[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Mr. Cairo]

Little bit of an update, wetbandit just declared on JR4:


JR4 still has the higher power, and his army isn't that out of position, although a lot of his Knights are still injured:

wetbandit is just out of view to the north of this screenshot.

If this turns into a real war we can make some gains at JR4s expense here. At the very least I think we can burn the city opposite our Moai city to claim more coast tiles. It's just a filler that's been left undefended forever, so a single galley should be enough. Another thought is to get the Music GA and bomb the city on our border with JR4 and see what we can do with that. I'd want Engineering though, since we only have 1 movers and I'd want the extra road movement. Knights are too far away and we don't have the time to build HAs, and JR4 has a lot of spears anyway. At the moment I'm leaning towards just burning that one city, I think a better target for a GA bomb+attack is DZ. Right now I'm ok with JR4 and wetbandit fighting eachother at full strength.

Our economy is doing very well, we're still behind in some techs, like Guilds and Machinery, but we can catch up easily enough. This was the demos from last turn, after all the GAs had ended:



Tech path is towards Music, with no immediate threats I think we can afford to go there now, but I also want CoL. We get half-price Courthouses, and with OR they get even cheaper, putting one of them in each of our cities will lower our expenses quite a lot. In 4 turns we get a Great Person, which I'm going to use for a GA, we can swap into HR, Vassalage, and OR. And if we have CoL by then we can also go into Caste for the duration to try and get another Great Person. Possibly another Artist. Which does lead into a possible path to Victory: Culture. The Sistine Chapel is at Music as well. But I don't know much about getting a Culture win.

BGN, if you're around, can you come up with anymore names for our cities? We have 4 currently using default Greek names.

[Mr. Cairo]

And it was a war-peace kind of thing, JR4 and wetbandit have a 10-turn peace treaty. I'm guessing that wetbandit is going after Elkad, considering that bribe he gave when elkad declared war back when, he wouldn't want Cornflakes to get all the spoils from Elkad. But to be safe I'm moving our main stack to a more central position, and putting Longbows in the coastal cities in case wetbandit decides to use his Beserkers as they are meant to.

In other news, here's the demos:


And both wetbandit and JR4 are currently teching (0 gold/turn available in diplo screen), so I think we might have finally pulled out ahead in economy, Let's keep it that way.

[Mr. Cairo]

Some stuff happened this turn:

We lost the SoZ. There was still 4 or 5 turns to go before we built it, so it's no great loss, and of all the people to get it, SD is probably the best, since he's not threatening us. Also, the fail-gold will let us tech more in the GA I plan to fire next turn.

As expected, wetbandit has declared war on Elkad. I'm pretty sure this is the real deal, there's no reason for him to war-peace Elkad in order to attack us. Cornflakes and continues to struggle against Elkad, he's lost a decent amount of power lately. That gives us some freedom during this GA, Music is the first big goal, after that, I don't know yet. I think we're a bit late to the party for Knights, we can get there but building them in large enough numbers before they become less effective is probably out of our reach.
But going along that route towards Gunpowder might be a plan.
Or we can go down the middle of the tech tree aiming to grab Liberalism at some point.
I do also want to get Engineering though, so GA tech ambitions might have to be curtailed somewhat.
With Knights now around in decent numbers (I'm assuming that's what Cornflakes has since he's had comparable power to JR4 who's power comes from his Knights) I want to have access to Pikes, and build a few to dissuade JR4 from using all his 14 Knights. I would hope that he instead looks into attacking wetbandit while he's busy with Elkad, but they have that peace treaty for the next 8 turns or so, and I don't expect Elkad to be able to hold off wetbandit for that long. But, because of those Knights, I don't feel safe revolting out of Slavery for our GA. So it's going to be Monarchy, Vassalage, and OR. Finally.

[Mr. Cairo]

Golden Age city report (they're not in any real order):

Capital, I'm busy cottaging most of its available tiles. An Academy will be in here at some point. It's just building a galley because it doesn't really have much else to build.


