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

[Krill]

New World Map:

[Krill]

Turn 143 and Turn 144

I'm going to try something a little different and go through the cities again, but showing both screenshots from during and after the GA; it's not like there is much to see in the difference and the tile yields are easily understandable, but hey, more pictures means it must be better, right?

First of all, going over the world map. It's worth reading the prior post written in reply to Dreylin. If you check the demos, you can see I have 20% more land than second place in land area. I believe that even though my GNP is pretty crap, I'm probably further ahead in the development of this land than other players are in improving their expansions: by this I mean other players will have to expand again to match me, and those new cities will be behind in development, so I will get a window of opportunity to attack someone, somewhere, whilst other players still recovering, growing and improving their land and cities. The downside is I have given other players an opportunity to attack me whilst I and still recovering from crashing the economy and growing that final wave of expansion cities, but Lewwyn and superjm are weak and OH is taking on superdeath, so it seems like I've covered that window well enough.

It's also questionable who has space to grow and where. I think there is space between Lewwyn, superjm and OT4E but it seems to be islands, and that will be easy to take and hold, so will require solid defenses as well, which sucks up more resources. That just widens my window of opportunity.

Second of all, I've been considering tech.




What does religion have to do with Tech? Theocracy. It costs 1k adjusted beakers to research to it, and 40 hammers per city to spread religion. Vassalage appears to be a much cheaper option to get units up to 5XP, and will surpass the value from Bureaucracy quite soon (around the time the next GA is available for sure). Bureacracy costs 8 gpt more than Vassalage, and Vassalage saves 21gpt on units. Add in inflation, and it's fair to say that right now Vassalage is worth about 40gpt in saved gold compared to Bureau. Bureau is worth 30 commerce per turn, which through multipliers is worth a little bit more than Vassalage (breakeven slider is about 25%), and with the Academy, I'd happily accept that Bureau is worth 45, even 50gpt. But to run Bureau and Theo will cost 1K beakers, or I could just ignore Theo, and religion completely until and unless I capture a shrine.

That 1K beakers is Optics. It's Most of Feudalism. It's 8 turns delay on Guilds. It's not worth it right now. I don't need the happiness anymore, so I'm going to stay without a state religion, and will reconsider at the next GA.

With this in mind, I think tech becomes much simpler. I want Guilds ASAP for knights and workshop hammers, but I need Optics first: I don't have fantastic port cities, and I want to start getting Carracks out from WB, and two stacks east and west to so I can respond to attacks on DZ and superjm. I need the navy built and in position before I build the army. Construction and Engineering come after Guilds for the road movement and Castles trade routes (I have stone from Superjm, I will build a few walls with it but I doubt I will have stone for Castles). Banking needs to be timed to come for the start of the second GA, or the end. Given I can start the second GA on T150 if I don't get a double Artist, and I really need to, I can't be sure when I need it, but I really, really want it as it's worth about 80 beakers or gold per turn (I will run a few engineers), which breakeven is a 60% increase in beaker output.

Right now I'm saving gold on Compass. I will save 125gpt, and I have enough gold saved to get Compass this turn if I want it, but then have nothing left in the bank. I'll save gold until I have the ability to get all the way to Optics, which is something like 2 turns of max tech and one turn of 50%. Each turn of max tech costs 370 gold. ETA Optics eot151 without additional wealth building.

















I made a decision on T143 to build more workers. I was working out how long it would take to improve all the tiles, and it was absurd. So I'm building a further 8 workers. There will be one gang of 9 improving the northern river for both HE cities, a gang of 6 improving the western river, gang of 4 improving the SW and a gang of 6 improving the south, and a couple of workers otherwise finishing specific cities (1 is hooking a spare source of furs). This way both HE cities will have all tiles improved for when they finish growth around T150, and the south should have everything improved as growth completes as well.

Onto the cities, with F1 first.







Compared to pre GA figures of +41gpt at max tax, 4ept and a max beaker rate of 430gpt, and first turn of GA making 172gpt at max tax, 612bpt at max science, now make 114gpt 22ept and 517bpt at max tax and science respectively.








