RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius

[WarriorKnight]

Lots to comment on. I'll hold off on detailed micro thought until tomorrow (where I'll have the time to look into everything in detail), but I can at least offer some thoughts off the top of my head. Apologies for the wall of text, I will make up for it tomorrow.

Opening

I agree that despite making a few micro mistakes in the opening it will not decide the game for us. I am not super impressed with Alhazard's or plako's openings, and the other 3 civs each have something else going for them in the early game (easy SA whipping, extra Baray food and arguably being played by mackoti/Phract fear). Moreover, the Dutch have no bonuses early on so we cannot be expected to be in the lead in food/mfg. We have done the best with what we have and as long as it leaves us in a decent position in the mid-game to take advantage of Dikes/EI/circum then I will be happy.

Macro

I do think naval action will far and away be the key factor in military action when the game gets there, and having EI/circum will be invaluable. I don't think that's enough for us to preemptively claim that no-one can contest us on the seas however. At the very least we will need to keep cities that are on the coast protected from a naval assault. In the W for instance, even if we do get control of the entire isthmus I don't think it will be as huge of a deal as I may have initially thought as we still need to defend all cities from a naval assault. I would be happy claiming the banana/fish city for the resources but would probably lean against making an aggressive settlement in the hub unless it is still available after claiming W isthmus.

Looks like we are both on board the scientist plan, so we need to work a scientist for 2t between now and t215 (pencil in t213-215, exact details tbd). Penciling in ND t216, subject to what mackoti/scooter does and the RNG.

Micro

I agree that now with soon to be 5 cities we can begin to exact our pre-game plan. In the short term though we need to focus on worker growth and improvements since we only have 7 workers. DR should build workers because it doesn't have the food to grow, while KND should whip workers because it doesn't have the improvements to justify growing (I think we are in agreement on this). Our new cities should aim for pop growth but will have to account for the worker shortage. I think both new cities should whip a worker at size 2, as unlike KND we don't have the workers in either case to quickly finish a 2nd food resource, and then grow from there.

PC deserves it's own paragraph, as we can now afford to start making it grow like crazy. I want at least 3 workers dedicated to cottaging everything so we can get our research train rolling. Health should not be a major concern, we can easily connect the Rice at DR anytime and in addition we will soon have Cows and Wheat. The current Happy cap is 8, Sugar/Incense will improve that to 10 but I don't think we can get either for ~10t or so. ND would be huge but we can't rely on that. I think a warrior can return home in time for it to grow to size 9, but we may have to pause growth by building workers/a settler after that. Also I'm thinking we should mine the 2 grass hills for now, since we aren't whipping PC anymore they will be valuable if/when we need to pause growth, and can always bulldoze them later if need be.

After about 10-15t we should be able to build settlers far more easily. Priority spots are the W isthmus, mack border and possible mack aggro plant (unlikely though), SE island and E isthmus/equator island, along with about half a dozen backline cities. Until then I think we should hold off on the settler building and focus on the capital/new cities, as that is what we have focused on pre-game.

Finally, we should not be thinking about SP workshops for our cities anytime soon. They are 50t away at least, and likely more. Cottages are king, even moreso with FIN river tiles. If/when we plant new cities with Communism in hand we can reconsider.

[oledavy]

Turn 211

I figured out how to get Aggressive jungle settled a turn earlier



So, Aggressive Jungle will be settled on 212, and our southeastern coastal city on 213. You'll note Scooter's explorer watching us. PC grows next turn and finishes the pike, and I think we'll want to move it up here just so they don't get any ideas. I think we can start running the scientist at Size 7 in Plains Cow.

Abroad, Alhazard birthed a GP, as I speculated. Quiet elsewhere otherwise, no new cities. Scooter built a Christian Monastery. Still nothing notable in demographics.



WK, I'm assuming you're good to take the next turn. Are you good with alternating turns from here on out? Barring one of us being unavailable of course.

I left signs for everything that wasn't obvious. We can whip KND next turn, and combined with the hard-built worker out of DR, go from 7->9 workers at the end of next turn. The only think I'm unsure about at the moment is what to build in PC next. I threw 3 hammers into a LBow in KND so it can grow, it can eventually be used to staff our Mack front city. I'm thinking that for our 6th city.

[WarriorKnight]

T212:

Last in the game to a 4th city. At least it's in an aggressive location.



