Turn 134 - 475 AD
The Taj Mahal race is over, and we did not win it.
On to the next stage of the game.
![[Image: ISDG-830s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-830s.jpg)
As we knew would happen after seeing the Lakshmi whip at the end of last turn, CFC finished Taj Mahal. The timing was just as putrid as our other missed wonders earlier in the game; we could have finished Taj next turn and forced a coinflip's chance at the wonder. This is a serious setback, not only costing us the bonus production/commerce but also forcing us to burn an Anarchy turn in civics change revolt, and essentially removing the chance to force out two Great People during the Golden Age. Landing Taj would have virtually sealed up this game as a win. Instead, we'll have to keep working that much harder. We still remain in a dominant position.
![[Image: ISDG-831s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-831s.jpg)
Here's vision on another Apolyton city from our scout. We still haven't found their Colossus city yet, it must be around here somewhere. They refused to trade maps with our team, then let us explore almost their entire territory, so we got to see all their cities but they're getting nothing in return. Interesting decision.
Apolyton also sent us a diplomatic message this turn asking about an NAP extension and not to interfere with the barb city that popped up near their borders. It's a nice break of fortune for us; we can easily promise not to screw around with their barb city, and we want that NAP extended past Turn 150. Signing a longer peace deal with Apolyton will tie their hands when it comes to the German war. We definitely want to do this.
![[Image: ISDG-832s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-832s.jpg)
Major news from the south, where we spotted another crabs resource and more importantly silver on the offshore ice island. There is also a German work boat poking around here as well; this territory is due north of their land across the world wrap. We'll be able to put quite a few cities down here, I count at least four more to make use of all these seafood and deer resources. If we settle all of these locations and consume the German team, we're looking at 40-50 cities under our control down the road.
Anyway, the Sentry war chariot will head further west, while the other chariot will hop on the galley and poke around on the ice islands themselves.
![[Image: ISDG-833s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-833s.jpg)
Here's our settler moving over to the sheep location, on the tile east of the wheat. We had a forest grow on the city tile itself this turn, and unfortunately that will delay the founding of the city by one turn. (Suggested names for this location?) Four workers finished a farm on the tile southeast of French Riviera to spread irrigation to the wheat, and some of them will start roading over to the new city. We don't need a road connection present when founding the city for trade routes/resources, as the coastal connection with Starfall will connect it immediately.
The biggest micro question for the turn involves handling the failgold situation with Taj Mahal:
![[Image: ISDG-834s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-834s.jpg)
Here's the capital; we have 442 production sitting in the box for Taj Mahal. This will get converted into gold at a 1:1 ratio next turn, which will do quite a bit to fuel further teching. I don't have much experience in playing around with the failgold mechanics, so here's my question for those of you who do: will we get more failgold next turn if we keep on building Taj Mahal this turn? In other words, if we put another 50 production into Taj this turn, will we get another 50 gold next turn? Or do we get what's already in the box this turn, and nothing more?
This obviously affects how we choose to micro Adventure One for the turn. If we can get more failgold from running high production, then we'll grab all the mines and pick up another 50ish gold at the start of next turn. If we can't get more failgold, then we'll run a setup like the one here, stressing growth and cottages. Those of you who use this mechanic a lot, let me know how to play this one.
It also factors into how and when we choose to swap civics. We definitely want to pop into Nationhood civic as soon as possible; we currently get 28 commerce from the Bureaucracy bonus in Adventure One, and we would save 30 gold/turn in upkeep from switching to Nationhood. That's largely a wash in economic terms, since we don't have an Academy in the capital for a huge beaker multiplier. As for the other civics effects, the +50% production bonus in the capital is more than canceled out by getting +2 happiness from barracks, +25% Espionage Points (EP) in all cities, and the ability to draft from Nationhood civic. As I see it, we revolt to Nationhood civic this turn if we can't get any more failgold in the capital. But if we can, then obviously we want to preserve Bureaucracy civic for one more turn, and use that to accumulate more failgold via production modifier in the capital. Does that make sense?
![[Image: ISDG-835s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-835s.jpg)
Elsewhere, pretty much every city is building forges right now. They are just so good to have, since the +25% production gets applied to whips as well. There's going to be a rather savage bloodletting in a lot of these cities shortly as we 3 pop whip forges all over the place.
The one other factor to consider here is leaving enough population to draft in some of the smaller cities. We probably want to skim a conscript out of cities like Cutting Edge and Simple Life before whipping them down for forges. I'll post in more detail on individual cities and forge whips once we know what we're doing with failgold in the capital.
![[Image: ISDG-836s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-836s.jpg)
We might want to revisit Eastern Dealers as well. The old plan was to whip a forge here and overflow into National Epic. I would suggest that we work all high food tiles and do exactly that. The forge isn't wasted here, as it lets us build National Epic quicker and also lets us run an Engineer specialist afterwards for low-odds lottery tickets at a Great Engineer. What does everyone think?
