Thanks for the advice, BGN. I've changed the default file format my computer uses; that will take effect after this report, as I played just before reading this.
I've never heard of Dynasty Warriors before, but thanks for the thought - perhaps I'll name all my cities after historical generals I like instead. That will have to wait till next turn, though, of course.
Unfortunately, I have had a week of low motivation (hence the lack of reports). I'll try and catch up on everything that's happened now. Let's see, the last thing you saw was t30. These were the t30 demos, which I for some reason didn't post before, so you can see the change over 10 turns:
I founded Guangzhou t33, after revolting to Slavery:
I managed a perfect whip (with regard to food in the box) of the granary in the capital:
This is my civilization at the half-way mark. As you can see, I took retep's advice and produced - actually whipped - a second worker in Shanghai instead of a granary:
Here's where my simming started to break down a bit. My sims indicated said whip, plus a chop from the newly-produced worker, would result in a settler with exact hammers in Shanghai. Beijing could regrow on the galley needed to transport the settler to the mainland, then whip it to completion with an optimal five-turn whip turnaround. Well and good. However, I wasn't entirely happy with how this would leave Shanghai, and to a lesser extent Beijing, working less than all its improved tiles for several turns. I wasn't in the mood to sim for any longer than I had already, though.
To compound my annoyance, it turned out Beijing had a couple more hammers floating around in overflow than had been present in my sims (and I couldn't figure out how), forcing me to whip there a turn sooner than I had intended and generally making me feel that things were more chaotic and sloppier than they could have been. Finally, I wasted my second unnecessary worker-turn of the game when I mistakenly moved my worker from the forest 1S of Guangzhou to the horses 1S of there before roading the forest. I didn't need the horses right away, and now I will spend an extra worker-turn moving back into that forest after roading the horse tile. However, as this was not a misclick but a lapse of concentration/judgement, I didn't feel comfortable replaying the save to fix the error. Lurkers can correct me on this if I was wrong (which will make me more annoyed with myself).
In any case, here's that exact-hammers settler:
Meanwhile, whipping the galley a turn ahead of plan did have the positive effect of enabling me to land a warrior and reveal the proposed settlement area ahead of time:
Heh, so it appears the debate about settling next to the flood plain plain was in vain, for that tile is coast. On the hill it is, then.
That barb warrior does make things interesting - I'm sure he'll move to the hill 1W of the warrior before next turn, threatening the settler I would land next turn. I could load a second warrior into the galley to guarantee the settler's safety, but that would delay bringing a worker over - and I had loaded the worker already, before thinking of this, so that would waste two worker turns (one to load this turn, one to offload again next turn)! What do dedlurkers think?
This is where we're at now:
You'll note I did decide to go for the mainland before settling the fourth (and, for now, final) city on the home island. Its advantages just seemed to outweigh the costs in my mind when I considered I could get the settler for that fourth city almost immediately afterward anyway. I used the overflow from the galley-whip to one-turn the work boat for said final island city, which must now take the seven-turn trek around the isle to reach that city-site's fish. I put the minor overflow from that build plus the proceeds of a chop (there honestly isn't much else for these workers to be doing) into a settler in the capital. This again feels inefficient, since I haven't allowed the city to fully regrow, but, as I said, I was unmotivated to do more simming, and, absent a warrior for at least this turn, I wouldn't have been able to keep it happy at a larger size anyway. I'm actually pretty stretched thin as far as military police go, at the moment, at least as soon as my cities regrow. Thankfully Guangzhou is whipping off its freshly-unhappy population next turn - but that's only a temporary fix, hence the dubious slow warrior build in Shanghai. Should have simmed more. Oh well.
Not all the micro has been seat-of-the-pants. The build, growths, and upcoming whip in Guangzhou have been nicely timed. The granary will be at 19/40 hammers, maximizing overflow, the city will otherwise have just become unhappy, and I believe the food in-the-box will be close to optimal (though I admit I didn't plan for the last). I'm not too happy with the rest of my recent micro, though I don't know if it's strictly suboptimal (with the exception of the outright mistakes), but I am happy with this, as well as some of what I accomplished earlier in this turn-set. In any case, it's passed now.
The current demographics:
You can see much of my former lead has evaporated, for now, at least. I actually remained in the top spot for demographics for some turns after my 'some randomly nice-looking demos' post above (t26), due to apparently growing my cities sooner than the other players and working so many high-yield tiles. Three whips between Beijing and Shanghai, combined with my opponents growing their cities, dealt me a blow both absolutely and relative to the other players. Whips are always an investment, though, so, assuming I can fix my military police problem and found these two more cities efficiently, hopefully I'll recover my position. Or not; we'll see.
And that's where we stand. I hope my lack of reporting and insufficient simming this past week has not let anyone down too hard. Hopefully my motivation will be better this coming week. As Fintourist always says, more work now means a more fun position later. If only I were better at following his advice.
I've never heard of Dynasty Warriors before, but thanks for the thought - perhaps I'll name all my cities after historical generals I like instead. That will have to wait till next turn, though, of course.