Aggressive Jungle doesn't fit within the char limit sadly, so we had to compromise a bit (it was the same for KND, we initially wanted to call it Commodore Next Door to satisfy pindicator's city request, but c'est la vie).

5th city gets planted next turn. REM and scooter already have 5th cities so we aren't the first, but oh well.

Demogs are confusing:



First off, someone has 5 MFG (lolwut?!? ). Since everyone has at least 4 cities I can also assume Alhazard is abusing Caste to the max now that he has a Prophet. I initially assumed that it was for a shrine, but could it be to bulb Liberalism? A prophet can bulb that if PP and Edu are out of the way. If he gets a Merchant for PP and a Scientist for Edu then it's certainly possible. Props to him if he does that, but I don't know how he will make up for lack of food/hammers he has in the meantime.

Also I have no clue how someone has 183 GNP. We are the only team in the game to have a city over size 6, so ???. Could Alhazard's max specialist strategy be creating that, or is REM/mackoti trying to race him for Lib by max building research? Have to keep track of research eta's once someone finally does get a tech, cause me may not be a midgame research leader.

Anyway, we are finally above average in food/hammers now. We look to explode in food since Jungle All Over and River Desert (5th city) will get up to speed very quickly and once we get PC to size 9 we will have the ability to build 5t settlers from scratch (at the cost of not working cottages). Is that enough to get us back into contention? I sure hope so.

Since we have a settler on hand I did some digging around and managed to locate everyone's cities. Results of that analysis to come up next post.

[WarriorKnight]

Here are the city locations I found this turn. Going Easterly around the world from our position:

mackoti:

Not much to report here since we already had visibility. Both backline cities, probably relying on Phract security to avoid being settled on. And it's working since we are having difficulty justifying settling towards him.

Alhazard:

Dense build. While he does have a city on the W lake (our E lake, which we settle next turn!), I don't think he'll be in a position to contest us for the island anytime soon. Also has a city on his equator lake FWIW. Not too worried about his expansion possibilities.

plako:

The coastal city location is 1S of mackoti's 'Black Dragon' city. Otherwise nothing really to note since we're on opposite sides of the world. Standard stuff.

Nic/REM:

Despite being the early game leader, REM hasn't used that to push out to grab land aggressively (yet). I'm pretty happy he hasn't expanded E yet at all, and seem to be gaining territory slowly and steadily. Little concerned that he'll change tactics and start planting more aggressively, but for now we are good.

Sculla:

These are the two locations I understand the least, maybe I've misread them somehow? (will double check next turn) The only other player to make a push towards the center of the map, I'm glad our location prevents Sculla from expanding our way. If these cities are in the correct location then I can't say I'm impressed. Wonder why he hasn't settled on a lake yet?

[WarriorKnight]

T213:



Interesting... Guess mackoti was on the ball and sped up his GP, grabbing the Sci at low odds. On the plus side, ND is ours if we get a GE. Downside is mackoti now has a FIN academy.

Still on track to get a GP next turn (going to stick to the t214 plan in case scooter speeds up his own GP). Since ND is still available we're pretty happy with either that or our own academy.

Also got 5th city down:



plako got his 5th city down last turn so we are 4th. Forgot to re-check city locations before planting so we will have to wait for another settler before we can spy other cities again.

[WarriorKnight]

While I thought there was an outside chance of racing scooter, I wasn't expecting REM as competition. Now we have a conundrum, do we rush ND knowing that REM might do the same and leave ND to chance? Or scratch that plan and hold onto it for now?

Leaning on taking the risk right now but not really sure. Since they have the AP they might have been targeting Sankore/Spiral Minaret with this GE. Even if it was for ND, our own GE surely has them worried. I hope they realize that ND is the only wonder on our radar and react accordingly. Despite winning the flip for circum against them I assume/hope REM isn't the type to hold a grudge. OTOH my sims haven't needed to use the happy from ND yet, although it would give us some breathing room in the future.

I'll play the rest of the turn and leave it unended until we can talk about it dave. Wishing we could talk to them right now so we could negotiate something.

edit: Actually, they just finished Nationalism so they will probably rush Taj. Because of that I'm definitely leaning towards going for ND.

[WarriorKnight]

t214:

Biggest news of the turn was definitely the GE, so there isn't much else to cover. We did finish the first food resources in our new cities, so the demogs look a bit better.



Still 5th in food, but a lot closer to the avg and still maintaining that 1 MFG spot.

