[PB64] Amicalola Gets To Heaven with Tarkeel and Ljubljana

[Tarkeel]

Stay tuned for T76, where I will announce a variant rule I've decided to run for PB64. Civ cookie for anyone who guesses it beforehand.

No cottages? Each city is only allowed to work one food? Isolationist? :P

[Miguelito]

Leave that hut in place until Astronomy is an eligible tech?

[Amicalola]

T74-75 - Get To Heaven

With wheat, ivory, copper and (jungled) gems, we finally make it to Heaven. 


My worker micro has been lacking, so we'll be improving it somewhat inefficiently. Oops. They've also been busy with something else to the north.  

Math supposedly finishes at 50% this turn, even though we say +17 beakers and it needs 21. So that's weird. It's quite critical that it finishes this turn so I hope I haven't somehow broken the interface.

Stay tuned for T76, where I will announce a variant rule I've decided to run for PB64. Civ cookie for anyone who guesses it beforehand.

No cottages? Each city is only allowed to work one food? Isolationist? :P

Leave that hut in place until Astronomy is an eligible tech?

I like these. The last one gave me a good giggle.

[RefSteel]

Math supposedly finishes at 50% this turn, even though we say +17 beakers and it needs 21. So that's weird. It's quite critical that it finishes this turn so I hope I haven't somehow broken the interface.

I believe it works like this: +17 beakers is your total, empire wide. Then the game adds (but doesn't tell you about) the free beaker every empire always gets every turn for reasons best known to Sid. Then the game looks at which tech you're researching, and adds the bonus percentages for "arrow" prereqs (in this case, Writing is an "arrow" prereq for math: A tech you have with an arrow leading from it to your current tech on the F6 screen so you get +20%) and known tech bonus (if any). So you get ( 17 + 1 ) * 1.2 = 21.6, which rounds down to 21 beakers, just barely enough to finish the tech. Assuming nothing happens to change your commerce in the meantime, of course. This actual total is correctly reflected in the tech bar, though the actual number of beakers is not displayed anywhere. (You can reverse-engineer it from your demo-screen GNP and the amount of gold you're making/losing and EP + Culture you're generating though.)

[Charriu]

Then the game adds (but doesn't tell you about) the free beaker every empire always gets every turn for reasons best known to Sid.

This is only a guess on my part, but I think the devs implemented this extra beaker so that barbarians also research techs the normal way, when they don't have any cities. Otherwise without cities they never would make any active progress in tech. Of course the barbs also have a secondary way of gaining tech explained here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...#pid756006

[Miguelito]

Math supposedly finishes at 50% this turn, even though we say +17 beakers and it needs 21. So that's weird. It's quite critical that it finishes this turn so I hope I haven't somehow broken the interface.

I believe it works like this:  +17 beakers is your total, empire wide.  Then the game adds (but doesn't tell you about) the free beaker every empire always gets every turn for reasons best known to Sid.  Then the game looks at which tech you're researching, and adds the bonus percentages for "arrow" prereqs (in this case, Writing is an "arrow" prereq for math: A tech you have with an arrow leading from it to your current tech on the F6 screen so you get +20%) and known tech bonus (if any).  So you get ( 17 + 1 ) * 1.2 = 21.6, which rounds down to 21 beakers, just barely enough to finish the tech.  Assuming nothing happens to change your commerce in the meantime, of course.  This actual total is correctly reflected in the tech bar, though the actual number of beakers is not displayed anywhere.  (You can reverse-engineer it from your demo-screen GNP and the amount of gold you're making/losing and EP + Culture you're generating though.)

Just missing KTB, which is also dependent on the tech chosen and would be added to the arrow bonus (please correct me if I'm wrong)

[Amicalola]

T76 - Amicalola Embraces Cottage Hatred
So you know what I realised is going to dictate this game? Cottages suck. Yeah, you heard me - I'm not fighting my instincts anymore, down with cottage supremacy!

But seriously, on this map, they do suck. There's just not enough food to work them efficiently - take Get To Heaven.


(don't worry, the metal units are en-route). Cottages are not what this city needs, because it'll stop growing way before it gets to work most of them. And this is a pretty normal city for the game.