I'm really struggling to grow ITM, because Kalamazoo can't give up the pig. This is something else that is pushing me towards Vassalage. I'm windmilling the hills, so it will grow, but it's not that important compared to improving the other cities IMO. ITM is going to finish the Xbow and will probably just prebuild a mace and HA waiting for Vassalage or wealth. I'm keeping a record of how many cities that this decision is coming up, because a mace and HA prebuild is almost a full turn of saving gold, and every turn I save on reaching Optics and Guilds is on one extra Carrack and one extra knight from the HE cities.








LBJ is going to stagnate at size 12 as previously discussed. A few tiles moves around, it reaches 12 base hpt. Same plan to prebuild mace and HA (or we go for wealth in thesse cities, but I figure this is a quicker way to hit the power spike if we can pump out a bunch of knights and maces right at the start of the GA without whipping). So that's 2 cities.








Minor fuck up here, I cottaged a tile needed to allow boats through from the western ocean out through 3S. OTOH, If I need to move a stack through, I'll just fort over the cottage: needs must etc. Can't quite get MtK to 12 base hpt (without farming over the tile that should have been forted) until Merc is in. Same plan, prebuild Mace and HA or wealth. That's 3.








TX will go straight onto Carracks once Optics is in, and needs that hill windmilling. It will give the corn back next turn.








Kalamazoo will has built one worker, will build another. Then likely onto wealth. The second worker is going to head to the farm 4E1N of Kalamazoo to chop the forest and prepare the irrigation chain that leads up to the BCR corn. It will start the long, slow growth to size 11 after the worker is done. I reckon it won't reach size 11 until T170. But as it is wealth or unit prebuilds, that's 4.








Growth@11 eot144, growth@12 eot147, growth@13eot149, growth@14 eot152. So fast the workers can't even keep up, but they should finish around T155 with the city capable of hitting 40 base hpt. Or rather, it would do if I had Guilds.








Poor JJ. Thinking about it, I could let JJ have the sheep and grow a little faster, yet it only grows onto base coast. Given I will send two workers up here as BCR finishes completion, all remaining tiles can be farmed and the two grasslands can be cottages to let it grow again. JJ has done its job, it hooked furs, it kept the economy afloat whilst we failed to build Mids, it got the galleys out to explore and get the island city, it got several settlers out. If it's left working 4 coastal tiles for 20 turns, I'm not complaining: it has the courthouse, it's still productive.

[Krill]

T143, T144 continued:







AM has to hit size 12, doesn't it...and I'm sending all the workers to go and improve the river area and get the irrigation chain up to the BCR farm. I likely have to build another worker here to get tiles improved for it to grow onto, or I have to delay sending some workers to the river to get the plains tile farmed. I think I prefer the farm TBH, and onto a barracks and then wealth or unit prebuild, so that's 5.








Aiming for size 13 or 14 after this worker, and another T145 (the copper tile can just get switched to ATAT, and the 9th pop is cheaper than the 14th pop). Going to build a few Xbows for city defence during growth. Don't need the market for happy, so it's only to be swapped to wealth after that unless circumstances dictate otherwise. Might even steal the flood plain farm after the artist has completed in Sold American. Looks like it will reach the size 13 after accumulating around 103 food (don't know current foodbox total) but that should take around 17 turns, around T162.








The workers from 3S will farm SA and then help improve ST. I think it will only need 3 workshops producing, 2 jungles cutting and those two watermills. It is more worker intensive than the other cities, as it only needs to reach size 10, size 11 if I want perfect rounding with Merc. ST will be mostly ignored in terms of workers until the end.