With REM finishing Nationalism, he was definitely the one with 183 GNP a few turns ago. Hoping that was a lot of Research builds to crank out Nationalism and now it'll return to reasonable levels. If he does rush Taj then expect a play for Lib/Economics (I don't know how they'll beat Alhazard to Lib though, that Prophet was a really smart move if they wanted to guarantee it).

Graphs confirm Alhazard is now last in food and MFG since he is pushing out GP's with caste. The GS he got this turn essentially confirms he is making a play for Lib, but I don't know what he plans to do after that. With REM getting Nationalism he will probably take either Economics or Astro with Lib, we should exercise some caution on the SE isle if it's the latter until we get Astro ourselves.

[WarriorKnight]

With the opening turns practically out of the way, it's time to start thinking about the transition into the midgame.

Mid-term strategy plan:

Research:

As per the pregame strat, our research goal is to build a megaresearch capital with bureau. Here's our glorious capital from my sim as of this turn:



What I'd like to do is have every cottage worked ASAP, as time is the main factor for getting towns online. We don't need a size 20 capital to do that, as long as any city is working the cottage it starts the clock. So with that in mind:

• Dry Rice can work 4 cottages. The 3 non-river ones are the priority, as the river cottage will be a farm in the short run to get the rice irrigated quickly. Once we have worker labor to irrigate the rice another way (most likely via whale lake through an ivory), I will switch it to a cottage.
  
• KND can work the 2 grass hills which can be cottaged. We do need one of them to be a mine in order to reach sustainable 5t settlers in the capital though, so I don't know if we should plan to keep 1 as a mine or not.
  
• Whale city can eventually work 2 cottages, but we haven't settled it yet and when we do it wants to work other stuff first.
  

PC needs to be size 13 in order to work all tiles that can't be given away. Of course, we don't need to be that large to work all the cottages but it is a starting point. I'd like to aim for all cottages being worked sometime in the t135-t140 range.

My current sim pauses at size 11 to build a settler, although we still aren't near the happy/health cap yet so we can push it further if we want. I would think we want a settler by then though, but it is quite easy to change if not.


Expansion:

The next settler is due from River Desert on eot223. After that we will get settlers from PC, KND and JAO around the t226-228 mark. PC can push the eta up to eot223 if needed, but the drawback is we don't grow so I wouldn't recommend it. With REM/Alhazard pursuing GP strats, scooter border settled already and mackoti not settling our direction we can probably afford to hold off pushing settlers for a while and get our current cities up to speed.

As for locations I think mack border, whale city and W isthmus are locks (in some order). SE island is subject to A) what is on the island and B) If Alhazard takes Astronomy with Lib. Depending on those we can either send the last settler to the SE island, make a move towards Byzcoti (probably not), settle the aggressive W isthmus location or move towards the E. Since it is some 10t away we have time to decide.


GP:

(the following assumes we land ND, hopefully that is the case!)

With the first GE out of the way and with ND (hopefully) ours, the next GP will either be a Engineer or a Artist. If we rush ND in the capital we will probably get a GE for sure from another city first, but I don't recommend that (see below). Any other city has odds of ~70% GE, ~30% GA. My pregame plan assumed that we used this GP for a golden age, and since we can't guarantee what type it'll be that is what I still lean towards. Although if we do get a Artist we may want to consider bombing shenanigans.

The first question is where to put ND as our GE can only reach Plains Cow, Dry Rice and KND this turn. Personally, I am leaning towards KND because if we get the 2nd GP from there, we can eliminate the GE points from that city and then have a reasonably good shot at getting the Scientist we need for an Academy during a caste/pacifism Golden Age run. The downside is that ND gives Artist points so it's not guaranteed, it'll probably be something like 80%. Still, that's better then any other city (where we've worked Engineers nonstop).

We can work 5 scientists at breakeven food in KND, along with 2 ND GP gives us 12GPP x 300% for 36GPPpt. We need 270GPP for GP No.3, 270/36 = 7.5 turns, which should be doable (we can build a library and run them the old fashioned way if we need to). JOA has enough food to create a GP as well, although it will have plenty of GE contamination so we can't guarantee a specific type.

Anyway, if we do rush ND in KND, and don't work any other specialists there the next GP will arrive t244. I'm hoping we can have Constitution to switch into Representation before the end of that GA, but given the current tech rate that may not be possible... We shall see.

