RBP3 [SPOILERS] - Friendly Kittens (Ragnar of Maya)

[Morgan]

Seems the magic pixies have played the turn

Took the liberty of posting some pics of each city.

[Maniac Marshall]

I actually played the turn when I got back from the con either Monday or Tuesday (I forget which).

At the rate the game is currently "moving", I think it'll finish right about the time Civ 6 is announced. Not that it bothers me, although now that I actually have time to devote to the game over the next month, I'm not against it moving a little bit faster while I have time to properly foccus on it (ie. Not having to log in at 2am when drunk and out of town every 2nd or 3rd day as my only activity, which I'm sure contributed to the recent problems at HV)

Thanks for the pictures Morgan.

[Morgan]

Wow, quick paced game.

No probs on the pics, is the resoultion ok?

[Maniac Marshall]

The resolution? For ME they're a little small, but for that rarest of all lifeforms, the lurker, they're probably just right as apposed to my jumbotron sized ones

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the pictures, Morgan! I don't mind the resolution, though Imageshack's various ads do annoy me a bit.

One thing I noticed is that three of our cities are - or will be soon - growing into unhealthiness. This is particularly bad at Kilrah, which is working unimproved tiles already. It needs to be whipped as soon as it has hammers in something, as it's nowhere near its happy cap. It was okay for Temminck to grow past its health cap when it was working nothing but floodplains and resource tiles, but for a place that's working unimproved forests, it's crazy. We need aqueducts and/or grocers in those places. It might even be worthwhile for Red Dwarf to borrow Kilrah's rice if Red will be growing onto useful tiles and Kilrah will be growing onto junk, but I think if it were me, I'd just put a turn into a health building at Kilrah and then whip it for whatever it takes.

[RefSteel]

Other thoughts/suggestions/questions:

1) Hukawng Valley will have a theater soonish. I advise putting one at Ornata ASAP. Fierias can build one pretty much whenever it wants (once the U Sankore is finished). That leaves five before we can build the Globe. Do we have any estimates for when and where they're most likely to be completed?

2) Feng Shui is one of the cities growing into unhealth. It has an unshared grass hill mine it isn't working. Will it slow down our research too much for Temminck to switch from the gold to one of the shared FP farms while FS works that mine? If FS does grow into unhealth, it's in a similar position to Kilrah (i.e. needs a health building, and should be whipped ASAP).

3) Pride Rock is the third soon-to-be-not-healthy city. I know you don't want to whip this place, Maniac, but for each pop by which it passes the health cap, one of its plains farms becomes a de-facto 1/1/1 tile. If we don't want to freeze its growth to let Temminck use its fp farm or something, whipping is going to become necessary. If we can get a hinduism in there, it can put one turn into a 'duct and whip it for two pop the following turn, but since I don't see Hinduism getting there any time soon, the place will be fine for a little while if it just whips the Cat to completion.

4) Do you think I'm correct in my estimation that we (PAT) won't have rifling for at least 15 turns, but that it will likely take no more than 20?

5) If we're just going to put our next Great Person on ice for a Golden Age, we should probably try to get one out of a completely mixed bag at someplace like HV, for minimal delay of a better pool at Smithsonian. Doing it at HV while also completing the Globe and growing back from size 5 will be challenging, but I think it's our best bet. We probably shouldn't go for a Worker there after the next Settler regardless, but hopefully I can put an alternate plan together that gets both the Globe at a reasonable time and a Great Somebody. When will I do this? Hahahahahaha, good point. But we've got some time, as at the rate things are going, we won't finish the settler there for a month or two at least.

6) While I disagree with Maniac about both the probability of and the way to prepare for a Cav rush, I've learned to trust his instincts on this game. Plus I'm pretty much completely out of touch with the state of diplomacy. I'm not sure what good Pikes will do even if there's pre-Cav junk in a Cav stack, but I may just not understand the way MP battles get fought. At all events, large cities in large numbers with lots of happy bonuses are always good things. And if we get rushed pre-cavalry, having pikes would of course be neat.

[RefSteel]

Yet More Thoughts™

On theaters for the globe: I should note that Smithsonian can complete a theater by turn 156, or even as early as turn 152 if absolutely necessary. (In each case, I'm referring to the turn on which the Theater would actually be complete - i.e. the first when we could hire artists from it). So if we can't get to eight before that point anyway, that's one more theater we've got covered. If possible though, it would be great to be able to start on the Globe by turn 150.

On defending against a possible attack: We have open borders with India and Azteca. Ruff also specifically agreed in an e-mail that we could send a (single) scouting/mapping unit through his territory way back when one of his units first showed up in our land. (Check the archives at F/K.) You can reply-with-history to that e-mail and say we're finally getting our scouting unit down there if you want, and send a Sentry chariot down to serve as an advance sentry. Presumably we can also send early-warning units into India and/or Byzantium's territory (you might want to check with them first, of course; I don't know the diplomatic situation at all) and though I doubt we'll be entering Incan territory, we can certainly dispatch a Sentry chariot to watch over the border region. Would stuff like this leave us with too few units to prevent barbs from spawning? Could be. Is that a bad thing? Some of our newer troops could use some more XP, couldn't they?

On getting a Great Somebody for a Golden Age: At this point, I don't think it makes sense to try at HV. But I've got some ideas for alternatives:

1) Let's prove me wrong about Kilrah creating Great People! Thanks to the HE generating artist points, Kilrah needs to run fewer specialists to get a great person than any non-Smithsonian city. (Fierias might disagree a bit, but it needs to work tiles.) Kilrah can hire an Engineer immediately (losing one of its unimproved tiles) then get a temple ASAP and hire a Priest. It'll need a Grocer eventually, so it can whip one later on and run merchants for a short time; how long and how many depends on how soon the priest gets started. This should get it a Great Someone just ahead of Smithsonian Park. I actually think I like this plan best right now. And yes, I'd hire the engineer immediately, instead of working a grassland forest.

2) What's our NE city-to-be for? Forget about stacking the deck with Scientists and Engineers. Just churn out GPs as quickly as possible from Smithsonian Park, regardless of type.

3) Combine the above: Get a random GP out of Kilrah in accordance with plan 1, and then speed up Smithsonian's next few GPs by running priests/artists/merchants/whatever. Note we don't have to decide on this one right away; if we go with plan 1, it allows us to switch over to plan 3 later on.

[Maniac Marshall]

I gave some of the above a cursory glance yesterday, but I'd be lying if I said I'd really looked it over seriously. TBH, with us having played, what, 1 turn in the last 2 weeks, and (guestimating) 4-5 turns in the last month I have actually begun to lose some interest in the game since I've found other things to do to keep me busy since Memorial Day. I'm sure being gone and having fun at the cons, followed by being sick as a dog the last 2 weeks (maybe I'm FINALLY feeling better today) has had an impact as well. Lets hope I can get geared up again when the game gets going again.

I'll actually try to give that a thourough going through this weekend, btw.

[Morgan]

I'm off to the smoke (london) for the day/weekend so if you can play that would be very good.

[Maniac Marshall]

I'm off to the smoke (london) for the day/weekend so if you can play that would be very good.

This presupposes that the turn will actually roll. Actually, I'm quite confident that it will STILL be T134 when you get back...

EDIT: For a lark, I decided to check, and was surprised that we'd actually played 8 Turns since June 13th. I would have guessed 4 or 5. Of course, we've not completed a single turn in roughly 12-14 days. I didn't check the later, but know that I completed our this turn on June 28th...