[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

Hmm, also came up with this.



So, it seems we could do Oracle at EOT 54 in Helium by whipping both the granary and the work boat in succession and then using the work boat overflow to dump a bunch of hammers into Oracle. And then we'd whip Oracle after that. Obviously this is stacking a lot of whip unhappiness, but we'd still be at size 3 and could get Hunting in 2 turns (Helium grows back onto the gold at EOT and cuts off a turn) for size 4 (camp will require 3 real turns to build though). This requires working the rice immediately even before it's farmed. We lose about 38 commerce by turn 56 in this scenario, a bit more than that overall because Helium can grow back sooner in the other. And we might end up even on hammers or maybe losing overall as we work the whip happiness off. At turn 59 this build is ahead by 9 hammers, and it finishes the second work boat for Lithium at the same time as the other one. But it's still stuck at size 4, it can build a worker after that though while waiting for the happiness to bleed off.

Overall I think this build is slightly worse, but a viable alternative if we think Oracle is at risk. I don't think we'll know whether Oracle is at risk though considering my C&D has collapsed.

So I think the main consideration between sim 1 and sim 2 is whether we want the scouting work boat. If we think it's not important we can go with sim 2 which gets the third city out faster and I think flows better. Note that the Oracle building part is largely independent of what the capital does, so we could still do the turn 54 serial whipping build for Oracle while going with the scout boat strategy.

Once we finish Stonehenge next turn we can see whether the map has a horizontal wrap (I think Stonehenge will let us ascertain this, can any lurkers confirm or deny?). If there is no wrap there is no circumnavigation, in which case I think the scouting can definitely wait.

Oh and the resizing seems to have started permanently sucking, the aliasing is always terrible now. So, this image is cropped. I hope it's not too large for people.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 35, a long awaited turn, of course.



It seems I am quite good at guessing, and we are in fact three tiles off the edge of the map horizontally. So my sandbox is perfectly correct in that respect. That's what it looks like from how far I can scroll to the right anyway, after border pops we'll know for sure. There is definitely no world wrap, the sandbox games with world wrap showed the wrap as soon as Stonehenge was complete. It's a side benefit of the wonder that nobody ever talks about and it can be quite useful. Otherwise you need to wait until Calendar.



I'm sure anyone remotely paying attention to the score will know that we were the ones who built it. Plus we're IND. In other news, Ellimist grew his capital to 4. Jkaen still has not researched BW, should only be a few turns more at most.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 36. Jkaen should have researched BW but he's only gained 7k power. Or maybe rival worst soldiers (15k) is someone else, but I'm not sure if that's possible either. No idea what's up with that, I'll figure it out tomorrow. Sleep time. Kuro got a tech too.

[Commodore]

Grats on the 'henge. You planning on getting any religions to complement it?

Although I have it on good authority the best Bismark of Mali strategy is to build every single wonder in the game in Helium. It's like being Philosophical except you can't control it.

[NobleHelium]

Grats on the 'henge. You planning on getting any religions to complement it?

Thanks. The first two religions have obviously been taken, but we are planning to go for Judaism soon. After Priesthood we will likely take Sailing, and then we'll want Hunting, AH, and Mono in some order. That is kind of slow so we might not be able to get it, in which case I'm sure we can get one of the later religions. I'd prefer to get one earlier, obviously.

Although I have it on good authority the best Bismark of Mali strategy is to build every single wonder in the game in Helium. It's like being Philosophical except you can't control it.

Haha, well, it is a good production city. I'm thinking of splitting the wonders into three cities just to have a backup cultural victory to fall back on. Hydrogen is likely the best place for Moai Statues with its 13 coast tiles, so it's a good candidate for pumping out some wonders once that goes up (plus it's the capital obviously). I generally hate the cultural victory, but if there's so much passive culture built up in three cities and not much turtling is required, it's a viable endgame. But only if the game drags on and something more interesting like domination isn't easily achieved.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, so turn 36 looked like this.





