Brick by Brick (Spoiler Alert!)

[TheHumanHydra]

Big Update Time (With Pictures!):

From the front: Azza's last keshik, instead of fleeing as predicted, attacked and lost against my spearman at 32% odds. Azza seems to take a lot of low-odds battles; I'll have to remember that in case I fight him again. Meanwhile, Azza sued for peace; I sent back a counter-proposal requiring his 32 gold. From the diplomacy screen, it appears Azza just settled two more cities, bringing his count equal to mine.

At home: Legoland just finished an archer, timed to coincide exactly with its growth, and has started on the settler that unit will escort. Pirates finished its archer and grew at the end of the turn, and will start its settler next turn. (I chose to produce archers in this case because the costs allowed me to sync up the builds and growth exactly and start on the settlers sooner.) My workers are in two loose clumps, one improving my newest city in the south and the other working on the cities in the north, especially the northwestern one which I couldn't fully improve up to now due to Azza's keshiks (I renamed this city "Wild West," another Lego product line, in honour of the conflict). The northern cities (Aquanauts, Hydranauts, and Wild West) are continuing the plan of growing onto commerce tiles while building infrastructure. One thing I would appreciate advice on is whether or not I should whip these cities' libraries, since the overall goal is to create commerce/research through growth. After finishing its settler, Pirates may switch over to this role as well, since it has all those coast tiles to grow onto, and leave Legoland to continue producing settlers. I suppose Pirates could grow and produce the escorts while Legoland puts out the settlers. (As a side note, I don't think Legoland is that strong of a commerce location, meaning unless I move the capital, Bureaucracy loses a lot of its appeal. I will have to ponder the implications of this.)

Now for some pictures. First, an overview shot from before I ended the turn:



You can see my projected city locations marked with signs. They are more conservative than they were up to now, because I realized putting them in theoretically better locations further out would make them difficult to defend and more difficult to afford. Better to have more good cities I can afford than a few great cities I can't, and can't hold on to.

Now for each of my existing cities:













Can anyone think of a fitting Lego product line name for Machu Picchu?

Oh, here's an image of the projected settlement area to the south. You can see what I mean about better locations further south, but those are I think too far away. These ones will stretch my finances to the limit as it is:



Now for the F-tabs, starting with the demographics screens:











I won't bother with the culture or espionage screens. You can see how alarming Serdoa's graphs are, and how behind I am. That spike in GNP I had earlier looked rather impressive at the time (since the graph scaled to it rather than Serdoa's current spike), but it ended when I whipped away so much population at the start of the war with Azza (in retrospect, I obviously didn't need to whip so much, but I didn't know how many keshiks Azza had coming, and I didn't want to take any chances).

Here you can see the wonders that have been built:



I highlighted the Great Lighthouse; that probably goes a long way to explaining how Serdoa's affording all these cities and putting out monstrous research (at least no one's opened borders with him yet). Note that he also just built the Hanging Gardens to add fuel to the fire of his massive empire, and how his Oracle grab will probably guarantee him the Colossus as well for even more economic viability in all those coastal cities he doubtless has. I wonder if I could chop out the Mausoleum of Mausolus to at least have some method of attempting to catch up (of course, Serdoa and/or Old Harry may be on Calendar already, though I expect Serdoa will have gone for Code of Laws instead).

Civics:



I'm running Hereditary Rule and Slavery, and can switch into Organized Religion at any time (I don't have enough Jewish cities for it to be useful yet, and the leap in upkeep costs is substantial).

Military:



I highlighted the workers just so you can see where they are now, but you can see my overall strength as well (not enough to attack, not that it would be economically viable anyway, but enough to defend with until Serdoa or Old Harry hits me with Medieval units).

Finances:



Not much to say here; obviously I break even around 40%. Unfortunately, the gains I'm planning to make in this area will probably be counterbalanced in the short-term by the new cities I'm planning on settling. Hopefully I can limp along to Currency and turn things around ...

Actually it looks like I forgot to take the tech screen. Oh well, I described where I'm at in that big post a couple days ago; just a few turns till Mathematics comes in, then as many as a dozen more for Currency (ouch ...). If Azza gives me that gold I asked for, that'll help. These next two cities are going to cost a lot ...

Here's an overview of all the cities in case it helps with the "big picture." You can see how much happiness and health I have to grow into:



Finally, an overview shot of the former warzone and bustling northern area of the empire, to accompany the shot of the southern settlement area above:



This was taken after I ended the turn; you can see Judaism happily spread to my newest city naturally (it spread to Legoland naturally a few turns ago as well). One final note about religions - Confucianism hasn't been founded yet, which means Serdoa (nor Old Harry) has gotten to Code of Laws yet for courthouses. That'll probably be soon, but the longer it takes, the better; the more breathing room I have to catch up before he gets his next round of economic infrastructure up, the better.