The worker gang at BCR is going to improve along the south of the river until it reaches WB, then cross to the northern plains watermill, then move back (a few quirks aside). Two workers will do the two western tile improvements. Other than that, it's just idling on Xbows for city defence and will grow onto the coastal tiles rather an slow grow on hammer tiles. Nothing good to put those hammers into. Still needs 27hpt for one turn Carracks, that requires size 11 and a bunch of tile improves that will be built by the time I reach Optics, so growth no means more pop to put into growth once Optics is in, rather than stagnating. Given that the value of BCR is based around available tech, and it can't do more than one turn Carracks anyway, I'm not interested in counting food here.








This is a complete lack of skill and purely luck. When SA reaches 300 gpp on the dot, SA will hit 299 and then work maximum scientists. Given that it can sustain 6 specialists at size 9, I need it to be size 12 to be able to turn a full food box into 207 gpp in a golden age. I need the market to sustain that pop size, and afterwards it can build a courthouse. The tundra workshop is probably a bad idea but I'm not that bothered.








(I reallocated the bare grassland worker. Don't worry).

The lighthouse allows the usage of the coast so the other tiles can be given to MW as needed to facilitate growth. I have to watermill this river in a specific order, but it will start from the mouth and work back. NW will finish that library (it's a third complete), then a barracks and finally a wealth option.








Same problem as AC: SW sustains size 8, so in a GA it needs to be size 11 to use up the entire food box to push out the GP. And out of GA, I may need it to work both mines to help with naval production. And it needs a forge. As I do not want to use the Artist from SA for the second GA (I want it for the third GA) then SW is an option to make either the 500 or 600 point GP. That should be due by eot167 for the 600 point GP or eot162 for the 500 point GP . To put this in context, AC will breach 600gpp on eot166 if it stagnates from T147 onwards (That includes popping the 400 point GP eot149).

OK, screw it, if that is what it takes. AC makes a GS/GE and SW makes GM. If AC makes a low odds Artist (so I have two) then it doesn't matter which of SW or AC make the 500 point GP because it will work with an artist. If AC makes a GE, same outcome. If AC makes a GS, then I have to push SW to make the GM and I prepare AC to reach size 12 and push out the 600 point GS in a golden age and SW can cripple itself trying to get the 700 point.








OH pushed back culture so I need to build a library after the forge. And walls/Castle. The worker from FlyMeToTheMoon is coming down here to help out, so it should start to stagnate soon, next turn I think.








Nothing to say here...The worker from MtK is coming down, so there will be two workers to workshop the necessary tiles and road the cow 9It's my only cow!)








Growing to size 11 as per previous plan, farms should be improved T148 and T151, GA eot147, growth@9 eot151, growth@10 eot152, growth@11 eot154. If I want to stagnate it during a GA, then it needs to grow to size 14 which it can do with the available tiles (only needs the two farms), it would grow@14 eot160 and the food box would be filled eot162, ready in time for the next golden age when it could make (With Merc) (6+1)*3*2*8=336, plus 3*3*2*8=96gpp from emptying the food box. So sweet FA.

This is the joy of IND: You think it's going to be OP, but then you realise that by having two National Epics, other cities will never get to pop great people. I could change tack and just accumulate Artists points, but this is a risky city to hold GPP in. I need to realise them and shove the GA somewhere safe. I'll just accumulate GM/GE points here in the GA, they may come in useful later.








Please ignore the stranded farm. I'm a moron. It will be an unused tile. Just need to grow SS to size 6 and get the tile improvements now. Lighthouse>Forge>whatever needed, Walls and castle included. I believe that SS grows@3 eot146, growth@4 eot149 (lighthouse complete with chop), growth@5 eot152, growth@6 eot155. The problem is that I will only have 36 worker turns available on the entire island by that point, and require 34 of them to fully improve SS. With this in mind, SS is likely to grow to size 7 before it stagnates.








Courthouse>forge>market? I think the "workshop" forest is better going into the Moai city, which leaves 3 forests here, but two of them I don't have time to chop just yet. I think the farm chop should land T150, which completes the courthouse. The rest is just trying to get the workers to keep up with growth. Assuming no tiles worked with a food deficit until stagnation at correct size I think MW needs 158 food beyond that needed to reach size 7, which means size 15 no earlier than T166 (and that assumption is just wrong anyway, so I'd say T172 as a rough guess).








