[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

So I forgot something when doing the last report - that I was due to get Lewwyn's demos at the end of turn! So I re-opened the save and ended turn again to snap some pictures:



Score is pretty meaningless here. He's behind me in pop and ahead of me in tech so we're pretty even in score. The long flatline was both of us working on Bronze Working while building settlers most likely. Food:



Yeah he's been the one bringing up the rear as expected. MFG graph is funny:



Well, funny just because the graphs followed such a similar pattern for so long, but really that's just because we're probably improving tiles at around the same time. He probably just got off the mine as well in order to grow, so we both just finished settlers I'm thinking (obviously I know I did). Power:



Lewwyn had a dip! Lewwyn got a Quecha killed very recently - or at least that size of a dip is what I'd expect in a dead Quecha. That's... interesting. So our first kill of the game has been registered. Congrats to whomever managed that. Culture:



My reason for checking this is actually silly - I wanted to see if he'd built a Terrace yet. Apparently he has - so he definitely has Pottery too. My brief flatline is the slavery revolt in case you're wondering what that was.

Not too much earth-shattering material here, but it's something to look at and entertain myself with during these boring times. I suppose I could hack these up and figure out what every single dip means, but I don't have the patience for that.

[scooter]

T27 now knows how to make pots

So I moved my settler towards pigs/gold, and that will be settled next turn. I feel like I mismanaged this and could've gotten him there 1/2 turn sooner, but I'm not sure. Either way, I'm making sure Brian's scout moves along:



I can't really kill him unless he moves foolishly, but whatever. He actually may move onto that plains forest hill and deny me that for a turn which would be mildly annoying. It wouldn't actually slow down anything being built, but that 0/3/0 is better than the 2/1/0 while building a worker. EDIT: This should read 2/1/1, not 2/1/0

For workers here - I'm going to stop the worker road action next turn and then have the Deer worker come up and complete the road. I'll found the pigs/gold city. Then I'll use that idle worker to go up and start the gold improvement immediately. Sante Fe finished the Wheat farm:



Going to go ahead and finish this worker despite my ability to grow. Holocene:



Swapped from barracks to worker since size6 would be a couple turns away. I'm thinking finish the worker and have it chop a granary immediately after that (the roaded forest NW of deer). My understanding is if the food box is roughly over half-full then it'll start at size 6 half-full - so that'll be perfect because a completion chop would come in just before growth. My happy cap is deceiving here because 1) city is empty (warrior will be here shortly) and 2) plantation hasn't been roaded yet. The gold will actually be hooked before the plantation so size 9 working some cottages will be easily achievable. Probably won't whip this city that much given its nice tiles. Sante Fe may be a different story. Simple Math:



Such a meh city long-term. Going to just use this for production (whip and mines) - farm the southern grassland once I get to it. I can occasionally work the incense if I ever need a brief commerce boost, but I'm not really taking that as a serious tile otherwise. Settling on it isn't a terrible idea, but I wanted a quick-starting short-term city when I founded it. I can't remember if I've mentioned it, but the early two religions have both fallen:



Next I think will need to be Animal Husbandry so I can get the pigs online. I considered grabbing Myst first (so I can pop borders) since I want to hook the gold first and using the gold to power through AH faster, but I still think getting pigs faster (plus finding horse) is the better goal here. Need to think this over - maybe I'll test it tonight. Top cities shows Commodore and Serdoa at size6:



Some whipping has happened already. Seems sort of odd to me, but okay. I don't remember what size those cities were at last turn, so I'm not sure how heavy of a whip it was. I shifted EPs back towards Brian since I have Lewwyn's graphs:



Hope Lewwyn does the same since he should have mine as well, and keeping up with Brian is more difficult since he's got that Courthouse. Granted, he isn't spending more than 1 or 2 per turn, but he hasn't shut it off either so it's a bit of a nuisance. Given the distance between everyone though, I'm not sure it's anything more than a nuisance and not really a massive advantage. On a tighter map he could use that to mask a rush. Still could do it here, but the huge distance makes that pretty pointless. Finally, demos:



Shifting to the netted crabs and completing the Wheat farm has made my food and mfg look more sane. My GNP is still LOLbad, although that is with no tech selected. With AH it should be in the low 20s which is still comically terrible compared to everyone else. And... I really don't care. We don't need no research here. Or culture.