Similar deal at Starfall: I don't really understand the continued calls to avoid building a forge there. We're on a 3 turn whip cycle there: select build -> whip -> overflow into Globe Theatre. We can also grow 3 pop in 3 turns. The forge is essentially free to build, as we can't run the whip cycle any faster and we grow back all the population we need immediately. Yes, we could whip axes or spears instead for overflow, but those units are already outdated and could only serve as military police. I would personally much rather have 5 catapults and a forge out of Starfall instead of 6 axes. I would argue that this is another case of trying to outmicro ourselves instead of taking the simple but effective solution.
Overview:
Yes, it's a lot of forges.
On the tech path, I clicked on Horseback Riding for anyone who can see our research, but we probably want Machinery tech next so that we can draft maces. With close to 500 failgold incoming, we can research Machinery tech very quickly; I'll look at the numbers, we might actually want to run something like 20% research on this turn and then finish it with two upcoming 100% rounds of science. This would allow us to run a drafting round on T137-138, and then another drafting round ten turns later without penalty. Remember that we can draft 5 cities per turn on this Huge map, and I expect that we can get 10 maces out per round without any real difficulty. They will be unpromoted cannon fodder without Theocracy civic to back us up (sadly, a two-civic revolt will take two turns now, meaning it's not viable) but hopefully that won't matter. I think that if we research Machinery -> Horseback Riding -> Feudalism -> Guilds, we'll be in plenty good enough shape to go after the Germans on Turn 150. With all our population, we can draft an army very quickly indeed.
![[Image: ISDG-838s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-838s.jpg)
As kjn said, the Demographics are in pretty good shape considering the fact that three other teams are in a Golden Age right now (Germans, CivFr, CFC). We're lucky that the Germans are in a Golden Age now, that means they won't be able to trigger one when we invade. It was also a good thing that the Taj free Golden Age didn't go to the Mausoleum team (CivFr). All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
UniversCiv is spending a lot of EP against us now, it might be hard to keep their graphs. I've been trying, but we lost them this turn, and we may not get them back. They have a lot of rathauses and we're a natural target to spend against. Everything else is about the same as before.
Final note: it was too difficult to keep updating the sandbox and also keep playing the turns. It was taking hours just to keep adjusting the sandbox before even getting to the turn, and with so many units and cities on the map now, there just weren't enough hours in the day to devote to this. My goal was to keep it up until we built the Taj Mahal, and that wonder has now fallen. This means that we won't have an elaborate micro plan stretching forward into the future anyway, so we will lose some of our efficiency. I'm honestly surprised that we were able to keep it going for over 130 turns. Sorry about that, it's just too hard to keep it going any longer.
The Taj Mahal race is over, and we did not win it.
On to the next stage of the game.As we knew would happen after seeing the Lakshmi whip at the end of last turn, CFC finished Taj Mahal. The timing was just as putrid as our other missed wonders earlier in the game; we could have finished Taj next turn and forced a coinflip's chance at the wonder. This is a serious setback, not only costing us the bonus production/commerce but also forcing us to burn an Anarchy turn in civics change revolt, and essentially removing the chance to force out two Great People during the Golden Age. Landing Taj would have virtually sealed up this game as a win. Instead, we'll have to keep working that much harder. We still remain in a dominant position.
Here's vision on another Apolyton city from our scout. We still haven't found their Colossus city yet, it must be around here somewhere. They refused to trade maps with our team, then let us explore almost their entire territory, so we got to see all their cities but they're getting nothing in return. Interesting decision.
Apolyton also sent us a diplomatic message this turn asking about an NAP extension and not to interfere with the barb city that popped up near their borders. It's a nice break of fortune for us; we can easily promise not to screw around with their barb city, and we want that NAP extended past Turn 150. Signing a longer peace deal with Apolyton will tie their hands when it comes to the German war. We definitely want to do this.
Major news from the south, where we spotted another crabs resource and more importantly silver on the offshore ice island. There is also a German work boat poking around here as well; this territory is due north of their land across the world wrap. We'll be able to put quite a few cities down here, I count at least four more to make use of all these seafood and deer resources. If we settle all of these locations and consume the German team, we're looking at 40-50 cities under our control down the road.
Anyway, the Sentry war chariot will head further west, while the other chariot will hop on the galley and poke around on the ice islands themselves.
Here's our settler moving over to the sheep location, on the tile east of the wheat. We had a forest grow on the city tile itself this turn, and unfortunately that will delay the founding of the city by one turn. (Suggested names for this location?) Four workers finished a farm on the tile southeast of French Riviera to spread irrigation to the wheat, and some of them will start roading over to the new city. We don't need a road connection present when founding the city for trade routes/resources, as the coastal connection with Starfall will connect it immediately.
