The Quarterdeck - Turn Discussion Thread

[Cornflakes]

It's so nice playing having the moves pre-planned! After dinner I logged into the forum one minute after Old Harry posted that we were up. I'll work up a strategy post to run by you so we come to some sort of consensus on our mid-term objectives.

EDIT: Axe completed at PR, and I set the build to a work boat. We can use this to explore offshore around the North and Northeast. We can see some islands around and we'll want it anyway for Crabs when we get around to green-dot.

[Cornflakes]

STRATEGY POST

SHORT-TERM:
Don't get involved in a war! War is bad bad bad in our position, so we have to appear strong enough to fend off attacks. I'm really hoping that M3 will extend their NAP with us. Then we just have to worry about TEAM in the east. I don’t recall having any diplomatic relations with TEAM in the last 50 turns. It would be nice to arrange an NAP for our eastern border, but I don’t think that could come without a border agreement and since we’ve been silent so long I vote we continue in silence for now. That hill is 7 tiles from TEAM’s capital and 9 tiles from ours, and would probably be the order line which none of our cities were supposed to work so let’s wait to talk until after founding Maracaibo. ”It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.” … that is, after we chop/whip out the terrace and walls by T110 to make us look like a less-desirable target, followed someday by catapult/longbows to put behind the walls. TEAM is currently 4th in power (about 5k higher than us) so nothing to alarm us at present.

Sort-term I see a very little choice open to us other than cottage cottage cottage and hope we can keep close enough to the back of the pack that no one decided to gobble us up. We have started planning things out through T100 in all of our cities, and after that we max growth building MP for happiness with Monarchy coming in soon. We’ll need 9-10 turns of gold at about -20/turn (200). We’re saving about 23/turn now with 97 currently in the treasuries. Turn on research T95 and get Monarchy in by T105.

After monarchy I’m debating between Calendar (for silk, spices, and sugar) and Construction (catapults will make us a less appealing target, and should carry us to LB’s). Question is, do we dare put off catapults until after Calendar? Since we’ll have Monarchy for happy I think that construction should be our next tech … These are the only two options I’ve considered, so if you have more ideas I’m completely open to suggestions. Construction requires maths, so 860b total (50% greater than Monarchy), while Calendar has the additional Sailing prerequisite for 1000b total. Perhaps the only benefit of being backward is that we get a bonus when other civs know the tech already.

Science Advisor screenshot

MID-TERM:
We have to get land—and fast. We have to get commerce cranking—and fast. I really wish we had the GLH here because with these little islands around for IC routes we could get a decent return from spamming fishing villages mid-term even if everyone closed borders with us. As it is I still think that the islands need to be included in our mid-term plans. (NOTE: our international trade-routes are an extra bargaining tool that we can use if needed to secure an NAP with M3. Let’s not bring it up unless we have to.)

See if you can juggle around the dots and fit the cities in any better, but based off the dotmap I posted earlier I would say Red (Maracaibo T101) > Green (T115) > Blue (T120) > Brown & Yellow (both around T125). Once we get a workboat to defog the little islands we can discuss expanding over sea. At our tech pace though, with math > construction > sailing > calendar I doubt we’ll have galleys in the water before T125. I really wish our economy was better and we could research faster and afford more cities, but I think we’ll have to pause for about 15-turns after Maracaibo until our current cities grow onto some cottages after HR lifts the happy-cap. Mainland cities are the priority anyway for now, but once we run out of land we’ll have to take to the islands.

We can build Q’s for MP, but I don’t think that we should build any more axe’s now unless we get attacked. We have 5, and that’s enough to withstand an attack on any one city. Plus we’ll be able to whip walls and more military if needed. Once construction comes in we should build 3-4 cats to raise our power graph and deter any potential attacker. They’ll be enough to soften a stack of knights which the enemy might have by the time we get construction.

Dotmap reposted

Worker/city micro-plans reposted

WORKERS

BARBADOS

HAVANA

SANTIAGO

LONG-TERM
Some day we’ll have to go to war with someone. I haven’t thought much about anything past the dotmap and research path I suggested above.

[Cornflakes]

This ad was too good to pass up it appeared at the top of our team inbox when i was checking for a reply from M3 this morning

[thestick]

I think we should settle Maracaibo 1N. Sugar doesn't seem such a big deal, since we don't have Calendar. Getting Cows and Wheat to pre-improve/work seems like a big deal.

For Blue dot, what about 2S 1W of it's current position, planting it on the plains hill 1SW of the Wheat?

What, not considering Currency? Definitely pick up Currency before Calendar. Another tech target worth considering is Code of Laws for Confucianism and Courts, but given our current situation it's probably a bad idea. Was going to suggest Horseback Riding, but remembered that Elephants eat Horses for lunch. Feudalism feels like an eternity away.

[Cornflakes]

Certainly Feudalism is not anywhere near a priority for our near-term techs. It too expensive and hardly provides anything useful for such an investment other than longbows (and we'd much rather be building other stuff). It's price on the picture is more for comparison purposes. Currency maybe, but not code of laws. We've committed to Hindu now and we don't have the hammers available to spread a second religion around or put up courthouses, so lets pass for now.

Currency provides an extra trade route everywhere immediately, plus allows us to build marketplaces (very expensive hammer-wise) and trade gold (not all that useful). Calendar allows us to improve 3 more happy resources (and we'll have all three by that time with sugar from green dot for sure, plus maybe from Maracaibo) ... More happy = more cottages worked sooner.

We should have research visibility soon on TEAM, so we'll be able to better judge risk of knights from that direction and hopefully put off construction for more economic-oriented techs like Calendar and Currency. But in any case Maths is next after Monarchy.

[thestick]

And Wealth building, don't forget that. Maybe just wait till Math comes in and reassess then.

[thestick]

Turn played, you're right that having preplanned moves is nice.

[Cornflakes]

Did you see anything important in game that might have slipped by me? I'm not in the habit yet of checking the event log so it's quite possible that something could happen without me noticing. I'm working on extending the micro plan past T97, including the new city and the workers around Barbados.

Is this dotmap a more like what you were thinking?

With the Quechua that's currently south of San Juan ... will further land exploration really benefit us that much? I think that what we currently have ourselves and through TEAM's screenshots is enough. We want to keep visibility on TEAM's northwestern border so that we can see in advance if a settler is coming and divert ours up to Green-dot if necessary. Rather than moving one of our axe's out it would be much less threatening to simply turn our current Q around and innocently return along the edge of TEAM's culture borders, and we'd be in position to see everything along that front by the time our settler pops out at Havana.

[Cornflakes]

Automatic email forwarding is so nice! This just came in from M3 (in reply to our NAP extension proposal)

Pirates,

We happily agree!

Smooth sailing,

TheHumanHydra

So our western border is quite safe for now Everything heads east

[Cornflakes]

Expanded worker micro plan. It's rather small, but if you click on it the picture should expand enough to be readable ... This does not include the new worker which Barbados will build around T96. I'm assuming we'll want to cottage with it around Barbados/PR, but we could move it down to Havana.