[scooter]

Some whipping has happened already. Seems sort of odd to me, but okay. I don't remember what size those cities were at last turn, so I'm not sure how heavy of a whip it was. I shifted EPs back towards Brian since I have Lewwyn's graphs:

Solved this mini-mystery. I knew this was Brian, but upon checking my old saves, he was size 4 on T24... Then T25 he double-whipped down to size 2, and didn't grow back to 3 until EOT26... So yeah, he double-whipped probably a settler to completion? I mean I get using the whip because of Sacrificial Altar and all that, but I don't get non-Granary whipping with this capital... And I don't think it's possible he had a granary on T24 already unless he's taken a weird opening tech path. And with this cap he would've grown sooner than now anyways. So I think I'm just going to chalk this one up to a weird whipping choice - as emergency whip is not likely since it was 2-pop (and with this capital there's no need to emergency whip given the production abilities at size4).

[scooter]

Oh - one final word on tech path. I know I briefly considered Myst before AH, but I think that's a mistake so I'll go AH next. Not only would the pigs finish quicker with AH, but those two workers at pigs/gold would have nothing to do for a little except road if I go Myst next, but if I go AH next that'll come in at the same time the gold completes and is hooked so there won't be dead worker turns.

[scooter]

T28 draws first blood

So T28 comes in, and err, Brian moved his scout back towards my pigs gold?



My theory is he thought the hill would be sufficient enough defensive terrain but no, not really. Perhaps he's stuck in FFH mode where hills give better defenses, but even 50% defenses would given me odds in the 80s, which I think I still would've taken. I still briefly hesitated only because it'd really suck to lose and not a huge gain to win, but worst-case scenario I have a warrior nearby enough to save the new city from a bizarre warrior-out-of-the-fog coincidence, so I went ahead and attacked. I won easily, and I can promote next turn if I want. I don't want to yet, but okay. So I handled the worker micro and got No Light settled:



Talked with Dazed about this awhile back, but I think I'm going to head down to that desert windmill and pillage it with my warrior to get some research gold just because I have no need for the windmill. Might do the same for the workshop since I'll just mine it anyways. Anyways, gold mine started so here's the final look at the area:



Mine started. The second worker will join next turn and they'll finish the mine together next turn, at which point I'll swap from Pigs -> mine and power through AH as quickly as possible (I'm estimating 4T). I'm actually already down to 40% break-even research right now while not working the gold - getting a fun 1.5g/turn from the Grocer despite working hammer tiles at the cap (worker) which helps ever-so-slightly. Started a Granary (yay!) in No Light:



Next turn I'll work the gold which will speed the granary, and really, that tile is like 1/2/8 while building a granary, which, yeah that's good enough for me. It'll slow growth but getting AH quicker will make up for that. If I don't work the gold, AH takes like 6-7 turns at break-even depending on what tiles I work which I think is worse than it would've been at T0. So yeah, that gold is important.

Anyways, Sante Fe is coming along:



Those workers were on the corn this turn and want to improve the Wheat. I could road the corn this turn, but that won't get me to the Wheat any quicker because I don't have Construction... So I used the dead turn to road the floodplains, and I'll start the Wheat farm next turn. Once that city completes the worker, it'll go straight onto a Granary while growing to size 2 and will (I'm thinking) immediately whip the granary. Then I'll let it grow for awhile, placing a cottage on the FP, grow to size 4, double whip something, and then grow back up with good food tiles, rinse repeat. That seems to be the best way to develop it.

Simple Math finished a warrior this turn and will go onto a granary. Capital will finish a worker soon, and will also go on to a granary (settler is tempting but I don't think it's time yet). Then a big expansion spurt will come after that. So that's the short-term plan. Demos:



Continuing my theme of being strong in food/mfg and being awful in GNP. It's partially distorted due to utter lack of culture (I've got to be the only one with only 2 cpt and no free 2 EPs either), but it's still fairly ugly. I'd probably be first in land, but I'm guessing Brian's creative has his capital at the next ring which distorts that slightly.

Random question - these soldier figures were the same at the beginning of the turn. Why did they not reflect my kill of Brian's scout? Nothing changed at the end of the turn, which just seems weird.

[scooter]

Actually Sante Fe should probably send the warrior up there to pillage that desert hill workshop too if I can afford to leave it empty for a few turns since there's no way I'll work that. I can do that once Simple Math finishes its warrior, so I'll try to remember to do that.

[dazedroyalty]

Maybe a scout isn't enough to affect the average soldier count? If Brian isn't the lowest power, that would be the only place it'd show.