Anyway, that was a big update. Any questions? Comments? Helpful advice from anyone who's unspoiled?

Have a good weekend, everyone.

THH

[TheHumanHydra]

Ach, I hardly posted for several weeks before; now I can hardly stop! I have one last self-directed question I want to address before I go (for now):

What caused TheHumanHydra to fall behind?

I've been thinking about this, and I would answer that it was my decision to build libraries in my best-developed cities (Legoland and Pirates) when I discovered Writing in 920 BC and Azza's declaration of war soon after (in 600 BC) that caused me to fall behind in building settlers, workers, and cottages. Note that before the war, I was developing a substantial lead in GNP (which was, of course, assisted by the libraries), and I was the first to settle a fifth city (including the capital). I spent time and population on libraries in Legoland and Pirates (the other cities, of course, were just getting running), then regrew while building axemen in response to Azza's spiking power rating. Then Azza declared war, and I whipped all my cities even more, causing my GNP to plummet, and built spearmen to try and keep from being overrun when I should have been building settlers and workers, or growing onto cottages. All of this took only a few turns, of course, but on Quick speed they seem to add up fast. I'm not sure that building libraries was actually the wrong decision - it was certainly something I felt I needed to do as quickly as possible at the time so as not to fall behind, and I did get them out quickly - but subsequent events prevented me from turning the GNP lead I was developing into more cities just as Serdoa and Old Harry were massively expanding. Anyway, readers can develop their own, better-informed opinions, and I shall be curious to compare what I was doing to the others at the end of the game. Now, to look to the future, and try and find a way to catch up and keep up with the big dogs!

[NobleHelium]

Well the screenshots were very good, I didn't read any of your walls of text.

I'll offer you an additional comment - what reason would Azza have to give you gold like that? Does staying at war hurt him in any way? Think about it.

[TheHumanHydra]

You must have read some of the text, or you wouldn't have known I asked Azza for gold! Anyway, no, I don't think he'll actually pay up, but staying at war does not hurt me in any way either, so I'm not sure what the concern is. No offence, but you sound a little peeved ...

Anyway, I've always considered the text the most interesting thing to both read and write in a report, supplemented by images to provide grounding. Looking back, I realize I've posted far fewer images in this thread than I thought I had, so I apologize for that, but I am dismayed that reports I spent several hours writing have been passed over in favour of the pictures, and that the latter are being looked at and possibly judged without any understanding of my plans or reasoning. I'm not sure how to handle this, since I recognize not everyone's tastes may be the same, but it does sap my motivation to report some. I'd appreciate hearing back from you on this, NobleHelium, if more to say have you, and especially from any other readers (I assume there are actually quite a few, given the jump in threadviews over the last couple days), so I can get a picture of what in general everyone wants.

Thanks for following, and thank-you for posting, NobleHelium.

[NobleHelium]

I always sound peeved.

I can't follow a game without pictures. I am a very visual person. I hate it when people describe their city and what their plans for it are...but I can't even see the city. That tells me nothing.

[TheHumanHydra]

I always sound peeved.

Ok, that's a relief; it's just the internet screwing with people's tone as usual.

I can't follow a game without pictures. I am a very visual person. I hate it when people describe their city and what their plans for it are...but I can't even see the city. That tells me nothing.

I can understand that, and as I said, I do apologize for not posting more pictures, especially with that long post earlier. But once I posted pictures, you were not interested in reading the text to understand what was going on in them?

[NobleHelium]

I read the text that came with the pictures, sure. The pictures are what make the text make sense. I said that I didn't read your walls of text, not that I didn't read any of your text.

[TheHumanHydra]

Ironically, I just checked, and my "wall of text" post from a few days ago and the one from yesterday with all the pictures are roughly equal in word count (1140 to 1000). I guess I know how to make you read all I write! But in any case, I do appreciate the feedback, and again, I would appreciate hearing what anyone else has to say as well.

[TheHumanHydra]

Time for another screenshot, since I noticed I forgot it last time:



And the GNP screen again, just 'cause I found it interesting:



Yeah, I want to know what's going on over there too. It wasn't a revolution ...

While we're on the topic, can anyone explain to me how the GNP graph and demographics figure actually work(s)? I read a guide about it on CivFanatics, but it said in BtS the value was the sum of all your beakers, commerce, culture and espionage - why then does it vacillate when you vary your beakers allocation; shouldn't it stay roughly the same?

By the way, you may have noticed that I don't bother with the rounding-error-correction tactic of alternating between 100% and 0% beakers allocation; assuming the others do, this presents the hopeful sign that my break-even beakers are not far behind Old Harry's maximum beakers (though obviously nowhere near Serdoa's average). I will continue to watch the graph to verify that is a valid conclusion.

[NobleHelium]

You generally gain 20% of your commerce as additional GNP when you set science to 100%, due to the prereq bonus. Often it can be higher due to known tech bonuses, and people generally have more science buildings than gold ones.