[PB48] TBW

[TBW]

T97:

I proposed razing the barb city to Raskol and then claiming roughly these spots for cities, which he agreed to. He said he might settle further south; I don't really care, because my goal was to secure the dye + bananas for myself. He went ahead and went through with his side of the deal last turn, so everything seems to have worked out just fine.

I was considering what my next move should be, and I thought about pushing for Hanging Gardens. However, I've been scouting his territory since we have OBs and I saw this:

and, even with stone, I can't beat an IND leader to it. On the bright side, it means even more of his hammers not going into military; on the other hand he'll get 8 pop he can whip down if he needs to. At least I'm two turns from Construction, so I'll have a clear military advantage for at least some time. Maybe swords/cats/HAs are my window to strike?


Domestically, I'll finish Construction in 2 turns, and make the Calendar/Metal Casting trades on T100. I'm #2 in GNP, tied for first in hammers, and #3 in crop yield, so I'd say I'm in a good spot right now. I have two settlers coming out in 3 turns; one will be heading north to settle the four resource island city up there and one will be claiming the dye/banana city. I think grabbing the tundra cities is going to be pretty important, it makes me wonder what kind of islands people who aren't on the top/bottom of the map have available though. Definitely need to scout some of that out.

[TBW]

Next turn's going to be a great one for me. I'll trade Currency for Calendar to Gavagai and Polytheism + Monotheism + Metal Casting to GKC, and I also get two settlers out. I'll also be doing a State of the State post with a lot of graphs and screenshots, is there anything anyone especially wants to see in it?

[Zed-F]

Your plan to conquer the world?

[TBW]

TURN 100 STATE OF THE STATE

DEMOGRAPHICS
0% research


100% research


I'd obviously prefer to be #1 in everything but #1 GNP, #2 production, nearly average on crop yield, and only a little behind on soldier count while neighboring the guy with the lowest seems like a decent position to me. Topping the charts on GNP as Boudica despite having a neighbor with four big culture wonders (including a holy shrine and Stonehenge with double culture bonus) and more land area feels like a real accomplishment. Production will keep going up as I get more mines and quarries online and especially when I get Metal Casting and start building my workshops.

----------------------
GRAPHS (last 50 turns)
GNP


Superdeath is #1 when he turns on the gas, but he has the most cities so I would expect that to be the case. Raskol's around #2 but a fair amount of that comes from his high culture output thanks to his wonders. GKC finished Colossus a couple turns ago and that's clearly reflected on the graph, he'll be in good shape now with that + Currency. I have no idea why Gavagai is struggling so hard on that front, maybe he's building too many units for his pop count to keep Superdeath from smashing him with HAs?

MFG


Nothing really exciting here, though I would expect Raskol with his Oracled Metal Casting and IND to have an advantage here that just isn't showing up yet. Once my forges and workshops start going up, I'll be pulling ahead on this one.

CROP YIELD


Right now this is basically a function of city count, nobody's conquered any territory yet so everybody's got basically the same amount of space and cities that are equally developed.

POWER


Gavagai clearly expects something to be happening imminently, and Mr. Cairo is clearly preparing for a possible praetorian invasion. Other than that, everybody else is basically maintaining garrisons and waiting for something to happen.

CULTURE


Raskol's wonders tell the story here. As you'll see later, I've had to stack culture buildings on my border with him just to keep from losing my first ring tiles to his fourth ring Stonehenge + holy shrine city.

Nobody has Code of Laws yet, so the espionage graph is just straight lines the whole way through.

--------------------------
CITIES
AIDS


My capital, and my most improved city. I'm building the archer here to garrison Rabies; the spearman is a shadow unit that's ready to be whipped out in an emergency. I'm leaning heavily toward using my GS to put an Academy in my capital, because it's a solid commerce city and I think I'd get more long term benefit out of that than I would bulbing Compass or using him for a GA. Holding on for a GA, getting Monotheism from GKC, researching Hereditary Rule, and using the GA to swap into HR + OR is an option I'll have to do the math on.

Cancer


My best production city and the future home of my Heroic Epic. The Colosseum is so I can put out two promo catapults, and the library is to keep fourth ring Stonehenge culture from encroaching on the iron mine.

Herpes


A commerce city that was never intended to be a border city, but after the Stonehenge play, I had no choice but to pile up culture buildings in it. The Jewish Monastery is because it got a religion spread from Raskol's holy city and I wanted the culture from it, I'm not spreading Jewish missionaries around. Otherwise, it's a commerce city with reasonable access to production.

Chicken Pox


My Moai city. Getting an early Moai for three move + sentry galleys makes sea exploration much easier and it's a fine production city with minimal risk of invasion. The cottage is being satellited for my capital and will be handed over when the population is ready for it.

Rabies


I settled this city fifth because it's important to me to get internal ICTRs up as fast as possible. It gets a whopping +11 food surplus if I borrow the clams from my capital, so this is a good city for specialists and commerce. Unfortunately, it's a very bad city for building a National Epic, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with monster whipping all the economic buildings when you have +11 food available.

Botulism


Another city that could go production with lumber and watermills, or I could mass chop the forests and go farms/workshops. Either way, it's another production city.

Anthrax


This is a border city without a lot of thought put into it. I had picked the spot out to get the second ring fish, but Gavagai grabbed it first (not unreasonably) and I decided to settle the spot anyway just to have the borders there. Eventually it'll get a lighthouse and work coast tiles while I'm improving the land.

