[PB61 - Spoiler] bell's uncreatively named spoiler thread

[Tarkeel]

Thanks for the great overview.

BTW, conditional modifiers such as ORG courthouses don't show up in graphs and demographics, only unconditional ones like forge.

[Mjmd]

Getting low again so here is a little

I actually am a  little bummed we have that high of military. Part of it is we just have more build queues than others, but part of it is that we have a million fronts to defend. Jack has two vs our every direction but due north.

I had suspected Vanrober production was product of working mines for wonders, but continued high amount is curious.

That yellow dot . Would probably mean instant war, which I don't think we want yet. I suspect one of them will settle and they can have another meaningless war about if they want.

I will say I kind of hate how far down religious tree we had to go this early. Would have preferred to get organized going after we got sailing and writing, but glad we grabbed with prophet incoming. We have lost a lot of potential trade income for the privilege though.

[bellarch]

I'm posting again already? Is everything alright?!?!? Well, while I am going to try to get a bit better about regular thread updates, there does indeed happen to be a situation:



So a few turns ago, Rome settled a very aggressive city on the border of Blessed Isle. This is a little annoying, but not ultimately a huge deal in and of itself -- it's not like we were planning to expand east of Blessed Isle anyway. However! Almost immediately after settling StoneCity, Rome built a monument there. This directly threatens the forest at Blessed Isle -- assuming I understand the culture mechanics right, they'll claim it as soon as they pop borders at StoneCity. While we don't need the forest, we'd really like to have the chop hammers for Moai.

So we have what you see here. The axe/spear garrison, moving with a worker to the forest in a desperate attempt to chop it for ourselves. Of course, the decision wasn't as simple as that. Mjmd and I were weighing several factors while deciding what to do with the forest -- does chopping a forest by Rome's city antagonize Rome? Can we really afford to create tension on our best chance for a peaceful border? Are the extra hammers for Moai really worth that much? Ultimately, the aggressiveness of StoneCity was what swayed us towards going for the chop. StoneCity is kind of insanely aggressive as a plant; Rome has to expect us to respond somehow. We had the forest first; they should expect us to have planned to chop it! Anyway, just in case we called it wrong and Rome decides to attack, we have several units in the area.



It's a bit hard to see there, but we have two axes moving towards Blessed Isle and a third coming out of Thalassina this turn. They'll be at Blessed Isle in two turns, enough to reinforce the city if necessary. Unfortunately, we can't have them guard the worker, but we can't have everything. Anyway, once the forest is chopped and the threat is gone, we'll be sending those workers south to scout around our city sites, as well as the southeastern area that we haven't really explored yet -- the axes aren't really out of position at all. 

As another point in relations with Rome, Joshy offered us Open Borders this turn. For now we declined, because we don't have sailing to benefit from trade routes, but then it occurred to me that the fact that our borders are adjacent along the coast between CopperCity and Blessed Isle means that we might actually get trade routes even though we don't have Sailing yet. Can anyone confirm this? If so we'd probably want to send OB immediately.

You can also barely see in that picture our beaker count -- in just four turns, we've gone from 56 raw commerce to 72 raw commerce! As I said during the big report, the crashing of our economy was exaggerated by the specific time when I took the picture. Between new cottages being worked at Ater and Wolof, the gem mine at Satus, and a cottage developing into a hamlet, our economy has improved quite a bit just from T76 to T80. 

Anyway, that's all from me for now -- I'll be back eventually with an update on the Rome situation . . .

[Tarkeel]

This directly threatens the forest at Blessed Isle -- assuming I understand the culture mechanics right, they'll claim it as soon as they pop borders at StoneCity. While we don't need the forest, we'd really like to have the chop hammers for Moai.

Not entirely true, but close enough. After a city expands its cultural borders, the culture esserted on any tiles inside the outer ring is increased, making them very hard to take away, but it should take a few turns in this scenario, but probably no more than 5 (that's pure guesswork BTW).

[bellarch]

This directly threatens the forest at Blessed Isle -- assuming I understand the culture mechanics right, they'll claim it as soon as they pop borders at StoneCity. While we don't need the forest, we'd really like to have the chop hammers for Moai.

Not entirely true, but close enough. After a city expands its cultural borders, the culture esserted on any tiles inside the outer ring is increased, making them very hard to take away, but it should take a few turns in this scenario, but probably no more than 5 (that's pure guesswork BTW).

So let me explain exactly what I think is going on with the cultural mechanics (more for the sake of learning how this works than anything else):

Blessed Isle and StoneCity both produce 1 culture per turn from the monument. When it comes to adding culture, both cities add 2 culture points (1 + cultural output) every turn to every tile in the outer ring. Currently, the outer ring for both cities includes the forest in question. Therefore, since Blessed Isle had culture there before StoneCity was founded, StoneCity is not able to control the tile before popping borders because they are adding the same amount of culture points per turn. There is a constant difference of something like 4 or 6 culture points due to Blessed Isle having added those points before Roman culture contested them.

Then ten turns after building the monument, StoneCity pops borders. Now the forest tile is in the inner ring for StoneCity, meaning that it adds 22 culture points (1 + 20 + cultural output) to the tile every turn. Because the constant difference between the Roman and Praesi culture points is much smaller than (22 - 2 = 20), the tile will be overwhelmed by Roman culture immediately as soon as the inner ring cultural bonus is added to the tile's culture points. 

Civfanatics thread and mechanics guide I used for reference here.

[bellarch]

Getting low again so here is a little

I actually am a  little bummed we have that high of military. Part of it is we just have more build queues than others, but part of it is that we have a million fronts to defend. Jack has two vs our every direction but due north.

