[SPOILERS] Dark Savant leads the noble Inca as half-noble Churchiill

[Dark Savant]

Turn 147 (740 AD) - Part 2

Civil Service comes in, and I fire my first Golden Age with Aristotle.  I suppose he's going to appropriately hang out at the Academy in King's Landing.    (Okay, Oldtown is thematically supposed to have the Academy.  I meant the hanging out in the Academy part.  )

I officially declare Judaism, the Old Religion of Winterfell, as the state religion.



Casterly Rock still doesn't have Judaism, but it's going to be a military pump shortly.  (I'll squeeze in a colosseum first.)  The next-most-important city that doesn't have Judaism is Braavos, so I'm well on my way to having my religion everywhere.

I perform this Golden Age civic swap:



Hereditary Rule happiness is completely superfluous right now, except maybe to get a few We Love The King days here and there.  Not nearly as powerful as it was in Civ 1 or 2, ah well. 

Bureaucracy will charge up King's Landing.  I'm finally going to produce that belated market.

I'm not actually going exploit Caste System to produce a ton of GPP for the next Golden Age right away; Oldtown is going to cash out its halfway-done Great Person first, and then Winterfell will be done with the National Epic and can start pushing out Great People in earnest.  I do exploit it to hire a few artists on the eastern border with JR4.  

Organized Religion will help production in a lot of cities.

I start courthouse production in earnest, and can get several done before the end of the Golden Age.  I'm fighting losing graphs on a couple other players, in addition to needing the economic boost.

Here's my current city roster ...



... and an overview.





Researchable technologies known by rivals:

• Compass: 0 (People really aren't in a hurry to get Astronomy, are they.)
  
• Drama: 0
  
• Horseback Riding: 6 (everyone else)
  
• Machinery: 4 (, JR4, superdeath, wetbandit)
  
• Music: 1 (wetbandit)
  
• Paper: 1 (WilliamLP)
  
• Philosophy: 1 (wetbandit)
  
• Theology: 2 (JR4, wetbandit)
  

I was going to finally research Horseback Riding, but I have a goal ... I can reach Banking before the end of the Golden Age, for Mercantilism.  I may have trouble doing so if I take a turn to get Horseback Riding.  So the next technology will be Machinery.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 148 (760 AD) - Part 1

wetbandit's knight stack now menaces Varanasi.



Those elephants would provide some backbone on defense.  They won't do a whole lot of good on offense against the Formation knights wetbandit is packing, unless Yuri hits the stack with more catapults than he has.

I'm about to produce a work boat in Storm's End, which may arrive just in time to finally work that seafood tile.  

wetbandit shows up with a musket in his border city  -- so that's what the mystery Renaissance technology was.  He moved the mace away last turn.

Some of JR4's knights moved to ... his Great Lighthouse city of Dadaejin?



Yeah, I don't know either.    Maybe he's trying to convince superdeath he's not going to attack?

is still officially at war with Yuri.  He still has a huge power rating that I should maybe be more concerned about, but in addition to that war with Yuri he just started a Golden Age without Slavery.

WilliamLP is accumulating a big pile of gold and not researching anything.  I wonder if he's angling for Liberalism.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 148 (760 AD) - Part 2

I was contemplating just accumulating gold too.  WilliamLP and Yuri are the ones who don't yet have Machinery, and Yuri may not ever get it.  If WilliamLP doesn't get Machinery imminently to deflate its research cost for me, it won't pay to wait.  So I'll get it next turn.

I can actually use it right next turn for two reasons: to start to build lumbermills, and to enable more military units (crossbows and macemen) so Casterly Rock doesn't hit the overflow cap; 50-hammer longbows and catapults are cheap enough that it's a slight problem.





I transferred a mine to King's Landing from Casterly Rock to get the former's market next turn and avoid the overflow cap in the latter.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 149 (780 AD) - Part 1

wetbandit captured Varanasi.



His units are mostly now injured.  Yuri's main remaining stack is in Vijayanagara, though he's still got scattered war elephants filtering in.

I have a work boat finally ready to claim more seafood at Storm's End.  

My scouts also get a look at what JR4 and both have on their border. 



Wow, what massive garrisons.  You think relations between the two are tense? 

I was considering re-rolling Open Borders with JR4, but I counted up island cities:

• Me: 4
  
• : 3
  
• JR4: 5
  
• superdeath: 3
  
• wetbandit: 1
  

JR4 actually has more island cities than I do, so charging him much of anything for Open Borders doesn't make much sense.  Besides, I still want my chariots to wander through and make sure he's not sending anything my way.  

I also checked researchable technologies known by rivals.

• Compass: 0 (People are still not in a hurry to get Astronomy.)
  
• Drama: 0
  
• Engineering: 3 (JR4, ?, ?)
  
• Guilds: 4 (, JR4, superdeath, wetbandit; I'm not sure how long has had Guilds)
  
• Horseback Riding: 6 (everyone else)
  
• Music: 1 (wetbandit)
  
• Paper: 1 (WilliamLP)
  
• Philosophy: 1 (wetbandit)
  
• Theology: 2 (JR4, wetbandit)
  

You know, maybe I should feel a lot more uneasy about being #4 in power when my neighbors are #1, #2, and #3. 

