RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius

[oledavy]

We may have to start thinking about Courthouses in JAO/RD. Play it by ear for the moment though.

I think library first in JAO, but I'm otherwise in agreement. Unless he is hard-building settlers, I don't expect REM to plant a lot of cities anytime soon. He's probably not whipping/whipping minimally during the golden age and instead is growing/running a lot of specialists. Afterwards, I imagine he'll do a lot of whipping and try to cram out 3-4 more settlers. I just don't see him wanting to whip off too much pop during a GA though.

I do expect the IMP civs will start pulling ahead in cities in the next couple dozen turns, as I imagine most of the early SPI civ expansion was powered by chops.

Can we make it a stated goal for us that Plains Cow always be the largest city in the world?

[WarriorKnight]

T221:



Crabs are a good sign, although probably not enough by itself. Will know next turn what is on the entirety of the island (I had to leave RD empty while we send the LBow to explore the island, little concerned Al shows up with a galleon but that's probably a unrealistic fear).

REM planted a 6th city and got a GS. He turned research back on and his GNP is up in the 200's. Thankfully the Golden Age should end soon. In other international news, Al finally came up with a naming scheme for his cities (and no, I don't know what it is).

I haven't ended turn yet, as there's a good chance that getting the settler out of JAO on eot227 requires us to have overflow hammers via building a LBow next. I'll run through the sim tonight to confirm.

Good news, we're back up to average pop! We should be in pretty good shape once the next batch of settlers are planted and running.

[WarriorKnight]

Turn finally rolled, so I quickly logged in to see what is on the SE island and, well...



I don't think there's enough Copper here.

I think I lean towards settling here. ICTR are pretty important with everyone in merc, Copper isn't important strategically for a while yet (less reason for Alhazard to contest us for it), it's quite a decent production city even before Dikes arrive and we have ample room in both happy and health caps to avoid going for other resources. We probably will need Gunpowder next to be safe but it's cheap enough that we could probably go for it before Astronomy.

A city here will almost certainly be called 'No Copper'

[picklepikkl]

[WarriorKnight]

T222:

Paranoia regarding an Alhazard invasion appears to be misguided.



No galleons in the vicinity, and little ability to produce a raiding force without whipping (and switching into serfdom this turn removes that ability). Plus our 2 news LBows pushes us to 2nd in power so everyone is still playing in the sandbox.

If I've counted right, REM's GA ends next turn. Unfortunately we'll still probably be behind in demogs after that readjusts itself which is sad. Just have to keep trucking along and see if there are any opportunities in the future to change things. We should be getting scooter's demogs next turn, which will be interesting to analyze.

Anyway, we are definitely going to go for Copper city and we should have 9 cities by t230. After that point we will halt expansion for a bit due to costs and other factors, but it should help a lot once we get them all up and running.

[oledavy]

Turn 223

Quick report, because I am typed out for this evening.



Traded maps with Scooter, got to see his and Plako's cities. I really love their theme btw

Realized after that spills the beans on the copper island, but they are in position anyway to settle the copper island between them and Mack. Maybe it starts a conflict

As for our own copper island, I'm not worried about Al taking it, but if we do want to secure it, two longbows would be ideal so there is no way he can take it with 1 galleon worth of units. Whipped River Desert this turn for the settler for No Copper.

I love how Plains Cow is shaping up:



Largest in the world!

Whipped a settler to completion in River Desert. REM's golden age ended. Shifted EP spending to REM, our last neighbor. Got 15 workers running around improving things, only 5 cities though. Turned us back to 100% on tech this turn, we'll finish education in two. Scooter finished Nat at some point. Us and Mack haven't finished a tech yet if I recall correctly. We'll definitely want a round of courthouses after this.

I think we may want to re-route the irrigation to Dry Rice to the plains so we can cram an extra cottage into Plains Cow.

At some point during this next week, I'll sit down and start figuring out city-specializations and tile improvements. I think the current policy of cottages everywhere is still good for the time being.

[WarriorKnight]

My general rule for worker improvements has been to cottage every tile in the capital as well as every grass river tile. While it works for now, we should go through each city and find a specialization for it at some point too. We definitely want to eventually cottage the farm giving irrigation to Dry Rice as soon we can afford to spare the worker labor though.

Little surprised scooter also went Nationalism though. They aren't SPI either and surely they weren't trying for Taj with their wide REX strategy. Maybe they're going for the Merc/Rep combo? Their demogs reveal a decent food/mfg lead on us and somewhat even in gnp, although their land is fairly void of cottages so we should have a gnp lead on them midgame.

Speaking of tech, what should we research next? I'm thinking Astronomy for the Observatory more than anything (although EI are nice too ). Gunpowder is the alternative, but no-one looks to be building military yet so we can afford to delay it I think.

[oledavy]

My general rule for worker improvements has been to cottage every tile in the capital as well as every grass river tile. While it works for now, we should go through each city and find a specialization for it at some point too. We definitely want to eventually cottage the farm giving irrigation to Dry Rice as soon we can afford to spare the worker labor though.

Little surprised scooter also went Nationalism though. They aren't SPI either and surely they weren't trying for Taj with their wide REX strategy. Maybe they're going for the Merc/Rep combo? Their demogs reveal a decent food/mfg lead on us and somewhat even in gnp, although their land is fairly void of cottages so we should have a gnp lead on them midgame.

Speaking of tech, what should we research next? I'm thinking Astronomy for the Observatory more than anything (although EI are nice too ). Gunpowder is the alternative, but no-one looks to be building military yet so we can afford to delay it I think.

I think we're pretty safe to go Astro. Let's get some boats going

[oledavy]

Turn 224

Found Alhazard about to settle a city in I think the same location as JAO.



Other than that, I think I managed to follow your micro plan to the letter this time WK.

Our completing 2 Lbows in the same turn really made a power spike - maybe that freaked out a neighbor Other than that, we're holding our own in Demos and tech. Mack still hasn't finished a tech. Besides Al, everyone went for nationalism. We're in about 4th place on average in most categories.

Loaded the settler this turn. I'm really excited to settle No Copper. I would also like to grab the one on the other side if we can. I really like these copper islands because neither coast has a great production location pre SP workshops. Having a city with lots of natural hammers will allow us to have a massive leg-up on controlling the water early, which is part of our long-term plan for victory.

After this next round of cities and then CHs, we should look at how we're going to settle gold/silver islands.

In the meantime though, not much else to report. Cottages going up everywhere, and more cities about to come out. Things are quiet abroad, for now.



End Turn.

[oledavy]

Turn 225

Al did settle his city in the same location as JAO. I opened the turn to two deals, which is why I did not end it. I typed this all up for WK in Gmail, but if you're reading it here first, go check Gchat, make your decision and end turn. Everything else has been done (and nice catch with the road to the Mack border city). For the lurkers:

In sum, we got an offer of World Map for World Map from REM. The most compelling reason to not accept is that we want to keep the copper island between us secret. Which yeah...is a pretty compelling reason. Screw what I said in Gchat, we can go without eyes on his cities a little longer if it means he doesn't know what's on that island. The other offer was this:



I think the subtext here is let's be friendly, which I am more than happy to be with them at the moment. This one, I genuinely have no reservations about, and I think we should accept.

Landed the settler:



Other than that, still improving everywhere. Need to come up with city names for our two next plants....had any in mind WK?