Because AoM is building the iMoai, then forge makes no sense, so just grow and then get all the forests chopped into it. I reckon it is better to work the coast until Guilds is researched, and then pick up the workshop and lumber mill tiles. Given how long it will take to grow MW, once I'm ahead there, I can focus on getting those tiles improved for AoM (I'll throw one worker straight at the lumbermill though). Growth is somewhat irrelevant here but I think iMoai takes 2 forest chops and a about a further 205 base hammers to complete, I don't think AoM starts to pay off until T170-ish.








Maths question for you guys. Is it worth spending 3 turns working an artist to pop borders and work a grass hill mine to get Moai? I think it does, but I was hoping for a religion spread. I'll work the artist at size 4 if it doesn't come sooner.








As per 3S giving up the copper now planning for size 9, which should be reached eot153 if it keeps the flood plain. Which makes more sense, as ST grows slowly and doesn't have any new tiles to work. Well, ATAT also needs a road to the city tile or units aren't going to get out of it very quickly, and an MP.








The tile west of SL will be workshopped and worked at size 3, and then the final forest chopped into the lighthouse. Then the workers run down to help out with SS before running back and will start improving SL before it reaches size 10: it will have to slow it's growth on the workshops so that it doens't reach maximum size to quickly. I don't know if this city is worth turning into a GT draft city: it probably is, but it needs production to build that in the future and Drama is not on my to do list right now.








I'm not screwing about with the avoid growth trick here, it will save 8 food in the granary anyway. I'll probably end up delaying the tile improvements as SS to chop the forest, and also put down a further workshop on the overlap with SL so that FH can build the lighthouse though.

[Krill]

I count 5 cities that I can just about be thrown straight onto wealth rather than unit prebuilds, and that should give me a further ~80gpt if I want it straight away. I reckon I do want that, because I would be able to finish Optics around about eot149 with some gold left, which is 2 turns faster than otherwise expected. That would also suggest Feud eot154 and Guilds eot160, which would put Banking in the range of availability for the start of the GA. Given that maces and HA would start to degrade in the queue, I'm going to go with the wealth builds after the barracks builds.

Given that some cities (ATAT, SS, MiF, and HWD, need forges, ST and 3S are ready at immediately) should also mature and be capable of building wealth by well before that point, I feel confident that this time timeline is easily achievable if OH doesn't invade me. The main decision would be how to balance military build up along with that teching.

[Krill]

I've not really done a critique of some of the major decisions in this game.

FWIW, I think once we decided to move the starting settler and settle on the plains hill, most of this game has been decided by the map. I don't think moving was the only reasonable choice: settling in place would have been fine, because with the pig second ring it could have been easily split off and the capital stagnates at size 5 with the two sheep, fp and two mines, rather than the convoluted route to Pottery we took for a capital granary and cottages. But once we did, we had to spam out the cities and settle for Hunting resources, we had to settle city 4 on the coast rather than at Kalamazoo because the capital just couldn't give up the pig until it had the granary and was at max size, then there was no choice except to rush for the only happiness resource available within 10 tiles of the start location (Actually that's a lie: it was 11 tiles from the start location).

I don't think it matters what leader/civ combo we picked for this start (except CHM, which would have blown this start to pieces). Because you have to spam out settlers to even reach a happy resource you go bankrupt, so you have to run scientists, so you have to get an Academy, settle the scientist, or go for a GA way too early. Religion first would have been viable for Hunting/Myst, so maybe ORG HRE could have gotten an early religion and still played for a shrine, otherwise an early religion strat would have fallen on its face. The Academy was the right choice. There was no stone or marble which is why we lost every wonder we went for (except MoM, that was just AGG giving a tech edge to OT4E). Staying small and limiting horizontal expansion doesn't help tech much given we would have reached Alphabet, and then not been able to build research and expand at the same time, and we didn't have cottageable land outside the cap, beyond what we did, and no happy cap room to work them. If I hadn't taken the chance of settling 3S and grabbing the sugar and gems sites, we'd have had one calendar, and one none calendar happy resource, with limited trade bait. We'd have also been in a position were OH could have attacked us and been able to take all the land we had (ie, if he attacked even now, we just have too much land for him to capture, but if he had 3S/ATAT/SA and ST then he may have been able to attack in a two stage war).

