[SPOILERS] PB1- Mardoc buys a can of paint for Thoth and Ellimist

[Thoth]

Ok I'll pull the trigger. XD

Also: Re the galley.

The galley is about the hammers we gain from having the Calbim worker complete the chops on the island. That gets 52 h directly into the GM and save 2 or 3 turns on the GM. That produces another 14 or 21 hammers directly due to earlier GM and it frees up the mines for Port to work 3 turns early geting it's GM online 3t earlier for another 15h. So there's an 81 hammer refund plus the extra commerce we'll get from working tiles faster in Sherry, plus we have an extra galley on hand.

The fact that it let's us use discounted Thane hammers that are not urgently required in Riesling to grab a *badly needed* happy resource instead of diverting orc hammers for a monument we don't need.

I'm actually looking at our rate of growth, and I'd like to skip the settler in NBA and put it on infra builds (ie SoKs to rush Markets in low hammer cities). We can do without that settler pair at the moment and we'll want markets down asap. I think we keep OSH on settler duty, finish up the two settler pairs queued in KIPA, build one Calabim (Phil lib in a commerce city YAY) and focus on getting Markets, Training Yards and Warrens up in production cities. Coors will be pushing out chariot pairs shortly and a TY near the Wizard border would be nice for local melee production.

[Mardoc]

The galley is about the hammers we gain from having the Calbim worker complete the chops on the island.

So orcish workers chopping would not be worth anything?

I'm actually looking at our rate of growth, and I'd like to skip the settler in NBA and put it on infra builds (ie SoKs to rush Markets in low hammer cities). We can do without that settler pair at the moment and we'll want markets down asap.

Agreed with skipping that particular settler, 13 settlers in 8 turns ought to be plenty . I'm not sure that Markets our our #1 priority for infra - we really could use some more TY's and SW's all over the place. But given the bonus on building them via SoK, queue the SoK now and debate the purpose later .

[Ellimist]

My preference is to adopt consumption and trigger the golden age at the same time. The orcs already bring in a lot of commerce, but most of it is used to cover expenses. They work a LOT of tiles as well, so it's pretty significant whether we get the +20% on that golden age commerce.

The good news is that this is relatively easy to quantify, so we can test if the commerce gain from getting currency a little bit earlier is worth the loss from +20% on the golden age commerce.

The galley is about the hammers we gain from having the Calbim worker complete the chops on the island. That gets 52 h directly into the GM and save 2 or 3 turns on the GM. That produces another 14 or 21 hammers directly due to earlier GM and it frees up the mines for Port to work 3 turns early geting it's GM online 3t earlier for another 15h. So there's an 81 hammer refund plus the extra commerce we'll get from working tiles faster in Sherry, plus we have an extra galley on hand.

Whoa... You're chopping the ancient forests??? Other than the shared hills, those are the only non-manor hammers that city will have.

Not only that, but why do we need a calabim worker to do it? We can transport an orc worker just fine.

Also, why the huge rush to get that manor up? It won't produce a significant amount of hammers until the city gets larger.

The huge problem I see with all that cash rushing is that we're spending something scarce to us (gold) to gain something that's already plentiful for us(hammers.) 75 gold is a significant amount, approximately what the clan or elohim can bring in from an entire turn of 100% gold. Sacrificing such a large amount of commerce (which we desperately need) for a slight boost to expansion (which we're doing fine with) seems counterproductive.

 So long as we can get our 4th island city settled ASAP then it's competetive with Arisograrianism 

That's actually what I logged in last night to check for after the turn rolled. I can't confirm that there are any more islands over there. With the first island we settled, it was relatively easy to spot the distant side's coastline, but I checked each of the foggy landmasses we can see and couldn't be sure.

[Thoth]

We now have contact with team Reddit.

Spotted a c2/sa hippus scout near the floodplains.

No sign of WWF unhappies yet. They may hit us eot or it make take a certain amount of combat.

In either event, we have a second Surgar plantationed and the road will be done t105 so we can cover the orcs.

We'll have two Pearls t108/109 and Whales circa t113? if we use a Thane.

If we tech Hunting before Festivals/Cart/Arch/Fued we can also have one source of Ivory t106. So we're covered for happys for the moment, but we'll have to step lively with the Markets in NBA and KIPA.

[Thoth]

I haven't ended turn yet or microed the calabim cities. I've microed the Elohim for max commerce output this turn as well.

BTW: at max tech the orcs are out producing the Calabim at max tech. (of course the Calabim blow the doors off the Orcs at breakeven.)

