Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[Gaspar]

On very high difficulty levels, like Immortal/Deity, and even emperor with toridal wrap, Org can out preform Fin. It is slower, however, even including the half price courthouses (which is often more imporant than the civic cut) and lighthouses. For noble/prince/monarch/most emperor games/a fair number of immortal games/some diety games, I'd prefer financial. In a sushi or other corp game, organized becomes even better. Many people over at CivFanatics rate organized as even better than I do, but I like financial more about 95% of the time (I usually play emperor/immortal)

Its interesting that organized is boosted in the RB mod unlike most top-tier traits-I think it becomes the one right choice at immortal/emperor there. You can tell rb mod was made for noble/prince/monarch multiplayer

Main issue here is that CFC is largely a SP site, and SP isn't "interesting" below say, the emperor level. MP is usually played on lower difficulty levels, which hurts ORG. Of course of late, we've been playing on Toroidal wrap maps more and more, which boosts ORG.

I wouldn't remotely consider ORG a top-tier trait. In an MP environment it needs another trait to do the kickstarting. But it is right there in terms of complimentary traits, probably on a rough par with Spi and Ind.

RB Mod is a snapshot of where the meta was 25 games ago when it was primarily constructed, and largely of Krill's vision of that meta. I wouldn't say it is particularly indicative of the RB metagame as a whole, presently.

[pindicator]

On very high difficulty levels, like Immortal/Deity, and even emperor with toridal wrap, Org can out preform Fin. It is slower, however, even including the half price courthouses (which is often more imporant than the civic cut) and lighthouses. For noble/prince/monarch/most emperor games/a fair number of immortal games/some diety games, I'd prefer financial. In a sushi or other corp game, organized becomes even better. Many people over at CivFanatics rate organized as even better than I do, but I like financial more about 95% of the time (I usually play emperor/immortal)

Its interesting that organized is boosted in the RB mod unlike most top-tier traits-I think it becomes the one right choice at immortal/emperor there. You can tell rb mod was made for noble/prince/monarch multiplayer

Yeah, we rarely play mp games above monarch which i'm sure has someyhing to do with that too. But even on prince/toroid the savings you get with ORG is noticeable.

Edit:i Gaspar beat me to it because i dont know how to flip to the next page.
I do like the idea of rbmod though, especially that it opens up more strategies without too much alteration. At least thats my impression of it so far. Still, i bet krill has his eye on things like this as far as future tweaks

[Merovech]

Main issue here is that CFC is largely a SP site, and SP isn't "interesting" below say, the emperor level. MP is usually played on lower difficulty levels, which hurts ORG. Of course of late, we've been playing on Toroidal wrap maps more and more, which boosts ORG.

I wouldn't remotely consider ORG a top-tier trait. In an MP environment it needs another trait to do the kickstarting. But it is right there in terms of complimentary traits, probably on a rough par with Spi and Ind.

RB Mod is a snapshot of where the meta was 25 games ago when it was primarily constructed, and largely of Krill's vision of that meta. I wouldn't say it is particularly indicative of the RB metagame as a whole, presently.

I thought RB mod was more recent, first off, but I didn't mean to say I don't like RB mod. I so far think it balances very well for noble/prince/monarch, which is one of the reasons why I thought it was made with that in mind, even if I think it nerfs financial a tad too much, I really can't complain. With the exception of high-level org, it seems excellent to me.

Edit: I especially like what it did with the Statue of Zeus.

[Gaspar]

RB Mod is okay for what it is, though I think base Civ is in decent enough shape which is why we only use RB Mod here and there for PBEMs vs EitB for example which, while still plenty flawed, has basically replaced FFH for us because FFH is really, really broken.

I think I'd prefer a simpler mod which only addresses the most egregious stuff. Like I'd probably make Fin only work on water and give it cheap something, swap Pyramids with Ankgor Wat which would make AW more useful and keep Rep from coming into to play so early, take GLH down to +1 TR and remove Civic/Religion swaps from spies. I think everything but that mids change is in RB Mod but I don't specifically recall.

There's other issues with base Civ, but I sort of dislike changing the base game so much.