The biggest micro question for the turn involves handling the failgold situation with Taj Mahal:
Here's the capital; we have 442 production sitting in the box for Taj Mahal. This will get converted into gold at a 1:1 ratio next turn, which will do quite a bit to fuel further teching. I don't have much experience in playing around with the failgold mechanics, so here's my question for those of you who do: will we get more failgold next turn if we keep on building Taj Mahal this turn? In other words, if we put another 50 production into Taj this turn, will we get another 50 gold next turn? Or do we get what's already in the box this turn, and nothing more?
This obviously affects how we choose to micro Adventure One for the turn. If we can get more failgold from running high production, then we'll grab all the mines and pick up another 50ish gold at the start of next turn. If we can't get more failgold, then we'll run a setup like the one here, stressing growth and cottages. Those of you who use this mechanic a lot, let me know how to play this one.
It also factors into how and when we choose to swap civics. We definitely want to pop into Nationhood civic as soon as possible; we currently get 28 commerce from the Bureaucracy bonus in Adventure One, and we would save 30 gold/turn in upkeep from switching to Nationhood. That's largely a wash in economic terms, since we don't have an Academy in the capital for a huge beaker multiplier. As for the other civics effects, the +50% production bonus in the capital is more than canceled out by getting +2 happiness from barracks, +25% Espionage Points (EP) in all cities, and the ability to draft from Nationhood civic. As I see it, we revolt to Nationhood civic this turn if we can't get any more failgold in the capital. But if we can, then obviously we want to preserve Bureaucracy civic for one more turn, and use that to accumulate more failgold via production modifier in the capital. Does that make sense?
Elsewhere, pretty much every city is building forges right now. They are just so good to have, since the +25% production gets applied to whips as well. There's going to be a rather savage bloodletting in a lot of these cities shortly as we 3 pop whip forges all over the place.
The one other factor to consider here is leaving enough population to draft in some of the smaller cities. We probably want to skim a conscript out of cities like Cutting Edge and Simple Life before whipping them down for forges. I'll post in more detail on individual cities and forge whips once we know what we're doing with failgold in the capital. We might want to revisit Eastern Dealers as well. The old plan was to whip a forge here and overflow into National Epic. I would suggest that we work all high food tiles and do exactly that. The forge isn't wasted here, as it lets us build National Epic quicker and also lets us run an Engineer specialist afterwards for low-odds lottery tickets at a Great Engineer. What does everyone think?
Similar deal at Starfall: I don't really understand the continued calls to avoid building a forge there. We're on a 3 turn whip cycle there: select build -> whip -> overflow into Globe Theatre. We can also grow 3 pop in 3 turns. The forge is essentially free to build, as we can't run the whip cycle any faster and we grow back all the population we need immediately. Yes, we could whip axes or spears instead for overflow, but those units are already outdated and could only serve as military police. I would personally much rather have 5 catapults and a forge out of Starfall instead of 6 axes. I would argue that this is another case of trying to outmicro ourselves instead of taking the simple but effective solution.
Overview:
![[Image: ISDG-837s.jpg]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/ISDG/ISDG-837s.jpg)
Yes, it's a lot of forges.
On the tech path, I clicked on Horseback Riding for anyone who can see our research, but we probably want Machinery tech next so that we can draft maces. With close to 500 failgold incoming, we can research Machinery tech very quickly; I'll look at the numbers, we might actually want to run something like 20% research on this turn and then finish it with two upcoming 100% rounds of science. This would allow us to run a drafting round on T137-138, and then another drafting round ten turns later without penalty. Remember that we can draft 5 cities per turn on this Huge map, and I expect that we can get 10 maces out per round without any real difficulty. They will be unpromoted cannon fodder without Theocracy civic to back us up (sadly, a two-civic revolt will take two turns now, meaning it's not viable) but hopefully that won't matter. I think that if we research Machinery -> Horseback Riding -> Feudalism -> Guilds, we'll be in plenty good enough shape to go after the Germans on Turn 150. With all our population, we can draft an army very quickly indeed.
As kjn said, the Demographics are in pretty good shape considering the fact that three other teams are in a Golden Age right now (Germans, CivFr, CFC). We're lucky that the Germans are in a Golden Age now, that means they won't be able to trigger one when we invade. It was also a good thing that the Taj free Golden Age didn't go to the Mausoleum team (CivFr). All things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
UniversCiv is spending a lot of EP against us now, it might be hard to keep their graphs. I've been trying, but we lost them this turn, and we may not get them back. They have a lot of rathauses and we're a natural target to spend against. Everything else is about the same as before.
Final note: it was too difficult to keep updating the sandbox and also keep playing the turns. It was taking hours just to keep adjusting the sandbox before even getting to the turn, and with so many units and cities on the map now, there just weren't enough hours in the day to devote to this. My goal was to keep it up until we built the Taj Mahal, and that wonder has now fallen. This means that we won't have an elaborate micro plan stretching forward into the future anyway, so we will lose some of our efficiency. I'm honestly surprised that we were able to keep it going for over 130 turns. Sorry about that, it's just too hard to keep it going any longer.