[Mardoc]

My preference is to adopt consumption and trigger the golden age at the same time. The orcs already bring in a lot of commerce, but most of it is used to cover expenses. They work a LOT of tiles as well, so it's pretty significant whether we get the +20% on that golden age commerce.

The good news is that this is relatively easy to quantify, so we can test if the commerce gain from getting currency a little bit earlier is worth the loss from +20% on the golden age commerce.

It may already be done...but I think I can show you that we won't regret it.

One turn earlier currency is worth at least 30 gold - 60 once we have island #3 settled. Probably secondary benefits too, like removing barb from Clan gold going forward. Consumption is a 20% boost, so the GA commerce alone would have to be 150 gpt to break even. But we don't have 150 orcish pop, we've 14 cities at maximum size 10 - and GA can only ever add one gold/pop (since it adds one per tile worked that already has gold).

So I think it was worth doing even for just one turn earlier currency, but also remember we can add 10-35+% to all Clan gold from this turn. I think the Elohim gold/beaker ratio is at least 1.25. Getting the ability to turn off Clan science is probably worth at least as much as Consumption itself will be. And it also applies to all the GA commerce, which is after all surplus to expenses.

[Thoth]

My preference is to adopt consumption and trigger the golden age at the same time. The orcs already bring in a lot of commerce, but most of it is used to cover expenses. They work a LOT of tiles as well, so it's pretty significant whether we get the +20% on that golden age commerce.

Too late. up to +175 gpt at max tax. 319 beakers at max tech (which we can and should do this turn). We should have Currency next turn after the Elohim and Calabim tech so we'll get the TR a turn early for the Orcs.

Currency will put us at about +190 gpt from the orcs rising to over 200 gpt on t106 with the third island city.

That's enough to cover all of the Elohim and Clabim expenses with enough left over to buy me my galley on t108.

The good news is that this is relatively easy to quantify, so we can test if the commerce gain from getting currency a little bit earlier is worth the loss from +20% on the golden age commerce.

It's not just the commerce. We pick up a bucketload of hammers right when we're building a bunch of settlers, workers and very soon infra. The turn advantage from getting all that stuff on the board faster is huge.

Mardoc is right, we should have pulled the trigger a few turns ago.

Whoa... You're chopping the ancient forests??? Other than the shared hills, those are the only non-manor hammers that city will have.

Nononononononono. Chopping the two Grassland Hills forest into the Manor for 13 h each x2 for Org. It has a huge multiplicative effect on the cities growth curve and has a positive knock on effect for Port.

And with GMs, both cities can produce adequate hammers to both build a few units and get some nice commerce infra in place.

We're spending some loose change on turn 108 to gain close to 70h by t120. And that doesn't include the extra maint savings from earlier GMs or the extra commerce from swapping from mines to coast earlier.

Not only that, but why do we need a calabim worker to do it? We can transport an orc worker just fine.

The chop hammers go to the closest city owned by the chopping worker's civ. We'd get basically nothing for the chop if we use an orc worker.

And we have a Calabim worker *on hand* in the area who can do the job.

Why throw away that many hammers when the cost is so cheap?

As an added bonus, we can use some spare Calabim hammers (Riesling isn't building anything after the Gran that can't wait a turn or two) instead of Orc hammers that are already stretched to the max keeping up with our expansion and in a very few turns, consolidation.

Also, why the huge rush to get that manor up? It won't produce a significant amount of hammers until the city gets larger.

GM will finish with the city at size 6. 7 if we net the Fish t6 with the WB produced on the mainland eot104 instead of a Pearl. If we're faced with a sudden happy crunch, we net the pearl. Otherwise it can wait 2t for the next workboat.

That's either 7 or 8 hpt. With developed land tiles (sans LMs) we get 10hp from tiles. That's a 3t lighthouse. Once that's in Port steals the mines to bootstrap it's self into GM/LH (it'll be gimped for growth as Sherry will be getting the lions share of the food whenever possible).

The huge problem I see with all that cash rushing is that we're spending something scarce to us (gold) to gain something that's already plentiful for us(hammers.) 75 gold is a significant amount, approximately what the clan or elohim can bring in from an entire turn of 100% gold. Sacrificing such a large amount of commerce (which we desperately need) for a slight boost to expansion (which we're doing fine with) seems counterproductive.

Gold is currently plentiful.