[oledavy]

I like building ND in KND not only to add GP points into the pool and clear it out faster, but also it will allow us to get the city to 60% cultural borders more quickly. Its central location means this will drown much of our subcontinent in our culture and make us more difficult for Mack to attack.

I'm really torn on when to build settlers out of Plains Cows. If we're not pumping constant settlers, I feel like we're under-utilizing IMP. If we're not growing the capital, I feel like we're not making good enough use out of FIN. I lean towards growing the capital though, and with that in mind I support pushing the settler back and growing PC to 11. Ideally, we can soon get some of our other cities in shape to contribute all the settlers from here on out. I think we have room for what, like ~16 cities total without going after someone?

No though, it feels like right now people are slowing down expansion and focusing on tech and GP shenanigans.

I'll be curious to see what Al takes with liberalism. However, I think we have the head start and can settle that island before he does. Just make sure we staff it with a couple of longbows. With these island cities (especially the gold/silver ones where we will be settling on hills), possession is going to be 90% of the law. The cities will be very difficult to take until frigates. With this in mind, I would like to prioritize these, especially if we do have enough workers that we can potentially send enough workers to each island to mine the gold/silver/gems?

I think we're more or less in agreement on settling order. I do think that settler from RD should probably still be slated for the island, I imagine it will be worthwhile and our city's proximity and early settler out of it will give us an immense leg up. However, definitely will want to make this decision after we have eyes on the island itself. With the exception of the whale city, let's make our next round of cities all coastal so we can begin eyeing the islands. We may yet be able to beat REM towards the southwestern island between us, as they have not settled on that coast yet, right?

1. Southeast island?
2. Mack Border City
3. Whales
4. Western Isthmus

Beyond that, the northwestern lake city is a very solid location that we've perhaps overlooked. We do need to settle towards Al eventually as well. The southwest fur city is also really solid. I haven't looked at the south in awhile, but maybe the sugar city down there?Beyond that, the "aggressive" plants we're considering are: Forward city towards REM, forward city towards Mack, and of course the 6 islands we want

If we do land ND, and get all three metals, we'll be rolling in happy. The city towards Mack to pick up calender resrouces is still a very nice plant, but definitely loses some of is appeal with that in mind. And, you know, settling towards Mack. Out of our two possible aggressive plants, I think I prefer the one towards REM, besides narrowing our front, it additionally because it improves our naval access in the area and saves us from building as fort.

A couple of asides in city placement:

- I think we still settle that clam backfill, just because:

A. No wasted tiles
B. Island city will have another clam to work
C. It will probably be more efficient to try and split off a the gold from the island city, as the island city will probably have trouble working them all on its own. This decision can await seeing what's on the island though.

- I'm not entirely happy with what the Mack front city does to our dotmap, as it wastes three grassland (2 riverside) on the subcontinent that can't be retrieved except with a backfill city. Then again, I prefer having a really good blocker city towards Mack (and additionally one that serves as a canal. I don't have a solution for this at the moment (I stared at it a lot last week being annoyed), but just wanted to point out that the tile wastage is there.

Every time you orphan a grassland tile in a modern start game, god kills a puppy.

Anyway, need to wrap this up:

Great stuff on getting the other cities to grow cottages for the capital.

Also agree with getting a second GP from KND and then setting it up for a GS. Let's regrow it on a library between whips, and we can run a SCI instead of a ENG, and, who knows, maybe pull the SCI for an academy earlier, and instead use our 3rd GP for the golden age.

About what time frame are you wanting to flip into a golden age?

Thanks for going with market. I think it will be more solid long term.

As a final thought, REM is off to a monster start. I wonder if any of the other SPI civs are going to try and metagame and deny him Sankore/SM. I would suggest playing spoiler with our GE and doing it, but....doesn't really help us win now does it

[WarriorKnight]

T215:



Thankfully they didn't go for ND, so we got it. They did get Taj though, and rival best MFG has exploded. REM is definitely in the driver's seat atm, but we are just getting started ourselves.

Not pictured: plako getting a GS, and signing OB with plako. We now have visibility on one more plako city, and hopefully we can find the last one on our route home.

With Desert River expanding borders, we get our first look on the SE isle:



Copper huh? Well it is a resource doubler for the Statue, as well as for our and Al's cathedral. It's true that there is no copper anywhere else on the map, but its no gems. Have to wait and see what else is out there, but I'm not liking this city from a growth perspective.