Okay, long overdue update time . . . I'm making a note to myself to try to post these daily now that we're down to only one turn a day. I'm very sorry about being bad about keeping the spoiler thread updated; this is just a harder thing for me. Probably in part due to my perfectionist tendencies. But anyway, enough self-flagellation about my bad posting habits . . .
So the truth is that really not too much has happened to us since I last posted? We went Calendar -> Construction, just finishing the latter last turn, but otherwise we've just been building infrastructure and getting our Calendar resources online. There's been a lot of diplomatic developments around us, but we've been mostly unaffected. It appears that JackRB has begun to build up military, so that may be changing, but up until this turn there hasn't been any indication that any western wars have been imminent. We have been preparing as best we can for the possibility of JackRB launching an invasion, but realistically that means building up barracks in our production cities and markets in our commerce cities while waiting for Construction to come online.
First, though, the Hanging Gardens before/after screenshots. The jump in our demos is small but noticeable.
Pre:
Post:
Honestly, the biggest benefit from this was just getting three more workers online -- we're struggling for worker labor still (despite having 14 already -- 16 next turn!) We just have a huge amount of jungle to chop, honestly.
You can also see a noticeable verticle jump on the demographics screen, though I honestly think that may have more to do with trading for Roman gold than the Hanging Gardens itself. It hasn't really shown up yet, but we're currently in the middle of another jump to leading the pack in food and production, largely thanks to growing to our new happy cap and connecting both spices and dyes last turn.
Graphs:
Food:
Production:
Our current demos, with our current research and on 100% research:
30% research
100% research
The big note here is that we've basically retaken the lead in food and production. This does come with a caveat: JackRB just started whipping, and he was leading in these demographics before, so it's not quite as good as it appears. But it's still reflective of us keeping up with everyone, which is the important part.
Now for the big diplo hotspots. I suspect everyone reading this is going to have a much better idea of what happened from reading the other spoiler threads, but let me provide a brief summary from our perspective. First, JesseL declared on Joshy about 10 turns ago. Jesse overran one Roman city, but lost his stack in the process of trying a second, and then lost the city he took to a stack of Roman Praetorians. He is now suffering from an invasion by a Praet/Cat army and his demise is likely imminent. Second, Rekenner declared war on Bing, in what I think was a desperate attempt to claw his way back into the game. It did not work. Rek lost half his power within the space of a turn, and last we checked there was a huge storm of axes heading towards the city on our border. This was compounded by Vanrober piling on -- Van declared war on Rek a couple turns ago and almost immediately captured two cities. We're also getting involved in this situation -- just nonviolently. You see, south of Hospes is this interesting desert hill location:
That city has both bananas and rice, along with a TON of forests that we're thinking of using to chop out a small army. We currently have a settler moving in that direction that should be in place to found a city on T114. We'll see how that works. There is a chance that Vanrober is moving a settler to contest that location -- see the Fast Worker roading in the area? -- but assuming he takes the spot we think he will, we have an alternative location that will be available as soon as Rek's city falls and his borders disappear.
Anyway, the current big diplomatic question is what JackRB will do. Jack just researched Construction and Horseback Riding, and he's just started whipping Ballista Elephants, so the smart money is on him building for war with someone. But is that someone us or Bing? We'll have to see. That being said, I think we'll be prepared to face Jack if we have to -- but I'd much rather not have to do that yet . . .
With the diplo stuff taken care of, I suppose the best way to close is with some overviews of our cities. First, let's look at the border with JackRB:
The biggest issue here from a defensive standpoint is just that a lot of our troops are on the other side of the empire. That being said, provided we get a chance to build up our military, we should be fine to defend here. Foramen and Satus are both strong production cities, and they'll contribute plenty of troops to fighting off JackRB (or attacking Bing . . . ) Now that we have Construction, Foramen and Satus will be hard at work building up our siege forces. Eventually we'll get some workers over to Satus to chop the jungle and build cottages so it can be the commerce city it wants to be . . . but that won't be for a while. We're really hurting for worker labor!
Next we'll look at the core:
Basically, these are our big commerce cities. (Thalassina is more of a production city, but it still has enough commerce that a market is a worthwhile investment.) Up until this turn, we've been building up markets so that we can get the multipliers and extra happy face. But Ater and Thalassina will also be building units as soon as they finish their building projects -- possibly sooner with whipping. In terms of worker labor we're doing alright here, but we could use more to build more cottages and such now that these cities can start growing and working more tiles again.
