[PB78] Dreylin boldly goes

[Mjmd]

I always forget Notre Dame is an artist wonder. I have no clue why, but in my head its a great engineer wonder.

[Dreylin]

T141 -

Well either there was never any plan for war, or I successfully stalled it with Pikes, as I remain un-attacked. Infact both Gav & Superdeath played back-to back turns (SD both in combined 15mins) so I feel like I'm going to be OK for a while. Still going to take advantage of Police State and pump out units, but can afford to ease back in a few places. Scott will build their Castle instead of a slow unit, and I feel comfortable setting McCoy to start Notre Dame next turn. It will be an 11t build and I should have a decent headstart so will go casually. The culture & GPP will be a bit wasted there, but Spock needs to be building units on the frontline and Kirk is still growing past cottages and doesn't want to put that on hold to focus on hammers right now.

If status quo is maintained then I'll probably ease back on reporting here in the run up to t150, but will probably start spamming my PB81 thread instead when that gets going.

[Dreylin]

We have engaged speed mode on turns - both turnplay time and turnaround. Superdeath and Gavagai are in their first Golden Ages, while Magic Science just kicked off their second (having also completed Great Library). There was a turn when Magic rolled and didn't play the turn - which coincided with the rejection of Open Borders - but it was settling related and they just rolled a double. Oh, and then offered Open Borders again.

I'm watching their tech; I had expected Guilds after Machinery, but they were saving gold on Engineering and are now showing Civil Service in 2t. That's good news for my Notre Dame build. After messing with my own tech last turn and leaving it on, I'm now 90% through Calendar and ate all my gold reserves. I can finish it this turn, but Workers are out of position so I will save for a few turns until they are ready. I did temporarily fix my few happy issues by renting Superdeath's spare Incense for 5gpt. I will be cancelling once the term is up.

After Calendar I've been thinking about heading to Civil Service and then Paper myself next. I'm not going to race for the AP, but Sankore could be worth a try for my cheap temples. Plus Magic will likely avoid the tech for a while to keep the Great Library active. I've also been wondering about continuing to avoid the Guilds path, but I should probably be doing the opposite and getting to Banking for Mercantilism ASAP. I'll have to run some numbers on Bureau-Cap payback verses straight run to Banking.

Next turn will be some Police State exit shenanigans to return to Rep, but I'll likely keep Slavery for another cycle to help the newer cities get infrastructure in before switching back to Caste for a while.

[Dreylin]

T145 -

Whelp I was wrong, one of the Theology researchers was indeed Magic and wouldn't you know it they just finished the Apostolic Palace, uniting Hinduism under their banner. Which is interesting.    Cheap Temples should pay back pretty fast, so Kirk has finally started building a Missionary.

I think I'm still good for Notre Dame, but they are teching like a lunatic right now. Now the military push is done, I'm going to start to salt in some Wealth builds to get my own rate up.

I also changed my mind about keeping Slavery and went back to Caste alongside Rep. I don't see myself needing to whip for a few turns after this and I wanted to hire some Artists to push borders back in a couple of places.

[Dreylin]

t148 - Huh?

I'm going to have to think about this one:


Sulu & Mathews are where my 2 sources of Iron, but beyond that I don't know what message Superdeath is intending to convey here. I've seen no sign that Magic is planning an attack, and why else those cities rather than Riker & Troi.

I sent back a mutual Iron/War with Magic to indicate a general willingness to join in again.

If something is brewing then I think it reinforces my (pending) decision to go Civil Service next ahead of pushing straight through to Guilds. Bureau doesn't have a huge payback, but I do have a couple of tiles that want chained irrigation; and Maces are probably as good if not better than Knights to break through at Little Lamplight (and I can start building them earlier).

Magic is showing 1t to Engineering, at which point I will have 3t left on my Notre Dame build. I think that should be safe but I can't help worrying. Nothing I can do to speed up though, and a big ol' chunk of gold to tech with wouldn't hurt.

[Dreylin]

T149 -

Gavagai's is much simpler:


I'm interested that neither have said that they would go to war with Magic; are they warning me? There's absolutely no sign of Magic building up forces, and it would certainly be in both their interests to distract me with a Magic war. I reply to Gav the same as SD: mutual Copper/War with Magic.

For the record, if we are going to war with Magic again I will be waiting for both of them to have declared and committed forces before joining since they delayed last time.

Then there's this:


Which is interesting, but frankly laughable. I already have Gold in trade from both Gavagai and Donovan - which Magic can easily see if they check - so this is just 6gpt for Stone. AKA peanuts, and especially bad if we are actually plotting war against him. Really the only thing that could incentivize me is some sort of trade involving Little Lamplight, so I make a counter offer:


This is also somewhat insulting, but I could see there may be some room for negotiation here - if countered with something along the lines of trading LL for Troi (sorry Deanna) plus additional incentives from my side, then I think we could likely work something out. I'm not sure that's particularly likely.