Unfortunately, I have had a week of low motivation (hence the lack of reports). I'll try and catch up on everything that's happened now. Let's see, the last thing you saw was t30. These were the t30 demos, which I for some reason didn't post before, so you can see the change over 10 turns:
I founded Guangzhou t33, after revolting to Slavery:
I managed a perfect whip (with regard to food in the box) of the granary in the capital:
This is my civilization at the half-way mark. As you can see, I took retep's advice and produced - actually whipped - a second worker in Shanghai instead of a granary:
Here's where my simming started to break down a bit. My sims indicated said whip, plus a chop from the newly-produced worker, would result in a settler with exact hammers in Shanghai. Beijing could regrow on the galley needed to transport the settler to the mainland, then whip it to completion with an optimal five-turn whip turnaround. Well and good. However, I wasn't entirely happy with how this would leave Shanghai, and to a lesser extent Beijing, working less than all its improved tiles for several turns. I wasn't in the mood to sim for any longer than I had already, though.
To compound my annoyance, it turned out Beijing had a couple more hammers floating around in overflow than had been present in my sims (and I couldn't figure out how), forcing me to whip there a turn sooner than I had intended and generally making me feel that things were more chaotic and sloppier than they could have been. Finally, I wasted my second unnecessary worker-turn of the game when I mistakenly moved my worker from the forest 1S of Guangzhou to the horses 1S of there before roading the forest. I didn't need the horses right away, and now I will spend an extra worker-turn moving back into that forest after roading the horse tile. However, as this was not a misclick but a lapse of concentration/judgement, I didn't feel comfortable replaying the save to fix the error. Lurkers can correct me on this if I was wrong (which will make me more annoyed with myself).
In any case, here's that exact-hammers settler:
Meanwhile, whipping the galley a turn ahead of plan did have the positive effect of enabling me to land a warrior and reveal the proposed settlement area ahead of time:
Heh, so it appears the debate about settling next to the flood plain plain was in vain, for that tile is coast. On the hill it is, then.
That barb warrior does make things interesting - I'm sure he'll move to the hill 1W of the warrior before next turn, threatening the settler I would land next turn. I could load a second warrior into the galley to guarantee the settler's safety, but that would delay bringing a worker over - and I had loaded the worker already, before thinking of this, so that would waste two worker turns (one to load this turn, one to offload again next turn)! What do dedlurkers think?
This is where we're at now:
You'll note I did decide to go for the mainland before settling the fourth (and, for now, final) city on the home island. Its advantages just seemed to outweigh the costs in my mind when I considered I could get the settler for that fourth city almost immediately afterward anyway. I used the overflow from the galley-whip to one-turn the work boat for said final island city, which must now take the seven-turn trek around the isle to reach that city-site's fish. I put the minor overflow from that build plus the proceeds of a chop (there honestly isn't much else for these workers to be doing) into a settler in the capital. This again feels inefficient, since I haven't allowed the city to fully regrow, but, as I said, I was unmotivated to do more simming, and, absent a warrior for at least this turn, I wouldn't have been able to keep it happy at a larger size anyway. I'm actually pretty stretched thin as far as military police go, at the moment, at least as soon as my cities regrow. Thankfully Guangzhou is whipping off its freshly-unhappy population next turn - but that's only a temporary fix, hence the dubious slow warrior build in Shanghai. Should have simmed more. Oh well.
Not all the micro has been seat-of-the-pants. The build, growths, and upcoming whip in Guangzhou have been nicely timed. The granary will be at 19/40 hammers, maximizing overflow, the city will otherwise have just become unhappy, and I believe the food in-the-box will be close to optimal (though I admit I didn't plan for the last). I'm not too happy with the rest of my recent micro, though I don't know if it's strictly suboptimal (with the exception of the outright mistakes), but I am happy with this, as well as some of what I accomplished earlier in this turn-set. In any case, it's passed now.
The current demographics:
You can see much of my former lead has evaporated, for now, at least. I actually remained in the top spot for demographics for some turns after my 'some randomly nice-looking demos' post above (t26), due to apparently growing my cities sooner than the other players and working so many high-yield tiles. Three whips between Beijing and Shanghai, combined with my opponents growing their cities, dealt me a blow both absolutely and relative to the other players. Whips are always an investment, though, so, assuming I can fix my military police problem and found these two more cities efficiently, hopefully I'll recover my position. Or not; we'll see.
And that's where we stand. I hope my lack of reporting and insufficient simming this past week has not let anyone down too hard. Hopefully my motivation will be better this coming week. As Fintourist always says, more work now means a more fun position later. If only I were better at following his advice.
That's not the absolute low-point of the whip cycle; that was a couple turns ago, for which I don't have a screenshot, unfortunately. The high point was also better than the t30 demographics show.
.
I was originally going to cottage the first flood plains, but I fear that might be disrupted by the barb warrior, and it puts my worker a couple turns away from being able to improve the pigs once borders pop. Mining the grassland hill would delay pasturing the pigs by one turn as against going straight there once borders pop. I could road the hill instead and come back to it later. Or I could cottage the grassland 1N of there, though I doubt that cottage would be worked for a long time. Thoughts?