[Dark Savant]

Turn 149 (780 AD) - Part 2

I sit down and do the math, and figure out that I can safely get Horseback Riding and still get Banking before the last turn of the Golden Age.  It's now finally due next turn -- no need to wait, as everyone else already has it and I can have Casterly Rock burn up overflow by buildilng a stables.    (Even a 60-hammer crossbow hits the cap this turn, so I'm building a mace. )





I start to build some lumbermills.  (They seem nice in RtR, though I haven't actually read of many people building them.)

All three cities on the eastern frontier that aren't already at third-ring culture are now running two artists to reach level-3 culture before the end of the Golden Age.  (All three western frontier cities are already at fourth-ring.)

Infrastructure builds continue.

[Charriu]

I start to build some lumbermills.  (They seem nice in RtR, though I haven't actually read of many people building them.)

I did test around a little bit with lumbermills. Obviously they are best if the forest is at a river for the additional gold. I did not test this in game, but only looked at the changes from RtR. This is what I found out, just looking at food and hammer:

• Until Replacable Parts a lumbermill on a hill is better then a mine, after that they are equal
  
• Until Guilds a lumbermill has 1 more hammer then a workshop. After that they are equal in hammer, but the lumbermill will always have 1 more food.
  
• With Electricity the watermill produced 1 commerce more then a lumbermill, but it will always remain at 1 less hammer
  

So just looking at techs the lumbermill is always better or equal then it's counterparts for most of the time. Things get more interesting with civics:

• With guilds and caste system, the workshop now produced 1 more hammer then a lumbermill, but still 1 less food.
  
• With guilds, caste system and state property the workshop has 1 more hammer then a lumbermill and equal food.
  
• Of course by the time you have state property you likely have Railroads to so with a railroad the lumbermill and workshop will be equal again.
  
• With serfdom a watermill is equal in food and hammer as a lumbermill, but in the case that both are on a river, the lumbermill will produce 1 more commerce.
  

So from this I conclude that a lumbermill always beats a watermill from an economic point of view. A lumbermill is better then a workshop most of the time, except for that time you have guilds and caste system. A lumbermill is always better or equal then a mine.

I think the main reasons why you see less lumbermills are the following:

• By the time you can build them, a lot of the forest is already chopped for the early hammer advantage
  
• Keeping a forest near a border city gives an attacker an advantage.
  

[Coeurva]

Happiness is a resource that biases your tile config towards hammers over too much food while in (RtR) Slavery. Even discounting all the post-Ancient improvements, the RtR 2-pop whip is generally inefficient at a 1-happy surplus city (such as is easily provided by CHM) compared to a pair of 5t-scattered 1-whips; take this example (assumes a granary):

A.) size5 works three "baseline" tiles + 2 grass mines stagnating for 10t (+6hpt over baseline) => total 60h over baseline.
If you'd grow in 3t onto another grass mine to cap happiness, then you end up at 81h over baseline (3*6+ 7*9)

B.) same, 2-whip off the mines, 50h
regrow 3t, (+3hpt from here) regrow 3t, (+6hpt from here) stagnate 4t, repeat => total 83h over baseline

C.) same, 1-whip 30h
(+3hpt from here -- we're 1 size above baseline) regrow 3t, (+6hpt from here) stagnate 2t, 1-whip (+30h) (+3hpt from here) regrow 3t, (+6hpt from here) stagnate 2t, repeat => total 102h over baseline; profit margin 19h

BUT

D.) same,
grow 3t to size6 (+18h) and 2-whip (+50), regrow 3t (+9), stagnate 4t (+24), 1-whip (+30) => total 131h over baseline and now can cycle plan C (some delay for happiness possible)

Obviously this is a cooked / hazy example since if you stagnate the size6 mine will subtract food from the granary and all. Also, a whip-cycled city is screwed when you want to get out of Slavery, for which there are much better incentives in RtR (Guilds Caste workshops are plain more efficient, but see usual caveat over hammers now vs hammers later and storing pop as a later-whippable resource for your strategy, etc).

The 2-whip is generally only worth it if the item you whip has a very high per-turn yield (or is involved in any kind of race: land, arms, wonder), but it's not quite that simple (see D). This is much different from BtS where you get laughed out of the door if you 1-whip an axe for overflow because you might as well 2-whip it, regrow in 1t, and get the 29h of OF earlier to boot (which is probably better than any one citizen could make in a turn).

Workshops / mines can outperform lumbermills accordingly when the extra food does not matter because either the citizen would be unhappy or a whip cycle is plain more efficient. That's in addition to their possible outperforming already for the missed forest chop. Whatever these 30h complete will turn its profit 30t sooner over the lumbermill (or 15t if only 2/0/0 tiles are left).

Watermills are never worse than lumbermills as both are 2/2/x (use the forest's 30h to chop an economic building if you would care about 1cpt). Serfdom watermills (2/3/1) are the best generic tile improvement of all, but labour-intensive to build and not usually available in large numbers.

