[PB63 Spoilers] Fabled, Amicalola, and JR4 are woven into the pattern

[civac2]

Well, that's the issue I have with culture and happiness from religion. It's not reliable unless you go up to Monotheism. It works much better if you are SPI, though.

[Amicalola]

Yeah, I agree. They can both be very useful, but you can't rely on it. I do think going up to Monotheism and double-converting can be worth doing pre-Currency, FWIW. For non-CRE or CHA leaders with decent teching. It depends on how urgent border pops are though, here they don't seem especially useful, at least not enough to justify a long detour like that.

[Charriu]

Well, that's the issue I have with culture and happiness from religion. It's not reliable unless you go up to Monotheism. It works much better if you are SPI, though.

There is one exception though, which was already mentioned by civac: Big maps. This is no longer spoiler, so feel free to read it. In PB59, which of course has a big map, I founded Hinduism. I only ever build 3 or 4 missionaries to spread the religion, mainly for those cities that got a foreign religion or for very specific needs. All the other spreads across my whole continent were random spreads. I don't know if my other neighbors spread Hinduism purposefully, but for my empire I got at least 18 random spreads out of it and all of it in a rather fast matter.

[Fabled]

Turn 52

Today was an eventful turn! First off, I received this message from Cornflakes:

Fables,
I have declared war and offered peace in PB63. Please maintain the current turn split until peace is restored.

Cheers

This came with the following trade request.



I was moving warriors around to scout, so Cornflakes was a turn split ahead on reaching Cairhien. I accepted the peace deal. I don't understand what's going here, declaring war and immediately sending a peace offer makes no sense. This doesn't even enforce a turn split? Someone help me understand.



The empire. We'll hit a big power spike next turn as all these builds complete. I want a settler next, probably out of Caemlyn. Tar Valon probably keeps building military, especially now that Cornflakes is getting aggressive. We're getting cottages up now.



We have horses, although I'm not sure it's the best place to settle from a food perspective. Maybe I can send a warrior from Caemlyn to look and keep the spear back for military police.



Charts. I think the important thing here is we have a little bit of power over Cornflakes.



Demographics.



EPs. We're slowly getting our charts set up with everyone.

[civac2]

What Cornflakes was doing there is so common there is even a term for it (war-peace, admmittedly unimaginitive, sometimes used as a verb, ie. 'SD war-peaced me.'). He is getting 10 turns of enforced peace out of his machinations.

[JR4]

Cornflakes probably wants to be left alone over the next 10 turns. Accepting the Peace Treaty looks fine but there is a possibility that he`ll use the chance to settle up on us somewhere. I`m not too concerned about that as we`ve got a solid border for now.

Maybe it`s time to build some Settlers as we need to make a claim NE which is definitely contested lands. Getting a unit up there quickly gives us a chance of seeing just how far away our neighbour is. I quite like building a Settler in Caemlyn and then whip it to completion, getting rid of an unhappy face in the process. And speaking of unhappiness, we should have access to Gold soon enough.

[Fabled]

Turn 57

Not much happening, but we finished sailing and started mysticysm.



Our land. Getting cottages and a gold mine up, hopefully we're working all improved tiles soon.



Our horses. Looks like we're close to Mr. Cairo, and I'm not sure if we can fit a city in here.



Not sure what that dip from Rome means.



It's good we're staying competitive here.



Behind on food feels bad, not sure if there's anything to be done about it though.



We're ahead on power. Maybe I should use this to stop building axes in Cairhien and switch to a settler? We're putting up a barracks in Tar Valon to go with the copper mine, so we're going to keep pumping out units there.



Demos for the interested.



Tech tree. I'm convinced about getting a religion for the border pops, and it looks like we may have a shot at either polytheism or meditation.

[JR4]

Okay, Mr. Cairo is pretty close too. I suggest building a city on the plains hammer right S of the Horses next. It would give us a really nice and demilitarized border with our northern neighbour.

We've probably built enough military to dissuade any shenanigans short term. Maybe we could grow Cairhien to size 4 and then start a Settler? We could wait a bit on finishing the Axe.  

I'm on board with the religion plan. Actually getting a religion would be huge. How many turns do we need to research Mysticism and Polytheism?

[JR4]

Those Pigs should probably get a Pasture asap. Food is more important than hammers right now.

How do you feel about whipping out the Settler in Caemlyn and start another foodhammer unit right away?

[Fabled]

Okay, Mr. Cairo is pretty close too. I suggest building a city on the plains hammer right S of the Horses next. It would give us a really nice and demilitarized border with our northern neighbour.

We've probably built enough military to dissuade any shenanigans short term. Maybe we could grow Cairhien to size 4 and then start a Settler? We could wait a bit on finishing the Axe.

I'm on board with the religion plan. Actually getting a religion would be huge. How many turns do we need to research Mysticism and Polytheism?

Those Pigs should probably get a Pasture asap. Food is more important than hammers right now.

How do you feel about whipping out the Settler in Caemlyn and start another foodhammer unit right away?

That looks like a good city site, we'll send the settler from Caemlyn there ASAP.

We're at 4 turns for mysticism, 5 for meditation, 7 for polytheism. Probably a couple more since we'll have to stop to bank gold after mysticism.

Good call on the pigs, I forgot about that

I missed the window to whip the current settler, so I'll whip the next one. Right now we're at 1 pop 5 hammer overflow, and that's just not good. A better player would have been looking for a 2 pop whip with good overflow, but honestly it's tough to keep track of this stuff in a pitboss compared to a single play session.