Now for our newest city:
Green Stretch is going to be our main project over the next while -- it's an incredibly good commerce city held back by a huge amount of jungle and a complete lack of production outside of whips. We need to get this city online!
Then we have the northwestern peninsula:
Nothing super exciting here, just two fishing villages getting ready to produce units forever.
Next, our GP farm, Nok!
This city actually has a surprising amount of production, so we're putting that to use by building the Mausoleum here. Perhaps this is a bit greedy, but . . . well, everyone else who could be going for it is building up for war, and Nok has a lot of natural hammers and tons of forests! So we're making a play for it. The iron will be connected soon enough; our workers were just busy hooking up spices at nearby Okoro.
Anyway, I think that's pretty much where we are now. I'll try to be back tomorrow whenever we play the next turn, likely with some more eventful news -- depending on how hard JackRB is going in on whips, things could be getting very scary for us . . .
Does it require a river or a source of fresh water. I think the latter and the Terrace provides that. It's totally pointless because there are only rare cases in which I want to farm a tundra tile making it a 2/0/0 food tile. But I'm just curious.
Nope needs a river. I've played WAY too many single player maps with large tundra expanses. Can't cottage either which is more relevant as being financial maybe we would have WAY down the line. There is very much a reason its called "garbo peninsula" Thing has 4 desert tiles, 4 tundra, and also 4 plains only 1 of which we may work. Super lucky we are inca. Can at least Turn Grey Eyries into a 'fishing' village (ie we plan to whip it continuously from 4>2). The plains tile being farm-able is actually important long term for Kahtan. Kahtan has slightly less food and some actual grassland hills to work. Once working those it will really not be doing much whipping so idea is to farm 2-3 plains and then mine either desert or plains hill (that will be taken culturally from Jack) and get it to 16 base hammers a turn (for greens multiples of 4 are always ideal as with forges will then be up to 20 hammers total). I suspect that the jack border will be too hot to go near though, but its so far down the line who knows. Like I said, Bellarch really made a mistake getting me rambling.
Okay, so I probably shouldn't have decided to shoot for daily updates -- not because I couldn't do them, but because our turns were rolling over sometime past midnight for me, and while I was awake enough to play that didn't mean I was awake enough to post afterwards! But it's been only three turns, so nothing much has happened. In fact, the point of this update is to say that nothing happened: JackRB does not appear to be building towards war! While he whipped a few units on the turn we were worried about, we still have 0.9x his power, and he hasn't really built units since then. Here's the power graph so you can see for yourself:
We do want to continue building units, but that's honestly as much because Rome is big, on our border, and halfway through conquering JesseL as because I'm thinking about a war with Jack or Bing. I took a look at the diplo screen and Vanrober, in addition to (I believe) having military parity with Joshy, is bribing him with a fish + silver for fish deal! So we shouldn't expect Rome to mess with Van at all. No, if Joshy wants to use that massive army for anything, it'll probably be headed straight for us. He could also go after Bing, but I doubt that will be his first option. I do think he'll want to go after econ techs first -- his economy looks to be relative trash, he has no econ units, and he's about to absorb several new cities that will all cost a ton in maintenance. But someone just got CoL, and it's entirely possible that's Rome and he's about to whip a ton of courthouses to cut maintenance costs. In any case, I'm keeping a close eye on Rome right now. We should also consider building another scout to send towards Van; we need one on JackRB's border with Bing to see if he's launching an invasion and one in Roman territory to watch for a buildup out of our sight, but we also want to scout around and see what Van has going on in his territory.
Meanwhile, we are beginning our military buildup. We're finishing five units (2 axes which we had hammers saved up for and 3 catapults) this turn, mostly through whips, and we have another axe and cat finishing next turn. However, our actual military development is taking a temporary back seat to something more important: forges! You may recall that we were researching Horseback Riding as of my last update. Well, Mjmd and I were actually spending that turn debating whether or not to go for HBR and elephants or MC and forges first. We decided that forges was probably better (if a bit more risky), and with JackRB's lack of a big military buildup I think that risk ended up paying off. We'll be whipping forges at Ater and Thalassina ASAP, and then those cities will get started on constructing units for real. Foramen also has a forge due in 7 turns, and we're planning on chopping its last remaining forest to speed that up further.
Speaking of Foramen: notice anything interesting in this picture?