Got some cottages, some hammer tiles. Just a normal civ city here. With the GA, I want to maximize the extra hammers as much as possible, so I've got Courthouses either queued or building in most cities, which are cheap thanks to ORG.


Here is where I was building the SoZ. It's got 20 base hammers right now and enough of a food surplus to work 3 grassland workshops. Once I have Guilds, that'll be 29 hammers. With a Forge and the HE  that's a Knight every 1.5 turns.


Another nice city, with a massive food surplus so it's been heavily whipped these past dozen turns or so. I don't think a Longbow is immediately required so I'm getting the Courthouse first. I can always whip the LB in a crisis.


The runt of the empire. I'm building a Lighthouse so it can grow on some halfway decent tiles. Will probably be whipping catapults until the end of the game.


Border city with DZ, I want some Missionaries to spread Hinduism to those cities without it already, for the OR bonus and the Shrine. After that, more units.


Border city with wetbandit, our now #1 rival. After the GA ends I'll probably try and grow this city some, it has too many tiles not being worked atm.


Here is where the Shrine is, and the GL, and soon, the National Epic. It has enough food to run specialists, but also can get hammers and commerce. I'm thinking of growing it onto 4 grassland workshops, with all those hammers I can build another wonder or two to get GPP, and then starve to run specialists at times. ToA is still available and comes with a free specialist. Thanks to JR4 adopting Hinduism and diligently spreading it around, our shrine is making pretty good money.


Pure commerce city, I'm using the few bonus hammers to get a Market here, at long last (it's been building that for a while now). It can then slowly build a Courthouse.


Border city with JR4 and SD. I want more Longbows (and Pikes soon) here, I don't like all of JR4's Knights. They are why I stayed in Slavery when I changed civics after firing the GA. The Odeon was queued to fight cultural pressure, but it hasn't appeared to be necessary, the city acquiring a number of tiles in its BFC from JR4 a little while back, with no indications it'll lose them. I'll finish it nonetheless.


Finally, the Moai city. With a bunch of its coast tiles controlled by JR4 (for now) it's not the best Moai city, but it still looks nice during a GA. I'll build some more workshops for more hammers so it can be a decent unit producer.


Demos and Graphs:











Army:



Tech path:

I changed my mind on Guilds and Knights. Guilds is useful just for the workshop hammer and Grocer, but Knights will also be effective for a good long time, until Rifles really. So Guilds it is. Engineering is purely for the military aspect. Pikes, Castles, and faster road movement.

In international news, wetbandit took a city from Elkad already. While Cornflakes continues to struggle apparently. I decided to offer OB to Cornflakes. A lot of our trade routes are with Elkad atm, so we'll need to replace them, and I want to be friends with Cornflakes. I don't see a reason to not be freinds with the only civ (other than Elkad) who doesn't border us.

[Mr. Cairo]

Got the Music Great Artist. Not sure what to do with him.

I don't know how to tell if a great artist bomb will claim enough tiles to make a sneak attack work.

The target would be wetbandit, but he has a Holy City on our border, that has been putting a lot of culture into those tiles for a while now, and as far as I'm aware, the GA just dumps culture into each tile, putting progressively less in the further out from the city. The tiles I want to take from wetbandit are in the 4th and 5th rings of the city I'd bomb, so I don't really think it'd work. Maybe I don't know how culture bombs work?

The reason the target is wetbandit is that Cornflakes just declared war on him. And sent and Iron-Iron deal. I sent back another OB request. I'm not agreeing to anything if he keeps rejecting that. But if him and wetbandit really do get into a fight, that could give us the opportunity to hit wetbandit in the back. Or more likely, seeing how most of the wars have been going so far, wetbandit and cornflakes fight for a while, lose some units, and then they and Elkad all make peace and the status quo is maintained. That would be ok for us too. I'd quite happily sit in peace developing while everyone else fights expensive and unprofitable wars. Cornflakes fired a GA last turn as well, but our GNP is still tops, so for as long as we can keep that advantage without anyone else gaining too much land too easily/quickly, I'd think we're still in a good position.

