[SPOILERS] Mardoc's Magical Mystery Tour

[Mardoc]

Nothing exciting in today's turn. Not even any new barbs to kill - see mostly animals at the moment.

Well - it turned out that slipping in a warrior in Bananas didn't actually delay the settler any. I guess we would have had more than 16h overflow.

[Qgqqqqq]

Did a spot of demos analysis, and I think you're beating yourself up too much. We're a solid second in hammers, and above rival average in food if you factor out the Lanun. It's a good position - probably not leading, because of the importance of food, but a in a very good position.

Also, I think we perhaps should consider working non-specialists in September? It probably won't generate a GP, and we're not lacking in GNP.

[Mardoc]

Did a spot of demos analysis, and I think you're beating yourself up too much. We're a solid second in hammers, and above rival average in food if you factor out the Lanun. It's a good position - probably not leading, because of the importance of food, but a in a very good position.

Yeah, that's fundamentally what I meant by:

All in all, I wouldn't say we're in first place. But we might be tied for it.

Also bear in mind, a good chunk of those hammers disappear again in six turns when the GA runs out, if I haven't gotten new cities/more pop by then.

Also, I think we perhaps should consider working non-specialists in September? It probably won't generate a GP, and we're not lacking in GNP.

I'm pretty sure I can get a great person from September. But the other related problem is that at the moment the alternate options are a bare lake, or an unimproved forest. I've got one worker in the area but he hasn't gotten ahead yet.

On the other hand, I suppose there's no reason we have to push the GPP right this instant. Can take a break to try to push out a settler from September, and return to working specialists later. Given that I'm hoping the GP from here is a prophet, not a sage, that may even be the wisest approach.

So I turned it off on yesterday's turn. Worked a Golden Age forest instead, and we'll try to get a settler from the city once we hit size 9.

We had the Paint the Cows event. Not quite as awesome with 3/4 of our cities already having a culture source, but it helps.

And then, this morning....



Just one more tech, then I'll make an event fund....well, maybe one more...

Could have used that for Bone Palace and guaranteed ourselves two more GA, if I'd been less greedy with tech now.

[Mardoc]

Bone Palace

I keep waffling on this. There's a good chance we're first to Philosophy. It's 468h. With Industrious, 300h. That's a bunch. Two settlers worth.

If I can find any marble, it'll be a no brainer at 187 base hammers. But without...well, I waffle.

But denial is big, GA is valuable. Engineer GPP are useful, too.

Maybe the best answer is simply to wait and see. If we've got enough higher-priority things out of the way, if we've got the Titan and enough cities settled and some more wanes boosting our God King capital hammers...then we can afford the Palace. Or if we find some marble hiding in one of those foggy spots that I really ought to do something about soon.

Otherwise, we work on the higher priority stuff and cry .

All that said: our position is getting substantially better now that the peripheral cities are growing up onto good tiles.

This morning's turn went pretty well:


The Drama bard is ours. Next turn I am absolutely locking the stable doors and building an event fund; I think Bronze has to come next. I'm tempted by Hunting for our furs, but with the OO spread only one of our cities is currently happy-capped. Hunting can wait a bit. Meanwhile, Bananas will have to choose between growing and more settlers; I'm going to at least finish off the current settler before I do anything else. After that it will probably be a mix - but more cities is definitely a good thing.


We're 2 turns away from having our fifth city . It goes so much more smoothly when you build the warriors and workers ahead of the settler .



Ants has pretty much taken over warrior duty for the empire; 10 hpt and lots of room to grow yet makes that a good fit. It does mean that my deployment pattern is a bit odd - it builds a warrior, who then makes a pilgrimage to the capital to get blessed by our elder adept, and on to a final duty station. But it's definitely worth it for the buffs, now that I'm not scraping the bottom of the barrel each turn.

Barbs seem to have really slowed down in the past few turns. I'm not sure if this is just random variation, or if the world is getting too civilized, or what. I do seem to be able to still get fights when I push my army outside my borders, so I'll be transitioning to more of that. Needed to do that anyway for scouting and finishing up our dotmap.

