[PB72 SPOILERS] Aetryn learns humility

[aetryn]

I'm extremely confused by the trade situation. Here's the connection:




This should be a connection, right? I have a city on a river, connected to lake, connected to an opponent's city. I have Sailing and Open Borders. We can freely trade resources. Why can't we get trade routes?

What's worse is when I tried to do this same thing in the sim I constructed for the game, even building the road didn't give us trade routes. What gives here?

Do we have valid trade connections but the cities aren't picking them for some reason?

[Magic Science]

I think you do have a trade connection, but his trade routes with you are only worth +1 right now, same as your domestic trade routes, because the sustained peace factor is too low.

[aetryn]

I think you do have a trade connection, but his trade routes with you are only worth +1 right now, same as your domestic trade routes, because the sustained peace factor is too low.

Yep, you're right. This is it. You can tell my single player experience is mostly on Huge Pangaea maps where this is almost never a factor, as there's always SOMEONE to trade with even if you've recently been at war with one of the other players. I just had the mental shortcut of "Foreign routes are worth at least 2 in all circumstances" in my head. Well, given another 10 turns I might get some additional trade. But honestly Xist needs it more than I do. My economy is sort of recovering as Hope grows and cottages mature - I'm now saving 20 gold a turn at 0%, and in 2 turns Hope grows to size 6 and I add another 9 commerce (new citizen works a silver, one of the citizens working a lake for growth goes from lake to silver). Still, if the price of peace is propping up his economy a bit, so be it.

[Magic Science]

The sustained peace bonus increases at a rate of +3% per turn to a maximum of 150%.

[aetryn]

The sustained peace bonus increases at a rate of +3% per turn to a maximum of 150%.

Yeah, I went and looked it up. It's been 15 turns since we were at war, and there's supposed to be a 25% bonus for being connected to his capital, so that would suggest that at 25 turns *3+25 = 100 we should have +2 trade routes.

[scooter]

Well, one thing I'm pretty clear on at this point is that I shouldn't play another one of these. Not wanting to declare war and thinking about it has just overtaken far too much of my thought the last few days. Give me a sim or a calculation or analysis any time, those are fun and I can put them out of my mind whenever I want. This has interfered with my prayer life and there's really no call for something that's supposed to be for fun and idle entertainment to do that. I'm not going to bail or anything, but it's pretty clear this is crossing a line it shouldn't cross.


Have felt this at times for sure too, which is why I’ve taken multiple years-long breaks in the past. In PB13 I was in a very strong position and the game was trending towards an enormous late-game showdown, and I just hit a wall. I was playing hours-long turns daily while planning my wedding and ramping up in a new job role that was very busy, and it devolved into me doing severely unhealthy things like playing turns until well past 1am, trying to mentally wind down enough to sleep, and then wake up a few hours later. Stepping away was an immense psychological relief even though I was sad to lose the chance to complete a very winnable marquee game. Sometimes folks can figure out a way to keep balance in these games and they go on to play a lot of them, and others burn themselves out and have to resort to lurking. It’s totally OK if you end up in the second category. I have definitely found these types of games can be compatible with my life at some moments and totally incompatible at others.


A decent compromise position is to consider ded-lurking or soft teaming with someone in the future, where you can have more control over your involvement levels but not be ultimately responsible to play turns and make final decisions. That way if you have downtime you can contribute by making worker plans, figuring out tech paths, proposing ideas, and if you get too sunk in you can just walk away for a week/month with no harm done. Hope you’re able to figure out a way to make it work in future games, but totally get it if you can’t. Enjoying your thread here in the meantime.

[aetryn]

T90-95: Fixing the economy

Sorry for the sparse reporting, but life has been a little distracting lately. My mother had to go to the Emergency room and then stayed at the hospital overnight, so I had more on my mind than Civ 4. There also hasn't been a whole lot going on. Xist's power remains flat, so it doesn't look like he's preparing an invasion. My cities are peacefully growing and mostly trying to avoid building units since I'm already paying a lot in supply, so I've built a couple more barracks and also a couple of settlers in preparation for the next settling wave. Which is not coming until after a couple more techs, but I have time NOW before the techs unlock buildings, so I'll eat the maintenance in order to have the settlers ready and in position when I want them.