[Mr. Cairo]

So I searched for "sistine" in Completed Pitbosses, and it certainly seems to be a requirement for a Culture victory, and we have a head-start, so I'm going to (try to) get it. I'll want more religions as well to go with that, which neatly leads into the reilgious set of Wonders (AP, UoS, and SM), so maybe let's go in that direction? Not being SPI makes that less good.

If I don't feel threatened enough to want Pikes and Castles, I'll get Theology next to spawn Christianity. There's two religions in our Empire atm, and we need more. The only ones left are Christianity, Taoism, and Islam. If we can get 2/3 of those I think that'll be enough. It also makes me want to skip Guilds, but I think I still need to get it. Both for the extra workshop hammer, and just to have access to Knights if plans change.

Still Cornflakes wont accept OB.

I sent JR4 an Iron-Iron deal, to suggest teaming up on wetbandit. Cornflakes has swiftly recovered in power and appears to have hurt wetbandit a bit, so that struggle does seem serious. A dogpile on wetbandit would be great, especially since wetbandit has Paper now, which means the UoS is available to him.

[Mr. Cairo]

Changed my mind on the religious trio of wonders, they're a bit too expensive, I'd really want to be either of IND or SPI for that to be worth it. Culture victory is still in the cards, I still will (hopefully) get the Sistine Chapel. With that in mind, going for Guilds first, since JR4 sent back an Iron-Iron offer, so I don't think I have to worry about those Knights right this minute, and can get Guilds before Engineering.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Things look really good, including the geopolitical situation. You really need to grow the cities taller though. We are losing out on a good amount of development by not being at the happy cap but I don't know how hard you've whipped to this point so this criticism may not be fair. The era of efficient whips is nigh over, if that time has not come already. Improved workshops and caste will more profitable, especially if you can get some forges down ASAP. I tend to value hammers more than a lot of players (I think this but I can't be sure, and anyway I love a good hammer economy and do less with whips than most) and I did cringe a bit to see so little emphasis on building the forges. The game is going to continue for a very long time based upon what appears to be somewhat of a stalemate between haves and have-nots, where even the have-nots are tough to dislodge and dismantle. The longer the game goes on, the more valuable the forge builds are, and the payback horizon is not terribly long with them since you have OR to defray some of the cost.

During the golden age, are you targeting cities for GPP generation? This is a good investment in the future if you can spare some resources now.

As for names, I will have to look. For now you can just go with redneck beers. Busch Light, Keystone, etc.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Here was the original list. Have all of these been taken?

Yokel Haram
Talibanjos
Al-Abama
Wal-Martyrs
Natty ISIS
Y'allqaeda
Talibangelical
VanillaIsis
Yee Hawdists
Ammo-Sexuals

[Mr. Cairo]

I'll play the turn and report on it in a bit, but to answer your questions:

Yeah, there was a fair bit of whipping once I realised that our neighbors are running around with medieval units while we still only have Spears and Hoplites. I haven't whipped much for a while now that the soldier count is respectable and our neighbors seem invested in fighting someone else. So for now I'm looking at ways to maximize tiles worked and growing to each city's food cap (happy cap isn't really an issue atm).

I've built Forges in three cities, but I tend not to think a Forge is worthwhile if the city has less that 18-20 base hammers, and many of our cities do not. It's possible that a few more cities could do with a Forge, but at the time I thought they had more immediately useful things to build while in the GA.

I haven't been working any specialists during the GA, unfortunately, I was either busy growing cities or building important buildings in those cities that could. I did build the NE in the Holy City, which also happen to have the Great Library, so we're getting another GP out of that city pretty soon. I also didn't swap to Caste for this GA, unorthodox I know, but at the time wetbandit was still at peace (and had a peace treaty with JR4), and JR4 had a stack of Knights around making me nervous. I didn't want to tempt fate and/or encourage an attack by offering a 5-turn no whip window. I might swap to Caste now though, since we're in a better defensive position, wetbandit is fighting Cornflakes, and JR4 still seems friendly enough. Also, now that I'm not planning on doing much whipping anyway, it's probably best to go for the strategy with the most upside.