[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[marcopolothefraud]

Enter Jay-Z 

I was *so close* to naming my second city Reasonable Doubt, after Jay-Z’s debut studio album. It’s Jay-Z’s best album. I like it more than Illmatic - more than any 90’s hip-hop album, in fact. I think it comes down to two things. First, it contains near-perfect boom-bap instrumental beats that I can’t find anywhere else. Second, Jay-Z’s rhythm and flow is so delightfully weird. He breaks off his sentences, pauses mid-measure, and abruptly doubles or halves his tempo seemingly at random.


Oh, crap, I guess I forgot to introduce Jay-Z himself.

Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) might be the archetype of the drug-dealer turned rapper. He grew up in the Marcy Projects public housing complex in New York City, raised by a single mother, and turned to selling crack cocaine to support his family. According to his lyrics, it apparently worked tremendously well. He learned crucial business strategies from his drug-dealing days on the streets...though he really was one-in-a-million not to lose his life or be imprisoned by such a risky job.

When he transitioned into music, he was determined to continue using his business talents. He co-founded his own record label, Roc-a-Fella Records, and released all his albums himself - taking care of distribution and marketing along the way. He had an insane work ethic, too.

Between 1996 and 2000, Nas only released three studio albums (plus one collaborative album). Jay-Z released five: one for each year. Imagine that! For each album, he had to release at least 2-4 singles and shoot music videos for them, so that he could market it to prospective customers. He had to prepare live tours and festivals, to sell tickets and merchandise and make even more money. Most of all, he had to make sure the music was good: he needed to carry enough lyrical and musical ideas to make quality songs that were worth relistening to.

I think it paid off well. All of these albums still sound great to this day, even if none of them are as good as Reasonable Doubt. Vol. 2...The Life and Times is hailed as a hip-hop classic (it won a Grammy Award), though personally I like Vol. 1 more.

In these four years, I can safely say that Nas’ star was falling while Jay-Z’s was rising. Illmatic was still critically acclaimed and sounded great, but many people thought that Jay-Z could make an album to rival it - hell, he might already have rivalled and surpassed Illmatic. The two hip-hop legends would finally cross paths in 2001.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I don't want to rely on the assumption that a natural wonder is nearby, especially since Ljubljana/Woden and Kaiser/Archduke most likely haven't met a natural wonder either. They don't seem to have gotten +3/+1 era score. To this end, I'm going to research Astrology over the Eureka and run the risk of "wasting" science.

In my singleplayer experience, I've committed the mistake of waiting for the Astrology eureka too many times, and lost out on a good religion because of that. (Same with waiting for the Foreign Trade inspiration - that's caused me to delay Political Philosophy by a lot.) Here, if I wait for the Astrology eureka, I'm not confident at all that we can find a natural wonder. My warriors are still fighting barbarians, and will do so for the next 10-15 turns. Your warriors have already explored most of your corner - your western warrior seems to have bumped into the western coastline, and your southern warrior has found the snowy southern coast. As a realist/pragmatist, I think the best thing to do is to keep researching Astrology and eat my losses. What if our natural wonder is east of Lake Mackay? I'm not going to explore there until the Pacific Barbarians are dead. Therefore, if we don't find a natural wonder, I should finish Astrology on my own and boost it for you.

And I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear, but I want to throw down a campus immediately.  

To be clear, I mostly agree with this. As long as you don't find a natural wonder within 7 turns of finishing Astrology, you come out ahead in science - and you can't know if we're only 7 turns from finding a NW. So finishing Writing 7 turns earlier and getting a campus down 7 turns earlier nets out to a profit in science, assuming you have +3 adjacency. Obviously if it's a higher adjacency (per Australia) then the return is even quicker. 

Now that you have a settler out, too, it looks like an early campus won't be so bad. The other possible investments all have drawbacks - a monument has that Mysticism gate we need to clear first (although after that it might be worthwhile), a third warrior or a slinger would be useful but not essential and wouldn't help the snowball a lot, and a builder is gated by getting our techs to unlock his improvements. THat said, your next build after the campus (or before, timed to finish at about the same time writing does) should be a builder and then you can start working on the builder techs. Really need to get taht up and going as soon as practical. 