The interesting bit is in the lower left. The tile I'm hovering over is the hill 2NW of Foramen -- which it looks like we're about to steal! This tile is extremely important for two reasons. First, JackRB having sight on this tile means he can see what we're doing at Foramen; us having this tile means we can obscure our operations for a bit. Second, and more importantly, it has a forest! I'm thinking of chopping that straight into Kahtan (probably backed up by several axes, because I can see Jack declaring war over it). Kahtan has enough forests to essentially build a forge just through chops if we can chop the NW hill, and that city will be a small but useful military pump that will be able to benefit from the extra military production. Unfortunately, this tile will be a rental for now -- once Waterdream Warm expands to 3rd ring borders, Jack's cultural output on that tile will outpace ours and we'll lose it. (Really unfortunate that JackRB picked up our religion in that city -- it cuts his time until border expansion by a lot.) But if we put up an extra wonder in Foramen, or even just build some culture buildings in Kahtan, we have a decent chance to steal it back eventually.
Let's also take a look at two other things. First, we've founded yet another city in the south:
Hall of Skulls isn't the best location in that area; a city 1S or 1SW would claim more forests, a floodplain, and a spice resource, and irrigate the rice. However, this location doesn't antagonize Bing as much, it still has two food resources for fast growth, it's a better defensive location between the hill and the distance to our empire, and it uses the desert hill for something rather than just leaving it as a mostly-useless tile. Anyway, the main attraction of this spot is honestly just the forests. Now I know what you're thinking: this spot has a ton of forests, and you've been super greedy with wonders already; are you building another one with all those forests? Well, yes: we're building the wonder known as "an army". Mjmd was the one who actually suggested this, but I'm very on board with it. (I honestly just wanted the city because it had food and grasslands lol -- something good to learn!) We're going to need to fight wars eventually, and the ~300 raw hammers those forests represent will go a long way towards building a useful army. While we build to that point, though, I think we'll mostly be whipping infrastructure -- using the +5 food surplus to whip terrace/forge/barracks while sending our workers to do other things in the near-term.
Second, we're on track to finish the Mausoleum on T118!
Nok has 29 hammers/turn right now -- shockingly large in a city we just built as a GP farm -- and it's getting another 100-odd hammers in forest chops in a few turns. Combined with the 250 hammers we have invested just from chopping two forests and working the high-hammer tiles around the city, we're well placed to finish it. There's a possibility that we could lose the wonder, but I don't think it's likely -- Van and Joshy have been busy fighting wars and building military, and JackRB doesn't even have Marble connected. We should be able to Nok that one out easily okay okay I'll shut up now. Anyway, once the Mausoleum is done there, I'm thinking we might make it another military pump in the short term -- it has the food to work hammer tiles even while running specialists, and we could really use the extra military right now. We'll see, though; I haven't run that idea by Mjmd yet, and we do still have to build a forge/market/barracks if we want to go that route.
Anyway, that's all I have in terms of updates. I'll close this out by showing our demos screen:
We're in a good place in terms of everything important. The soldier count is lower than I'd like, but we're taking steps to remedy that. Our GNP is actually comparable, despite looking like we're at a huge deficit -- we're intentionally not doing binary science to obscure our economic progress, and this is around break-even. Our economic potential is even more than that, but . . . well, we have to chop a LOT of jungle before we can exploit it
TL;DR: not too much is actively going on right now, but we're preparing for the war we expect to break out in the near future -- wherever and whenever that will be.
Here's another update! We're up to Turn 118 The turn actually rolled over while I was writing the post, but nothing big happened this turn, so take the post as-is. I may do a small update on diplo stuff later today, but it's not super important right now.
The big news is that we built the Mausoleum! This isn't shocking, but it's still a good thing for us. We can see it here in Nok right now:
Nok is important partially because it built the Mausoleum, but also because it's producing our next Great Person. As you might guess by the fact that we built the MoM, it's going to be used for an immediate Golden Age. We have three goals for this Golden Age: swap into Hereditary Rule and Vassalage, push to Guilds, and start building Knights. Our goal is to go to war with Jack while we have a tech edge, ideally around the end of our Golden Age. We've already sent Bing an offer for a military agreement around that point. This will take quite a few techs: We need to pick up Monarchy, Feudalism, Machinery, and Guilds, and we're also picking up Archery, Priesthood, and Meditation (which we researched last turn) while we're at it. However, we have 21 turns of research and 12 turns of Golden Age commerce, and we're going to be improving our commerce cities in the meantime. So I think we should at least be able to get most of the way there. Here's our tech path for reference:
We've turned research down to 20% to save money so that we can fund our Golden Age research, so we can of course do this much faster than the number of turns listed. We'd be down all the way to 0%, except we want to grab Monarchy so we can swap into Hereditary Rule immediately upon entering the GA. Blessed Isle, at the very least, would appreciate that a lot.
