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

[Ellimist]

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.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the way it works. It can be tested, but I believe that if a chop takes place inside the BFC of an ally's city, it will go to that city. If the forest is shared by two cities, it will go to whichever city the forest is assigned to.

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.

So the impact of consumption on the extra golden age commerce is about 20 per turn, multiplied by however many turns we'll run our golden age without consumption(4 minimum, I think.)

So, according to that estimate, we gave up 80. Did we gain at least that much by getting currency a turn sooner?

[Mardoc]

So, according to that estimate, we gave up 80. Did we gain at least that much by getting currency a turn sooner?

Arguable. We gained 30 commerce for the extra turn, plus 175 orcish gold * (Calabim&Elohim beaker/gold ratio - Clan beaker/gold ratio). Handwaving says this is a 30% difference, or 52 beakers.

It's not just currency earlier, though, is it? It's also every following tech, until T109, when presumably we'd have caught up. Which could mean earlier Ivory, earlier Markets - maybe even earlier Vampires?

We also gained some speed into all our infra and garrisons and new cities, from the hammers. How do you count 1-2 turns early on a bunch of Markets, number unspecified? How do you count the value of an earlier wolf rider - it could be negative if it's just extra maintenance, or it could save us tons.

The main reason I was in favor of GA now, is that I think we need the boost to get over the hump to Feudalism and finished with peaceful expansion. I think it'll turn out to get us a vampire striking force 3-4 turns earlier. Which depends on Team Clown, but if that makes the difference between hitting before or after Snowfall Hemah, it'll have been worth it.

I don't care as much about our tech rate post-Feudalism. We still need one, in case vamps don't suffice to end the game, but it's not as much of a race.

[Thoth]

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?

I'm doing my best here with the logistics Mardoc. We'll have double g1 warrior garrisons for both our two new north cities with a road net and 3 mobile defenders including an axe able to cover both. Actually getting a proper screen up will take a bit longer.

We do have a griffon somewhat nearby, I haven't checked out the area for peak paths but he could be a decent stopgap.

[Thoth]

So, according to that estimate, we gave up 80. Did we gain at least that much by getting currency a turn sooner?

It means we get the full effect for all three civs a turn sooner. End of turn 106 was the best we could do without the GA boost. And we'll have Island 3 settled t106. So we get the full +2 commerce per city a turn sooner in Elohim and Calabim and +1 commerce for the Orcs a turn sooner. And we can start fully funding our techers a turn sooner.

Second, it will get us our laundry list of techs up to but not including Feud by t109.

t105: Calabim and elohim exhaust the last of their gold to get to currency. (end turn for the Elohim first, if we have to build Research in a Calabim city or two to finish currency. We do it.) Orcs gain +14 commerce from TRs and hit close to 185 gpt. Tech off for Orcs.
t106: Found third Island city (orc) and Orc city #16 as the pig site. Orcs should be around 200 gpt at that point. And fully fund Calabim and Elohim tech. We're a hair under 300bpt at max tech right now for the Calabim. Add 2 libs completing, city growth and tile improvements and we're looking at 315-320 bpt. Might be enough to 1 t Festivals by themselves. Elohim clock in around 200 bpt at 100%, but this will be rising sharply over the next 10t so long as we can keep funding it from Orcdom. If the Calabim don't quite finish Festivals, the Elohim finish it with most of their beakers overflowing.
t107: Elohim 1t Hunting with overflow beakers. Calabim 1t Archery.
t108: Elohim and Calabim beakers finish Cartography.
t109: Orcs into City States/Consump/FT. As many Non-riverside tiles as I can manage are worked as cottages in Orcdom. 10 is doable, I'm aiming for 15. That's 15 hamlets by the time the GA ends, with 30 orcdomwide asap. In order to best make use of our resources I want to concentrate as many as possible in Budweiser.

Depending on what he Island situation is, we can settle Westwards around t109/110. Going East would take a couple of turns longer. Unfortunately, we need two settlers going eastwards to get the Island (one for the mainland port, one for the Island after we double Archery Chop a 2t galley) so we're looking more like t112-115 before we actually found.