The big news is the upward growth of the economy. It wasn't that many turns ago I was scraping along making single digit gold at 0 science, at one point even going as low as +1 gold at 0 science. Here's the situation at T92, when we'd rebounded a bit:




Looks okay, except for Bing's massive food lead, but I've seen Rival Best GNP up above 100 so these aren't really competitive numbers when the opponents are teching. And I'm making a whole 18 gold a turn! But Turn 93 was a big turning point, as Hope hit its maximum supportable happy pop and I activated commerce configuration:




29 gold! I actually have an economy again. Let's try not to ruin it, okay?

The turn after that Greenline sent me an Open Borders request, and, since Greenline is at present very far from my borders and also I can't see how I could even get to him without cutting through Xist, I figured there was little loss in accepting. But Xist built a city on the southwestern sea so I actually get trade connections here. They are very fragile, as only while I have Open Borders with Xist will this trade route work, but it's something, and I'll take 37 gold a turn thank you very much. I also discovered that Xist and Bing are now neighbors due to that southwestern sea city:




So maybe I can cling to my fragile hope that future-Praetorians are attacking Bing instead of me?

Turn 95 I was able to turn tech on for the first time in 20+ turns. Metal Casting is due on T98, and then on to Writing which I am shamefully late to, but at least I get a 3-player Known Tech Bonus for it. The next wave of settlers will probably launch after Writing finishes.

Here's the GNP graph, though it isn't as dramatic as the gold per turn numbers are:

[shallow_thought]

So maybe I can cling to my fragile hope that future-Praetorians are attacking Bing instead of me?

That doesn't strike me as completely improbable if Xist is also paying attention to the GNP graph. Yoicks.

[Qgqqqqq]

Feels sad not to be working FIN lighthouse lakes for so long.

[aetryn]

T96-98: Mint-flavored

The discovery and exploitation of vast lodes of silver at the northern frontier of Maliland fundamentally shaped the development of that culture. While people in far off lands gathered books into libraries, and some even named their cities after them, all business of the Mali was done orally for several subsequent centuries. The Mali instead gave their highest honor to their jewelsmiths and metalsmiths, working the beautiful Northern Silver into all manor of fancy trinkets, and by the year 425 BC they had honed their skill to such a high level that the chiefs of the Malian cities ordered the construction of special workshops dedicated to metalcrafting. These buildings were called "Mints". While this term would later come to mean a place where currency was produced, at that time the Mali were still on a barter economy and had no concept of currency. It's likely, however, that the trinkets created in the Mints functioned as significant articles of value in that barter economy, so the evolution of the term is fairly easily explained. After many dark centuries of stagnation and privation following the Roman war this was a hopeful time as the elites of Mali looked forward to peace and prosperity in trade with their neighbors. The lot of the common folk, who rarely had decent jobs and lived on the handouts of their fellows, was unfortunately much worse.

----

Bing and Xist are mutually each other's eastern and western neighbor through the wrap around. That'd be an interesting position if one of them goes to war - how do you know where to keep your defensive stack? Or maybe they just trade territory by each attacking a less guarded flank.




I think this means that Bing has mostly confined himself to the southern band and has expanded east-west.

Turn 98 brings Metalcasting, and we're going to leverage the Malian Unique Building:




Next turn our leading population demo is going to go down down down as 16 pop are whipped off for some shiny new Mints. Of course, a lot of those pop are unhappy anyway, but there are at least a few cities where we're going to lose a couple workable tiles, so other demos will likely fall as well. But should be +7 commerce just from those 4, and that's not even counting the extra workable tile when the whip unhappy wears off.