 So long as we can get our 4th island city settled ASAP then it's competetive with Arisograrianism 

That's actually what I logged in last night to check for after the turn rolled. I can't confirm that there are any more islands over there. With the first island we settled, it was relatively easy to spot the distant side's coastline, but I checked each of the foggy landmasses we can see and couldn't be sure.
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I'm 99.9% we're looking at a pair of 1t islands in the Far East. The settler for the second site won't be getting on the boat until t7 so we've got a couple of turns to scout with the griffon (the galley is booked until t109, if we scout with it we can't settle the 4th city until several turns later. At what will be close to 18cpt in Orc trade routes, I'd like to settle the 4th asap. (t9 would be good if we can swing it )

[Thoth]

The galley is about the hammers we gain from having the Calbim worker complete the chops on the island.

So orcish workers chopping would not be worth anything?

Might be worth a hammer or two in the nearest Orc Hive city. Enormously more valuable as chops into a Calabim GM on a city that will be a pretty darn spiffy commerce spinner once it gets over the GM/LH hump.

Agreed with skipping that particular settler, 13 settlers in 8 turns ought to be plenty . I'm not sure that Markets our our #1 priority for infra - we really could use some more TY's and SW's all over the place. But given the bonus on building them via SoK, queue the SoK now and debate the purpose later .

SoKs have been added to queues. Each one queued = 2 1t markets at +3 g and -1 beaker into a dump tech (Optics looks good atm). I like 1t markets. and we should be able to arrange for 10 or so Orc markets the turn after we get Festivals (or maybe a turn or two after that). So a nice 30gpt shot in the arm for the Orcs (which will help the post GA shortfall).

Also: City development. Budweiser only has one unique hill. It has 2x riverside cotton a bunch of rivers and cottageable tiles. I'd like to aim for the Orc Brewery here circa t108/109. Sam Adams can steal two mines and get turned into a very decent hammer city instead of a commerce city. Bud is full grown until we spend hammers/secure more luxs and can quite easily be working 8/9 cottages t 109. That become villages t119. so we get some solid base commerce, the civs multiplier and a very good hammer city instead of two mediocre commerce/hammer hybrids.

We'll want at least one or two more cottage heavy cities to keep our gold up, but the main focus in the west will be hammers. We've got a couple of very promising cities in the area that need a bit of worker love (in progress. ) and a SoK or 3 each to speed up development (Ie 2x Training Yards and 1x warrens, Markets when we can slip the hammers in).

Coors SoK completes eot 104 and puts 60h into its' SW. I think we can finish the SW eot105 and have our first chariot pair eot 109/110 with additional chariots coming out every 4/5 turns.

[Thoth]

Tweaked the Calabim cities for max tech this turn.

We'll want to shift tiles around next turn.

And Ellimist: You're right. It's either a very big Island to the West or mainland.

So no point diverting a settler in that direction. Sounds like we need an eastern port and a chopped galley in the east.

Can do.

[Mardoc]

Too late. up to +175 gpt at max tax.

Assuming 14 of that was island city 2, and we were at ~60 last turn, that makes the GA commerce about 100. Consumption on it would have been worth 20 gpt - or basically the same as a turn of Currency trade. Yeah, I don't regret this .

Nononononononono. Chopping the two Grassland Hills forest into the Manor for 13 h each x2 for Org. It has a huge multiplicative effect on the cities growth curve and has a positive knock on effect for Port.

Yeah, Elli, you've got to account for Thoth's math on forests. He always counts it as hammers into the final product, not base hammers. I think that's why he tends to be biased toward chopping things that are doubled even when it doesn't matter.

The chop hammers go to the closest city owned by the chopping worker's civ. We'd get basically nothing for the chop if we use an orc worker.

And there's the detail I was missing. I do agree chops will be more valuable getting a Manor started than being part of something orcish; that was the whole rationale for making the cities Calabim in the first place.

I think I'll stop objecting now. Not totally convinced, but close enough that it's not worth further argument anyway.

I'm 99.9% we're looking at a pair of 1t islands in the Far East. The settler for the second site won't be getting on the boat until t7 so we've got a couple of turns to scout with the griffon (the galley is booked until t109, if we scout with it we can't settle the 4th city until several turns later. At what will be close to 18cpt in Orc trade routes, I'd like to settle the 4th asap. (t9 would be good if we can swing it )

Far East and Far West are the same, aren't they? I'm 90% sure there are at least three more big islands, like the one we've now claimed. And possibly a fifth in the middle. Not that it'll matter until we have the time to scout and find them - but we could potentially have quite a bit of commerce from the ocean, currently uncontested.

Oh, I suppose it's vaguely possible there's a X of a land bridge dividing the ocean in fourths. I want Hawks so badly, just to satisfy my curiosity about things that probably don't really matter.

On another note, now that we've been found by T2 - any chance we can find the hammers to throw out a screen to the north? And/or find their borders, and maybe even start harassing them too?