[SPOILERS] Donovan Zoi and AdrienIer: Slümhund Millionaires!

[AdrienIer]

Are we certain the stone landmass is a different continent ? After PB22 I'm wary of such assumptions.
If not settling the ivory sooner is a possibility. Do we have a scouting WB now ?

Do we have a clear production center ? Any ideas for the future epics cities ? SoZ in the HE city would be great.

How many calendar resources do we have in our current territory ?

Do you think someone will research alphabet soon ? OB is great for your economy, and it's prereq to currency so you get a beaker discount

[Donovan Zoi]

Are libraries really useful ? One or two in the cap and a commerce city is ok but everywhere sounds a little suboptimal (giving us less than 1bpt on average). Walls are also a bit much, more settlers (and more units to escort them) would be more useful. FW also. Infrastructure can wait.

I am only planning Libraries for the big 3 for now (SF, Duqusne and Oswego), as we will get an additional 4-6 beakers per city at 80-100%. I know not to build them just for the sake of building, which is why I have waited til now for the first 3. Others will come in due time, as needed. Libraries in Duquesne and Oswego will help us win the culture war in key regions against Elkad and Joey respectfully, allowing us to outlast their Barracks culture.

Walls are a bit of a no-brainer with Stone hooked up, especially as we extend our reach to places our neighbors don't want us. Once again, I don't intend to spam Walls everyhwere but only consider them at the right time where necessary.

Where are we regarding city sites in Gavagai's direction ? Did he start settling in our direction ?

Fish site will be the next location, as Gavagai has settled 2S of our 2-clam location. I'll be posting a better overview of each neighbor shortly.

What kind of army does Elkad have ?

Elkad is a bit below us and Joey in soldiers, but has a couple Barracks built to pad that number. I have still seen only Axemen from him and he has no access to Horses yet. The Hague currently has no garrison so we may want to consider a strike, though there have been too many other priorities for us to commit to such a plan. The way it looks though, the Hague and Rotterdam should fall to us when we are ready for it...I am just leary about inviting Joey and Gavagai to test us while we take the cities.

I like the MC idea to make good use of our production advantage and to build some workshops but the main thing that would make me prioritize it is whether we've reached the happy cap in many cities. We should probably go for currency immediately in any case. What's our breakeven research right now ? 60% ? We wouldn't want to crash our eco. You want to build markets : how many market resources do we have ? Ivory furs and silk if we race Retep for them ?

I think we can go with MC over Construction without issue, but I agree that Currency should come first. Size 7 is our current population cap; 8 in SF. So we are getting to the point where we will soon need the additional happiness, especially if we want to make our new Libraries stronger. In the meantime for popultion control, we can 2-whip Markets (or just optmize for prouction and build outright) in the Big 3 once we have Currency. I really think getting the jump on these will give us a good edge.

Break even rate is 70%, which we are at right now after 2 turns of 0% research. It's just not worth it to toggle back to 100% because it drains the gpt too fast.

Do we have graphs on all our neighbors or did someone spend EPs on us ?

I am checking our EPs every turn, and we have graphs on all but Grimace. I'll be devoting full to retep once we meet him. Gavagai is the only concern re:EPs, as he has us by 100/71. We are matching him 2 for 2 each turn for now.

I'll post some graphs when I get a chance. Keep in mind that I may be overpromising though.

Do we have a good site to chop the HG from ? How many wonders have been built so far ?

Stonehenge still stands as the only World Wonder at this time, so we have the pick of any wonder we want to go for. Would you put HG over Pyramids though? We'd have to build an unneeded Aqueduct first but we do get the bonus for that building at least. I still have an interest in SoZ and GL too, which would pull us onto the Aesthetics path. Something tells me that either Commodore or Gavagai will get there first though.

[AdrienIer]

Please go to 100% research, 70% is never better than full binary.
Rest sounds good. Would we really have lots of specialists to use rep for ? If not I don't think the mids (with their huge cost) is better than the pop from the HG. Both give GE points right ?

[AdrienIer]

Now I realize that theoretically going 70% research to maximize/minimize overflow into a prereq-heavy tech. But that's not the case right now.
Just in case you missed it while answering the first round, I had a second round of questions, post 251.

[Donovan Zoi]

Are we certain the stone landmass is a different continent ? After PB22 I'm wary of such assumptions.
If not settling the ivory sooner is a possibility. Do we have a scouting WB now ?

Yes, I am pretty certain of that. Once Niagara Falls is settled, it will be easier to pump units into the region to protect it and work it.