Dengue Fever


This was a filler and another coast commerce city. Pigs mean I can run a couple specialists in it and keep growing on coast tiles and use it to satellite cottages in AIDS and Herpes.

----------------------------
FUTURE PLANS
My tech path right now is looking like Aesthetics -> Literature -> Monarchy -> Machinery (Code of Laws somewhere between Monarchy and Feudalism, when maintenance gets too oppressive) -> Feudalism -> Guilds. Thanks to trades, I don't have to spend any more hammers on the religious techs. I want to get my National/Heroic Epic up as fast as possible because their bonuses are a big part of a successful snowball. After that, fixing happy cap issues with Hereditary Rule and making the march to knights is my main goal.


On settling, I will be grabbing up cities along the frozen north and relying coast commerce up there. Most of the good territory left on the mainland is either occupied or would be impractical to defend at this point, but I will be settling at least two more cities there.

Your plan to conquer the world?

Roughly, it's "get to knights first and roll through Raskol and all his wonders". I can't kill him right now with HAs because we both have spears, walls, and culture defense available in our hill border cities. I have the option of elephants and catapults available, and I am seriously considering it, but knights are the traditional game changer.

[TBW]

T103:
I've decided that I'm going to go for Great Lighthouse in Chicken Pox. I can build it there in 13 turns, minus whatever the whip breakpoint is. It seems worth going for because I'm discovering more and more islands on this map and I have two formal allies, so I'd benefit immensely from the extra trade route. If I don't get it, I can still put the failgold into Monarchy/Code of Laws. Outside of that, it's still mostly sedate expansion/improvements with nobody being willing to launch the first war, though I did spot a stack of horse archers that Mr. Cairo was building up (7 at last count) and relayed the information to a thankful GKC. I'm not worried about them coming for me because the middle of the map is still completely covered in forests and jungle.

[TBW]

superdeath sent me a PM asking if I'd built any spies. I haven't and I decided to answer honestly, I don't see any tactical advantage in lying about it.

[TBW]

T108:

It feels suspicious to me to be pulling ahead on techs like this with Boudica of America, but the numbers don't lie. After I finished Literature, I checked the techs screen (which I do every turn anyway) and saw that Gavagai actually doesn't have it, which I thought he did because I had it in my head that Literature was a prereq for Drama. I must have been thinking of Music instead. Anyway, nobody else in the game besides him even has Aesthetics, which gives me an idea for the road to Guilds.

- Grab Great Lighthouse in Chicken Pox. This isn't absolutely vital, but it would be a very nice boost. If I don't get it, the failgold can immediately go towards my next techs anyway. I feel like it's a gamble worth making.

- Grab Great Library in AIDS, then follow it up with National Epic there. My capital is cottaged pretty heavily, but there's enough of a food surplus that I can run 3-4 specialists there and keep my cottages going, as long as I'm not using all of the mines. I also have an academy there, so the Great Library scientists will get an extra boost. Happiness will be an issue as I keep growing there (currently at 10 pop/10 happy cap) but swapping to a state religion + Hereditary Rule will solve that problem.

- Run 2x scientists in Rabies, get my market there whipped as soon as possible, run 2x merchants along with them to get a Great Person out asap. Use that Great Person for my 1 person GA, use the GA to get into Buddhism as a state religion / Organized Religion / Hereditary Rule.

- Continue military buildup to maintain power parity with the other players, especially defensive catapults as a deterrent.

I don't have turn breakpoints on any of this yet, I figure I can just wing it. I can pull this off as long as Gavagai doesn't suddenly break the alliance with no warning(which seems pretty unlikely, I've gotten the impression he games with honor) and Raskol doesn't launch a sudden invasion (no power spikes out of him yet and I have slightly more power, so I know he's not hiding more than 3-4 HAs at best).

[TBW]

T110:

The other team recently passed around Monarchy, and Superdeath finished Machinery this turn. I can finish Monarchy in two turns at 100% so I'm not terribly behind there, but Machinery will take me 6 turns at 100% research, so if that gets passed around too then it'll be fairly concerning.


What's immediately concerning to me is this road here, which has no reason to exist. I'm going to PM him about this and see what's up, because I can't think of any reason to build a road there besides setting up a fork on me. I've moved spears around so I can have them ready to defend that area next turn, as well as keeping my HAs ready where they are and dry whipping walls in Herpes. I'll get my first catapult out next turn and it can be ready to defend Herpes two turns after that.

Domestically, the wonder plans are still in effect, if all goes well I'll have GLH secured in 6 turns. I'd strongly prefer not to delay it to get emergency units built but that option is there if things really go south.

[TBW]

Sent him a PM asking about the road and he says it's because he's going to put windmills on that hill and the one 1S of it, which is reasonably plausible. I think with a sentry in the area and walls, I shouldn't have anything serious to worry about over there and I can keep going with my economic plan.

[TBW]

T111:


Damn! We didn't discuss wonders, but at least it went to someone on my team. Colossus + GLH means he'll be in pretty good shape economically, since I know he's been settling island cities too. The failgold out of this should get me pretty close to finishing Machinery, since 3 people have it now and it'll only take me 5 turns to finish it. I can swap Chicken Pox over to settler production and start occupying more islands ahead of schedule, and Great Library should still be guaranteed since nobody has Literature (and only Gavagai even has Aesthetics).