My theory: anyone who doesn't realise this and tries to run a cottage economy is going to get completely bulldozed by the people who don't bother. What that means is that barring some early conquest or diplomacy shenanigans, the winner of this game is going to come down to whoever can get the most non-cottage commerce. And there's a few ways to get that:

1. Great Lighthouse trade routes.
   
2. Colossus water tiles.
   
3. Serfdom farms/windmills.
   
4. Monk wonders/Shrines.
   

So I think we need to focus on maximising at least two of these, as our goal for getting into a winning position. I didn't prioritise religion and the first three have fallen, so barring something spectacular I'd say Monk Economy is out. And Colossus is great, but I don't want Metal Casting so early on this map, because it's expensive and non-IND forges kinda suck. So that leaves Protective Great Lighthouse, and Serfdom, which I've decided are our two priorities for this game. They're two things I've already played with before, but to be honest, I quite like the familiarity of them both. GLH in particular is going to be huge, as a source of commerce that the other players just don't have an equivalent for - I realised a little while ago that we need to prioritise it hard, which is what I'm trying to do now.

And despite my low content posts, I have been busy behind the scenes. On T70, we 2-whipped our 29/60 lighthouse with maximum overflow (putting Warm Healer at 2 whip unhappy ). Then we put a few turns into the GLH, just enough to get it to 60-ish hammers. We 3-whip another settler at Size 6 on T74, because I've got too much food and not enough hammers here. Finally, this turn we finish Mathematics, and chop 3 forests into the Great Lighthouse at Warm Healer. 


Barring some very poor luck, it should finish next turn (202/200 hammers). The game is getting interesting!

On that note, as I said earlier, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is on this: 

Stay tuned for T76, where I will announce a variant rule I've decided to run for PB64. Civ cookie for anyone who guesses it beforehand.

No cottages? Each city is only allowed to work one food? Isolationist? :P

Tarkeel wins a civ cookie!  I have decided to try playing a zero cottage game. I actually have some faith that it'll work decently.  


On tech:

Math supposedly finishes at 50% this turn, even though we say +17 beakers and it needs 21. So that's weird. It's quite critical that it finishes this turn so I hope I haven't somehow broken the interface.

I believe it works like this:  +17 beakers is your total, empire wide.  Then the game adds (but doesn't tell you about) the free beaker every empire always gets every turn for reasons best known to Sid.  Then the game looks at which tech you're researching, and adds the bonus percentages for "arrow" prereqs (in this case, Writing is an "arrow" prereq for math: A tech you have with an arrow leading from it to your current tech on the F6 screen so you get +20%) and known tech bonus (if any).  So you get ( 17 + 1 ) * 1.2 = 21.6, which rounds down to 21 beakers, just barely enough to finish the tech.  Assuming nothing happens to change your commerce in the meantime, of course.  This actual total is correctly reflected in the tech bar, though the actual number of beakers is not displayed anywhere.  (You can reverse-engineer it from your demo-screen GNP and the amount of gold you're making/losing and EP + Culture you're generating though.)

So Ref, you were 100% right and the interface was to be trusted. What I find confusing about this is that Mathematics only has one arrow, from Writing: 


So are you saying that even with that one arrow, we get a 20% bonus? I had always thought that was from having a second arrow (e.g. AH and Priesthood -> Writing).

[Cornflakes]

Each arrow gives 20% bonus. Since most techs have one arrow anyway, the emphasis is usually on double arrow techs for the extra 20%, but really the double arrow techs are cumulative 40% bonus.

And congrats on the great lighthouse! And good luck with no cottages

[Amicalola]

Each arrow gives 20% bonus. Since most techs have one arrow anyway, the emphasis is usually on double arrow techs for the extra 20%, but really the double arrow techs are cumulative 40% bonus.

And congrats on the great lighthouse! And good luck with no cottages

I can't believe I've played so many games here and didn't know that.   But thanks, Cornflakes and Refsteel (and Charriu and Mig and Hitru and really everyone who answers these questions)!

[Tarkeel]

On that note, as I said earlier, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is on this: 

Stay tuned for T76, where I will announce a variant rule I've decided to run for PB64. Civ cookie for anyone who guesses it beforehand.

No cottages? Each city is only allowed to work one food? Isolationist? :P

Tarkeel wins a civ cookie!  I have decided to try playing a zero cottage game. I actually have some faith that it'll work decently.  

I agree that the land isn't set up for cottages, but the green north should be cottaged IMHO. Down south however.. farms and mills, baby!