Turn 21

I finish the barb slinger, which, coupled with the two dead spears, gives us Bronze Working:




Where is Bronze Working on the tree? Hiding right behind the Wheel, it turns out:




That's...super annoying, since we now can't boost the Wheel with an iron mine. That's going to be a very difficult tech to boost, unless we want to delay Iron Working until we can get one of our silver cities out (a desert one for Australia, a tundra one for Russia), and there's no copper in sight. I am pretty sure my Gypsum at Suvurov will take a quarry, not a mine. We might just have to eat the costs here. 

Overview:




Suvurov founded on turn 23. Archduke got his second city down this turn, which means he must have timed his settler to coincide with growth to size 3. Kaiser might have done the same - we'll know in a turn or two. No other settlers visible on the score, so you and I might be 2nd/3rd (or 3rd/4th) to our second cities, which is decent, and suggests everyone has similarly challenging starts. My builder is due out on turn 25, and I think I'll throw down a farm to find Irrigation, then a pasture at Suvurov to boost Horseback Riding, and then - do I quarry the stone, or quarry the Gypsum with my third charge?

[marcopolothefraud]

My builder is due out on turn 25, and I think I'll throw down a farm to find Irrigation, then a pasture at Suvurov to boost Horseback Riding, and then - do I quarry the stone, or quarry the Gypsum with my third charge?

Hmm...is there any chance that you can make fishing boats with the third charge? I forgot whether or not you have Sailing yet, or if you're gunning for Sailing after Astrology. I think that a +1 food improvement would be better than a +1 production improvement at the moment, as Borodino and Suvorov won't have high populations when the builder's ready. 

Personally, I'm wondering if it would be smarter to settle Suvorov one tile to the west, on the Gypsum. (What's your justification for settling Suvorov, by the way? I think you put down the pin a long time ago and I can't find an explanation or a strategic plan with the Suvorov spot.) 

1. Settling "Western Suvorov" means that you can pick up two hills in your second ring of tiles, and you can put mines on them too. Doing that gives you nice 4-yield tiles, and also reveals Apprenticeship in the tech tree (though of course it'll be very far away).

2. You can put a Lavra down on the current Suvorov spot, and a Harbor that borders both Western Suvorov and the Lavra. This would give you a +2 adjacency Lavra and a +5 adjacency Harbor.

Or, if you want to take a risk, you can put a Government Plaza on the current Suvorov spot, a Lavra southeast of West Suvorov, and a Harbor that borders both West Suvorov and the Government Plaza. This may be something to consider because I anticipate West Suvorov's production to overtake that of Borodino once it gets to 3 or 4 population. After all, you want your Settler-pumping city to be a high production one, not a low production one.

3. West Suvorov borders 2 sea tiles, but Suvorov borders 3. 8 Frigates can hypothetically shoot at West Suvorov, but 9 can hypothetically shoot at Suvorov. Of course, this is a flimsy argument because West Suvorov is only marginally more defensive. It's on flat land, right?


Sigh...I wish Cornflakes was here to help us. Perhaps he could advise me with my second city location of "High yield, no coast" as well.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

mostly because I have a habit of not putting cities on resources, even when it makes sense to.

I also try to pack 'em in 3-4 spots from my nearest city, too. I like density of settlement. Cities 5 or - god forbid - 6 tiles apart drive me nuts, because lots of the land in between goes to waste for most of the game.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

West Suvurov makes sense and I'll probably shift it. Makes better use of my landgrab ability and doesn't invalidate any potential sites further west.

As for your fishing boats, I'm still a ways from sailing. But I also don't have mining for a quarry anyway. Either one could be my immediate followup to Astrology. However, in general I feel like production beats food, especially with this start - I have lots of food available (two rices, two cottons) but not a whole lot of production (not ONE PFH or deer in sight. ). Quarry also will let us spot Masonry (which must be in one of two places) and has a 50% chance of being our next tech after Sailing (Irrigation is the other potential tech). We'll need all but one ancient tech in order to progress through the classical bottleneck on the tech tree (I'll show a picture next turn), and so we might need Masonry sooner rather than later.