(No guarantees given that I'm right about any of this -- just how I see it.)

[Dark Savant]

So from this I conclude that a lumbermill always beats a watermill from an economic point of view. A lumbermill is better then a workshop most of the time, except for that time you have guilds and caste system. A lumbermill is always better or equal then a mine.

Well, I currently am in Caste System, and I'm going to have Guilds in 2 turns, 3 at most.

I'll flip back to Slavery before the Golden Age ends, but if I do well enough I'll eventually leave it for good.

By the time you can build them, a lot of the forest is already chopped for the early hammer advantage

I actually have a forest near King's Landing now.

Ordinarily, I'd have chopped that ages ago.  I did, actually!  But I had leftover forest at Oldtown from my Great Lighthouse attempt.  Before I cashed them in for the Parthenon, another forest spawned from them, far too late for any sort of "early-game" advantage.  I'll have a lumbermill there about the time King's Landing can grow to size 18.

It's generally not worth whipping a city that grows that large -- it takes forever to regrow without a ton of food (two wet corn and two flood plains are good but not a ton), and they're high-leverage tiles.  High-leverage, since King's Landing is a Bureaucratic capital with an Academy.

Keeping a forest near a border city gives an attacker an advantage.

That's eventually true, but one of the reasons I'm keeping many of the forests in your former territory is that it gets in the way of knights, which also don't get a defensive benefit from them.  (If you've paid close attention, I got rid of the forest on hills but am keeping the ones on flat land.)

Once people start fielding grenadiers or rifles, without any threat of cuirassiers or cavalry, I may chop them down, even if they've got lumbermills.

(If you've ever played original-flavor Civ 4, cavalry were one of those things that were super powerful that got nerfed into reasonableness.)

And I think you realize it now, but one of the reasons you got in trouble here was that you never actually used your initial forests for much.

The 2-whip is generally only worth it if the item you whip has a very high per-turn yield (or is involved in any kind of race: land, arms, wonder), but it's not quite that simple (see D). This is much different from BtS where you get laughed out of the door if you 1-whip an axe for overflow because you might as well 2-whip it, regrow in 1t, and get the 29h of OF earlier to boot (which is probably better than any one citizen could make in a turn).

I feel a 2-pop-whip in RtR often really is worth it, but if you're whipping 3 or more pop, you'd better either be whipping a high-leverage item, or else you're whipping citizens that aren't being especially productive (like working 2f2c coast -- as often is the case in island cities with a lot of food).

Watermills are never worse than lumbermills as both are 2/2/x (use the forest's 30h to chop an economic building if you would care about 1cpt). Serfdom watermills (2/3/1) are the best generic tile improvement of all, but labour-intensive to build and not usually available in large numbers.

You also have to be in Serfdom to begin with -- even buffed, it's not a compelling civic compared to either even nerfed Slavery, or Caste System.  At least it's something I might find a use for -- it's the one civic I just never used in base Beyond the Sword.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 150 (800 AD) - Part 1

It's a nice round number for both the turn and the year (hey, Charlemagne's accession as Holy Roman Emperor), so I'll do an extra-detailed turn report.

Yes, I know Civilization IV starts turn number at 0, so this is actually the 151st turn played.



Yeah, I always used OPTION BASE 1 when programming as a kid.  

I still prefer this number, because it keeps the date even-ish too.  

superdeath and JR4 seem to have good relations, because JR4's garrison on superdeath's border is also minimal.



If I were superdeath, I would have planted a city on the hill right on the border, as a crumple zone if nothing else.

wetbandit's knight horde moves north.



There's no way Yuri can defend Vijayanagara against that;  is probably going to be too late here. 

I also forgot that war elephants don't actually get defensive bonuses.  Right, good to know that before I start building a few.

wetbandit also just spawned a Great Engineer.



I wonder what he'll use it for.

I'm still watching the tense situation at the -JR4 border.



Two things of note:

1. The tiles equidistant between Dongnae and Nobamba just came under JR4's control.  That includes a cow and an iron tile, well worth the trouble JR4 went to build a Hindu missionary and extra culture.
   
2. JR4 is about to plant another city to the north of the disputed border; that's a settler pair at the end of that little peninsula.
   

superdeath and WilliamLP also seem to be getting along fine.



That's not a ton for border defense, though WilliamLP's catapult stack isn't too far away.

[Dark Savant]

Turn 150 (800 AD) - Part 2

I can get Guilds in two turns.  I'll do so, saving gold for one turn.  I want all three things it enables (knights, grocers, and +1 to workshops) pronto.  WilliamLP is now researching something hard, and still doesn't yet have Machinery.

I have a settler in place to plant city #22 next turn.



I'm not going to garrison it heavily, at least at first, because has his hands full on two other borders.  That's the last leftover city site I have that claims any sort of new food resource.  I should start to soon build a settler for the city site that has unworked Iron and shares three existing food resources.

My first courthouses complete.  I'll get a few more next turn, and that should provide enough EP to stabilize graphs on wetbandit and superdeath at the same time.