[SPOILERS] A new Thread [SPOILERS]

[novice]

They have closed borders with slowcheetah, Nakor, BaII and they do not have Astronomy. So their trade routes go through the Ottoman land. If we close the borders, they can not trade with 2metra, dick, Jowy, Gawdzak and TBS. Right?

You have to be at war with both trading parties to prevent their trade routes from going through your lands.

[flugauto]

They have closed borders with slowcheetah, Nakor, BaII and they do not have Astronomy. So their trade routes go through the Ottoman land. If we close the borders, they can not trade with 2metra, dick, Jowy, Gawdzak and TBS. Right?

You have to be at war with both trading parties to prevent their trade routes from going through your lands.

Seriously?

[Mardoc]

Seriously.

In FFH PBEM3, I used Thoth's roads to gift copper to Nyktorion, when Thoth was at war with Nyktorion and I had no other route. So I've seen it with my own eyes.

[Mardoc]

Looks like 5-6 turns to Communism - not sure quite how much overflow we'll have, nor how far down the slider will have to go. Six turns untill Edirne births a Great Person, at which point these demographics will go through the roof!



Zanth still hasn't researched Astronomy or SciMeth, so it's looking likely that I can snipe both Great People. He has broken Slowcheetah's stack, again, so that's all the further I ought to push the econ-only gameplan. Need to pick up a bunch of military techs next - just got to decide if grenadiers or cannons or rifles are most urgent.

[flugauto]

Do you want to build the Kremlin?

[Mardoc]

Six turns untill Edirne births a Great Person, at which point these demographics will go through the roof!

I've got a number of good things happening right about in six turns. Let's count them up!

State Property will come in. It should be worth ~100gpt for reduced maintenance, another 100gpt of unlocked trade routes, and probably 20gpt in reduced civic costs. It'll also give us 30 hpt and 40 fpt.

We'll get our next Golden Age launched. Should be worth 100 hpt, and 2-300gpt while it lasts

Oxford will finish up about then, too. That's worth ~100 bpt on breakeven

Then there's the minor things that'll happen - cities growing, courthouses/banks/grocers completing - probably another 100 bpt as a result of these.

All told, I expect our GNP to go up by at least 600 in the next six-seven turns, and 2/3 of that is permanent. . If I'm lucky, foes will attribute it all to the GA and underestimate my permanent rate

Do you want to build the Kremlin?

I, um, hmm. I'm not sure. Conventional wisdom says it's a really good wonder. I've got no current use for the thing, except the 2 spy GPP. No cash rush, no slavery, and neither civic seems worth adopting. Even with Stone, 400 hammers is a lot to find.

On the other hand, there's no reason to believe I'll stick with Caste System forever. We will run out of happiness and want to whip, sooner or later. State Property boosting our food supplies ought to help that come sooner. Or maybe we'll want to dip into Universal Suffrage instead and rush-buy. Or, well, maybe we get into a war *not* on our own schedule, and need to whip. All of those would benefit from having the rush discount. Spiritual makes all of those more likely to happen.

On top, there's always denial value.

I should give it a try. Probably in Edirne, once Edirne gets Grocer + Hammam up to recover from its health deficit. That's where the GPP can pay off the most, and it's a solid hammer producer as well, so it's probably one of the best candidates anyway. But I should do a survey next time the turn comes around; perhaps it would go up faster in an alternate city, and I may even have a hammer-heavy city that doesn't need more infra for itself somewhere around here.

[flugauto]

And State Property pushes the crop yield towards 700 and makes the growth even growthier. Hurray!

[spacetyrantxenu]

This all sounds really nice. Which one of those factors will boost your soldier rating and push your civ into Killing Time™? After all, we all visit for the civ playing. We stay for the blood! WAAAAAAR!!!

[Mardoc]

I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait, Xenu. Maybe you could listen to some Mozart or smooth jazz to ease your nerves?

Seriously, GNP will lead us to war. At the moment all possible targets are even or ahead on military tech, and that just doesn't make any profit. The only potential target at all beatable is Jowy, and he's far enough away that I don't think we'd be allowed to keep anything we took. But a nice GNP lead like this will give us an edge, and then we can exploit the edge. And note, please, that our MFG is excellent and improving as well.