What on earth is Jkaen doing? I really have no idea. A 7k power gain is most confounding. The only thing that seems to account for that possibility is barracks (3k) + Wheel (4k). My best guess is that he went for Polytheism and then switched off for some reason (before Ellimist finished it) and then researched Wheel. No, that doesn't really make sense, so maybe he was researching something else (like BW, lol) and changed his mind. That doesn't make too much sense either but I really don't see how he could have gained 7k power otherwise. And his GNP, presumably the one with 30, didn't change between this and last turn, so he might very well have been researching a no-prereq tech. He must have switched at some point recently when I lost track of everything. Whatever, that's the best theory I can come up with, it's really getting impossible at this point.

Only able to guess what Kuro researched. I was originally going to say Pottery, but he has both prereqs and would have researched it faster. I'm going to say Animal Husbandry, that's pretty close from my guess at his research rate; he has both prereqs there too but it's more expensive. Why is nobody researching Pottery? GET GRANARIES AND COTTAGES PEOPLE. AND STOP CONFUSING THE HELL OUT OF ME.

Note to self: do not forget about land points. Jkaen has a religion so he gets his third ring earlier. He got it on turn 31, so don't be confused by points around turn 51.

[Lewwyn]

Hoorah. Looking good.

About what Commodore said about building every wonder. We're the only IND so theres a good chance we'll be able to do just that. Think is do we want them to all be in Helium? I think we should go ahead and think about this a moment. Would it be better in the long run to have our capital be the Wonder city? Once we get to burea the 50% hammer increase will kick in and could be a huge boost to our wonder building abilities. Something to consider.

I like Oracle Turn 54 if it feels like there's trouble but I'm willing to go with T57. Thing is if in fact any of our opponents can beat us to it, its a pain in the ass. Early MC will be huge for us because we're IND and we get our mints and we can just easily whip them out and get huge hammer bonuses over everyone.

[NobleHelium]

Okay, sorry about spamming you into oblivion on gchat. I do think the normal build is better. And it's actually turn 56, so we're only gaining two turns with the expensive short-sighted whipping abuse build. Oracle is the key wonder for us, and Ellimist is a contender for it, but I'm thinking if he really wants it he can beat us either way, so my intuition tells me we should minimize the worst case scenario.

We're actually getting 21 hammers of overflow into the settler after granary. That's pretty good.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 37.



Hydrogen grew to 3. The culture inflation from GNP is somewhat even, but we have more. Kuro has 4, Ellimist has 5, Jkaen has 5, we have 10. The demos are kind of bad actually, but they should get better in a couple of turns once we've farmed the rice and netted the fish. That'll boost our CY to near the leader.

The EMC team took forever to play the turn today. The only major event is obviously Stonehenge, so they were likely discussing that. I'm not sure what to make of it. Perhaps they were going for it and were in the process of chopping it out, and were discussing what to do next. Maybe they concluded to chop out Oracle instead, or maybe they concluded not to compete for Oracle. Who knows. Anyway I'm kind of tired of simming out the Oracle build trying to optimize it any further, and I really think the EOT 56 build is the best it's going to get. There might be some room for improvement on worker management unrelated to the Oracle though.

We should have enough gold to see us through Priesthood, so the ETAs are real.

[NobleHelium]

Played turn 38. I set up some micro signs. This is the best plan I can come up with, there might be something better.





You can see here that Ellimist grew his second city to 2. The top cities page shows when the city was founded, and that turn was Ellimist's city. So he hasn't completed a new tech yet. No tech means no Priesthood. Of course I just noticed that I missed Ellimist getting a tech on turn 36. He finished Polytheism on 34. There's no way he can get Priesthood in two turns, and his power went up from 14k to 16k that turn. So that is likely Hunting, which is cheap and definitely doable in two turns with some overflow at 100%. He could have researched something else while building a warrior, but I don't see what else he could research in two turns. He was making about 20-22 beakers tops those two turns. Since he went for Hunting before Priesthood I'm feeling better about our chances on Oracle. Maybe part of their discussion yesterday was over what tech to get next, or maybe that was entirely the discussion.

Reminders for next turn: make sure Hydrogen is working the fish once it's hooked up. Governor should do it but no harm in checking. That's about it. Turn after that we switch to the rice in Helium. This will NOT be automatic since the governor is turned off, so it's important that we remember this. We also whip the granary when Hydrogen grows to 4, probably the turn after the Helium tile switch.