[Gaspar]

OK, enough about stuff that doesn't have to do with the game. I'm having my typical hard time sleeping so let me see if I can't bang out the sort of big-picture strategy I'm supposed to be bringing to the team. Noble & I have a weird sort of dynamic that really doesn't allow my half-cocked side to flower to its full potential. The conversations usually go like this:

Noble: Ok, so what do you think we should do?
Gaspar: Well, I was thinking that we could maybe
Noble: What I'd really like to do is find a way to get another 2.5 culture per turn onto the 3rd ring tile at Cathedral so we can steal a tile we'll never use from Commodore!
Gaspar: Well, no really we should start thinking about
Noble: Clearly you're ignoring my superior cpt plan because you're not paying attention. I'm going to load the the last 34 saves to accurately graph how much culture we're pouring into that tile.
Gaspar: <starts surfing internet> LULZ FUNNY PICTURE

...

Anyway, without my pedantic, annoying half around - let's take a swing around the world to talk about where everyone is and what they're up to...

Yuri: So far behind as to be irrelevant. Has vendetta against both Ichabod and Commodore. Knows he's dead soon. Likely trying furiously to tech to pikes.
Dave: Trying to manage dual feat of not dying to incoming Cataphracts by teching to Pikes and bulbing his way to Liberalism. The latter plan will probably be foiled by the former as I fully expect Mistabod to slice through him like a Ginsu on an infomercial. If he's going to live, he's going to whip himself silly to do so. I don't think he has the pop for that, but I hope he does - slowing down the Byzantine juggernaut is pretty crucial and we can't do it.
Mistabod: Obviously en route to Guilds. Probably out of the Liberalism race due to that and due to the fact that they're obviously going to go apeshit on Cataphracts once the tech is in. They already have by far the largest army in the world. I'd bank on them hitting Dave first, then probably aiming to clean up Yuri afterwards. If they get away with that, it probably doesn't matter what the rest of us do.
Commodore: About to land Taj Mahal after hand researching Nationalism. I knew he'd beeline this because Commodore obsesses over synergy and he would want to do anything possible to deny us the Taj/MoM combo. As Mr. Top GNP, he'd likely be able to grab Liberalism after this should he so choose, but he's currently down at least Paper to us on the chase (not that he can't 2-turn Paper, just saying.) I don't actually think he intends to attack us in the near-term, he's going to want to maximize that GA to make sure he can fend off Mistabod should they come after him. He's likely to overstate how well Landsknecht can do on that front - Pikes don't stop Phracts, that's what makes them Phracts. Slice it anyway you like, no doubt Mistabod will have double-promoted Phracts rolling off the line and C1/Shock Phracts will do well against Pikes, UU variety or not. But he is paranoid and his border is currently well-defended.

Laying it out like that, we have three openings that I can see:

1. We can probably land Liberalism. We've got a 9t GA starting up soon and no matter what Commodore's tech rate, at the end of next turn we'll be two techs away - Education and Liberalism. Unfortunately, with Nationalism's main prize already spent the best we can do is probably to tech Alphabet and Lib Printing Press - ultimately pretty underwhelming. That said, it is probably worth going this road just to make sure none of our opponents can sling something ridiculous. Whether we take Nationalism to open drafting and teching down the Constitution/Democracy line remains to be seen - either of those would be great as an aside, we have enough happy that HR is truly useless for us.
   
2. We tech Machinery > IW > Engineering after Philo and put together the largest stack we can of Cats/Pikes/CKN and see if we can't beat up Commodore through attrition. The downside here is that if he gets Rifles on the board before we get too far, we're going to be getting murdered on the hammer exchange. CKNs may retain their value late into the game, but as you get later on most of that value is as collateral on the defense (Attacking out variety.)
   
3. We take a measured approach but the same sort of thing and take that same combination in probably lesser numbers to put try and take Yuri out while Ichabod is occupied with Dave. This is probably the easiest choice - Yuri has no hope of defending. His cities are small and he's quite a bit backward. I have little doubt that a stack about half the size needed for Commodore could clean up most of Turkey. The downside here is twofold - it could embolden Commodore to attack us for one, it gives us a border with Phract man sooner than we care to for two. But it is unquestionably the easiest route to more territory.
   