[Dreylin]

T150 - kind-of a boring turn

I took eleventy-billion screenshots for the T150 empire overview, but the turn itself was fairly routine. No responses from either Magic or Gavagai, but Superdeath sent me back this:


Despite all the Iron/Iron and Copper/Copper going on with these two, I am fairly suspicious of their coordinated pushing me towards attacking Magic - without indicating they would do the same. Maybe they are indicating Magic is trying to organise an attack on me, but he has no standing army and is not exactly going to whip one out during his Golden Age. Plus he's opened borders and not exactly rushed to scout me out other than a Trireme up to McCoy. In order for me to go to war with Magic I would need to weaken my borders with them, which is a strong incentive not to do so.

Civics are available again, but I've held off. I do have a couple of cities that want to whip in some infrastructure, but I will have either Vassalage or Bureaucracy available in a couple of turns and I am also still putting Caste to use with a few Workshops and Artists. More on that in the overview.

[Dreylin]

T150 - Overviews & bumpf

After some twiddling with FoV sliders and aerial whatsits, I managed to take a shot of the whole map for your viewing* pleasure:



* if you can see past the spammed on signs!

Let's zoom in on our neighbours and look at how they have expanded.

I'll start with Superdeath since I discussed this quite recently:



Very N-S expansion as fitting with the landforms. CRE gives it a good buffer esp. in the South. Preferred expansion avenues are East or West, but easiest expansion would probably be North or South into Donovan.

Moving West, we have Gavagai:



He got pinched early by Magic and Thrawn and has ended up with a strung out empire. His South is troublesome to defend, but is most vulnerable to me and he forestalls that by maintaining his massive stack on my opposite border. There's a bit gap between Agra and Varanasi - or on "Fortified Praet" island - so expansion may not be on his mind. West into Magic or Donovan would seem to be the route.

Speaking of Donovan:



Thrawn pushed aggressively at Magic and Gavagai early skewing this empire towards the Northeast. The lopsidedness was then compounded by the loss of the original capital Fierias to the Barbs. After stabilising relations and before departing into the night, Thrawn made a massive landgrab back Westwards staking out a large territory with lots of space for backfill ... which probably crashed his economy and delayed those plants. This is a pretty recent view, so the gaps in the West and to the SE of Willow are still there. Definitely has the most space for internal expansion.

Now that I've finally opened borders with Magic, I can comment on their territory:



From the original capital Gaugamela, Magic's primary expansion direction was Northwards, and while he was nipped and tucked here and there by the war, I don't think he lost anything in the South. Marathon is the jewel, having pushed out the majority of their wonders and now taken on Bureau-cap duty. It has a phenomenal hammer output fueled by Railroad Mines and Iron. In recent turns the borders have been padded with filler cities to replace ones lost during the war. There's still a bunch of space in the South, as well as the Marathon island going begging.

Magic has no standing army to speak of, but has a GG stored as well as a GM. Biggest logistical challenge is between New Tehran and Artemisium, but then he would see an attack coming on NT from a long way off.

I suppose I should round this out by also talking about my sorry empire:



Actually it's a comparatively compact blob, but also suffers logistics issues across the water between Mathews and Riker. It would also be so much more aesthetically pleasing (not to mention financially healthy) with addition of any/all of Ssala, Diamond City and Little Lamplight. <sigh>

I'll talk more about the cities in the following post, but we're generally pretty defensible behind Engineering movement and Castles. As you can see I'm doing a bit of border tracking against my CRE neighbours - most of which are moving in the right direction.

As for expansion though, I'm pretty-much out of options. There are these two spots with space to plant a city:


The Southern is the better of the two as it enables 2 additional flat grassland and can pull unused tiles from Uhura and Mathews, but neither are really worthwhile in the current economic climate.

I didn't take a shot of my finances (because they are frankly embarrassing) or graphs (too many Golden Ages), but you can see from my builds that I've started to deploy more Wealth builds to prop myself up:



But I am still behind in tech:



I don't think Magic has actually grabbed Engineering, rather using it as a placeholder/overflow between pushes towards Knights, but they also have through to Music and Theology. Gavagai's first knight is pictured, and probably also has Literature, so I'm half a step behind. Superdeath I have less certainty about what has been teching since landing his own knights. I think Donovan is recently the second to CS.

I'm still umming and ahhing a bit about my decision to go CS rather than push straight to Guilds. I'm mostly using Monarchy to put off that decision by a turn; with the overflow I can get CS in 2t (maybe with an additional Wealth build), or maybe 5-6t to get to Guilds.

Here's a partner image:


From bottom to top:

• Superdeath has finished his Golden Age, so these are his civics for the foreseeable future. That's why I'm speculating Donovan as the second CS, as there's no opportunity to Bureau - but on the other hand CS would fit the gap between Guilds and future Gunpowder research.
  
• Gavagai still has a turn or so on his GA, but these are also his exit civics. No religion adopted, so no OrgRel. He did run Caste during the GA.
  
