[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

Okay I realized that Kuro's GNP was lower than expected because his second city costs maintenance. So most likely it does have a trade route, and the 2 commerce cancels out the maintenance. Or maybe he doesn't have a trade route and he's getting the 2 GNP from a prereq bonus. Argh.

So looking at turn 30 demos the only difference between that and turn 29 is Kuro's second pop at the capital that appeared after EOT and was placed by the governor. His CY went up by 1, MFG by 1, and GNP by 1-4. So most likely the governor placed the citizen on a 1/1/1 riverside grass hill that he chopped to build the settler and hasn't mined yet. The governor generally prefers food and hammers to commerce, so I would expect that the capital no longer has any forest tiles to work, which is consistent with my three-chop settler hypothesis.

Turn 31 demos. This is getting difficult now with two people having second cities. Top CY must be Ellimist, so he also planted near a 3 food tile. 6 MFG is also him. Total rival GNP is 75-77, and subtracting best and worst (Jkaen and Kuro respectively) results in 26-28, so Ellimist's GNP must be 26. Previously it was 22, so his GNP went up by 4. One from the city, one from the rice...and he is currently researching a prereq tech so he may have gotten an extra beaker from the multiplier (if he's not running all gold this turn, could be breakeven). And maybe the maintenance is only 1 for him and he has a trade route. Yeah, there are too many possibilities. I guess it doesn't matter too much, we know he's working a rice-equivalent tile and that's the important part.

Last interesting part of the demos is the 15 CY from Kuro. Previously it was 13 right after he founded, so he must have finished farming the rice. Three turns have elapsed so he must have been using both workers to do it. His GNP is still 23 (same as the turn he finished Hunting) and he must have turned tech on by now (unless he forgot), so he is likely researching a no prereq tech, which must be Mysticism. The other possibility is that he queued up a tech after Hunting and that was reflected in the demos of the Hunting completion turn, and his new city doesn't have a trade route.

[NobleHelium]

Well, Polytheism takes 6 turns with overflow. 7 turns without overflow. Pottery is 4 turns with, and 5 turns without (completes 1 turn after Stonehenge with overflow). Hopefully Ellimist will complete a tech and tell us what tech we should research next before we have to decide where to put the overflow.

[Lewwyn]

I say default poly if he doesn't get a tech to let us know.

I'm also feeling pretty confident we can get Oracle.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, I currently agree with defaulting to Polytheism if we don't know. Getting Pottery one turn sooner doesn't do anything, we can't finish the granary in Helium until the city grows and the whipping makes no difference if we do it with one more turn of hammers or one fewer. I was switching to the granary and whipping that, but whipping the work boat and overflowing into the granary is likely better if we can still finish the granary before the food box goes to half. Need to check that. And we still finish Pottery before the work boat in Hydrogen, so no change there either. The work boat will finish one turn after growth to 3. We'll work a 2/1 forest for a turn probably.

Getting Pottery first means we can do the granary in Hydrogen before the second (scouting) work boat. That's obviously stronger for growth, but if we can get Hinduism we should obviously get that first. We definitely want Pottery before Priesthood either way, Helium can't finish the granary and work boat before we get to Priesthood anyway. And we definitely want both of those to grow much faster and end up with more production overall for Oracle. Currently the fastest I can do for Oracle is EOT 56 with a 4->2 whip. We could grow to 5 instead and finish it on 57, or we can work 3 mines at size 4 and finish it one turn earlier. That's what I have right now anyway. I might be able to cut off one more turn if I work the grass mines at size 2-3 over the gold, which may or may not be a good idea.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 32.



Not sure what's going on with the GNP. Top rival is 30 and another rival is 28-30. Kuro is still 23. Last turn Ellimist and Jkaen were both at 26. Hinduism has not been founded so that is not it. Yeah, I think it's starting to get to the point where tracking individual people is mostly impossible. I do notice the rival worst CY is 14, which seems to indicate that Kuro is working the fish over the corn. That's pretty weird but possible. Anyway I think I will mostly be tracking tech and pop gains from now on.

Reminder for next turn is to make sure Hydrogen is working the correct tiles (corn and grass mine). It is currently on the unimproved fish because I assume the governor does not put any value on hammers if there is nothing in the queue. We build a work boat next. Other than that we start the workers on chopping, turn off tech, and press enter. And hopefully see whether Ellimist researched Polytheism.

[NobleHelium]

All right well, I don't think it's possible to do substantively better than this.



Oracle was whipped this turn from 5->3. I dumped the overflow into Polytheism and then went with Pottery -> Polytheism -> Priesthood -> Sailing -> Hunting.

From now, the builds in the capital were work boat -> granary (4->3 whip) -> worker -> work boat (scout) -> settler (one turn) -> galley (Sailing finishes this turn, 6->4 whip next turn (before the chop)) -> settler (visible in screenshot). So the galley has had three turns of movement including turn 56. Helium went Stonehenge -> work boat (until Pottery) -> granary (whip) -> work boat (finish) -> Oracle. Keep working the gold until the rice farm finishes (I tested working the rice immediately, getting the hammers from the gold is better to finish the work boat faster), then we mostly go with the governor recommendations except for one point where we work a grass mine at size 3 over the gold mine for one turn, which cuts growth to 4 by one turn. I remember this being right after Sailing gets researched, I think.

