GeneralKilCavalry and thestick talk it out

[thestick]

I really wish we knew if Raskol had MC so we could see if he can cheese the thing with a GE...

Though a wrinkle is that SD and Cairo both have Stone, so they might be going for 'Mids. Colossus is definitely the safe play here. Two-pop whip a Forge in Arcole, and we can basically chop out the Colossus with our 3 forests.

EDIT: Of course, the risk is lost hammers, and given that we're running up against the economic limits and Arcole doesn't have much in the way of cottage potential, the downside risk isn't tolerable. The opportunity cost - lost hammers - is lower, since we don't have much good to convert the hammers into. Meanwhile, the upside benefit is obvious.

Of course, we could always go Currency and Build Wealth everywhere if we have spare hammers...

[thestick]

Alright, updated the micro spreadsheet for the first time in a long time. First pass micro, if we start the 'Mids immediately, immediately go for OR, ensure Dumas pre-roads the stone, and somehow scrape up 4 Workers or so to immediately Quarry the Stone the minute borders pop, we can get the 'Mids T98. We might be able to shave a bit off with one-pop whips of Scouts or something from Size 6 to Size 5.

EDIT: Though seeing we only have 6 Workers, if we can scrape up 2 workers and Quarry the stone T90, we get the Mids T99.

[thestick]

Brief T87 update.

Note, SD offered us OB, I didn't accept because I wanted to look around. Also set the new city to Granary (since the WB is done), and Arcole to a Lighthouse (filler build, feel free to change it). Definitely reoffer if you feel that OB and trade with SD is the right move.

I personally think good relations with SD is a good move, it frees us up for the landgrab and Wealth builds and HR Chariot MP and stuff.

We finally met Raskol, he has 7 cities. He also has Metal Casting, which means that he'll probably nab the Colossus. Bummer. Most of score is likely land and wonder illusions, and not real winning power. Everyone else has 7 cities, except for us with 8 and SD with 10.

We're about to finish Metal Casting, which I'm hoping is part of a plan to flip it to TBW for Currency.

We're currently feeling a Worker and monetary crunch (40% breakeven research), but hopefully that will go away with Currency and we can start landgrabbing again. A cheap Forum in Toulon will be amazing... then we can run a couple of Scientists for an academy. Still think next we should go Monotheism (OR to build Forges and Missionaries for the landgrab) before plotting our next move.

We're somehow second in food and third in MFG (most likely due to having more cities). SD is still first in food and MFG and he has Currency, so he's the current favorite to win this. Plus he has all sorts of neat resources I'm jealous of, like Gold.

   

That GNP number is an illusion, we're 5th place at breakeven.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I agreed to OB with SD, I plan to accept the deal.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

I burned the barb city, by the way. I had given it 15 turns to grow, and it just didn't want to kick. The gold obtained in the short run will be more valuable, and the city will be better off 1S anyways.

[thestick]

Addendum to the brief overview.

We're currently hitting the health/happy caps of our cities. Health will go away once we get Fish at our new cities and get around to roading Abukir's Pigs. Happy is a bit more problematic, and probably will have to come from Monotheism (Wines and HR) or Calendar (Silks and Spices).

   

I think our next strategic move (once the economy stabilizes) should be landgrabbing all this empty space. That's miles and miles of lush grassland. No rivers, but miles of flat grassland for cottage cheese, with gobbles of Banana food. Iron Working still hasn't  Once we get Currency, we can just landgrab and defend with praets, then tech up and eat someone (Cairo?) with knights.

EDIT: Only now do I realize that Gavagai is up there, but my point still stands.

   

The biggest benefit of the move? No one except TBW has IW, so we will have no competition for this jungle-choked land. Workers and Settlers really are the best wonder. Then we conquer Raskol for his inevitable Pyramids and cruise with Mercantilism/Rep.

   

Other notes, looks like Gavagai is going for the Parthenon to steal all the GP. Or something.

EDIT: Also, I swapped EPs from SD to Raskol to get graphs on him, feel free to change back.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Switched eps to 3 on rask 1 on cairo. Although, we were close to getting research on SD...

I think I want to try for colossus. If we don't make these kinds of moves, we're going to lose bad, and we need commerce.

So, what are our options? We have three productive coastal cities, toulon, arcole and lodi. Toulon is a cottage monster, it can't build colossus.

Arcole has 3 forests to Lodi's single one.
Arcole has 2 prod on city tile, 5 from iron mine, 3 from horse, total of 10, can be 14 if we work the ph and give up the crabs to the capital in order to get some settlers out of there.