[scooter]

Maybe a scout isn't enough to affect the average soldier count? If Brian isn't the lowest power, that would be the only place it'd show.

I just checked and apparently scouts do not contribute to soldier counts. That's interesting, didn't know that. Mystery solved.

[scooter]

Warning: wall of text is ahead, but if you like long-ish strategic planning posts, you'll probably want to go ahead and read.

Ok, a consideration of techs and general planning... So I am currently researching AH, after which I'll get Myst. After that I have decisions to make. See the problem here is I'm going to crash things at some point, and really I need Currency to save me. So getting that quickly would make sense. So let's try to prioritize here. Assuming AH-Myst as stated earlier, the path for Currency is:

Writing -> Maths -> Currency

Beelining it would mean the following techs would be ignored:

-Iron Working (clear jungle)
-Masonry (stone)
-Archery (keshiks)
-Horseback Riding (same)
-all religions

All of which are moderately important. The question I need to figure out is are any of them worth delaying Currency? Not really. Masonry only matters if I have IW. IW would be for stone and iron... But I don't care about stone quite yet, and iron who cares (for awhile) because I have copper and I'm Mongolia. Archery and HBR again would be together, but I don't really NEED Keshiks anytime soon. I'm not going to rush anyone, and I can defend myself just fine with axes and/or chariots (if I have horse). I REALLY hope I have horses because chariots would let me skimp a bit more on military than axes would.

Anyways, so I've been chatting with Dazed and we've been trying to cook up a plan. So the first GP on quick is 67 GPP, and I can work 2 merchants now. So first merchant would take 67/6 => 11T working 2 merchants. Two options here, settling or bulbing. Bulbing would be Metal Casting.

At first I was tempted by settling becuase of the grocer, but settling isn't that great until the market comes in and I get +50%. At that point that's 9g/turn from a single merchant which is pretty strong yeah. In a game where I'm likely to be strapped for commerce, that seems really strong. On the other hand, Forges are obviously important for duh reasons. Plus, I'm getting hammer bonuses on workers, settlers, granaries, which means I'll have spare hammers. There's no wonders that will be particularly easy/necessary for me, so Forges would be easy to build. So it seems like hammer bonus vs gold (and 1F) bonus.

But... that's not quite true. See, what I COULD do is build a forge in something like Simple Math and use all those mines to run forge-boosted wealth and use THAT to fuel expansion. Doing some simple math (teehee) shows that doing that would allow me to pretty much break even on the gold (or better) and still get the forge bonus everywhere. So that settles that, I'm bulbing MC.

So that's nice and all, but Currency will still take me forever as I don't intend to stop expanding... So another idea. I generate TWO great merchants. First bulbs Currency, second bulbs MC. I can get the first GM in 11T of 2 merchants which is great. I can get that before I finish Maths and get Currency in play a good 20T sooner (very rough estimate but it's in the neighborhood) which will be a boon. The second GM would mean 134/6 => 23T. So 23T after the first GM I'd bulb MC. That's not really any slower than slow-teching Currency and then bulbing MC, and it's the added bonus of getting Currency sooner. The only downside is that I'd be spending 34T working two merchants instead of tiles, but really, getting Currency sooner AND having a grocer the whole time I work those merchants makes it worth it IMO and allows me to keep spamming settlers/workers as long as no one calls me on it.

So summary time for the plan:

1. Tech AH -> Myst -> Writing -> Maths.
2. While doing this, grow the capital up towards size 8-9 (gold + incense can support size9) and get several cottages down.
3. Once I'm around 8-9 (figure out a more precise time) and working on Maths most likely, swap to 2 GMs, and stick with them for 34T. Work the food tiles and cottages. Pass the north mine over to Simple Math, the south RR mine over to a copper city and just get those GMs.
4. Once both Maths and the first GM are finished (ideally these would pretty much coincide), bulb Currency. Continue working 2 GMs and expanding. Tech whatever I deem necessary - arch/HBR or IW/masonry. Or even some sort of religion if one is miraculously available.
5. Once the second GMs is in, bulb Metal Casting. Forges everywhere.

So that's the plan. Any thoughts? Like it? Hate it? Dazedroyalty and I spent a good long time hashing through this and coming up with various plans before agreeing on this one, and I think this is the best one possible for us.

[dazedroyalty]

My only question, did you check the Bulb order for GMs? Do we need Math first to bulb Currency?