[SPOILERS] The Wild Card

[spacetyrantxenu]

I was tempted to try saying something more scary, but here's something nice instead: Frigates require Astronomy.

[Ceiliazul]

ditto Xenu, lol.

Actually, when the trade route was lost some years later, the swords stopped being made. speculation is that an actual Indian fellow or fellows was performing the work in secret. What magicians they must have seemed. But obviously that's incorrect, and the problem is that the dark ages included the no tech trading option!

[The Black Sword]

Never mind the Vikings, our ships can't even handle the barbs:


It was a 35% loss which were better odds than I expected tbh, thankfully Azza was nice enough to kill him for me, so I don't need to interrupt the Galley's schedule again and the WB reaches it's spot in a reasonable time too.



The plains workshop works best for the timing of Envoy's Granary. Then it will finish the Lighthouse at size 3 and just grow onto coast.

We managed to squeeze out Banking in 2t, and the capital is now immediately building a bank.


We also built our first knight.


I spent some time considering the tech path again. Here's where we are currently:



We're also missing Meditation, which I think we might pick up whenever the Capital runs out of its current build queue. Literature might be worth it for the NE but we have to wait for Hiram to complete its Library first in any case, so that can be ignored for a while. We should probably pick up Construction too, but for the moment I'm happy with a few more LBs instead. I'm currently saving gold on Calendar to get a bit more thinking time.

Looking at the later era techs, I again came to the conclusion that none of the econ techs provide enough benefit for their cost. Mackoti has Paper and Banking and a better GNP, so pursuing the Economics Merchant seems to be a bad idea. Even assuming we get him, it's still not a great deal when we have to go through Education as well. For the military options, I think Astronomy has the best chance of getting us more useful land. Additionally, I see we are getting some known tech bonus on Compass and I really don't want to be too far behind the Vikings to that. Then maybe Gunpowder -> Chemistry -> Steel, which is a bit cheaper than the Rifling path and also comes with Frigates obviously. It's not worth picking up Paper just for the extra pre-req bonuses either.

We do have another city about to be settled soon:

[Ceiliazul]

I thought you needed paper to get a known-tech bonus. rbMod changes a lot, maybe thats outdated...

[The Black Sword]

Writing is the first tech to give some known tech bonus in this version, Paper would double those bonuses.

2 other points I forgot:

Sentry Chariot met Plako for another set of OBs.

Swapped places with the Bacon people again!

[The Black Sword]

A lot of people picked up Paper last turn and dtay researched Printing Press. He's still a long way from Rifling, needing Feudalism, Guilds, Banking, Replaceable Parts, Gunpowder and Rifling itself. Still, I assume he has a Taj Golden age coming up and we can't afford to let him get to drafted rifles too soon before we get Grenadiers/cannons. Hopefully, the Astro side-track won't be too costly.

Our research is pretty good in comparison to our production though.


So, I think we should try stay the Astro course. I put full research on Compass->Optics first. That will allow us to build caravels who won't go out of date for a while. The half price harbour will actually be useful in the capital too. Then it's probably backfilling the Calendar/Construction/Lit techs before Astro. In the meantime we can pre-build galleys to upgrade to galleons in the queue and get some troops ready to go on them.

Another target for the next few turns is down here:


I'll get two galleys with 2 maces and two knights and take Toledo. No razing, because I want to skirmish with suttree a bit to try get the 12xp required for a GG. Having troops available to take Toledo and perhaps Minimax in the event of him collapsing to Old Harry and Mackoti is important too.

We settled a new city, Sewer Jack, this turn:


Unfotunately Ishval and the Old Harry city in the south(actually his HE city) just popped third ring borders, making it quite a bit weaker than I hoped and rather vulneruble too. No need for a Granary I think, just grow to size 5 and pump out units the whole time.



Got the Bank down to 4t in Jetboy, some nice religion spreads over the last few turns too, up to 54g shrine. Decided to pre-build the galleon in New Tachyon instead of the Bank.

Summary:


Btw, to explain my aversion to Printing Press, we currently have 8 capital cottages and about 16 non-capital. Let's assume they all upgrade to villages in the time we could research PP(which is unlikely). Capital cottages are worth 24gpt, assuming a 100% modifier on both gold and science(only 75% atm). Non capital cottages are worth 20gpt, assuming a 25% modifier(not true everywhere). So, that's 44gpt. Ignoring the extra cost of Paper, PP is 3220b. If we give ourselves a very generous 30% pre-req bonus that's 2477b which pays itself back in 56(!) turns. That is just far too long IMO. Better to go for military techs first, that you're going to need anyway, and see if we can do anything with them.

[The Black Sword]

That's interesting, those borders look more suttree than Azza. I have been wondering where his final city was. Even more interesting is the connection to the island up north. I'd really like to grab that place before the Vikings. So, the attack suttree plan is off, though I imagine we should come back to it and pick up that island city eventually too. Peregrine is building a 4t settler for this island and Water Lily is building another Galley to speed it up. Might have to build another settler in Yeoman too.

[The Black Sword]

I bought a dud.



He sailed passed good city sites to get there, I assumed the spot would be at least as good as Envoy. I guess he was afraid of being eliminated at the time and wanted a spot so bad that no-one would take it from him.

I put the city on build wealth, not sure I'd ever complete that Lighthouse. If I was in slavery, maybe I could have done something with the city but it's just a drain on the finances now. I think it's costing ~7gpt due to increased costs elsewhere. I'm considering declaring war on suttree to cancel the 10gpt deal.

I also traded maps with mackoti, revealing the rest of the islands:
[img][/img]

That's some nice unsettled land but it looks like we might have to fight for it. I feel we're lacking units everywhere at the minute. I've pulled units off the mainland to bulk the island garrisons, and we could certainly use with some caravels, both mack and pindicooter have these ships floating around our borders. That's made me feel under-staffed on the mainland too, we have similar power to dtay but it looks like he doesn't really have other fronts to worry about. Not being in slavery makes me really paranoid.

Global affairs:

Good news that Azza is distracted if we can get enough units together to take advantage. We really need to throw another golden age too. On reflection, the GP planning for the last one wasn't great. The next GP comes out of Captain Trips in 7t but with a very high chance of being a Merchant. The second GP will take forever though, probably in Hiram when it finally gets the NE set up, and will probably have a rather high merchant chance too.

Our long spindly empire:

[flugauto]

The map looks like you are between many rocks and many hard places.

[The Black Sword]

It certainly feels that way. I'm trying to switch off any non-essential infrastructure builds to military ones at the moment. Finally teching construction this turn. Astro looks to be 10 turns after that, though I'm pretty sure I'll get Literature first.