RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius

[oledavy]

Turn 230

Played my last turn for a little bit today, and settled our ninth city:



Named after what I can only assume was a mapmaking gaff (or feature?  )
Either way, I haven't thanked Mardoc for crafting the map lately. Excellent job mate   

Plako also settled his 9th city this turn, bringing city counts to 11-10-9-9-8-7. Feels about right. Plains Cow still leads the top 5 cities, which is a win in my book. We're using the three surrounding cities to grow its cottages at the moment while we bang out 5t settlers from it. BC + IMP is the best.  

Whipped the library in KND this turn, so w'll be able to accelerate our second great person out of there. 

Abroad:  



The second wonder of the priest economy trio falls to REM. I for one, welcome our new Khmer overlords. 

And with that, I turn things over the the inimitable WK.

[WarriorKnight]

T131:

Going to have to be brief today.

mackoti is whipping a ton. He must have whipped something like 10 pop over the last 2t? Come to think of it, REM did the same after his GA ended so that must be how the SPI civs are keeping up with expansion. Anyway, now we have to wait and see where mackoti settles his latest batch of settlers (and hope our mineral islands aren't on his radar).

Additionally mackoti finished PP which is a strange choice. PP is a useless tech to get early with no-one having anything close to a village. It does have some very important techs as a pre-req true, but is it that important? If he does beeline Rifling then we can probably remain safe with EI's, not sure what else he could be trying to do...

[oledavy]

T131:

Going to have to be brief today.

mackoti is whipping a ton. He must have whipped something like 10 pop over the last 2t? Come to think of it, REM did the same after his GA ended so that must be how the SPI civs are keeping up with expansion. Anyway, now we have to wait and see where mackoti settles his latest batch of settlers (and hope our mineral islands aren't on his radar).

Additionally mackoti finished PP which is a strange choice. PP is a useless tech to get early with no-one having anything close to a village. It does have some very important techs as a pre-req true, but is it that important? If he does beeline Rifling then we can probably remain safe with EI's, not sure what else he could be trying to do...

His power isn't continuing to spike, right?

[WarriorKnight]

We have a bigger problem:



I spotted 2 workers roading here this turn, so Alhazard will definitely be making a play to settle here. He also bought 3 LBows, 1 to cover the worker and 2 on the tile I'm on for military support.

If he plays his cards right there's not much I can do. Banana location has to be scratched, he almost certainly can settle a city to invalidate it before we can (none spotted this turn but it's only a matter of time). Original isthmus location will be close, it depends mainly on where he plans to settle (I assume his settler is 2t away at max). I guess he is aiming for the hill my explorer is on? That would make the most sense from a defensive perspective. It would also be the best case scenario for us as the original location will still be available for us for the crucial canal.

If he goes 1S of the hill we are kinda screwed since that cuts us off from making a channel to our mineral lake, affecting our eta for settling there (and misplaces 2 settlers). We do still have backup locations in the form of scooter's island and W isthmus locations, but it would still be a harsh blow. Either way we may have to scratch the silver city since most of it's food will be taken already. If we still want to go for it we have to move it 1W and accept a much smaller food surplus.

Thoughts dave?

[WarriorKnight]

T233:

Got REM's demogs, and now we can see how much trouble the rest of us are all in. Firstly food:



This is hardly surprising considering the Baray boost. More surprising is the MFG graph:



I thought scooter was the one with the super high MFG since he is in a GA, but alas that was not to be. Keep in mind we are 2nd in MFG so REM must be going to town with those AP hammers.

And if that weren't enough, REM switch to Representation this turn (and scooter is sure to switch into it before the end of his GA). Seems I wasn't the only one to theorize a early push to Constitution (although they probably won't build an economy out of it). Not sure what we're going to do about it, maybe we should make a push for the W isthmus location after all? It's unfortunate mackoti is on the other side of the world, I'm not sure how scooter and I will deal with this.

[oledavy]

Not much we can really do about Al, but it is still important to get a city down over there for naval access. 

Hopefully he settles on the hill, and we can settle on the grassland hill 1SW of the bananas as originally planned. We may still be able to settle silver city, let's what and see where he places his settler, and adjust as necessary. Worst case scenario as you said, we do have the backup locations.

Do you want to revisit the western ismus spot?

[WarriorKnight]

Do you want to revisit the western ismus spot?

Definitely thinking about it if we can't settle both mineral islands. It may turn out that we need to be able to hit REM, W isthmus is pretty much the only way we can do so right now (at least, until he settles on our lake).

The 2 northern mineral islands may be higher priority though, as FIN/IMP they are a very high priority for us.

[WarriorKnight]

T234:



OK, guess we won't be settling silver island then.

Thankfully we are now guaranteed the original E isthmus spot. We settle our E isthmus location next turn. If Alhazard moves S to settle next turn then we win the race since I have moved first both this turn and the turn before (Brick, as admin please confirm this). If he settles in place this turn then we still have room to settle, although it'll be a tight fit.

We have to be paranoid about mackoti though, he could easily have a few settlers on hand considering all the pop he whipped around t230. He will be able to beat us to the gold island if he has a settler on hand to ferry over there which is entirely possible. We on the other hand still need a few turns so I'm not optimistic.

He also settled a city that allows him to claim scooter's islands, if he has a plan to settle those islands before we can then that leaves no minerals for us. On the plus side I think we can guarantee the other copper island, since REM has yet to plant a city on his SE coast. I would prefer a mineral island though.

EDIT: Ah, nevermind Brick. Al settled this turn so there is no issue that needs to be solved.

[oledavy]

That's really disheartening that Mack was able to get a city there first, although we did see it coming. Hopefully, he's really behind on getting to the gold island. If not, we'll redirect our efforts north.  

At least we still get to put an isthmus city down. It'll be tight, but it's a canal for us, it's defensible, and it still has a pretty good food bonus.  

We should still be able to get the copper island, as we already have a pretty big head start on settling it. But it seems we're in a real race for the precious metal islands at this point, so I would prioritize those.

Which settler were you thinking about sending west?

[WarriorKnight]

We should still be able to get the copper island, as we already have a pretty big head start on settling it. But it seems we're in a real race for the precious metal islands at this point, so I would prioritize those.

Which settler were you thinking about sending west?

It depends on how many metal islands we can secure (or more accurately, how many mackoti is not able to imminently secure). There are 3 islands left that we can reach, we can probably get at least one and I'd be pretty happy with two (we aren't getting all 3).

How many islands we can get determines which settler we send W, but in the best case scenario PC finishes a settler t239 that can head W.