With Gavagai settling the 2 crab site, I don't want him to mess up our Fish site plan so that one should be next. After that we have about 3-4 other locations worth considering, though I think the Ivory site is the best one. Our scouting WB is now a senty WB near Gavagai since it reached the borders of retep and Gavagai too quickly.

Do we have a clear production center ? Any ideas for the future epics cities ? SoZ in the HE city would be great.

Is SoZ city only or empire wide? If the latter, I don't think it matters if paired up with HE. The big 3 are all possibilities, but I think Duquesne will emerge victorious here and eventually Niagara as well. The capital I usually reserve for Oxford and Wall Street national wonders (not always), so Duquesne is looking pretty good for HE.

How many calendar resources do we have in our current territory?

We now have Bananas, Dyes and Incense (with Frontenac border pop). Then more Bananas on Ivory Island, with Silks from either Elkad or retep. We have been blocked from Spices by Gavagai, it seems.

Do you think someone will research alphabet soon ? OB is great for your economy, and it's prereq to currency so you get a beaker discount

I was wondering about that myself. I'm hoping that others would research Alphabet and offer OB to us, but it might be nice to lead an Elkad invasion with a scouting Spy first (although the Secretive nerf makes them annoyingly useless for the most part). We can take a closer look at this as Maths gets closer to completion.

[Donovan Zoi]

Please go to 100% research, 70% is never better than full binary.
Rest sounds good. Would we really have lots of specialists to use rep for ? If not I don't think the mids (with their huge cost) is better than the pop from the HG. Both give GE points right ?

Re: binary research. We would need to go 2 more turns at 0% to gain 1 turn of research at 100%. Maths is theoretically at 5 turns though the screenshot says 6 right now (I emphasized production this turn). At 100%, we could get it in 4 but the gold reserves would go into the negative before completion. I am sorry, but I'll always take the faster research time in cases like this. But I review the binary plan at the beginning of each new tech, and opened with two turns at 0% already for Maths.

And I did misspeak, I believe, though I will have to clarify. 70% is -11gpt so our break even is probably 50% actually.

Re: 'Mids. We are going to want to get at least 3 Academies pretty quickly so we'll need to find some site that will support specialists for at least the short term anyway. The extra 3 beakers would certainly come in handy, especially while the techs are still cheaper. But the big thing about the Pyramids is the +3 we get for the top cities. That will offset whip penalties in smaller towns (of the 6) while allowing major cities to grow to Size 16-17 after Forges and Calendar.

[AdrienIer]

SoZ is only in one city. Useful to pump high promo units easily (SoZ+barrack+stable+vassalage or theocracy=10xp for mounted units, SoZ+barrack+vassalage+theocracy is 10xp for everyone).

I'll take a look ingame for the rest.

[AdrienIer]

Argh our current breakeven is under 50%... Currency next is obligatory.
The problem with academies is that they only give a bonus to beaker output, which means that a 14cpt city wouldn't give +7bpt but more like +3. I know that the cities will grow but there might be other uses for GPs than a +5% global increase in beakers. It makes sense in the cap because we'll probably get into bureaucracy and with +50% commerce in a good city, the +50% beakers can make you gain a lot. Happiness is good but with markets and forges our happy cap will exceed the number of good tiles we can work pretty easily, so more happiness in the bigger cities is not necessarily worth the huge mids build. I'd rather get some more cities out and HG them for a nice boost.

Notice how Retep decided to let Commodtay get all the land between them and rushed the uncontested land to his east ? I was wondering why we had so little room in our secondary continent compared to the others...

[Donovan Zoi]

Yeah, the maintenance on the small map is kind of killing us a bit. Two cities are nearing 5 maintenance. I have also withheld on Cottages to maximize our mining advantage, but those will come on board quickly as we enter the next stage of growth.

OK, I think you have me convinced on HG. With Stone/IND we can knock it out pretty quickly. Hopefully we can get a couple more cities up to enhance the benefit.

Re: retep - After another map trade with Commodore, it looks like retep has 6 cities now. It almost makes me want to bypass the Ivory site to settle on the Wines before he does, but that will likely put us in immediate conflict without much backup. There is also a landbridge site with 3 food on the island between us to our west. That one may be better, and it would really help our position if we controlled that island.

Niagara Falls will be up next turn, with the Fish site coming 2-3 turns later.

[AdrienIer]

I made a proposed change to the dotmap when I logged in, putting the cow site S of capital 1SE to use the gem tile (else no city can use it !). That way it loses the fish (it can still be used by a city on the big western island) but it's a cow/crab/gems city so still pretty nice. I'll let you play next turn to make your decision, and also to let me get out of jet lag without using my brain.
Also it would be nice for the cow to be improved (and roads built) before the city is settled, I didn't look at the worker micro though so maybe it was already the plan.