We'll want both (one tile islands are perfect gold cities for the Orcs. every one makes a profit. )


Budweiser:

It's a mediocre hammer city at best, and all but one of it's mines are shared. We can have 3 meh commerce and prodcution cities (Coors, Bud, Sam Adams). Or one fantastic cash cow in Bud. We'll want the Brewery and a Bathouse to maximize the effect but if we can bang those out using borrowed hammers we can have a city working 11 villages and 2 riverside cotton by t119. And that's a nice big heap of Brewery commerce to throw through Consumption/Undercouncil.

Sam Adams can be made into a very solid hammer city quite quickly. It's fast growing on farms, seafood and Sheep. It has two mines to steal from Bud and 4 grasstiles that can be workshopped post Smelting.

[Thoth]

Thinking about civics:

A lot (but by no means all) of the savings we'd be getting from CS/FT is from FT's 0 upkeep. We're quite food heavy in Orcdom and pushing our happy cap. I'm thinking t109 we keep Aristo (allowing us to postpone the investment into Cartography) and add Consumption/FT.

That will slow our orc vertical growth a bit, but most of our cities are closing in on their happy caps and the two new Orc cities we have planned have Pastures as their food resource.

We go ahead and throwdown a pile of cottages and then come t118 we make the swap into City States (possibly with Conquest or keeping FT for the gold). Difference is we'd be hitting city states with a bunch of Villages appearing instead of a bunch of cottages.

[Mardoc]

A lot (but by no means all) of the savings we'd be getting from CS/FT is from FT's 0 upkeep. We're quite food heavy in Orcdom and pushing our happy cap. I'm thinking t109 we keep Aristo (allowing us to postpone the investment into Cartography) and add Consumption/FT.

That will slow our orc vertical growth a bit, but most of our cities are closing in on their happy caps and the two new Orc cities we have planned have Pastures as their food resource.

Huh. That would be absolutely max commerce, at the cost of putting our farms at 3 food. I agree the core can stand to lose that, it'll slow settler production a bit. I need to take a closer look at the game, and in particular new orc cities, to see how much that would slow their growth. Tentatively, I think I can get on board with that, especially since we'll still have a few turns of GA that synergize very well with Aristocracy.

Your initial post is copied below for numbers.

Overall eco development thoughts:

The Orcs are currently working 47 farms worth 94 commerce. At 100% gold that's 103 gpt from Aristo farms with the 10% Undercouncil boost. By t109 we'll be working ~60 farms and can swap into Consumption for another +20%. So 120 base commerce at 130%=156 gold from Aristo farms.

Inflation is currently at 18% and will rise.

If we were to swap to City States/FT right now (which we can't, I'm just using this as a base for comparison) we'd save a total of 23 base gpt in civic maintenance. The reduced distance and # of cities maint is about 37 gpt right now. So 60 gpt total saving x 1.18= ~70 gpt.

[Thoth]

A lot (but by no means all) of the savings we'd be getting from CS/FT is from FT's 0 upkeep. We're quite food heavy in Orcdom and pushing our happy cap. I'm thinking t109 we keep Aristo (allowing us to postpone the investment into Cartography) and add Consumption/FT.

That will slow our orc vertical growth a bit, but most of our cities are closing in on their happy caps and the two new Orc cities we have planned have Pastures as their food resource.

Huh. That would be absolutely max commerce, at the cost of putting our farms at 3 food. I agree the core can stand to lose that, it'll slow settler production a bit. I need to take a closer look at the game, and in particular new orc cities, to see how much that would slow their growth. Tentatively, I think I can get on board with that, especially since we'll still have a few turns of GA that synergize very well with Aristocracy.

I haven't looked in detail, but overall it won't hurt much. We still have 4 more turns of growth on 4f farms for our growing cities. A couple of them will get gimped a bit, but I don't think our major cities will be hurt too badly.

