[Spoiler] Desperados: The Black Sword & Agent

[agent427]

Do you think I should set the Good to build stuff that will let it grow or stuff that will halt its growth (Settlers/Workers)?
It is at Size 7, it will take 13 turns for whip unhappiness to die down enough for it to be work effectively at Size 8.

[The Black Sword]

Worker->Grow is clearly better than Grow -> Worker, because we get the worker out a few turns earlier. The other option is grow then whip, but we have some good tiles now, I wouldn't really like to whip off and we have other cities to take up the slack for producing settlers. So, I'd go with another worker.

[agent427]

What do you think I should do after Mathematics?

With no GLH, I don't see a need for masonry, except as a precursor to construction.
Iron Working gets us swords, currency gets us money.

[The Black Sword]

I haven't thought too much about it yet. We should probably come up with a mid-term plan that thinks beyond just the next tech to be honest. For the moment I'd save gold for a bit so we can stay flexible. Agreed there's not much point in masonry right now. My default right now would be either to tech Currency or something that raises our happy cap.

Do you know how to check what techs others have via GNP scrying? I'd see if they have anything interesting to help make a decision.

[agent427]

Grunkle Whosit gifted us his sheep, I assume this is signalling good intent? Should I gift him my wheat in exchange?

The Ugly is growing and only has 15 turns of whip unhappy, I could double whip a settler at Size 6 to start pushing west, but I might want a spare worker in this area first.

Do you know how to check what techs others have via GNP scrying? I'd see if they have anything interesting to help make a decision.

I don't, can you educate me?

[GermanJoey]

Techs that others know give a hidden bonus multiplier called the "Known Tech Bonus," often abbreviated as KTB. It exists in base BTS as well, but it has a more pronounced effect in RtR mod in the mid/late game. It works like this:

Code:

Known tech bonus no longer scales with total player number. Scales depending on the tech era of the most advanced player in the game:

Ancient: No bonus
Classical: +2% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 30 players)
Medieval: +4% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 15 players)
Rennaissance: +6% per met player with tech, max +60% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Industrial: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Modern: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)
Future: +8% per met player with tech, max +80% (no further bonus after 10 players)

Anyways, what this means is that your GNP number on the demographics page (the charts aren't helpful here) will be higher if you're researching a tech that lots of others know as compared to a tech that noone knows, even if they have the same prereq multipliers and you're working the exact same tiles. Like, for example, let's say you have Writing (not speaking to your exact tech situation here, just as an example) and want to research either Alphabet or Mathematics. You set research to 100% on Alphabet and look at Demos, and it says you have 114 GNP. You know that nobody else has this tech, as you have contact with every civ and none of them can offer open borders. You know you're producing 10 culture from your palace and whatever from monuments, and 4 EP from your palace too, so that's 100 bpt. Now, you switch to Mathematics, and it says you're making 118 GNP. 118 - 10 -4 = 104bpt. Well, since you get a 2% bonus per player with the civ and the most advanced tech is classical era, that means you had a 4% total bonus = 2 other players know Math. It's not necessarily always worth calculating this out, but it can still help even if you eyeball it. For example, if you notice that HBR is giving way higher GNP than CoL, then it might be a good idea to queue up some spears...

[The Black Sword]

GJ explains it. Here's our demos when researching currency, no-one knows this:


and when researching Metal Casing:


So one person knows Metal Casing, probably Dreylin from the Oracle. I checked and nobody knows HBR, Aesthetics, Calendar, Construction or Iron Working. Guess it wasn't that useful, but at least we don't have to worry about someone with advanced units.

Might as well gift Whosit something back, that border is very defensible, we don't want to attack there right? We only have 1 wheat though I think.

The Ugly is growing and only has 15 turns of whip unhappy, I could double whip a settler at Size 6 to start pushing west, but I might want a spare worker in this area first.

It feels a bit too early to me, but it might work. The other option would be to whip a settler from A Few $ More I suppose.

[agent427]

Got a nice stroke of luck-- Buddhism spread to Django, saving the cost of an Ikhanda, which would otherwise be useless there.

Gave clams to Whosit, we have a spare.

Chopped the Ikhanda into Sabata, overflow going into a Granary... At 90H I think a Library too expensive to invest in solely for culture war.

[The Black Sword]

I was thinking a bit about our next techs, seems like the only options are Currency and Calendar IMO.

-Geographically, only war with HRE makes sense right now. But they're doing very well, power isn't low, so it's unlikely that would be profitable. So we shouldn't need any military techs.

-Gave some thought to Metal Casing, but Dreylin certainly has the advantage for the Colossus and Forges will just take forever to build with nerfed whips.

-Monarchy is pretty expensive when you add in all the other techs and worse than Calendar anyway

-Aesthetics has some interesting stuff, SoZ for an Aggressive Civ is nice, Paya is good, but not until a bit later.

So, Currency or Calendar. Probably ~14t teching for Calendar, ~16t for Currency.

I think the big point for Calendar is whether we could win the MoM or not. We have 5 forests to chop in Bad(150h), could probably set up 60h overflow and mining the hills(Calendar would give the happy to work them) we could make 20hpt. Without Marble though, that's still a long 12t build. There's no doubt Elum could beat us if he went there quickly. Leaving aside whether we could win it or not, 450h is a lot right now.

More mundanely, we have 3 Calendar sources; need to pop borders for spices in Il Merc and settle for silk by the north west pig spot. Then we need Iron working for the dye. That's a bit of extra work to set up, but essentially 2 happy per city.

On the other hand, I reckon we'd have at least 12 cities(one another island obviously) by the time we got Currency for an immediate 24gpt. The markets and wealth building won't be too useful IMO, but do have some extra value.

Looks to me like we should grab these two, then finish Iron Working, and figure out a plan after that. Continue expanding with new cities in the meanwhile.

[agent427]

T81 new city

Once Upon a Time (in the West)

There used to be a hamlet where my Impi is now standing, CH's warrior pillaged it when he saw me moving in to settle. I suspect he'll do the same to the windmill. Not technically in my territory yet but still an aggressive move. The Impi has 1 move left, should I take out the warrior before it can pillage? I didn't go ahead with it because it'd mean another war declaration right when we're about to settle in his face.

In hindsight I should've just blasted this warrior away at first opportunity instead of trying to dance around a settler/worker and 2 guard units around it... Make him suffer for the inconvenience, not me.

Which by the way:

Thoughts on where to settle?

Yellow grabs Gold, Copper, Clams; Red grabs Pigs, Copper, Gold; Green grabs only Gold and Clams but it slightly less aggressive.


I don't see any reason to back down from CH so no need to choose Green.
If we farmed the rivers, Yellow would have some good production from those plains hills.
But, the pigs are a better tile than the Crabs.

--

Researchwise-- We're running 0% for this turn.
I'm considering whether to switch into Calendar, or keep on with Currency.
If we go for Calendar, I think that would mean stopping expansion for a bit as all worker labor is diverted to three projects (hooking up calendar resources, chopping the MoM, improving the newest Gold city).
No sense building settlers to work cities with no hands to improve them.

At the moment it doesn't look like we're in a race for any city spots. The south will be sealed up shortly, the Northeast has little more to offer, and we can take our time settling islands. The only competition would be to the Northwest, but I've seen no signs yet that Rome is expanding this direction. I will move 2 Impis to observe the area.