Now for a broad overview of the empire. First, a first stab at a flying camera shot of the whole thing:
Minor whine: Hall of Skulls makes this somewhat awkward, as it sticks out at the bottom and getting it in the shot is difficult without zooming out quite a bit. But whatever; it's fine.
Anyway, now let's post more zoomed-in screenshots, going north to south. First, the north of the empire:
The Grey Eyries and Kahtan are well on their way to becoming fully-developed fishing cities. The Grey Eyries actually can expand its population a little upon researching Biology -- I saw that there was a discussion about this upthread, but because the Terrace counts as a source of fresh water and not just irrigation, you can farm tundra tiles around it. At least the game tooltip is suggesting that I build farms on the tundra tiles directly east of Grey Eyries, which I'm guessing is accurate In any case, this isn't going to matter until Biology is a thing, so it's not a concern right now. Kahtan is whipping its last unit for a while, as it's prepares to get the population to work two mines and build units faster. That last missionary will be whipped into a forge, and we should finish it either using natural production or by chopping that forest. We'll then knock out the Barracks with the 50% production bonus from OR + Forge, and then go straight to building more Catapults.
Nok you saw already, but we should talk a little about Okoro. Okoro is a weird city; it's a mixed production/commerce city that mostly exists for the purpose of working tiles the other cities can't. That being said, it's turning out quite well. We're using it to produce a bunch of ships, turning out galleys and triremes so that we can hopefully launch a naval attack on JackRB's northern city. It also has at least one cottage -- probably two eventually -- so it can produce some commerce too. We'll be whipping a forge there soon, once we get Judaism spread to the city for the OR bonus hammers.
Next, the imperial core:
Thalassina and Ater have finished their forges. Thal is already three-turning War Elephants, but Ater needs to build a barracks first and regrow some of the population we whipped off to build the forge in the first place. Once it regrows, though, Ater will be able to pump out units just as fast as Thalassina. Foramen is finishing its forge this turn, and it'll be doing the same thing. We already have a ton of axes, and our less powerful production cities are building up catapults already. We're also building two chariots at Thalassina -- one will be helping scout Rome, while the other will be going to scout out Vanrober's territory. We'd really like to have a better idea of what's going on there . . .
The other two cities are much less military-focused, but they're still important. Wolof is producing a huge amount of wealth for our empire between the profitable shrine and the tons of villages. It's working on its forge now, but that's its last really important build; I expect we'll just be turning out scouts or missionaries there while we wait to be able to build a Grocer. Blessed Isle is, of course, unhappy. The city is size 10, has one unhappy pop, and still has a +8 food surplus; what do you expect? It's building the forge and then will go on to build a market. Basically, we're turning the city into a megacity that does a bit of everything. I expect that once we build the forge and market we might build a barracks and turn out a few units, but its main goal right now is building infrastructure. It is possible that we build the Globe Theater there for whip/draft shenanigans, but that'll be further down the line if we do decide to do that. It's not a priority right now.
Finally, the south:
Obviously, the south of the empire is a lot less developed than the north. This is mostly because we just couldn't chop the jungle until recently, but it's still a problem. We're going to be putting almost all our workers into improving the south over the next few turns so that we have some cottages and such to benefit from the Golden Age bonuses. We're currently getting the dyes online -- the last one will be done on T120 -- and building mines around Satus to get the city's production going. Satus itself is currently a military production city, producing 10 hammers per turn, whipping units every 10 turns, and building up our catapult force. Though we may pause that soon to get a forge going . . . Green Stretch is just building up population to work high-commerce riverside tiles. Hospes is getting ready to whip a forge (and then to whip units afterwards), but in the meantime it's just working some new cottages. Hall of Skulls, of course, is just waiting for us to whip a forge and barracks so we can chop out some knights there. At the moment, though, it's just building up infrastructure.
Now let's look at demographics. By the raw numbers we're doing okay, though once Rome conquers the rest of Germany (and gets out of its economic hole) that'll be less true, and Vanrober's also someone to keep an eye on. He is sitting on another capital site, though I believe it's been whipped down enough that it'll take a while before that city really starts to become useful.
The big thing to take note of is our production: we've been consistently leading (or close to it) in production for the last few turns, even before we started putting up forges. We're translating that production lead straight into more military. We're also basically keeping pace with the other major categories, which is a very good thing.
