[SPOILERS] Mardoc gets back on the horse

[Mardoc]

Didn't occur to me Probably a good idea, though; we won't have trade routes immediately but we should be able to have them soon. He's apparently got Currency already so he'd appreciate having them. I don't want to fight him, there's too much land to be grabbed and infra to be built, so even a meaningless friendly gesture is worth making.

[Mardoc]

Moving pretty quick today, just had a second turn. Offered THH open borders, and also found a chariot of his incoming to Polynesian. I'm going to have to be careful to make sure I get the last kill on that city, not him. And I'm bringing in a spear pronto, to keep him from getting any funny ideas about my Vulture, too.

Also spotted Alhazard's borders to the north, haven't met him yet though. It's looking like this is a good game for Knights!

Nothing much else newsworthy this turn. Just continued pressing forward on settlers and spears, for now.

[Mardoc]

Much THH posting...I bet we're at war .

[flugauto]

Doublemove! Reload! ???

[Mardoc]

Not at war. Still have spears headed this direction as fast as possible.

Vulture took more damage killing the first warrior than I expected. At least he'll have a promotion out of this. Might need to rest a bit before taking on the next one, though



Commodore! If THH wins, I'm blaming that plains-floodplain you gave him
that is, unless I take it from him by knight...

Did spot a THH settler heading somewhat my direction. Be interesting to see where he decided to plant.

The scout is headed to meet Miguelito.

Otherwise, just kept on keeping on. Got Judaism, it'll be interesting to see whether it can spread any better than Buddhism in the next ~8 turns until Monarchy comes in.

The place is getting crowded. May not be all that long before we go vertical, at this rate. Just gotta stretch to at least grab the happiness to let that work.

[flugauto]

What are the demos?

[Mardoc]

Last turn new scouting info.




This turn we picked up two new cities! Ultimately didn't see anything I liked better for Schoedinger. And we captured Polynesian, both the Vulture and the spear participated. As long as THH doesn't hit us this very turn, we should be safe - his chariot is at 2.3/4, though, so I don't think that's likely.

That catches us up to China in city count, and puts us strongly ahead of Carthage. Of course, part of Carthage's growth problems became clear when they built the Pyramids.


Demos are . I choose to believe that's the result of pushing ourselves so hard for new cities. GNP has been obviously falling with increased maintenance; not quite high enough to queue up Zigs yet at 3-4 gpt/city, but it might not be as long as I thought. Crop Yield/MFG...um, also blaming that on worker/settler whips.



Next turn, we should found the silver city and finish the settler for the furs; in three turns we'll settle the furs and have another settler ready without a clear site in mind for him.

And....the way our income is behaving, we may be forced to pause at that point. If I can get enough workers to the colonies, we may even have the happiness to justify a pause for infra. Growing the cities up and putting down Colossus ought to fix our GNP problem. I can definitely see why Currency is so highly valued, but we're committed to the happiness path instead. If we're paused for growth, that'll be a good time to fire off the GA and trust that it'll boost us enough to get our HR revolt by the end of it.

Actually, on reflection, a lot of our demo problems are simply the result of our cities being so small. Average size is something like 2; the mature cities are generally on a 4->2 whip cycle and of course the new ones are size 1. I could see our happy cap easily becoming double digits once the current plans come to fruition (gold/silver/furs = 3, forges = 2, HR = 1, Religion = 1). So I still have hope. But we need to get the workers moving to make that happen. And, um, we'll get a minor boost whenever we get a road to the Chinese and Carthaginians, too.

Research plan is pretty straitjacketed at the moment. Finish Monarchy, then Math - Currency - Calendar. More income, 2 more happiness (so far), it's all good things.

[Mardoc]

Probably the extra settler will go over by THH to borrow Bohr's fish.

So, on reflection, that means my build queues are pretty well defined, too. No more settlers for a while, instead just workers and units. Gotta make sure I connect the happiness ASAP, get some cottages in place to grow onto, and remove any temptation from my neighbors while I do that.

Except Bohr. That GNP deficit means I need to go ahead and slap down the Colossus already. Someone may be picking up Metal Casting soon, if their economy is in better shape than mine. And we'll need that extra income. Currently it would just be 3 gpt for the resources, but once we start growing cities, we'll be able to put down lighthouses and really cash in. So Bohr will use its overflow and a whip to make a forge, then go directly to the big shiny statue.

[flugauto]

Demos look fine. Civic upkeep maybe is higher than city maint. It is time to stop whipping the cities that can work cottages. Dalton is working the wines hill. Dalton can borrow the Polynesian cows for a while.

[Mardoc]

Demos look fine. Civic upkeep maybe is higher than city maint. It is time to stop whipping the cities that can work cottages. Dalton is working the wines hill. Dalton can borrow the Polynesian cows for a while.

I'll be doing those...in about five turns. The trouble is, stopping the whip requires that we stop working our food, or else grow. Can't grow, we don't have the happiness. Stopping working resources just feels insane. I guess maybe we could build a worker or three with food instead of the whip, give up the Exp bonus for larger cities but not the resources themselves. Could definitely find a use for more workers.

But...assuming no wars, we'll have the gold online in 3-4 turns, fur and silver a couple turns after that. Those should at least give the whip a pause and change the cycle to 7->5 or something like that. If the demos weren't a moving target, that'd let us catch up by itself .

Forges will help too. Hard to justify when there's a settling race - but if we have to stop horizontal expansion anyway, Industrious forges are awesome, especially with metal happy available.