Lodi has 1 prod on city tile, 6 from copper mine, 4 from PH mine, and can steal mines from austerlitz as well as build new ones. About 14 as well, since we'd probably give up the sheep tile to austerlitz in exchange for the plains hill - here is where the problematic happy cap crops up.

However, Lodi can currently whip itself on a worker, overflowing easily into a forge. This is an advantage over arcole, one that almost nullifies the forests.

Let me micro this out in detail now...

Lodi colossus:

turn 88: whip, 30 hammer overflow.
turn 89: forge 0/120
turn 90: 30+14 = 44/120
turn 91: 58
turn 92: 72
turn 93: 86
turn 94: 100
turn 95: 114
turn 96: 0/250 on colossus.
We should probably chop the spice forest at this moment, say we made it coincide, so we get:
turn 97: (8OF+14+30)*1.75 (forge+resource benefit) = 91
turn 98: 115
turn 99: 139
turn ... 104 will be complete, however we could inefficiently chop some forests just outside the BFC. I have no issues with doing such chops, especially since they would be defensive in nature against cairo.


Now, arcole has the problem of settler finishing in 5 turns, however, let's leverage the chops?

Settler finishes turn 93 with 37 overflow (we chop one forest)
put into forge, swap from crabs to PH mine.
turn 94, we have 51/120
Grow to size 6, unhappy
turn 95: 65/120
turn 96: 79/120 unhappy ends! work plains mine for 3 extra hammer
turn 97: 97/120
turn 98: 113/120
turn 99: chop comes in, total of 40 extra production, +17 base, therefore,
turn 100: (40+17)*1.75=99
turn 101: 128, also final chop comes in somewhere around here, +30
turn 102: 210/250
turn 103: 239/250
turn 104: complete

EXACTLY THE SAME!
However, we can triple whip arcole, which we cannot do for lodi.

thoughts?

However, lodi's 3 outer forests past BFC could tip the scales here... I don't know what to think. Lodi will be more labor intensive because of the distance. Arcole is a safer city, easier to defend.

Another problem is health cap. Lodi will be generating 0 food, unlike arcole.

Also, if colossus somehow gets built in the next 4-5 turns, arcole plan is a better contingency.

finally, I think 16 turns is actually pretty reasonable. I assume Rask has chopped every damn tree in his lands at this point to fuel stonehenge+oracle

Oh, and I messaged gav about getting calendar. That would be an absolute game changer, we have spices and banana aplenty. I am moving scout to look at northeast, i suspect, based on maps acquired, there is a lot of room left there.

[thestick]

Updating micro.

I assume you're going to try to flip IW for Calendar? I don't think Gavagai has the beakers to trade away? Calendar is 350 beakers. Plus we can't trade away MC yet, it's 450 beakers and we've already traded away 200. But if he can trade away Calendar, go for it.

Definitely need to try to line up good tech trades when T100 comes around and we get another 1000 beakers to trade away. MC for Calendar and Currency would be almost perfect for us. Once we get those in hand and get the classical economic techs, we'll be in good shape.

EDIT: I assume the reason we're building a Library in Abukir is to run Scientists for an Academy?

[thestick]

Updated the micro.

Arcole. I think it has to be Arcole. We can send the Worker that just finished a Cottage 1NW to mine the grassland hill, getting us up to 17 hpt base. Then we grow to Size 6 and work a grassland forest/junk plains for a bit to get 18 hpt, and we can finish the Colossus T101 after the Settler, or even earlier if we pop the Settler somewhere else (Lodi?) and start the Forge immediately.

We can go Organized Religion T92, 4 turns at breakeven. If we decide to go Settler->Forge->Colossus, we can revolt into OR after finishing the Settler. This OR actually shaves a turn off of the Colossus, which finishes T100 flat.

Now to tinker with going straight for the Forge/Colossus without waiting...

[thestick]

Err, there might be one off errors because I think the overflow from building a Forge might be divided by 1.25. Maybe. Anybody know off the top of their heads?

EDIT: It looks like with Math, 3rd ring forests in borders are 24 hammers, 4th ring 20 hammers. Hang on, this might tip the balance in favor of Lodi.

EDIT 2: Lodi finishes the Colossus T99. This is assuming I counted right and we have 1 second ring, 3 third ring forests in Lodi. I'm too lazy at the moment to sim out how fast we can finish the thing at Arcole if we immediately stop the Settler and go for the Forge. All the stuff is in the micro spreadsheet linked in my first post in the thread.