One thing that kind of bugs me (warning: whining) is the GNP. This is less because it's not good (I think we're doing comparably to Van and Jack?) than because it's difficult to tell. So last turn, T117, I had a minor moment of panic because India's GNP spiked far beyond what we could produce that turn. (Note that Vanrober is doing entirely binary science, so he's been spiking and falling all the time. I can only keep track of this via the demographics screen, of course, since he has so much EP from the early courthouses). In that picture, we're at 289 GNP at 100% science versus Van's 358. However, that's entirely dependent on what tech we were researching at the time. I did some experiments to demonstrate this on this turn. So on T118, where we are right now, our GNP is 256 at 40%. However, if we were to research Priesthood instead of Archery, that jumps to 282. This also changes as we move the slider; at 100%, we have 314 GNP while researching Archery and 377 (!!!) while researching Priesthood. The ktbs on these techs is the same, so this is just the effect of the prereq bonus. The point of this is that it's very hard to use the GNP on the demographics screen as a representative measure of how well our economy is doing -- between the 70 artificial GNP from our massive culture production and the effect of tech multipliers, it's just hard to see. This doesn't matter too much because we have the tech tree to keep an eye on, but it still annoys me a bit. Anyway, I'm sure this isn't really new to anyone who's played this game extensively, but it still drives me up the wall. This is the issue when someone has a huge amount of EP on you, lol.
Speaking of EP, let's take a look at it:
We made the decision not to try to contest Vanrober's espionage production because his courthouses means that he can overwhelm us. Unfortunately, that means that Van's espionage production has increased to the point where he can (I assume) have visibility on our cities, and possibly see into them. I wish there was an easy way to see how well your opponents' espionage has worked on you . . . Anyway, this is bad news in the long run, but in the short run I don't expect an attack from Vanrober anytime soon so I'm not that worried. It is a possibility -- but that's just another reason why we want to build towards war right now. I assume that Van will go for Joshy before he goes for us; Joshy's in an economic hole where he might not be able to resist Van effectively, he's much more dangerous for Van between the military and the very long border, and it's just a logistically easier conquest. But we'll see how that goes.
The good news is that we're going to regain visibility on JackRB's research -- in fact, we already have it (this screenshot is T117), but Jack apparently finished a tech last turn and hasn't logged in and picked a new one yet. (In fact, I just went to log in to double-check a few minor things for this post, and Jack has just logged in! I'll have to post a short update on that next turn.) This could change if he spends more EP on us, but so far he hasn't changed that so we'll see if that continues. I assume he's trying to block Van right now. Anyway, we're now splitting our EP between Joshy and Van. T119 EDIT: he just turned EP on us and apparently has courthouses, so that's out of reach right now. I think I have to switch our EP to block him from seeing much information on us.
Finally, some words about the foreign front. First, Rekenner has been eliminated. This is entirely expected, of course. It's unfortunate, but that's what happens when you fail an early rush . . . I just wish 3/4 of his cities hadn't gone to Van. I'd much prefer a stronger Bing instead. Second, JesseL has been reduced to 3 cities. I actually moved the scout over in that direction and got a glimpse of the battle:
Berlin is going to fall, but that won't happen immediately; Rome just doesn't have enough units at the moment. I have to assume that they're moving into the territory, though, so the demise of Jesse's capital is imminent. One thing that surprises me is the complete lack of cottages -- I mean, JesseL was sitting on a huge capital for how many turns? And he didn't build any cottages? That's a huge mistake, and it certainly explains why he hasn't been keeping up in tech. Though it's possible that he tore up his infrastructure out of spite. We would love that; please cripple Rome so it's too costly to attack us . . . T119 EDIT: It actually seems like Joshy may want to work with us, so please, Jesse, don't cripple Rome . . . that much
Anyway, that's all for this update! I'll probably be back soonish for a more diplo-focused update.
Click the "Show AI Espionage" button and you will at least get graphs and tech vision they have on you. There's no easy way to show city visibility though, as that's on a per city basis.
) Now that we have Construction, Foramen and Satus will be hard at work building up our siege forces. Eventually we'll get some workers over to Satus to chop the jungle and build cottages so it can be the commerce city it wants to be . . . but that won't be for a while. We're really hurting for worker labor!
In any case, this isn't going to matter until Biology is a thing, so it's not a concern right now. Kahtan is whipping its last unit for a while, as it's prepares to get the population to work two mines and build units faster. That last missionary will be whipped into a forge, and we should finish it either using natural production or by chopping that forest. We'll then knock out the Barracks with the 50% production bonus from OR + Forge, and then go straight to building more Catapults. 
