try and play "Spot the SoD".





Superdeath looks to be much further west than I expected him to be. Looks like he may have been rather isolated, but he hasn't capitalised on that. OH's swap into slavery is not surprising either: He has no land for workshops but plenty of pop to whip into CKN, and he already has one GS from Free At Last so he is jut waiting on his capital to get him the second Astro GS, and he has minimum of 4 GP slots in Babylon Burning (Plus the shrine and Moai gpp, for 14gpp, and merchant slots if he is combining it with a GS, so that is 20gpp) for a Prophet or GM there so his next GA isn't a concern.

I'm trying to figure out what the reaction will be to OH's move, but I'm not sure, because until he commits to attack DZ things can always change and I can't find units sent towards DZ, or myself, and units were heading away from Cairo but then WTF is he doing? Where is Superdeath?





If anyone has been counting whilst I've been doing the city improvement updates, we can work out what the longer term projection is for MFG. The South West (MiF/HWD) is 50 adjusted hpt. The South (AT-AT/3S/ST) is 100 adjusted hpt. The East (NW/MW/AM) 105 adjusted hpt. The North (WB/BCR/Kalamazoo) is up to 215 adjusted hpt from 3 cities. The island cities (SS/FH/SL) hit 90 adjusted hpt! (And those island cities can cap out at sizes 7, 6 and 10 respectively). This isn't counting the core cottage area of ITM/LBJ/MtK/TX, the NE cities or SA, or the moai cities. That's a total of 560 hpt into military which is already in the process of switching on, and that is more than double the current nearest best, GA MFG.

We just need the turns to get it all switched on now, and to wait and see what everyone else does before we make the move to start rolling along a path towards a Conquest VC (not saying this is the aim, but that is the direction this empire heads in).

[Krill]

T142 GA T7

No pretty pictures, just graphs after running the EP slider for this turn.





So...looks like the tables have turned on Gav for Population. I'm really starting to look like the tall poppy, 50 points over Gav and 160 points over OT4E (but he has a prolonged GA to build up his tech and create a window to murder superjm). And OH is murdering his own population which means our numbers are going to start looking large than the really are in the world pop %age.





Score doesn't mean too much, except that Lewwyn has always been low on score. The only important player missing is Cairo now.





The CY graph shows quite a few problems for different players. Lewwyn had no food (his island is junk). superjm made the mistake I said he might, he has over used Rep scientists to tech but stagnated his growth and now he is going to lack the population base for the next phase of the game. OH seemed to stop his horizontal expansion for some point (read: SoZ, Parth, GL) and is gambling on those wonders to give him a window into Astro and whipped CKN to murder someone. OT4E got into a cramped position and didn't spread to islands which has limited his CY growth. Gav has hit a plateau, and I reckon he is battling costs of early horizontal expansion via murdering Elkad, and has also hit a happy cap in his older cities, like I did around T80 (look at around the 1250BC mark for my plateau where I hit horizontal and vertical growth limits at the same time).

Now OT4E is building up to murder someone, but might need to get the last bits of tech in place (ie tech Guilds and knights). OH is about to pull the trigger. Gav needs to react to those players with his own opportunistic war dec, or focus on horizontal expansion and thee delayed rewards for that. superjm has to both grow his pop base, but also has to defend against OT4E (and potentially myself).





The MFG is pitiful, but I did make a mistake last turn: the second best MFG is none GA, it's Gav, which means everyone else sucks even worse. So I need to rush to get my cities up and producing military to start rolling over people. Remember that I'm expecting to hit over 600MFG in none GA production once these cities are grown (and the granaries are almost all down, all food resources hooked in the slowest cities, all others are one there way to the required sizes).

The main problem for everyone else is there are going to need to whip everything, and it's self defeating, their expansion and then consolidation will definitely take longer than I need to start interfering with any city captures near me, ie, I can react to a war dec on superjm at probably any time, and I will still outproduce OT4E 2:1.





GNP is always weird. Ultimately, I don't care too much about this: All that really matters are the tech thresholds: Optics, Astro, Guilds, Engineering. OT4E should be getting Guilds in the next 2-3 turns IMO. Superjm is still putting too much emphasis on GNP and is about to pay for it. Gav is just middle of the road and looks to be taking just what he needs and will then follow where others go, he is reacting. Lewwyn is broke. OH has Optics and is about to get Monarchy (I think he got it eot142, same as me). I'll have to get Paper.





Lewwyn is broke in more ways than one. superjm is about to get rolled, Gav acts as a counterbalance though so OT4E may not be able to push that hard into superjm which helps me even more, every turn of delay puts me even closer to Optics, Guilds and 560MFG war machine.





Boring.





More boring.





That top power is likely going to be OH very, very, soon.

[Krill]

Turn report tomorrow, any questions, ask them now and I'll include them in the report.

[Dreylin]

Assuming you're not invaded - or decide to declare on someone to limit 3rd Party gains - who would you expect to declare on and when?

[Krill]

I think that it's a bit simpler to understand over the past 2 turns.

superdeath declared on OH. OH will win that war, or at least is going to take stuff from superdeath, the question being how much and how long it takes.

OH would then be able to move from his south west to his west and just capture everything as he goes through DZ and into Lewwyn, there is nothing stopping him except me, OT4E fighting with him for some of the gains, or Cairo smashing into his south eastern flank.

Taking out superdeaths starting island and then moving north with CKN and knights to take out DZ and Lewwyn is a dangerous play to me, but it's obvious, and that's what I'm going to have to prepare to deal with. Lewwyn has a good chunk of DZ's starting island, and if OH has that, then there is only Lewwyns starting island that is basically grassland, plains and about 4, four food or great tiles total. So I'm expecting to have to intervene at that point.

I believe OT4E will react to superdeaths partial demise and seal a deal for a chunk of island holdings only (unless his tech position is better than I can see and he can get to Gunpowder in this GA, which I seriously doubt and even then he needs Nationalism, no way he can get both in this time frame). Then OT4E can pressure north into superjm, but I don't think he can do that until after his GA is finished: his power isn't rising as if he is stacking up and I can't find any offensive units in his territory.

Meanwhile Gav is continuing to increase in power, but he is stuck between Cairo and OT4E, and until I get Cairos graphs in the next 2-3 turns, I don't know if Gav feels Cairo is a potential target. But Gav attacking Cairo doesn't fit with OH being #1 in power and attacking a weak superdeath (I don't have his graphs, but he was really backward 20 turns ago, can't have made any real headway), because Gav would be making the first move and would then give OH an opportunity to use bulbed galleons and CKN to start clearing up Cairo if Gav wiped out Cairos army, once Superdeath is evicted from his cities. The only other route Gav has is straight through OT4E who is in an MoM GA, playing Toku of France and I think has a tech lead over Gav.

Meanwhile superjm has awful power (worse than mine) and overseas expansion prospects only.

tl;dr OH has the initiative on at this point, if his war with superdeath goes really well and he starts to roll up against DZ and Lewwyn I'm going to be forced to intervene, but everyone else seems too weak and with too poor MFG to actually do anything.