Our next three orc cities are two fortress cities in the West with AH resources so they'll grow well enough to serve their purpose. The other is a 1t Island city that will produce a silly amount of gold under FT/consumption and pretty much never get past size 3 maybe 4.

Again, we'll want to look things over in game both now and on turn 9. I'm throwing out ideas for consideration so we don't get blindsided.

Your initial post is copied below for numbers.

Overall eco development thoughts:

The Orcs are currently working 47 farms worth 94 commerce. At 100% gold that's 103 gpt from Aristo farms with the 10% Undercouncil boost. By t109 we'll be working ~60 farms and can swap into Consumption for another +20%. So 120 base commerce at 130%=156 gold from Aristo farms.

Inflation is currently at 18% and will rise.

If we were to swap to City States/FT right now (which we can't, I'm just using this as a base for comparison) we'd save a total of 23 base gpt in civic maintenance. The reduced distance and # of cities maint is about 37 gpt right now. So 60 gpt total saving x 1.18= ~70 gpt.

We'll want to look at the exact numbers once we're a bit closer, but my gut says City States on ungrown cottages in a GA is going to underperform Arisocracy in a GA even with the maint savings.

FT, OTOH is actually a bit better than I'd remembered: We get an addtional +1 tr in each Orc coastal city (currently 3 mainland +1 offshore t6) so an extra 5+c per turn.

Costs will rise so figure 20-25gpt for Agrariansim including inflation. 20 TR commerce (35 with a 4th offshore city) x 1.3 = 26 or 45 gpt + maint savings of 20-25 gpt. So low end 45 or so gpt high end 70 gpt or so. And we can grow up a bunch of cottages into villages *fast*.

I'm not sure how many cities we have at happy cap with full or close to full food boxes and Avoid Growth but it's around 5 or 6.

Sounds like a good trade to me, but we can poke around in game and see what things look like.

[Thoth]

Under-council thoughts:

First vote appears to have been borked.

Next vote will be for head t 112/113? (assuming we get a vote). I think we vote vote for Jonas as head.

I'm not 100% certain how the mechanics work in a PB game, in SP ties go to the player. I *think* but am not sure, in PBEMs ties result in a hung council and no leader.


Ideally we want the chair, but a hung council is fine by me.

I really don't want Plako/DaveV to get their hands on a pair of GS's circa 122. If they do that, it's t123 AL, 124 Strength of will and Pass Through the Ether.

t125: Nexus and Snowfall Archmages.

I do *not* want to have to deal with that crap TYVM.


Yeah, we want a pair of GS's for Calabim and Orc GAs. But Secret Codes can wait a bit. (if we do a bit of planning we can actually generate a few gp of our own )

Let them do their own teching.

In the meantime if we get council head: (order is up for discussion )

Smuggler's Ports: +1 trs in all cities (in all civs). Helps everyone. Helps us most. We want.
Summon the Nightwatch: Creates a free Nightwatch unit in the capital of each member. If Esus isn't founded by then, we're first in turn order and can use the Nightwatch "spread Esus" ability to bag the holy city. We probably want.
Gambling ring: Discounted Gambling houses. Cheap happy. What's not to like?
Slave trade: Allows slave buying. Avoid. We have the ability to build Soks. Why give the Clowns the ability to cheap rush wonders as well?

[Thoth]

Also: Metagame type thoughts.

Our biggest threat right now are Summoner Snowfall puppets.

Any thoughts on how we might "persuade" the Wizzzards to cast Arcane Lacuna while we ram a huge stack of Ogres, catapults, Iron chariots and Vampires down the clowns throat?

(alternate: How fast can we put together a crippling stack to deal with the Clowns?)

[Thoth]

Also: Other than our projected HE city, I think we skip Warrens in Tolerated Orc cities. Spend the hammers on TYs instead.

Both Mil State and Overcouncil enable drafting.

We're on a large size map.

Which means we can draft 8 Ogres per turn from the Elohim cities.

Unhappies be damned, that's 24 Mob 1 Ogres (with Conquest) on the board 3 t after IW if we play it right.