I had suspected Vanrober production was product of working mines for wonders, but continued high amount is curious.

That yellow dot . Would probably mean instant war, which I don't think we want yet. I suspect one of them will settle and they can have another meaningless war about if they want.

I will say I kind of hate how far down religious tree we had to go this early. Would have preferred to get organized going after we got sailing and writing, but glad we grabbed with prophet incoming. We have lost a lot of potential trade income for the privilege though.

I don't mind having a huge military, but the fact that we are most likely going to need all of it bothers me, trust me.

For what it's worth, Vanrober's production has come back down, so the big spike was only temporary. Still not sure why it was so high for so long, but maybe they were working mines for extra hammers that went into settlers or courthouses or something? Or the population was whipped off?

The yellow dot was more to put the possibility on the table than because I thought it was a good idea . . . though let's be honest, it is a rather funny idea. But of course, "funny" does not mean "good" 

Yeah it would have been nice to have gotten Sailing and Writing first, but I still think going right after Monotheism was the best option. That's a big prize to potentially lose to India (or Germany?), and we would have had to go way out of our way to get a religion after that (and it would be much later down the line). And I ultimately think that we'll still have an advantage in commerce to make up for it in the long run.

[Tarkeel]

This directly threatens the forest at Blessed Isle -- assuming I understand the culture mechanics right, they'll claim it as soon as they pop borders at StoneCity. While we don't need the forest, we'd really like to have the chop hammers for Moai.

Not entirely true, but close enough. After a city expands its cultural borders, the culture esserted on any tiles inside the outer ring is increased, making them very hard to take away, but it should take a few turns in this scenario, but probably no more than 5 (that's pure guesswork BTW).

So let me explain exactly what I think is going on with the cultural mechanics (more for the sake of learning how this works than anything else):

Blessed Isle and StoneCity both produce 1 culture per turn from the monument. When it comes to adding culture, both cities add 2 culture points (1 + cultural output) every turn to every tile in the outer ring. Currently, the outer ring for both cities includes the forest in question. Therefore, since Blessed Isle had culture there before StoneCity was founded, StoneCity is not able to control the tile before popping borders because they are adding the same amount of culture points per turn. There is a constant difference of something like 4 or 6 culture points due to Blessed Isle having added those points before Roman culture contested them.

Then ten turns after building the monument, StoneCity pops borders. Now the forest tile is in the inner ring for StoneCity, meaning that it adds 22 culture points (1 + 20 + cultural output) to the tile every turn. Because the constant difference between the Roman and Praesi culture points is much smaller than (22 - 2 = 20), the tile will be overwhelmed by Roman culture immediately as soon as the inner ring cultural bonus is added to the tile's culture points. 

Civfanatics thread and mechanics guide I used for reference here.

That should be more or less correct, just wanted to point out that it's not an instant effect, and can at times take surprisingly long. If your city had enough culture to expand twice before then, the pressure should be more or less even.

[Charriu]

Also there is the oddity in MP that in the first turn Rome gets >50% culture against you they don't get the tile the same turn. Only the turn after >50% the tile swaps

[bellarch]

So let's have a quick update based on where we are right now (T87 -- we played something like 4 or 5 turns yesterday!).

First, the resolution of the Rome situation: everything went peacefully, and indeed we have a fish/fish deal and Open Borders going now! This is obviously huge for us, worth 8 commerce by itself. That being said, we already have plenty of commerce even without Open Borders. As of this turn, we're making 105 raw commerce a turn, and that's still increasing as we grow our cottages, build lighthouses, and work more water tiles. Just look at the river valley between Ater and Wolof:



And then realize that we have 5 cottages that aren't even hamlets yet! Meanwhile, JackRB only started building cottages at his third city -- a city with a whipped library! -- a few turns ago. I think we're in a very good spot with our economy. I am amused by the fact that our development mirrors the development of many real life early civilizations -- large, rich population centers built up on fertile terrain on the banks of rivers. 

Here's a better quick look at our cities:


Right now we're pushing infrastructure, building libraries in our two main commerce cities and putting up lighthouses in our seaside cities. Blessed Isle already has its lighthouse and is growing in preparation for whipping more units into Moai. The only reason why we aren't pushing whips there even more right now is that we're in the process of hooking up Stone for even more building multipliers. Well, that and preparing for future whips; Blessed Isle's food surplus only goes up as it grows. (We only have the stone resource this early because of Ater's culture -- Stonehenge paying dividends once again!) We're currently stockpiling gold at 0% research, saving for a push to currency once we secure Writing. I feel pretty secure doing so because we're still tops in power (absolute #1 in soldier count by now too!) and we're not far behind in overall tech.

Of course, we're also expanding. Our next settler is out, and our ninth city should be founded in two turns. This is the spot and the surrounding area:



You've previously seen our plans to settle this spot. What you haven't seen is our plans for our next city in the area, which I'm guessing will be the 11th city. This is another very nice green area with tons of spots for cottages. It can even potentially secure us a source of sugar if we settle the more northern spot -- though we can probably trade for that with Rome if it comes down to it. We're also making plans to build the 10th settler in either Satus or Ater, slated to go north to claim the wheat spot. That spot may be bad, but strategically it'll be very important because the westernmost mountain on the peninsula provides sight over the water. 

p.s.: our high commerce and culture led to this amusing screenshot a few turns ago, where our GNP is almost 3 times the rival best. It's mostly an artifice created by ktbs from four other civs having researched Writing and other people on 0% research, but it still makes me laugh.

[civac2]

Is there a screenshot missing?