[marcopolothefraud]

Ah, gotcha. While we're waiting for my turn, let's discuss your other two prospective city sites:

- Navarin has no food whatsoever. I see two tundra hills that will become 1 food/2 production/1 faith tiles, which are pretty decent - but it would need a trade route to actually get off the ground. I would make it my fourth or fifth city, right after the Ancestral Hall finishes.

- Imperator Aleksandr is a total mystery right now. I like the 5-yield sugar and the 4-yield horses, but we would be taking a gamble on the tiles to its south. If we're lucky, there are lots of tundra hills or tundra woods, or even a natural wonder. If we're unlucky, there's flat tundra - though snow tiles are unlikely. Unless Oslyabya is really, really good, I would make it my third city.

- We barely know anything about Oslyabya's terrain, but it already looks better than Navarin. It can share turtles from Borodino, and it has a 2f/2p forested plains hill in reach as well. My warrior will reveal some of this land, but it seems like your southern warrior is coming up as well.

- The question mark cities look really, really bad.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

For the most part I agree. I'm leaning towards Aleksandr for #3, since with DotA its lavra will be really strong, and it has the sugar and horses to get off the ground with. The Holy Site + tundra will provide production and faith to fuel settlers. I'm curious about the tiles to the south but the barbs have kept me from scouting it.

Oslyabya is a mystery, and might also make more sense as an Australian claim. Need to unveil the terrain to know more.

and that exhausts the decent expansion options!

Navarin takes advantage of the Baikal freshwater, but will also be able to build a harbor to produce ships. That miiiiight alleviate the food shortage but we need to scout more. Otherwise it has a handful of hills and nothing else to recommend to it. It's mostly a filler city. Again, a lavra can do work here. As I push exploration westwards, we might find a better site for it.

The two question marks don't even have names yet because they're so bad I won't dignify them as really worthy of discussion. They're late game filler - throw down a high adjacency lavra and profit, nothing more. That said, what makes them mildly viable rather than outright wastes of resources are the seafood and luxuries they can grab, and the production and faith from tundra. Basically, they'll be later settles that will depend on fishing boats to hopefully grow to size 4, pick up the silver, and be able to host a campus or a commercial hub and pull a little bit of weight.

On the whole, the heavy, heavy amount of tundra and lack of production really limits Russian opportunity. I think the best way to make lemons out of lemonade is to take Dance of the Aurora, hope that China doesn't grab Work Ethic with Stonehenge, and go from there.

[marcopolothefraud]

Turn 22

Natural Wonders provide +2 Appeal to surrounding tiles. We can safely conclude that Oslyabya has no Natural Wonder. However, it's got lots of good forest tiles and perhaps another Woods/Mountain/Lake tile hiding in the fog.

Otherwise, my two warriors move on the Pacific Barbarian camp.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I moved the settler to west Suvurov and will found next turn. Kaiser is second to city #2, as suspected, he built a settler timed with his pop increase. Given their rapid pop increases AND early settlers, it is my suspicion that either Archduke and Kaiser have dramatically better capitals than we do (unlikely) or they halted their first builds at size 2 and swapped to settlers immediately, taking a gamble with early barbs in order to get their second cities down a couple of turns faster. 

One note: we won't be able to squeeze both Oslyabya/Unnamed Australian City and the second High yields/no cost city together, so we should be sure to finish scouting the coast before we make a final decision there. I'm also leaning towards Australia settling that site anyway, since the coast and high yields make it a natural Oz site while I can make better use of our vast tundra to the south.

[marcopolothefraud]

Turn 23

Oh dear. Barbarian woes keep on coming.

The good news is that the barbarian warrior will be too slow to capture my settler, no matter what. The bad news is that I will need some way to deal with it. I'm considering a gold-purchase of a warrior as soon as I settle my city, The Blueprint...this would require 160 gold, 25 gold from Australia and 135 from Russia. Is this a smart move, or should we save our gold for infrastructure?