I'm not sure where we want to found with the settler next, it could be on the mainland, or either of the island spots. You can see I'm chopping the northwest city site in preparation if we go with that spot. At first glance that seems like the obvious best plant, but the problem here is that if we steal the rice from Helium, Helium won't really be able to grow past size 4. Maybe we shouldn't be growing cities that large this early in the game, but there are so many improved tiles already and with a large happy cap it feels kind of silly not to. I don't really know, not enough experience.

The southeast spot does not have an improved food resource right now, but it has clams in the inner ring and Helium could build a work boat after Oracle. It'll take a few turns so it won't be there when the settlement happens, but the new city could work a mine for a couple turns while the boat gets there.

Alternatively we could ship the settler to the mainland, the obvious problem with that is that we don't have any warriors and we won't be able to scout anything on the mainland besides the coast. It is possible (although unlikely) that we may run into an opponent warrior who simply smacks our settler, but either way with very little scouting information on the mainland we'd probably be fumbling around with the settler for several turns before deciding on a spot to plant. In this scenario, Helium would build a warrior after Oracle (should be 2 turns), for mainland scouting/garrison.

Here's the sandbox file from our current turn if anyone wants a look or to try an alternative sim.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32632104/pbem21/...dSwordSave

[NobleHelium]

Okay, we could also do Oracle at EOT 55 if we work three mines at size 4 instead of growing to 5. That's probably not as good.

But, this may be a viable alternative:



This build is obviously more horizontal. Things we'd be losing are worker turns (third worker is being built), the scouting work boat, and galley turns. The galley and clam nets both finished this turn (well the galley EOT last turn I guess), so there won't have been any scouting at all. Lithium has worked the southern grass mine for three turns. We would likely do a warrior in Hydrogen next, and then onto a settler for the mainland. Or we could even build a scout instead of a warrior. There is lots of scouting to be done on the mainland after all, and no barbarians to worry about. This build overall has the advantage of flowing better, at least I think so.

Builds in Hydrogen for this alternative were work boat -> granary -> settler -> work boat (for 2 turns to grow to 4, coinciding with the cottage completion) -> settler (finish) -> work boat (finish) -> galley (5->3 whip). One turn of working an unimproved tile setting up the galley whip.

So, Lewwyn, which one do you like more? Or do you have a better idea? I hope you had a good flight, by the way.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, going to reiterate the reminders for next (two) turn(s) since you'll probably be playing it/them and you just got off from your flight.

Next turn: turn off science, start both workers on chopping, build work boat. Check whether Hinduism has been founded, if it hasn't, dump overflow into Polytheism. If founded, start tech on Pottery.

Turn after that: turn science back on, check whether Hinduism has been founded. If founded, research Pottery. If not founded, research Polytheism.

For subsequent turns we keep checking whether Hinduism is founded, and if so, switch over to Pottery.

[NobleHelium]

I played the turn. Need to go to work so no report, but Ellimist took Hinduism as expected. I set us on Pottery and kept tech on because apparently we can do Pottery in three turns.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, belated turn 33 report as well as turn 34.



Not sure what happened with the aliasing in that image. Much worse than the others at the same size. Bottom line is, the elements learned how to attract fish into their baskets. :neenernee



Not sure how the percentage influence calculation works. I thought it was the summation of (population of city with religion / total religions in city) divided by the total world population, but that doesn't seem to be it. Jkaen has 4 pop and Ellimist has 3+1 pop, we have 2+1 pop, and Kuro has 1+1 pop. So Buddhism should have 4/13 = 30% influence. But it's only 25%. Likewise Ellimist's Hinduism holy city is obviously his second city, so that should be 1/13 = 7%. But it's not. Anyone know what the formula is? And speaking of holy cities, has anyone ever landed the holy city in the capital when there was a second city present?



Our GNP is heavily inflated due to researching Pottery with both prerequisites. It will be even more so when we get to Writing. The rival GNP demos are pretty weird. I had assumed Ellimist was the top one last time, but the top 30 GNP didn't go up with the 5 holy city culture. I mean, they did lose the prereq bonus, but to get a 5 beaker prereq bonus you'd have to have 25 bpt. We don't have that and we're working an 8-commerce gold mine. I'll see if I can decipher this later.

Turn 34.





Apparently multiplayer games will tell you when your human opponents have adopted a religion even before contact. That's pretty stupid. I guess they had to do it for the same reason they had to reveal the scores before contact: each line of the scoreboard is one widget and they had to either not show your opponents at all before contact or show everything you'd normally see on that line. Of course, they should have just fixed the widget.

Anyway, as you can see, Kuro grew both of his cities to 2, giving him 13 points.