[Mardoc]

Hmm, speaking of Industrious, there are a couple other things worth considering:

Dereptus: We've got all three grains (or will once I get the workers to them), so we'd get full value. After the OO spread, though, we only have one city at its happy cap. I think it's worth building...but not yet. Maybe once we have a few more cities and have grown our current ones somewhat.

Heron Throne: It's not a great wonder for us, because we don't have Sailing yet and won't generally want to work coastline even when we do. Denying it to the Lanun could be valuable, though. But maybe it's already too late? We're hurting enough for hammers that I really would prefer not to risk failgold. Leaning toward 'no, let the Lanun have it' here.

National Epic/Heroic Epic: Absolutely want these, and we'll be researching that direction anyway for the first-to bonuses. Tentatively thinking Nat Epic in the capital, because it's got so very much food. Heroic Epic, tentatively in Luftballon, it's got a lot of hammers already and will keep getting more.

I still want the Great Library, although I don't know we can afford to divert for it until after we get the Titan (and more cities).

Any other early wonders worth considering? Already have plans for Titan and thoughts for Bone Palace above.

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Another thought, that I want to check. We've still got our neato world spell. I had been discounting it. It's got several drawbacks. I'm pretty sure that Floating Eyes can see through invisibility and I was thinking of Aurorarcher as our priority target. I don't believe invisibility works on units that have fought. Also, it's not common that you can get strategic surprise given graphs. And, well - by the time we can conquer anyone, invisibility piercing should be relatively common. Not like this is the only use for Floating Eyes, anyone who doesn't build Hawks wants them.

But...try this scenario: Invisible Drowns show up off the Lanun coast, declare war and move in. They don't attack anyone unless Jalepeno leaves a too-tempting target. Instead, they wander around, pillaging coves. And pillaging. And pillaging some more.

I need to verify that invisibility works the way I'm thinking: Scouts can't see it, nor can Spiders: in fact nothing can until Empy or Metamagic. Also that combat and only combat makes a unit visible if I want to keep it hidden. In particular, that pillaging doesn't reveal a unit. And I can choose to move an invisible unit under an enemy without fighting (or that Drowns can walk on Ocean, not just coast).

If I'm right, that would be a way to make a harassing Drown force extra effective. Jalepeno would basically have to park a galley on top of every cove he wants to keep (if that even works). In addition, replace those we destroy before he can react. Eventually he'll research Empyrean or Sorcery, but we could do a lot of damage in the meantime. And if we force him to research that direction, it's at the expense of something else he wants. And he's got to do his research without the benefit of coves .

Although it's a one use spell - is there really a better time? Wait too long and counters are available. Is there a better target? No point in using it against Auror, he's already got a counter in play. Against Molach - well, he's not winning and not (I think) close enough to conquer profitably. Against DaveV...somewhat tempting, actually. But it doesn't actually help take cities or anything he knows to garrison - and we don't want to pillage him into the stone age, we want his cities intact if we go for him.

No, the main question in my mind is whether we use it against the Lanun, or whether we don't bother using it against anyone because it's less useful than it seems.

[Mardoc]

Tonight's turn wasn't terribly exciting. We do, somehow, have enough beakers at this point that Bronze Working is a nine-turn tech *when at 100% gold*. 39.

Capital is (Inspiration + Sage + EC + Great Sage + Great Sage) *1.5 = (2+4+2+7+7) * 1.5 = 33 bpt...so yeah, that's how it happens. Pretty insane. And if the barb spigot ever turns back on, that's got a lot of room to go up again!

[Mardoc]

City five is down! Do need a little more worker support in the area, two doesn't seem enough for both Ants and Dance - but only barely insufficient.



Scouted the barb city...oooh, that's not going to be trivial. In fact, I'd better push some extra warriors to the east to absorb that kill stack...


Oh. Or it could be going to give Aurorarcher some XP instead. At this rate I'm going to have to delay the Titan techs after all, barbs have apparently decided that they don't like me anymore.



And...post-GA demos. It looks like using the GA to push settlement paid off: we went from last to have a fourth city (of those we knew) to first to have a fifth. And we've got the settler built for number six, which is probably going to be in the north at the fish/corn site.