I suppose that's another argument for Kremlin, come to think. It's a lot easier to put together an army to take advantage of a tech lead before it expires with the whip, than with boosted workshops.

As for targets: I'm starting to seriously consider BaII as an option. He's currently in a solid position, but that's for mostly fading reasons: he ran out of room early, and he's Sumeria. So he got courthouses and tall cities much earlier than the rest of us. He doesn't have anywhere much to expand to, though, bordering me, Zanth, and Gawdzak: all of us are bigger, and all of us are nearly even in tech. But he does have quite a bit of vulnerability to a galleon push, just about every city of his is coastal. And that might let me try to restrain Zanth on my own, instead of needing to have BaII do it. I'll have to show a screenshot later - but basically what I'm thinking is that the same army that (hopefully) burns down all Zanth's coastal cities could then swing over and take Sumeria for my own. Or vice-versa.

That all assumes that I keep the GNP lead long enough, without interference, to get to pick my own wars, of course. That's my biggest worry at the moment: I really need 20 turns to get caught up on miltech and get decent border forces built. Communism is such a sparkly prize that we're taking the risk of getting caught unprepared: but make no mistake, we *are* unprepared.

[Mardoc]

Played last night, but didn't have time to report. Let's change that!

First up - Angkor Wat is ours! Yay stone! Yay 4 Priest GPP and many Priest slots for Edirne! And, oh, yeah, yay for the ability for a Spi civ to get boosted priests elsewhere, if I want them.

You can see why Edirne is going for the Grocer/Hammam next, though. Definitely needs more happiness and health if I want to work all these awesome Moai tiles and also a bunch of specialists.

Edirne's such an awesome city with Moai, it wants all the infrastructure, and it wants those yesterday. Sadly, pre-Moai, it didn't have the hammers to build much, so I'm still catching up.

Somehow, Edirne hasn't made it into the top-5 cities list. I think it'll get there, though: still has four more pop to grow, a bunch of infra to benefit from, and, of course, more wonders in its future.



Demos continue to be awesome. Should drop off some at EOT: SciMeth is a 2-prereq tech, while Communism is only 1-prereq. Plus we'll have to drop off of 100% science. I still expect to be toward the top of the pack, but maybe we won't be 1st place for a few turns. Going to do maximum breakeven rate, each turn earlier on State Property is worth so much.



I mentioned BaII: here's why he looks like a target. Especially the northern half of his empire, is pretty much entirely accessible from this sea. Galleons could fork the whole thing, and it's only 2-3 turns from my land to anywhere in the place.

Also, those are some beautiful island cities. Note that they're basically impregnable if their owner controls all the ports on this sea - and the only ports are mine, Zanth's singleton, and BaII's - so a partial war could also be successful. I'd prefer to take all of Sumeria, but I could get away with sniping these islands and razing BaII's ports.

That works both ways: if BaII should go up to Astro, several of my cities are instantly vulnerable and on the front lines. Edit: Actually, on reflection, those cities are already vulnerable - pretty much the only tiles not in his culture are coastal. Astro would just give him extra speed and the ability to hit me from the fog.



If I'm thinking bigger scale, his southlands are also very nice, and almost entirely coastal.



It's still mostly in the pipe-dream stage, though. Not worth planning too deeply before I know what the next 20 turns look like.

Finally, let's show off some cities that were newly founded when flugauto passed the baton:

Inebolu's actually getting close to max size, presuming that I can't take some of those tiles from China. It's a very nice max size: chemistry/caste workshops give Inebolu the hammers it needs to put up a good bit of infrastructure, and those coast tiles give it the raw commerce to make the infra worth building.

When I get around to indulging Xenu, it'll be a nice place to push out a navy from, or some marines. Especially if I dip into Slavery or Nationalism and spend the banked population. And it will benefit a good bit from State Property: 2 extra food, another hammer, and of course its maintenance will fall further.



Adana's in a similar situation, only a few turns behind. But you can see it's definitely a profit center for the empire, not a drain, even discounting the Stone it provides. And it's hard to discount the stone, which has been worth several hundred hammers of Moai, Angkor Wat, and Oxford so far. It'll help with the other half of Oxford and the Kremlin attempt, as well - and that's just the short term plans.



All in all, things are looking good for the empire. I hope the next 20 turns go by in a flash, as we turn all this production into the ability to have a real foreign policy.