We had the one none coastal start, so we had no way to compete for Circumnavigation either. So the more I look back on this game, the more I think strategically I've made the right calls. The last major one was to spam those last 7 settlers out because those cities are going to be ready for Medieval era warfare and will probably be what let's us win (if we do). We know have a food and land lead of all other players. MFG is slightly inaccurate: it doesn't show the double HE that we have built, which right now is worth 28hpt so I don't believe we are actually behind Gav at this point (He may have a HE unit, but the point holds, both HE are worth up to 40hpt, so that's 40hpt he can't have.

I do know that a lot of the micro I've done has been a bit naff though. Definitely wasted a good 20 worker turns through stupidity.

[Dreylin]

You can probably add on another half-dozen lost worker turns as my contribution to the enterprise.

Was going to ask this earlier but didn't want to break the two halves of the turn report; going through the cities I noticed a bunch of Filler locations marked and the potential West & East islands, when do you think the next round of Settlers might come (if at all)? Would they come out in a concerted push or trickle out gradually?

[Krill]

There are 4 city locations inside my borders that are marked filler, but have no food resources. At a cost of 100 hammers and an immediate cost of about 10gpt, and output of two trade routes and a Merc specialist, those cities are only useful if they can build something, or draft units. As none of them can, I'll be holding off on those city locations for a while.

There is a single tundra hill tile city that has a fish past AC, that will be settled after Optics. There are two city locations off the south east seaboard, one on a single tile desert, the other on the 4 tile strip of land, that I want to guard cities from naval invasion, and potentially a third city beyond the 4 tile strip if I want to push a bit all of these cities are to defend and extend the reach of the navy, so the economic reason for them is secondary to just having them: I will build these settlers to coincide with Optics and Carracks being built. Guard them with Xbows, which are better island defenders than longbows IMO.

The west is a bit more difficult. I need a city on the plains tile on the two tile island, because OH may try to push galleons through to the northern ocean, and that gives it two land tiles and zero food resources. But I can't settle the city South West of FlyMeToTheMoon, without seriously annoying OH, but he just settled a city on a hidden island that actually makes defending a bit harder. I expect that city to be what causes us to come to war actually: I have to sail right past it to get to DZs island. I wonder if OH knew what he was doing when he settled that city, or if he just needed more land, and let's be fair, everyone on this map but me needs more land.

[Krill]

On the next bit, I think the settlers come out in an order defined by cities that stop growth. The more I look at it, the more I think I need the western coastal city ASAP, just for vision and ability to place units in position to limit northern aggression.

I also think I'm going to have to hit Lewwyn really, really hard to split the DZ island with OH. Which is a shame, but we'll see how it goes. I have to pick east or west first, and there is significantly more land west than east.

[Dreylin]

Yeah, I think that going West is fairly inevitable; at least in the East you have OT4E and gavagai as counterweights to each other and you might be able to snipe/raze a couple of key superjm cities if needed without needing to hold the land from OT4E, but letting OH potentially take all of Lewwyn's mainland would be a disaster.

[Krill]

Turn 145

On that note Dreylin, consider this: I have a Great Artist completing eot147, no need to bulb Astro, and I'm up CS on OH on the path to Privateers.





I could stack up, drop everything at Earth, capture it and culture bomb. A giant "Come at me Bro" to OH. But by god would it stop that problem immediately.





I hate barbs. This one killed one of OH's galleys a while ago, and now it will remove the nets at Sold American, but not in time to affect the Great Artist completion.





It looks like superdeath pre-empted OH's attack somehow? Still trying to find his units or any galleons.