• Donovan is early / mid GA; adopted Vassalage/OrgRel and Confucianism on entry - no Caste.
  
• Magic is in the middle of their extended second Golden Age and adopted Bureau a couple of turns in. Maybe looking to exit into Mercantilism?
  
• I think I've probably talked enough about my own civics, and there'll be more to follow.
  

That's about all I've got energy for on the world view front. The subsequent post will delve into the individual cities, but I may not update before tomorrow. I'll add a new post to let everyone know when that's done.

[Dreylin]

T150 -  Cities n' shit

There's only 14 of them, so I'm sure I can find something to say about each of them....

I will spoiler the whole thing for volume.

Kirk:


Kirk is trying to build up it's commerce potential which was stunted during the Pyramids push and the happy crunch. It also suffered from not being able to settle a support city to the West, and the absence of food to the South delaying a city in that direction. I can see this being on Wealth builds for the foreseeable future.

Spock:


I've already said how much I love this city.    I might add a Hindu Temple for the hammer boost, but this needs to go back to Military once we hit the next tech threshold, since Gav & Superdeath keep adding to their respective 2-move stacks.

McCoy:


My other production powerhouse, McCoy will probably add the missing Walls/Castle pair next, then turn back to mixed military/wealth. I may even build the Lighthouse ... eventually.

Scott:


From the production centres to the commercial heart of the nation. Scott's other job has been religious, having produced the bulk of the missionaries necessary to convert cities that consistenty refused spreads through trade routes. 

Uhura:


A utility city built to support Kirk, Uhura is finally getting space to grow. I placed my 3rd Stables here, so the secondary job has been building mounted units. I'm starting to put Windmills on some of these bare hills to give it a few extra size. Uhura also remains my test case for just how long a city adjacent to 2 holy cities can resist religious spread...

Sulu:


OK, so now we're out of the core and into the second wave cities. Sulu has had an interesting history; as with Chekov & Chapel it has "suffered" from having more food than it know what to do with. This led to some big whips, but also a bunch of juggling to make sure it kept in the Rep top-5 for the extra happiness cushion. Now that the cap is raised it can finally grow itself out through the whip anger.

I'm still not convinced that Moai here is the right answer and that instead I should be pushing specialists, but quite frankly I have nowhere else to put Moai and I'll need somewhere to park those specialists while I'm pinging out of Caste.

Chekov:


Chekov didn't feel the whip quite as much as Sulu & Chapel, and used their pop to push out the Scientist for the GA. It's working towards a commerce configuration, but will probably start picking up specialists soon. Since Magic AP'd Hinduism, this is where I sent the Missionary from Kirk and have started idly building Missionaries. I'm not entirely convinced of the payback on a SPI temple from just the AP, but if I picked up one of the other Monk wonders then there would definitely be value.

Chapel:


Look, Workshops! My NE border city - bulwark against Gav, SD & Donovan - on flatland with adjacent forests. When Slavery next returns I'll whip in the Market, but then it will be Military/Wealth/Specialists.

Pike:


The last of the "second wave" cities, Pike spent some time supporting cottage growth at Scott, but now is set to chug along building military. You see I've run some Artists here to push the 3rd-ring border pop and regain the "Production" tile which had been lost to SD.

Mathews:


OK, nearly there. The first of the 3rd-wave cities, Mathews finally claimed the capital-adjacent land to the South and incidentally ended up discovering "my" source of Iron. We've already discussed how the city ruins site would have been objectively shit, but here at least I have the sheep and 2 forested lakes and this is shaping up into a decent city after I wrote it off initially as a red-shirt sacrifice. Courthouse will be whipped yada yada, and I just fired the Artists that were pushing to 3rd ring. I'm also running the cross channel ferry from here to Riker's Fort and am adding ships mainly to facilitate that potential need to transfer units quickly.

Picard:


At the Northern border, Picard stands strong. Probably Barrack->Military to follow the Courthouse.

Riker:


While on the Western border, Riker stands legs akimbo waiting to be taken. <ahem>

Artists pushing 3rd-ring, military, yada yada.

Troi:


With Magic planting that filler, maybe I should have built Troi 1N, but then I'd be missing out on that sweet 3h city center. Riker has always had the pick of the shared tiles - better to have one strong city and one weak, than 2 mediocre - so despite being founded not long after it is more than a few steps behind.

Dr Crusher:


Finally here's a shitty filler city ... well actually it looks worse than it is and will be a pretty decent city down the road. Some nice green tiles to work and a coastal Hamlet (15t to a Fishing Village ... actually scooter, next time you do a map like this you should place a Village on a Fish for the lols). Anyway, I'll probably Lumbermill over the Forts since I have the alternate route via Sulu and McCoy.

And that's the tour. Please like and subscribe and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

[Dreylin]

Above posts have been updated with the T150 goodies.

An addendum on the civics/tech discussion is that of /course/ Donovan has no interest in Bureaucracy as his replacement Capital is currently sitting at size freaking 2!