[Mardoc]

So, what else do those demos tell us? They tell us that it was probably a mistake not to ban the Lanun on this map. Everyone else is in a pack, and it looks like I was wrong about barbs being common enough to make up for the coves. OTOH, maybe metagame will save us - maybe after I put some pressure on them, someone will join in. They still don't have anything other than econ, and built units alone can't make up for a dogpile.

I think with the barbs slowing down, I'm going to need to change my strategy somewhat. God King is looking less like a good idea, without infinite wanes to boost. I'll need to pick between City States and Aristocracy to replace it. Probably should aim to have that available right before the next golden age in ~14 turns. I'm leaning toward Aristo, actually. There's more farmland available than I had thought, city maintenance isn't nearly as crippling as lack of base income, and courthouses can make up for the worst of city maintenance anyway, eventually.

There's also no particular rush to get to Warfare at this point. I had been thinking the tech would limit the Titan, but it looks like instead we'll need to wait until we can scrape up 26 XP somewhere, which won't be as easy as I thought. I still want the MilStrat GG...but again it's a somewhat lower priority when there's no steady stream of barb XP to multiply. It might even end up as part of a golden age instead of a command post .

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So what do we do instead? Well, bronze still seems clearly useful - should be able to get us that barb city if we don't dawdle, and boost overall security, and make the Lanun-harassment more effective. Other than that, we're still not in any position to go conquering - going to be building settlers for a good long while instead. Perhaps in 20-30 turns we can consider conquest, after we're in Aristo and have filled in more of the wilderness. So miltech can wait.

To boost growth...Hunting seems like a good idea, for the bonus happiness. Maybe go so far as to pick up Animal Handling, too - send out a Divided Soul with a Hawk instead of a dozen scouting warriors. If we do that, then we'll want KotE - which would have the bonus of allowing us to retire our adept at some point. He's up to 13 XP, so I expect it'll be 20+ turns until he can Wane...but we could start working on the replacement(s). Sanitation is always good, especially if we're planning to become Aristocrats. Writing is useful, especially as Phi Sidar: libraries are quite useful when cheap and the Great Library boosts us again: 5 beaker Sages are worth working in a lot of situations. We'll want HBR and Sailing, which in turn makes Trade worthwhile. And that still doesn't leave us with anything T3 military

So, well, we still have more options than available beakers. By a long shot, even as clear #1 GNP. What do we do *next*? Well, I see two main factors. Factor 1: we're still wanting to REX right now. That means we don't yet have anything spare for buildings, really. (and if we did...well, OO temples and markets are already available). That means writing can be delayed, and therefore also the Trade route. Hunting may still be valuable - but we can always deal with the happy cap by putting a worker or settler in queue, and I don't really want to build Hunting Lodges yet.

Since we're looking for passive boosts and to change our economy... Code of Laws. Aim to have it right when the golden age starts. Not much point in having it early, but I don't want to wait, either. Aristofarms and golden ages are like peanut butter and chocolate .

If we're going aristofarm, then we'll definitely want sanitation to go with it. Sanitation helps REX, even if it might be overkill pre-aristo. If we want to lean on Sidar (and GLib) specialists, the bonus food is needed for that too. So Sanitation can come right after Bronze.

And, well, our tech rate is good but not awesome so Bronze - Sanitation - Code of Laws is probably all we can realistically expect before the golden age. Once we're into aristo, our tech rate will jump again and we can sweep up Writing, Hunting, etc. Reevaluate as we go (and tonight when I see the turn and can put hard numbers to this) - but if we change anything, it'll be to slip something else in between Sanitation and CoL, or to delay Sanitation until after CoL. Probably Hunting is the best optional addition.

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Ok, so I've a plan for the next week . Finish Bronze, Sanitation, CoL. Keep pushing out more settlers, workers, warriors, to settle the areas we know about and scout enough to add some more dots. Figure out whether I want just a ton of warriors or Drowns + warriorpults or Axes + warriorpults for the barb city, and build that force and go take the city. And finish up the Sage for the next Golden Age.

[Mardoc]

Well, we definitely are going to want a city somewhere down thisaway. Maybe two cities. Especially once we can chop the jungle.

[Qgqqqqq]

Sorry for being out of touch for a week.

Quickly: I'm pretty sure invisibility cancels after pillaging - but test.

Are you sure Drown can go on ocean?

More shortly.