[PB25-SPOILERS] The Lunacy of the Reign of HAK Continues

[MindyMcCready]

One that thing,...but then i really have to get some work done.

If you do a SIM,...see if you get ICTR from settling the stone island. That's a very big consideration for our tech speed. It might get us to COL quicker allowing us to spam out 10 more cities.

[HitAnyKey]

That 3tile lake creates further problem for him in settling,...he'll have to garrsion enough on both sides of that lake which will slow him down a bit. We'll also have naval mobility options through those 2 lakes.

While I'm on the topic of naval mobility,...that city that captures corn + copper, cows, wines close to Borsche,...that allows us full naval mobility from our ocean to the southern one. We really want a city right there.

I don't understand what you mean by these two statements. The first one I don't know which 2 lakes you are referring to.
With the one by Borsche, that city is right in the middle of the landmass...how does that allow naval mobility?

[MindyMcCready]

That 3tile lake creates further problem for him in settling,...he'll have to garrsion enough on both sides of that lake which will slow him down a bit. We'll also have naval mobility options through those 2 lakes.

While I'm on the topic of naval mobility,...that city that captures corn + copper, cows, wines close to Borsche,...that allows us full naval mobility from our ocean to the southern one. We really want a city right there.

I don't understand what you mean by these two statements. The first one I don't know which 2 lakes you are referring to.
With the one by Borsche, that city is right in the middle of the landmass...how does that allow naval mobility?

With forts/canals you can move 1 spot so long as the next spot is either a city or a water point.

So with a fort-canal 1SW of Happy you can move into the lake Happy-2S2W. This next one I'm not 100% sure about, but if you fort-canal the corn (briefly, and only for surprise) you should be able to move into the city 1W of corn.

Then, Fort 1S of Copper and bingo your entire Navy and all troops are popping up right by Borsche's capital!

We'll need to sim this to be 100% sure, of course.

Same with the Marble city. Either a city or a fort will allow movement into those lakes.

[HitAnyKey]

Nothing all that exciting this turn. I did check...with Grimace's last score increase from tech, he also got a power increase...which I think means he got the Wheel. So he'll have his copper hooked up in no time. Kinda glad we didn't rush him, since I doubt we could have enough of a force there quick enough.

[HitAnyKey]

And just like that, working the Gold gets us to #1 in GNP....



I'm currently sending the Spear from Happy westward a bit along that north coast both to defog it and hopefully find and kill that Bear I saw earlier.
I sent the Scout back on his way home. I'm going to heave him heal slightly while in the borders and then will probably have him spawnbust the area south of Sleepy (which btw, this turn also makes it back to #5 on the Top Cities list).
We get Pottery in 2 turns, and I'm very tempted to try the 6 turn run for Poly. If we can get a religion to get founded in Happy, that will be awesome. Even it happening in Hungry would be good.
I know it kinda strays from our long-term path of CoL, and the need for AH & Sailing...but it's tempting. If we don't go for it, I think AH is the next best tech with us planting City5 in that spot I have marked for the Ivory/Furs. Getting those two resources hooked up will allow for some massive city growth (and even additional whipping).

Anyway, didn't get a chance to make the sandbox, so no time yet to test out if the Worker first option at Happy should have been changed. And I'm still planning to 2-pop whip the Barracks in Hungry next turn when it grows to size 4. The Axe which Sleepy will finish in 2 turns will head SE to clear the path for the workers that will be roading the way for the settler.

[HitAnyKey]

Also Borsche settled City3 last turn and Gavagai just got his City3 this turn.
The only ones still with 2 cities are Donovan (he spent all that time on Stonehenge), Grimace, & Elkad.

[MindyMcCready]

The Run for Polythesism,...so let's say that we land it? We can't leverage too much from just that religion alone. We'd be further tempted to pursue Monotheism for OR. So thinking about Poly needs to be really Poly + Masonary + Monotheism. That's the real cost attached to the benefits you're pursuing. It comes with significant benefits to be sure.