I guess there's a last option which is to just continue to build enough military to stave off invasion while pushing hard for Rifles. That protects us against Phracts as well as gives us an offensive option against Commodore. The problem there is that I think Commodore will get to Rifles first for sure. Rifling looks close once you get to Ren but its actually a long ways away. In addition to the above discussed techs, we'd also need Feudalism, Guilds, Banking, Replaceable Parts, Gunpowder. That's a lot of tech, well-more than we can expect in our GA.

Well, I'm not sure this post really said anything new, but I can't think it wasn't good to get it out on the page.

[Gaspar]

This is the last incredibly dull turn for a bit.

Dave offered us a map trade, which we declined. After his AI diplo shenanigans we don't really have any interest in giving our map just so he can flip it to Commodore. In map related news, we did get our first eyes on Byzantium and apparently he missed the "We're Financial" memo because they're workshopping away. Also note the 3h plains workshop in a GA - they don't have Guilds yet.



Speaking of players in GAs, Commodore rushed Taj with his engineer as expected:



Let me tell you, its obnoxious looking at his coast tiles having grassland town yields:



Two chops come in next turn and finish UoS. We misplanned this a bit, since we'll be in Pacifism next turn after the GA and not OR, but the chops will still get the job done. Thanks, stone!



Speaking of GA, ending turn we got:



Next turn we swap Caste and Pacifism and see what we can do. We're almost definitely going to get one scientist to bulb Education, beyond that, could do a lot of things. I think my friend Mr. Helium would like us to get an artist and bomb Cathedral to attack Kiki, though I think we might be better off with another scientist or a merchant. We've plenty of time to argue about that though.

[CFCJesterFool]

I think my friend Mr. Helium would like us to get an artist and bomb Cathedral to attack Kiki

I think I have to agree. Sure looks like he is stacking units there and even if not, Kiki is a key hammer city (for Commodore) right on your border. How many GP do you think you can generate once you GA? Is there any possibility of bulbing Fuedalism/Guilds with a GM?

[NobleHelium]

By the way, you'd have more of an upper hand in chats if you typed at faster than half my speed.

[Gaspar]

Gonna take a while to play this turn, and these numbers aren't precisely accurate but...

Us and Commodore, both in a GA:



I may have come up with a harebrained scheme that gives us a shot in this game. Details to follow later once we figure if we can actually pull it off.

[Gaspar]

So... we held the turn roughly 24 hours, but more importantly between the two of us I actually think we spent like 10 actual hours on it. If I have to talk about GPP, Base Beakers, or talk to NobleHelium again in the next day or so, you might be reading a story about "MAN IN MASSACHUSETTS GOES ON RAMAGE, KILLS EVERYTHING THAT REMINDS HIM OF COMMODORE" on teh interwebz soon.

Anyway, we fired our Golden Age as advertised (the inspiration for the title) and boy oh boy, managing a golden age is a lot of work. First things first, since we last spoke, this stuff happened:



99% sure that GSci is Dave. Its going to be real depressing when he finds out that there's no GP who can bulb him actual units to defend against Ichabod. Commodore is in the same civics we are, I'm sure with the same intent - bang out many GPs during the Golden Age. Gotta be painful to pull specs off 2/0/5 tiles for him.

Anyway. The biggest news of the turn was the completion of University of Sankore - good for a nice free 60 beakers/turn. Monk wonders are really nice. Not game changers, but they definitely help defray some of the disadvantage we get against the Fin guys. SM would be nice, but no spare beakers for Divine Right for a little while yet.



Astute observers will notice Macemen as a build option there - we finally teched Machinery this turn. Next turn we'll do Iron Working to get both the tile yield and CKNs on the board. THEN WE BUILD A MILLION UNITS AND SHOW COMMODORE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A MAN. Or more likely, we build a few units and maybe take some cities from Yuri. Whatever.

Won't go crazy with the city pics since next turn is T100, but here's where the first GP is coming from.



Neither Commodore nor us have a tech selected. EAT YOUR HEART OUT, HOLY ROME.