[SPOILERS - PBEM17] darrelljs - Elizabeth of Egypt

[NobleHelium]

I think you need to rename your sandbox cities now.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

Why do you dislike the southern dotmap? Outside of green, every city has potential double food for times of growth.

[Krill]

Wastes tiles, specifically coastal tiles that for us are important tiles to work.

[darrelljs]

Coast is a nice place to park population (assuming we don't get the Colossus) while waiting to whip it off, but its down on the list of reasons to place cities below food resrouces and grassland. Okay, so a pretty nice turn, the highlight being:



I don't see any reason to revolt still, even if we get a spread to Brazil. I do plan on revolting while USSR is in transit to our Stonehenge city. Demos:



We are working a Hamlet now, and another Cottage promotes in two turns. Losing the food lead is vexing, but then we only have 6 population right now. We are 3 cities and 5 Workers, just the ratio I like at this point in the game. Its going to reciprocate over the next dozen turns or so .

Edit: Updated sandobx attached.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

With the faster border pop and extra Worker, Henge accelerates two turns, and we have a Mine complete to accelerate the workboat at Henge city as well (chop mine instead of just a chop).

Darrell

[Krill]

ZOMFG awesome.

pop sizes are 5/3/1, 3/2/2/1 (so someone has 4 cities...) 4/2/1, 4/2

Meh, we got 5 workers as non-EXP, a religion, and a free religion spread that should speed up Henge. And even if we take out the "useless" culture from religion our GNP is still higher than everyone elses'...and they all either are CRE or EXP/nonFIN Inca with another "useless" 6GNP per civ or have a religion (another useless 5 GNP for StM).

We're playing FIN/PHI against EXP/FIN, EXP/IND/INCA, EXP/CRE/INDIA and CRE/FIN. We're supposed to be eating everyone elses' dust and be dead last in growth. As it is we're annoyed that we've lost first place in crop yield? And we have religion down? And the highest bpt?

Yeah, annoyed is the right word. It's completely inconsequential. Let's just spam settlers for a bit and come back to those stats in 20 turns.

[Krill]

Bah, lightening strike and lose a post.

Coastal tiles are as good as grass cottages for us for 26 turns (that is the amount of time it takes the cottage to grow and catch up with the higher base commerce output of the coast).

Cottages get better later on through PP, FS and US, and by the time these improvements are there we want to have as many towns as possible. That means we need to never slave off cottages. And that is where the coastal tiles come in - it doesn't matter if we have 2 extra cities if it means we can work an extra 15 or so coastal tiles, a few in every city so that we can slave off the coast and keep developing the cottages. The issue of city maintenance? Doesn't really matter, we are going to have a lot of cities no matter what we do, and they are all going to be coastal (well, near enough) anyway that defending them still means controlling the oceans.

[Krill]

Comparing 2 civics, for Darrell:

Bureaucracy: High cost. +50% commerce and hammers in capital (IOW if it should be any city with palace, FP or Versaille). Needs CS, which gives us ability to farm, needs CoL, which gives court houses.

Vassalage: High cost. +2XP/city, +X free units (depends on pop of civ). Needs Monarchy for HR, comes with Fued which also gives us LB.

I think Vassalage is better for these reasons:

1. Our boats, and we will need boats, will have C1 so have odds on anyone that does not have Theo or Vas. That means we really need one of Theo or Vas, so either Bu+Theo or Vs+OR.
   
   
   
2. Our slider will be low from the high-ish maintenance, so saved gold is effectively the same as making more gold from Bureaucracy.
   
   
   
3. We are growing our pop in every city to work cottages, not just the capital, so the free units from Vs should be fairly high.
   
   
   
4. Our capital is ideally placed to work food res and 7 specs (NE city), with overlap our other cities can work cottages for the capital so they still get developed.
   
   
   
5. Fued is on a better tech beeline (HR or court houses...not a difficult choice). And it is cheaper to get to (560 v 960 base beakers (no I'm not counting Currency, or Monarchy, the later is critical, the former isn't)). So Fued makes it quicker to get to Lit, Calendar, Currency etc.
   
   
   
6. How many people want to attack into CG2 LB compared to C1 axe/spear? Cost difference between CG2 archer+CG2 LB and C1 axe/spear is...3 hammers. And work against everything whereas axe/spear is weak against mass anything, and we're going to be running into mass anything because we don't know what the others have for resources. Plus with saved gold we can even upgrade the archer for more protection.
   
   
   
7. We're not going to be farming (m)any tiles: cities will be working food res, then cottages, then coastal tiles and slave off the coast.
   
   
   
8. Collosus...and Triremes. We're going to be fighting any wars we have on the ocean (unless Kyan comes for and we are slow to Astro/Chem). Someone is going to Oracle MC. We need to keep the flexibility to head to MC then Optics open for as long as possible while delaying everyones time to Astro (if we are outbuilding everyone war is the last thing we want). So trying to run all the way to CS only to find we need to get MC and we don't have the deterrant of Fued and Vassalage will be a big kick in the teeth.

TBH, I think Bureaucracy is a waste almost all of the time in MP games. I can't think of a single game I've played on RB where Vassalage was worse, but pretty much everyone on this forum still thinks Bureaucracy and then Nationhood are the best civics in that column.

[darrelljs]

It comes from an SP mindset. For small empires (which is usually the case on Immortal/Deity), the capital is often pulling >50% of your beakers. Early Academy is multiplicative with the commerce bonus from Bureaucracy. In most of my games, I only cottage the capital, and I farm everything else for whipping and running scientists for bulbs. Having lots of cities, especially having lots of cities that generate commerce, reduces the importance of the capital and hence Bureaucracy.

Longer term, I want Paper -> Education so fast it makes your head spin. I prefer the Civil Service route to Paper because I think Theology has less value itself (don't see AP as worth the cost). A capital like Brazil can pull in 70 commerce easily. With Library/University/Academy/Oxford we get 210 beakers. Under Bureaucracy we'd get 315 beakers. For argument's sake let's assume a 50/50 duty cycle on research, so we'd have to save 53 gold/turn for Vassalage's economic impact to outstrip Bureaucracy's. I have trouble seeing that, and even pre-Oxford's number of 35/turn is hard to believe. The 2 XPs/unit will probably push Vassalage to the top, but given that Feudalism is an arrow discount to Civil Service let's just plan on teching it and deciding later .

The near term tech path should be:

Masonry -> Writing -> Mathematics -> Sailing -> Calendar

I like Calendar for extra happy (and commerce) from the Incense, and an early start on the MoM (chopped out at the Henge city). In the unlikely event The Colossus hasn't fallen by that point, I would consider Metal Casting next. Otherwise I think Priesthood -> Monotheism -> Monarchy makes the most sense. Then Metal Casting. Then Currency -> Code of Laws -> Feudalism -> Civil Service -> Paper -> Education.

Darrell

[darrelljs]

Probably need Iron Working and Archery in there somewhere .

Err...and Hunting for Archery.

Darrell