Pursuing this tech does not mesh well with taking Grimace's marble city and then defending it.
-To grab his city before he can properly defend it might be much easier if we had horses.
-->We want this anyway for the +2 happy from ivory and furs
-To defend from him retaking that city we'll want Archery for cost effective defense
-->We want this anyway since our city #2 is sitting on a hill and needs to be a rock.
-->Same for city #5/6. Effective defense of our chokepoints will define our game.
-Later on, Swords are very hard to defend against and we'll need to attack out meaning catapults.
-Now we're not very far from our UB which equates to the ability to support 10 more cities,...and this tech has a religion which is ours for the losing.
-Given our choke points we look like we'll have the land to place those 10 cities without a serious military campaign.

And I do think that cutting Grimace off via marble city is well worth it since that will allow us to control the SE area.

Given the land setup I think that we need to largely beeline up the math route. 30hammer/chop from math; COL for 1/2 price UB, construction to defend our cities and then there's calendar (for silk) + currency for our 1/2 price, +3 happy (ivory, whales, furs +2 for silk) markets. The math route just has so much going for it given our setup.


On the Hungry Barracks whip,...
-Since we're landing Pottery in 2T do you think that we could do better putting 1T into a granary and then whipping that out first? We could regrow quicker and then whip the barracks out. I'm just verifying that you've considered the benefits of this option.

Next question: which city comes after #4? Presumably the city #5 location rather than the Western choke? I want to land the chokepoint as soon as possible, but having the workers in place like city #5 shared food is just too dominant economically.

[HitAnyKey]

Thanks for putting the Polytheism run in perspective. I had thought about the fact that us going almost straight for CoL might land us that religion (unless someone Oracle's it, or simply beats us to it). And I do sometimes get a little hung up on religion...just like I often get hung up on Wonders. I've still surprised myself that I've barely even considered trying to build one yet. I'm sure some of the lurkers that have seen me in other games have also realized that you've kept me balanced in that regard. Usually I would have one of my cities building a wonder by now. Heh.

So yeah, I guess getting AH next is probably best. Both to know where our Horses are and for hooking up that Ivory/Furs....which yeah, I've been leaning towards that spot as #5. It is just too good of a spot, especially with already having multiple workers in that area improving C4. Plus it being ultra quick to get a few roads so that it is hooked up for trade routes the same turn it is founded. Then we could go Writing after that. I'd like to get Libraries started as soon as possible. And depending on what things look like, we can always stick Archery in before or after Writing. And maybe slip in Sailing at some point along the way to CoL.

I did a few partial SIMs during my trying to think about when/if to whip something out of Hungry. The whip of the Barracks happened last turn, so it's too late to alter that plan. It might have been slightly better one of the other methods, but I simply didn't get around to spending enough time planning that part out.

[MindyMcCready]

No problem. So it sounds like we're on the same wavelength.

Right now I'm thinking that the tech path looks like:
Animal Husbandry
Sailing
Archery
Writing
Math
Currency
COL

The relative benefit of Writing vs Sailing depends on:
1. Whether the stone city gives us ICTR. If so, this becomes a fairly dominant consideration.
2. Our dotmap and/or how much of our resources are 2nd ring. We'll probably need to have a discussion about this soon. I'll try to comment on your dotmap tomorrow AM.

Sailing for the organized lighthouses probably can't be beat at this point in the game.

Archery, given it's low tech cost, might be a reactioary tech so long as we pay close attention to everyone's graphs.

[MindyMcCready]

I could see your keen interest in getting a religion, but I didn't realize that you were Wonder-inclined. Do you have any particular weaknesses in that regard?

The only game of yours that I followed was when you were getting pounded by Seven and that was because I was following Seven's thread. Being pounded by Seven puts you in good company of couse. :LOL:

Don't know if you went back to read Seven's thread; he was really impressive in that game even by Seven's standards.

As for me, I tend to favour power and land. But it's not hard to imagine Notre Dame or the GLib being part of our future.